Yes, they were finally in a place where their phones would be of use. In Zastrad, there had been zero cell signal because they didn’t use that kind of technology. And on the Isle of Stone, they apparently used a different kind of tech for their phones, because Caelan could never get his to work.
At least email did. He’d exchanged email addresses with his grandfather, Haru, and a dozen other members of Clan Omari. The rest of their team had done the same. It was still a long way off, but steps were being made to open up communication between Erya and the Isle of Stone. Caelan had just gotten a chunk of family that he’d never known existed. There was no way he was going to let them go now.
He did see some incredibly long and painful conversations in his future about whether to reveal the name of his father and his own personal heritage, though.
“Cael,” Drayce said, pulling him from his random thoughts of dragons. “Do you think Ilon has already fallen to the Empire like Damardor or Uris-Oladul?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
As much as he worried about the safety of the people of Ilon, there was a bigger, darker question nagging at him.
Was he too late to claim the power of the godstone?
TWO
Adrian Westergren
Adrian tipped his head back and laughed as he watched Drayce get caught up in another headlock. Eno grinned at him and made a point of mussing his pale-blond hair while Drayce growled and swore.
It was hard to believe Drayce was a dragon. He and Eno had been playfully tussling for the past twenty minutes as Caelan and Rayne cleaned up from their dinner. Not once did Drayce use his dragon’s strength to break free of Eno’s hold. There was no hint of fire or ripple of black scale along his slender frame. If Adrian had not seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it.
“Is that hard to do?” Adrian called out.
“What? Get caught?” Eno replied before Adrian could clarify. “Not really. He seems to be quite good at it.”
Drayce grunted and finally pulled his head free from Eno’s grasp. He rubbed his neck and threw the warrior a dark look. “Screw you! I would have got it the next time.”
“No, I mean for Drayce to not use his dragon strength,” Adrian interjected.
The smaller man’s expression immediately brightened, and a wicked grin spread across his lips. “Oh, you mean like this?” In the blink of an eye, Drayce darted over to Eno and hefted the significantly larger man onto his shoulder like he was carrying a sack of potatoes. A yelp leaped from Eno, his legs kicking in the air as he tried to keep himself balanced on Drayce’s narrow shoulder.
Drayce easily turned to face where Adrian was seated on the ground with his back against a fallen log. “When I first moved to Erya, I’d screw up all the time and carry stuff I shouldn’t be able to. It was only after hanging around Caelan for a year that it became more natural. We’re both about the same height and weight, so I figured whatever he could lift, that’s what I could lift.”
“Eno is not on that list, so put him down,” Rayne said in a dry-as-dust tone.
With one last evil grin, Drayce carefully set Eno on his feet. The larger man tossed him a dirty glare, wandered over to the other side of the campfire, and dropped to the ground. Drayce snickered and stretched out halfway between Adrian and Eno.
“I spent years in my human form while living in Erya. No shifting. No fire. No flying.” He gave a shrug, his eyes locked on the dancing flames not far from his feet. “The truth is, I mostly forgot about being a dragon. Every day, I’d wake up, look in the mirror, and see a human.”
“Except for all those game controllers you broke,” Caelan added. The king crossed the camp, returning from packing a bag of food away in their SUV. “Every time you got pissed at that racing game, you’d snap one of my controllers in half.”
Drayce winced and extended both of his hands toward Caelan, beckoning him forward. “I said I was sorry, and I always replaced them.”
A snort jumped from Caelan, but it didn’t stop him from lowering to the ground right next to his…boyfriend? Was it right to call the man dating the king his boyfriend? It seemed far too informal. Rayne probably knew a better, more official term for Drayce’s position in Caelan’s life, but Adrian had no interest in the dissertation on the history of the term he’d likely receive.
They’d spent a good chunk of the day heading away from Ilon’s capital and wandering through the smallest towns they could find. While Caelan remained trapped in the SUV with Rayne and Eno, he and Drayce would slip into stores and start up conversations with the locals, trying to get a feel for what had been happening in the country over the past several months.
From the sounds of things, the people of Ilon were just as lost as they were. The smaller towns outside of the capital weren’t hearing much from the government and had seen only hints of the Empire. But New Rosanthe’s presence had grown significantly in the past month. No one was quite sure what it meant.
That didn’t seem to be a hard thing to figure out: nothing good.
The presence of the Empire was always bad, and these people were lying to themselves if they thought for a second that this could possibly turn out to be a positive thing.
By late afternoon, they located a lonely section of woods several miles away from the nearest house or farm. They pulled more than a mile off the road and made camp in a clearing surrounded by trees so their campfire couldn’t be spotted.
“You know, of all the camping we’ve done so far, I think I like this spot the best,” Drayce announced to the group.
Caelan made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “As compared to what? Zastrad and the Ordas?”