Saving Marigold: Lick of Fire Read online

  Chris didn’t ask what kind of things. He could imagine what two mates who’d found each other just days earlier might want to do together. With a pang of sadness, he wondered if he’d ever share this, or anything, really, with Marigold.

  “So what have you been up too?” Idris went on, oblivious to the dark turn Chris’ thoughts had taken. “Rose said you were talking about teaching, but she mentioned a special project you have to do first?”

  Chris almost stumbled.

  “Talking about me with the in-laws?” he asked mildly rather than answering.

  Idris shrugged and threw him a grin.

  “If it’s a choice between talking about you over breakfast and trying to explain to Violet’s mother why we left early, yeah, I’ll…”

  His grin faded even as he tilted his head to one side and considered Chris, his expression slowly turning to a frown.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Chris replied, too fast and too defensively to be entirely credible.

  Idris closed his hand over Chris’ forearm and drew him to a halt, tugging gently until they faced each other.

  What’s wrong? he said again, this time directly in Chris’ mind. His worry came through loud and clear. He was a couple of years younger than Chris, but he’d always been very protective of his big brother—as Chris was of him.

  For a few seconds, Chris considered denying that anything at all was wrong, but who could he confide in if not his brother? He had good relationships with the people who lived in the boarding house, or at least as good as near strangers could have after only a few days, but he wasn’t close enough to any of them to bring up this kind of topic.

  “I found Marigold,” he said simply, speaking the words because he didn’t trust himself to speak mind to mind to Idris right now; with the state his mind was in, too many emotions and too much confusion might seep through.

  During their teenage years, they’d sometimes talked about the women whose names they wore on their skin, and while Idris had always claimed he never wanted to meet his mate, Chris had looked forward to falling in love with Marigold. Back then, Idris had scoffed at Chris’ ‘sappy romantic side,’ as he called it, but now that he’d found his own mate he’d changed his tune. He looked genuinely happy for Chris, already giving him a wide smile and releasing his forearm to clap him on the shoulder. Chris shook his head.

  “I found her,” he said again, “but she’s not all there. I’m not quite sure what her condition is. They’ve told me it’s like a coma, but she’s awake, she can move when people guide her. She just doesn’t communicate with anyone or do anything of her own accord.”

  Idris’ expression fell.

  “Oh, wow, man, that’s… brutal.”

  Chris nodded. They started walking again, and for a little while they were both silent. Idris finally said, “So that’s the ‘project’ Rose mentioned, then?”

  “Yes. They asked me to get in her mind and try to bring her back to reality. That was before I realized who she was, by the way. Can’t say I’m all that impressed with your mother-in-law. Feel free to tell her that much from me.”

  Idris barked out a dry laugh. “Oh hell no. You can tell that to her yourself, thank you very much.” After a second, he added, “So, any luck talking to Marigold, then?”

  Chris sighed. “Not so far. I mean, I’ve looked in her mind, but I don’t speak dragon, and she didn’t seem all that interested in speaking anyway. But I’m gonna have to keep trying, won’t I?”

  When Idris clapped him on the back this time, it felt more like commiseration than the congratulation from earlier.

  As they walked on, with the village square in view at the far end of the road, they passed by what had to be a school. A wide, grassy yard was fenced with weathered posts; it had been empty when Chris ran by earlier, but now two dozen children or so ran, played, or simply sat in the sun. From the way they looked, this seemed to be an elementary school.

  One of the oldest-looking children, a girl of maybe ten or eleven with long blond hair so pale it almost looked white in the sun, got up from where she sat near the fence and easily slipped through. Chris realized it was the child who’d traveled to Sanctuary in the same plane he had.

  She ran to Idris, throwing her arms around him with such force that Idris, though he had to be at least three times her weight, wavered a little. She hugged him, her little face pressed to his chest. Idris didn’t merely look startled by this unexpected hug, he seemed downright petrified. Despite everything going on with him, Chris couldn’t help but smile at seeing his brother right on the edge of freaking out—all because of a little hug.

  After a frozen second or two, Idris patted the child’s head gingerly.

  “Hey there, kiddo. How have you been?”

  The kid’s only answer was a little shrug. She still didn’t let go of him.

  “We were on the same floor back in that jail,” Idris explained to Chris. “I helped Violet get her out of there, and she took a liking to me because she thought I was a dragon. Which I’m not, by the way.”

  He addressed the last toward the child, who finally looked up—though she still didn’t release the hug.

  “You’re not?” she asked, and her voice croaked a little, as though she hadn’t spoken in a while. “But… fire.”

  There seemed to be much more in that simple word than Chris could comprehend. Idris on the other hand knew exactly what she meant.

  “I make fire, yes. That doesn’t make me a dragon.”

  The kid’s brow furrowed, until she finally shrugged. “That’s all right,” she said. “You can be an honorary dragon.”

  Both Idris and Chris laughed at that; the sound seemed to attract the attention of two teachers who had been standing by the door of the school, talking while keeping an eye on the kids. They finally seemed to realize one of their charges had made a run for it, and started toward the fence at a fast pace.

