21. Enzo

Enzo’s body shook with rage as the image of his father came to his mind, and his description left Brad’s mouth. There was no denying that it was his father who came to the island, attacked his mate, and took Blaze from his cage. Those were tactics that Enzo knew were in Gemar’s Art of War. How he managed to get Blaze’s power to burn through the warded bars was still a mystery, but it was without a doubt Gemar who stole Blaze from them.

"It was my fucking father!" Enzo bellowed again as his fist connected with the stone wall. He felt the skin on his knuckles split open, and the warmth of his blood trickled down his fingers onto the ground. "That is why he created that barrier that we encountered. He did it so we could not enter the kingdom while he was away. It could have alerted his forces and bogged us down, so we’d be easy pickin’s for his army."

Beckett growled. "That makes sense. He created the barrier to keep us from entering the kingdom when he came here while the island’s defenses were down. Clever bastard."

"But why leave the island untouched and only take Blaze?" Arlo asked no one in particular. "Why not take Kaida, too? He knows how valuable she is and how powerful her magic is. She is way more of an asset than Blaze, no offense to him."

Esen scoffed. "He probably thought if he took Kaida, we would go in to get her back with the entirety of the island behind us. The people love her here. Blaze is just a bit less beloved by the people."

"No. He wouldn’t care about that. He wants Blaze for something in particular," Enzo told them, leaning his head against the cold stone of the wall behind him.

"What could that be? Blaze isn’t like us. We are all connected to Kaida, but he isn’t," Beckett explained.

Enzo let it roll around in his head to find an answer. Blaze was not special in any way outside of being the most powerful Ember Dragon on the island. That is how he became the prince of the Ember Dragons. He was not connected to Kaida, but how would his father even know that? He knew Blaze was a mate of Kaida’s, but that was it.

There is something we are missing here.

No kidding.

What are we missing? How is Blaze different from us that could benefit my father in any way?

Arlo haphazardly raised his hands and made a sideways face. "Could it be a bargaining chip? Blaze not being mated to Kaida would mean she would want him back. He knows that he is one of her mates. Anyone with a fated mate would do anything to protect them, including getting them back if captured."

Enzo leaned his head from the left to the right and back to his left. "Maybe? I don’t know. I have never seen my father use this tactic before. Even if it is like him to do something like this, he never has in the past. He would leave someone dead before capturing them to be his prisoner. ’Leverage’ isn’t a word in his dictionary."

"Oh, wonderful. Someone who would rather leave bodies like our brother’s," Beckett snarled.

Enzo had to admit that he felt a wave of anger at the idea of his father holding Blaze and would easily kill him if he found it necessary. As much as the guy pissed him off, he was still one of Kaida’s mates. That made him family since they had bonded to Kaida.

"I don’t even know where to begin to get him back. If my father captured him after putting up a barrier to guard the kingdom from us getting in, we are limited in what we can do."

Beckett shook his head and laughed. "Wrong."

"How am I wrong?"

"I think you forgot that we have one of the strongest weapons in the kingdom. Kaida is strong enough to blast that barrier like she did around the island. She’s literally the key to the kingdom; We utilize her to knock out the defenses, and then we walk right into the kingdom."

Enzo leaned his back against the wall and bowed his head. "I doubt that it would be that easy. My father could have set up an alert when someone attacked the barrier so he would be ready for us. That’s how it was with the island. We always knew when people tried to get off of the island."

Beckett looked at the others, and they shared a look—not as if it was a revelation but more of an "I told you so."

"She can still get us into the kingdom to get Blaze out of there," Beckett told him.

"I don’t think that is smart. We must gather those who want to fight with us immediately and storm the kingdom. We need to be ready for an attack because it is surely coming. Gemar was here. With our barrier down, we didn’t even know it. We need to do something about that," Arlo countered.

Enzo scoffed. "There’s a slim chance of that happening. It would be better to have a powerful Witch to help us build the barrier. Adrien is gone. She would have been the best person to help us build a barrier here so there wouldn’t be a surprise attack from my father and his army."

"Would he really be stupid enough to attack us here? This is our home turf. He is rarely here, so he does not know the land as well as we do. We could disappear on this island and reappear exactly where we want to be to ambush them when they least expect it. If your father is as smart as we think he is, he won’t be coming here to start this war. He is waiting for us to bring it to him," Arlo explained.

