Mentored in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

And we will prepare a visit to the princess of the Dark Kingdom. For that will be her title whether or not she accepts it. After this, she has earned it.

Twenty-Four

“It’s fine. No one will notice, honest.”

Roger stared at me like I’d grown two heads. Three dragons crouched on his lawn beside his very private, very secluded, and not-so-secret house. You could keep a great many things from a great many supernatural creatures, but you could not keep much from Darius. When Darius wanted to know about an enemy turned acquaintance, he learned everything. Including Roger’s previously secret hideaway in the Sierra foothills that only a few other people in the world knew about.

Well, a few other people…and the government. Shifters largely followed the rules. Vampires did not. Being a good guy came with its drawbacks. And now Roger knew.

He continued to stare at me. He was clearly at a loss for words.

“Look.” I gestured around us, to the sprawling house that could fit a wife and a whole litter of children, the gorgeous grounds that would thrill even the fae, and the woods stretching for four hundred acres. The guy might dress like he was just another kid on the block, but he was clearly loaded. Being an alpha paid well. Somehow. Or maybe he’d just stolen some golden bricks from the elves. “Who is going to see them? They won’t bother you. They’ll just hang out here until the battle, and then they can hopefully head back to the Realm and fly around there. It’ll be great. You’ll love them.”

Penny sat off to the side, basically draped over a patio chair, her arms hanging limp and her legs sprawled out in front of her. A plastic bottle of bubbles sat beside her, which had been her pastime for the last hour, until she’d just given up and opted to stare at nothing for a while. We were taking it slow. She needed some time to back away from the edge.

It had been two days since we’d returned from the Underworld, and I still couldn’t shake the image of my dad lifting his hand in salute and letting me go. It hadn’t been an acknowledgment of defeat. He would’ve had me—if not there, at the gate, then he could have followed me into the Realm. I’d known it when I sent Darius with Penny. I’d known it when I stopped Penny from desperately trying to leap from her dragon to mine.

The jig had been up. My escape plan hadn’t gone smoothly enough, and he’d caught me.

But instead of actually capturing me…he’d let me go. He’d respectfully said goodbye.

That fact made me want to go straight back to him. To my wing. To the castle and its weird gardens. It made me want to continue training and then maybe tour the kingdom and scare more conspectors. That had been a great time. Better than freaking out shifters, because demons were crafty and would give me some real trouble if they fought back.

But that was probably a pipe dream. Lucifer might have let me go this time, but it was hard to say what plot that worked into. What game he might be playing. I needed to just count my lucky stars and look on his kingdom fondly.

In the meantime, at least I’d gotten Archion out. Apparently, dragons couldn’t leave the Underworld unless escorted by a card-carrying member of the magical society. They had to have someone on their back who wanted the dragon out.

Given none of the demons were allowed in the Realm, and they wouldn’t want their dragons heading to a place they couldn’t go, the dragons were mostly stuck with everyone else. Some of them hadn’t liked that fact, obviously.

But we couldn’t just leave our dragons in the Realm. The elves wouldn’t allow them to wander freely, so the only option had been to take them with us. Which led to the conundrum of where to keep them.

It was Darius who had suggested this place. There were a few options, including his island, but this was the closest to a gate to the Realm.

Roger hadn’t been home when we got here. He hadn’t come home because of us, either. Apparently he’d needed a break from all the tireless organizing he’d been doing, of his people and of the fae, now hiding in the Brink from the elves’ minions. He’d left them in capable hands on some of his shifter lands, and showed up here for a few days of quiet reflection.

Surprise!

“Reagan…” He shifted his weight to his other foot, his heavy slabs of muscle straining his white T-shirt. “They are dragons. It’s against…”

He let the thought drift away. It was a different world than when he’d started this job, and we all knew it.

“It’s against the rules?” I finished for him. “It’s against the rules…of the creatures who are currently hunting any shifters and fae left in the Realm?”