Chapter Six

"ZANE HAS BEEN TO the future," Zoey murmured in shock. "He's been to the twenty-first-century." She shook her head in confusion. "And I don't mean since Keira first traveled back a few years ago. The age we just saw him at, if not younger."

Magnus frowned and shook his head as well. Surely, she was wrong. "Impossible. His kin would have known." He looked at Rafe. "At the very least, Leviathan would have known."

"You would think." Rafe looked Zoey's way. "What makes you so sure?"

"I don't know." Zoey narrowed her eyes in thought. "My sense of certainty comes from my dragon. That's all I know." She eyed them with curiosity. "I would think any of you could travel there when you feel like it via the Yggdrasil. Given your mothers and grandmothers are from our era, I would imagine you'd be curious about where they came from."

"Some of us were when we were younger, where others weren't." Magnus shrugged. "I was not, as my Sigdir mother had no ties to anyone from the future."

"Nor was I curious about the twenty-first-century," Rafe agreed. "Everyone I cared about was here, so I saw no need to spend time in an era so unlike our own. An era that, as a whole, is unkind to nature."

"Of all of you, it would make sense Zane would be the most curious," Arne said, giving Magnus a look implying it more than made sense. "After all, he is power-hungry, so who knows what he would be capable of in the twenty-first century."

"True," Rafe agreed as they continued making their way through the blustery winter woodland.

"Or," Quinn countered, "Zane might have just been curious about where his mother came from because chances were good, since many generations on his mom's side come from our era, that he might be connected with a mate across time too. Seems perfectly logical to me." She shrugged. "Maybe he was curious to see if he could connect with her sooner. Get an idea what he might be in for."

"That definitely seems logical," Zoey agreed, giving the men a look. "More logical than trying to rule a world so unfamiliar to him with nobody he knows alive in it anymore. That doesn't sound like a sure thing to me at all."

"Because you don't know Zane," Magnus grunted, praying she never did. "And as you just saw, it is best you never do because he can't be reasoned with."

"Agreed," Rafe and Arne said simultaneously.

He could tell by Zoey's expression she didn't entirely agree with that.

"So, who won the fight in the memory we just watched?" she asked. "Who won the Keep? Should I assume Zane?"

"Against me? Very unlikely," he made clear. "And neither of us won because Leviathan stopped us."

"Stopped you before you killed each other, no doubt," Zoey returned, not entirely wrong. "I noticed one thing when you two were fighting, though."

"And that is?"

"Zane never actually said he wouldn't turn the Keep over to Ulrik someday," she said. "Nor did he at any point claim Ulrik wasn't the most powerful or that he didn't deserve to rightfully rule the Keep." She shrugged a shoulder, yet again proving she might be diplomatic, but she wasn't above saying exactly what she thought. "From what I could tell, he was fighting you so he could oversee the Keep sometime in the near future." She cocked her head in question at all three men. "Has he at any time either then or now claimed he intended to rule the Keep permanently and usurp Ulrik as high king?"

"Whether he has or hasn"t," Magnus ground out, not liking where this was going, "he's made it clear by his actions precisely what his intentions are."

"Right," Quinn said, backing Zoey up in her quest to bridge the gap and seek peace. "And what are those again?" She flinched and shrugged a little at Rafe. "Sorry, love, but you haven't said. Nor has my dragon figured out exactly why your dragon dislikes his so much."

"Outside of Zane not swearing his loyalty to Ulrik—" though clearly disgruntled, Rafe kept his words gentle when speaking with his mate— "he and I stopped seeing eye to eye after he and Magnus had their falling out. I sided with Magnus and tried to make Zane see reason, but he only wanted to challenge whoever stood in his way over the Keep. Even me, so we skirmished here and there. Then dragons I had grown up with made it clear they backed Zane." He sighed. "Soon after, Magnus and I fell for Rune. The rest is history."

"Right," Zoey said softly, seeming to see things clearly enough based on the all-too-familiar contemplative expression that fell over her delicate features. "Zane and Knud killed one another's mates, and the kingdoms split apart. You went one way, and Rafe another. As far as I can tell, Zane stayed the course, whatever that may be."

Magnus could tell by the bristling he felt in Rafe's and Arne's dragons they didn't like Zoey's assessment any more than he did, but he could admit she wasn't completely off target. It had been a turbulent time, and emotions had been high. So high and for so long, he wondered how much of it had been skewed by anger and hurt and pain.

