Chapter 21

21

R hi

“He’s gone!” I pant, spinning my gaze around.

“Yes, but who the hell is that?” Stone says, shielding his eyes and watching as the three dragons fly closer, finally joining the golden dragon in the sky. They circle us three times and once again my mates are crowding round me and lifting their hands.

Then together all four dragons swoop towards the beach, the ground shaking as they land in front of us.

Renzo’s rucksack – the one he’s been carrying all this time – now lying discarded on the sand, begins to wriggle, and then Pip squirms his way out of the top, squawking angrily as he does.

The others pay him no attention. They bristle ready for another attack, but the three riders – one man and two women – simply stare at us. These three dragons are smaller than the one I healed, with duller coloring. The women riding smaller green dragons and the man a larger brown one.

They are dressed in tight-fitted suits of leather, dark helmets on the women’s heads.

“You may lower your hands,” the man says, his accent thick with the West. “We are not here to harm you.”

He clicks his tongue and the brown dragon lowers its head to the sand. The man slides down the dragon, landing deftly on his feet. Closer now, I see how well his suit is cut, how well the leather has been buffed, and spy the heavy gold rings he wears on his fingers.

“I see you have found my dragon,” he says. “Gwenhwyfar.”

His voice is quiet but full of authority. The man clasps his hands in front of him as the golden dragon watches him, her lidless eyes unblinking.

“Your dragon?” I say, scowling at him automatically, thinking of the cuffs around her neck and ankles and the scars on her body I’m sure were made from whips.

“She was, although perhaps she has changed her allegiance, daughter. Dragons have always favored female riders.”

I stare at him, my mouth falling open, even Pip stops snorting by my ankles.

Daughter?

“Yes, daughter,” he says.

The scowl on my brow deepens. Can he read my thoughts? I draw up my defenses like Stone taught me. I may think I know who this man is but I don’t know for sure. I don’t want him wandering through my mind.

“I have been looking for you. Looking for you for a long, long time.” He smiles, a warmth in his eyes. “I sent men out looking for you.” Those men? The ones that came for us over and over again? I always thought they were lowlifes taking their opportunity to abuse women who lived on their own, or possibly gangs hoping to capture magicals they could use for their own purposes. Was I wrong? Was it this man’s men all along? Is that why my aunt fought them so hard over and over again? And if so, why? What was she so afraid of?

“I even came myself when the rumors began to circulate about a powerful girl – risked the start of a new war, daughter, to find you. And now, here you are at last.”

I peer up at the man, my heart thumping in my ears. Tears glisten in his eyes.

“I should have known it would be this way,” he continues. “That you would call to me, Rhianna.”

“Call you?” I say, confused. “I didn’t call you.”

“You did,” he says, pointing to the knife, blade down in the sand by his feet. He holds out his hand, palm upwards. The rings on his fingers glint in the pale light and his fingertips are worn and calloused. “Come, we have so much to discuss. So much lost time to make up.”

I look past that hand and up into his face. He’s handsome, despite the lines of time that have marked his face. His eyes are dark and beautiful, his jaw sharp, his build solid. He is the man in the locket. The man I saw when I held my father’s knife. Is this the man my mom loved, then? The man who seduced her?

Is this my father?

I want to take his hand. I want to be welcomed with arms wide open. But something holds me back.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t,” he says simply. I nod. I should know that by now. “Come. It’s time to go home.”