“Handsome, am I?” Jayce asked softly, his voice husky. Hazel opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Inside! Both of you, now!” Elizabeth’s voice shot out, hitting her with the force of a canon ball, even though the other two seemed unaffected. Although Hazel did notice that Jayce turned to go inside just as quickly as she did. “And put some clothes on, will you?”
Elizabeth watched Hazel and mysterious monster-then-man hurry inside. She turned to follow, determined to get answers from that girl once and for all when she was stopped abruptly as she noticed another man standing stock still on the front porch.
“Well? Are you going to say something, or just stand there all night?” Elizabeth demanded, unnerved that she hadn’t noticed him before and about at the end of her level of tolerance for the night.
The other man just shook his head, staring at where the other couple had just been. “I’ve never…I’ve never seen anything like that.” He finally whispered.
“I’ve never seen a dragon before either, still no reason to stand out here until we turn to dust.”
“No, you misunderstand me.” He said calmly, and she was taken aback by the utter confidence in his voice. “I’ve never seen anyone powerful enough to calm a fully morphed Drakolian soldier. It’s impossible. She should have been destroyed.”
“Powerful,” Elizabeth snorted, “Hazel? I think you are the one who misunderstood.” She just shook her head as she moved to continue inside, but the thought repeated in her head. Powerful? Haze? Certainly not, she told herself as she entered the small, familiar home. Impossible, indeed.
Chapter 7
“Wait, I’m sorry, explain that again?” Elizabeth demanded shrilly, her voice echoing through the otherwise silent room. They were all back in the kitchen again, the Mother Guardian, Hazel, and Nika all sitting around the sweetly colored table while Jayce paced the small room restlessly. He was wearing his clothes again, which Hazel was thankful for. There had been a moment, out there in the dark, standing before his magnificent body when all she could think of was running her hands down the front of him. To see if he was really as hard as he looked.
“Stop it.” Jayce threw the softly spoken words in her direction and she blushed a bright red as embarrassment swept through her. Nika also sent her a sharp look, shaking his head at her, but she couldn’t miss the heat that had his pale skin flushing as well.
Elizabeth looked from one to the next to the next. “What is going on here? You know what, it doesn’t matter,” she said, forestalling her own question with an ill tempered sigh. “Just, start again, from the beginning.”
Jayce sighed, but complied. Most people did in the end, and dragons too it would seem. “We were soldiers, part of a great army of protectors, sent on a mission to capture the evil spirit called Eidolon. He had massacred hundreds of innocent lives before we could stop him, growing stronger with each death he caused. We tried to destroy him, but he was too strong, so instead we trapped him, using ourselves as bait.”
“And you two also ended up trapped in this prison.” Elizabeth barely waited for Jayce’s nod before she continued. “For hundreds of years, without food or water, or…anything.”
“We were trapped in the Neverworld. The world in between. Time doesn’t exist there. So yes, hundreds of years, or mere moments, both and neither.”
“Stop with your riddles, boy!”
Jayce’s dark eyebrows climbed up his forehead at being referred to as boy, and even Nika let out a soft chuckle at the chagrin on his face.
“…And somehow, Hazel just happened to accidentally free you from this powerful curse.” Elizabeth continued as if nothing had happened. Jayce and Nika both nodded, serious once more.
“Yes, she did. She conjured us back, she broke open the prison and freed us.”
For the first time since they had all sat down, Elizabeth turned to look at Hazel with her dark, piercing gaze.
“Is he telling the truth?”
Hazel just shrugged, unsure how to answer.
“Answer me, child! I am out of patience tonight.”