Something he contemplated as they continued on without any signs of Zane. All was eerily quiet as they safely made it onto Rafe's land and into his Realm just as the sun set.

"Oh, wow," Zoey whispered, slowing as she looked north through the woodland. Peered in the direction of the standing stones without being able to see them from here. "What am I hearing?"

"You tell me," Rafe said softly. Respectfully. "What does it sound like?"

"Laughter...happiness..." She smiled before her brow furrowed, and she inhaled a ragged breath. "Now terrible sadness..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Loss."

Magnus stilled because he heard and sensed nothing, yet it felt like something. Personal in a way that put his inner dragon on alert. Made it feel distressed and threatened.

Quinn gave Magnus a gentle, loving look that alarmed him before she took Zoey's hand. "Then let's go see what it is."

They didn't have to walk much further before the stones came into sight, and Zoey slowed as if hesitant to go any closer.

"What is it?" Quinn asked, looking from the stones to Zoey.

"Dread," Zoey whispered, her face pale. "That's the only way to describe it."

"Too much dread," Magnus said softly, feeling what her inner dragon felt. Drawn to it even as he wanted to run in the opposite direction because this sensation felt all too familiar.

Suffice it to say, when Zoey drifted toward the tallest stone, he followed.

"Are the runic symbols glowing in the stone?" Mea asked, her voice as gentle as the wind around them.

"No," Magnus said as Zoey murmured, "Yes."

Zoey drew closer to the tallest stone and gazed at it in confusion. "It's..." She trailed off, cocked her head, and narrowed her eyes. She picked at the rock as if trying to dislodge a piece, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "There's something wedged in there, I think."

The more she tried to grab hold of whatever it was, the more uneasy Magnus became. So uneasy, he rested his hand on the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his waist because it felt like he needed to brace for battle.

Better still, that he was too late.

"There it is," Zoey said softly, pulling out a charred splinter of wood as if it had been wedged in the rock. She eyed it and frowned before visibly shivering. "What is this..." She shook her head. "I don't understand."

Repelled yet drawn, Magnus held out his hand. "Might I see it?"

Zoey nodded and dropped it in his palm, only for his inner beast to keen in pain. "I don't understand," he said hoarsely, seeing a small flaming boat floating over the sea all over again. He shook his head. "How is this possible?"

"What is this, cousin?" Troubled, Rafe rested a hand on Magnus's shoulder in comfort. "Whose death was this? Because this is the burnt wood from a funeral pyre." He narrowed his eyes, clearly seeing what Magnus saw in his mind's eye. Seeing the worst day of his life. "There were several...yet this one meant far more than the others..."

"Oh, no," Zoey whispered, undoubtedly feeling his pain. "They were family..."

"They were." Magnus sighed and stared numbly at the charred bit of wood. "My wife and daughter."

He felt everyone's shock at that.

"I didn't know you had either," Rafe murmured, just as upset. "I cannot tell you how sorry I am, my friend."

It struck him anew how foolish they had been for fighting years ago. Letting too much time pass. Rafe should have known his family. Been part of their lives.

Everyone else also murmured their condolences, without a doubt sensing this wasn't a comfortable topic for him. When Zoey rested her hand on his forearm and softly said how sorry she was, her touch somehow eased the ache in his heart. A pain he had long thought he'd tempered, yet the old familiar ache had come rushing back with this charred wood. With the memory of his loved ones drifting away from him on cool waters caught in hot flames, sailing into the afterlife.

Even so, some part of him understood he needed to pull them close again. At least in this moment because the stones were trying to tell them something. Lead them somewhere.

"They were Zane's men," he growled, recalling how livid he'd been to find that out. "From what I was told by my dying warrior when I arrived too late to save them, our enemies, even then, were eager for females." He clenched his fist and crushed the charred wood. "My mate and daughter were out gathering herbs with a few others when they were attacked."

"They weren't shifters," Rafe realized.

"No," Magnus replied. "My wife was fully human, and my daughter didn't inherit the shifter gene." He bit back a fresh wave of pain. "They were, however, with female dragons at the time, so they were especially vulnerable..." He swallowed hard and tossed the crushed bits of wood to the ground. "And equally disposable."

Silence fell for several moments before Rafe spoke softly. "Was Zane among those who attacked them?"

"Not according to my warrior," Magnus said. "But that does not mean he didn't order the attack. Or that my warrior simply did not see him during the mayhem." He shook his head. "They should have had more of my men with them. More protectors. They knew better."

