Tropical Dragon Diver (Shifting Sands Resort 5)

He soared through the salty air, snapping at seabirds who dared get in his way, and flew back to Shifting Sands with sure, strong wing strokes.

He circled the resort twice, gratified when the people sunbathing below looked up to admire his big, gleaming body. Then he landed at the back entrance to the kitchen, closest to where he sensed his mate.

Saina! he roared, calling her.

Saina! I have your tribute! You will be mine!

Obediently, as she should, Saina came to the door, Breck and Chef right behind her, staring curiously. Chef was holding a wicked knife, and Breck had a dish towel. Neither of them was any threat.

Bastian dropped the sodden suitcase at his mate’s feet. I have won you, he snarled.

Her spoken voice was sharp and unexpectedly clear. “You have done nothing of the sort, you idiot.”

He opened his jaws and roared flame into the air.

Chapter 17

Chef proved to be a large older man with a twinkle in his bright eyes, a white mustache, and biceps the size of winebarrels. He welcomed Saina into his kitchen domain with the open-hearted kindness that she was beginning to accept was a genuine part of this odd resort and showed her the tasks that needed attention.

“Are you sure you are up to this?” he asked sincerely.

Saina rolled her shoulder, turning her head to look at the fading puckered scab. “It’s almost all healed,” she promised before diving into a soapy sink of dirty dishes.

He continued to regularly check in with her as he moved around the kitchen with busy authority, praising her attention to detail and generally encouraging her in an unexpected way. He sang as he worked, and it was surprising to Saina because it was without method or motive, just for the joy of it.

She joined him, because his pleasure in it was so addictive. She was careful to keep her magic dampened, and to keep her grief from coloring the counterparts she sang. It helped that Chef seemed to like happier tunes, skipping from Italian arias to folk songs as the mood struck him. Most of them weren’t songs that Saina knew, but she could improvise a harmony to almost anything, and after a few choruses could usually pick up on lyrics. Breck joined them for a few lines, as he moved in and out of the kitchen bussing tables and restocking and refreshing the buffet.

She was chopping tomatoes for that night’s dinner, singing the soprano to “Tonight” from West Side Story and forgetting for a while that she would be leaving very soon, when Bastian broke through her reverie.

Saina! He called her. Saina! I have your tribute! You will be mine!

Saina dropped the knife, snatching her hands out of the way in time to avoid disaster, and left it on the counter to answer the call. Judging by the way that Chef and Breck also startled, they’d heard Bastian’s imperious words, and they were at her heels when she came out of the back kitchen door to find a gigantic green dragon perched at the retaining wall.

Her pink rolling carry-on case fell with a sodden thump at her feet.

I have won you, Bastian said, and his golden eyes were shot with glowing red.

Goldshot.

“You have done nothing of the sort, you idiot,” Saina could not stop herself from saying, and she saw Bastian flinch and then rear his head back in anger to flame into the air.

She recognized his irrational anger and the unnatural glow to his eyes and scales. She didn’t for a moment fear for her own self, but she knew that Bastian would lose his real self if she didn’t do anything, and she cast desperately for something she could do to free him as she opened her mouth.

Her grandmother’s words came back to her, and she drew power not from her belly, but from her heart. She focused all of her unpredictable magic into the idea of leaching the personality-altering drug from his system. She had to draw out the poison, sing it from his very veins. Not sure it would work, she poured her magic into her song.

Let it go,

Let it die,

Let it out,

Let it fly…

When the last note died away, Saina waited to see if it had worked.

Bastian remained perched on the retaining wall, swaying slightly, and she panted, every muscle in her body aching from the effort.

Chef and Breck looked from one of them to the other, baffled.