"Wouldn’t that be what we shouldn’t do then?"

Arlo chortled and shook his head. "Yes, but he thinks we are too scared to do that. He knows that we are plotting, but we haven’t made a move yet. He is counting on us not having the numbers or the balls to go to those gates and bring the fight to him."

"That might be true, but I see my father anticipating that."

All three of them laughed. Enzo suppressed a growl. He knew it was at his expense as if he had said something they found to be wrong.

Beckett was the one to confirm that, saying, "I think you give your father way too much credit. He would have gotten rid of us long ago if he were smart. We four have been rising to power since we were young. Many people here find us to be the real kings of the dragons. They want us on the throne. The only thing stopping them from joining us to claim it is the possibility of losing the lives that they built here. People are too comfortable to be willing to give everything up without a reason that truly benefits them. Otherwise, we would have tried to storm the gates when that barrier went down."

Esen nodded. "Yeah. I have to agree. You think your father is untouchable because he has made himself look like he is. He is just a man who can shift into a semi-powerful storm dragon, but still a man. He is not a god. The Great Dragon is our only god, and your father is not that."

Enzo wanted to argue, but it was no use. They made a point. His father was not the Great Dragon. He could be defeated.

"How do we do that? I’m not trying to make him seem untouchable. I am trying to think of a way for us actually to win here."

Arlo spoke up. "That’s going to be the hard part. With a barrier around the kingdom, Gemar made it ridiculously hard for us to infiltrate it to ambush them." Arlo was right. The new barrier threw a wrench in their plans.

"We need Kaida to break the barrier and storm into the kingdom. We take it by force," Enzo finally agreed, though he thought this was not the best strategy.

"It’s the only plan we have. Without knowing the weak points and being able to sneak into the kingdom, and with the barrier stopping us from getting in, breaking down the barrier with Kaida and launching a full assault seems to be our best and only play. It might be just stupid enough to work."

Enzo growled and kicked himself off the wall. He hated not having more options. Every strategy they could develop would still rely on them breaking down the barrier and alerting his father and his troops of their presence. "We need something else to assist us here. Some kind of force multiplier to make our attack hit harder than just us. Do you have any allies we could recruit to make this plan a bit less suicidal?"

Beckett shook his head. "No. The allies that we could have used returned to the kingdom. Adrien, Remy, Azulia, and Sundrei would have done anything for Kaida, including jumping into the fight. With them gone, we don’t have anyone but who is on this island."

"No witch powerful enough to help us with our barrier?" Enzo asked them.

Arlo answered with a sigh. "No. Adrien was the only truly powerful witch on the island—at least powerful enough to cast a secondary barrier to alert us if it was broken."

"Our shields? Could that work?" After he said it out loud, he knew that wasn’t a possibility.

Beckett shook his head. "No. It would deplete our energy and prevent us from having the strength to fight if we reached the kingdom."

"Yeah, I thought of that after I said it. I don’t know what else to suggest."

Enzo started to walk toward the house. He wanted to bring Adrien to put a barrier around the island to keep Kaida and everyone else safe. The idea of risking their lives left a pit in his stomach. Why couldn’t they make the island safe again and live out their days making this their kingdom? That sounded a much better option than charging into the kingdom to take it for themselves. That way, all five could be happy and not have to deal with this anymore.

"I know what you are thinking, and I wish it could be that way, too. We have only wanted to be happy with our lives and bring peace to our people. You don’t know that we have received letters from your father stating that the island will no longer be open one day. One day, he would come in and wipe it off the map. There have been warnings since we were young that we are only here because he deemed it necessary for now. As much as we wanted to keep the peace, we couldn’t. We have bided our time to find the right moment to put a stop to this. Your father on the throne is the only threat to dragons surviving. If he would come here and wipe us off the board as he wishes, then one day, the dragons would no longer be here. Storm Dragons can’t always just mate with each other. That would lead to our extinction. It is in history books for a reason. Even here, not many of the same types mate with each other."

Beckett’s words hit too close to home. He thought of that throughout his life and feared it to be true. The longer the kingdom only relied on the Great Dragon being able to pair them within the Storm Dragon’s lines, the faster the Storm Dragons would die out. But to know that his father threatened his people just because he saw them as lesser beings than himself was something he could not tolerate.

"We need to wake Kaida and explain everything we know. Then we need to gather those willing to fight with us and knock my father’s ass off that throne."