"We all do these days," Mea concurred gently, resting her hand on Magnus's other shoulder. "Yet still, we need to live. We need to do things that feel normal despite these turbulent times, ja?"

He knew she was right but couldn't quite find it in him to agree because his loss had been too great, the toll of their warring kingdoms too high, and the unrest that had stolen so much from them too tiring.

"Unless you see something else in the stone we need to pay attention to, Zoey," Rafe said, "we should head inside for the night. Another storm brews, and fresh snowfall will be here soon. Come in, eat, and we will discuss what this might mean going forward. Why the stone showed you both this...and in turn all of us."

"There's nothing else there," Zoey said, surprised when she glanced at the stone again. "In fact, the runic symbols have faded altogether."

"Then you have seen what you were meant to see." Rafe squeezed Magnus's shoulder and urged everyone to follow. "Come, let us have an ale together and continue reconnecting as we should. Mourn together as we should."

He appreciated his cousin's compassion because it was real. Like Magnus, Rafe truly wanted things to return to how they had once been, excluding Zane, of course. Because whether the women believed it or not, Zane was at the heart of all this. At the heart of far too much.

As expected, Zoey was in awe of the cave at the center of Rafe's Realm, with its towering trees growing up the walls and its brilliant green and autumn leaves overhead.

"This is so beautiful," she murmured, drifting toward the vibrant blue-green stream trickling beneath the largest tree. "And familiar...so very familiar."

He slowed, stunned, when she crouched by the stream and cupped a handful of water. "We've been here before," he managed moments before a tiny blue-black dragon manifested beside her and ran its talon through the water as if enchanted by it. "I've seen you...her..."

"Who?" Zoey asked. "Me?"

As if in response, the little dragon glanced at him with startled eyes that were the same vibrant turquoise as the prisms of light rolling across the sky over the trees in a suddenly dim cave as though it were night. Lights that were referred to as the aurora borealis in her time. In his, the gods as they frolicked through the Nine Worlds.

"This is when I first saw you," he said, impacted so strongly by the moment his chest tightened. "The first time we laid eyes on each other..."

"Zoey was a shifter," Quinn realized as her Valkyrie clearly allowed her to see what others couldn't.

Allowed her to see his memory from another life.

She was right because seconds later, the tiny dragon snapped away in a poof of turquoise firefly-like flaming sparkles and left a little girl with blue-black hair staring at him wide-eyed over her shoulder. Everything inside him felt frozen in time yet never so elated. Never so intensely connected to another than he was to Zoey at that moment.

"Just as we suspected," Quinn said softly, resting her hand on his shoulder as she gazed with affection at who could only be Zoey in their last life. "Like me, you met someone else first. Fell in love. And, like me, it was with a shifter when such was frowned upon. Especially for us because we were supposed to marry each other."

"She was...is so beautiful," he managed, fighting back emotions as he recalled this moment. "I was only a child myself at the time, but I knew when she shifted, hoping I hadn't seen she was half dragon, that it would be the hardest thing I'd ever done to look away. To not see how stunning she was in both forms...how incredibly perfect."

"I more than understand." Quinn smiled at where Zoey, as a little girl, had been standing before she faded. "I felt the same way when I first met Rafe in our last life."

"I know you did." Magnus squeezed her hand, glad they had found each other again. Rediscovered their friendship. "How is this possible, though?" He shook his head and looked at Quinn and Rafe. "How did I see Zoey in our last life when we're not in the Forest of Memories anymore?"

"I imagine because you and Zoey were so connected with Quinn and me in our last life." Rafe gestured at the tree and stream. "And this was recreated for Quinn, so given your bond, it could very well spark memories for you and your fated mate." He gestured at a table full of food and drink. "Come and sit. Let us talk, eat, then rest."

So they did, along with Arne and Mea, who remained mostly silent as far as they knew but had at least sat beside each other. Magnus couldn't help but notice Rafe didn't give them much choice. Understandable, given he carried as much guilt over their separation as Magnus. Hoped, as he did, that they would find their way back to each other.

Zoey was also quiet as ale and mead were poured. In her case, however, silence was uncharacteristic. Then again, he sensed both her human and dragon halves were unsettled. Sad, even. He didn't need to ask why because he felt her genuine pain over how much he had lost. That he'd suffered such grief from losing his wife and child. And it touched him in ways he wasn't used to because he'd never shared his grief with another, not even Arne.

And it seemed, as he soon learned, the connection he and Zoey were forming was about to reveal she didn't just sympathize but empathized in a way.