  “Are you a dragon, then?” Chris asked her, his thoughts immediately taking him to Marigold.

  “An ice dragon,” she said, and her tone of voice was almost smug.

  “What about my brother?” Idris asked, indicating Chris with a tilt of his head. “Can he be an honorary dragon too?”

  The kid considered Chris before asking, “Can you make fire, too?”

  Chris started answering when the teachers, one of them having come past the fence, made their presence known.

  “Isa, you know you’re supposed to stay in the yard. Back in now, please.”

  The kid fully ignored the teacher, turning instead her attention back to Idris.

  “Will you come and see me again?” she asked, almost pleadingly.

  “Sorry kiddo. I’ll be going away soon. There’s plenty of other little girls to save.”

  Isa looked crestfallen, but she nodded gravely. The teacher had reached to touch her shoulder lightly, and she pulled away from the touch before stepping away from Idris. She gave him a little wave of her hand before stepping back through the fence and into the school’s yard. The teacher, frowning deeply, watched her go before turning to Idris and Chris.

  She looked like she wanted a word with them—and probably not a particularly pleasant one—but just then a bell rang over the yard and the children started lining up. It seemed recess was over. After another look at them, the teacher hurried away, and Chris and Idris started walking again.

  “Look at you,” Chris said, bumping his shoulder against his brother’s and grinning a little too widely. “Saver of little girls. Hero to children. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Asshole,” Idris muttered; his cheeks were turning bright red, the way they always did whenever Chris teased him.

  “I mean it,” Chris said, more somberly. “Seriously. I can barely imagine leaving Sanctuary and risking being arrested again, and here you are, ready not only to go back out there, but walk straight to the UIPP and kick them in the balls.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m doing it alone. Di
d I mention my mate can kick some serious ass? And she’s good at recruiting people, too. After all, she managed to recruit me.”

  They shared a laugh, and for a moment they might have been teenagers again, without a care in the world. Except that they weren’t…

  “I hope you can reach Marigold, wherever her mind is,” Idris said quietly. “You’re the one who always said having a mate would be awesome, and you were right. It’s only fair that you can experience it for yourself.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  After two days of trying to figure out how he’d reach Marigold in the prison of her own mind, Chris came up with a plan of action. First, he decided, he needed to know as much as possible about what had happened to Marigold before she’d come to Sanctuary.

  Obviously he wasn’t going to approach the UIPP and ask if perchance they kept records on how they’d tortured this one particular dragon shifter. Instead, he’d turn to her rescuers… starting with the person who’d first asked him to help Marigold.

  It took him a little while to find Petro. Sanctuary had a sort of ‘White Pages’ on the local network that gave him an address, and he was rather excited at first to realize it was only a mile or so away from the boarding house. He knew the place because it was one of the options he’d been given as to where to live when he left the boarding house.

  He climbed onto a bike and went to the group of buildings where he hoped to find Petro. Each of the five buildings held a handful of apartments over three floors, and they were spaced out around a large central plaza where residents gathered to tend a community garden or hold barbecues and picnics with friends and family.

  When he went to knock on the door of the first floor apartment, however, there was no reply. Frustrated, he knocked a little louder, only to have an elderly woman peek out the window of the apartment next door.

  “If you’re looking for Petro, he moved,” she called out in a slightly wavering voice. “Pity that, he was always so polite. And so helpful with my groceries, too.”

  Walking over to her, Chris crossed his fingers for luck and asked, “Thank you for the information, ma’am. Would you happen to know where he moved to?”

  She did—and she was all too happy to tell him, along with what she thought of it.

  “I mean,” she said in the end, “the girl is his mate. And she’s charming. She lived right here with him for years, you see. She used to bring me some cookies or fresh bread whenever she baked. But what about those two other men? One is his brother, I’ve heard, and the other’s a doctor. That just can’t be right, all of them living in the same house. Don’t you think?”

  She seemed quite disappointed that Chris had no opinion to share, and no interest in discussing this juicy piece of gossip. Thanking her for the directions, he made an excuse about being in a hurry and hopped back onto his bike.

  After months spent in a cell where the most taxing exercise he could do was push-ups, all this biking was leaving him more tired than it would have before his captivity, but the prospect of falling in bed physically exhausted that evening certainly beat staying up half the night staring at the bars of his cell.

  He found the out-of-the-way house easily enough, a nice sprawling ranch at the end of a dirt road, with fields and tree orchards all around. He couldn’t help but wonder how useful to Sanctuary one had to be to be offered such a nice home rather than an apartment, even one in an environment as pleasant as the one he’d just visited. Then again, Petro had seemed to be pretty high up in the hierarchy of the squad.

  And Chris was all too aware that he was focusing on these trivial things because he was in no hurry to learn details about Marigold’s captivity. He needed to know as much as he could, but that didn’t mean he looked forward to it.

  He finally knocked on the door and rocked on his heels as he waited, hoping that this time he’d find Petro. It was a woman who answered his knock, tall, dark skinned, her hair in a multitude of braids. It took him a second to figure out why she looked familiar. In the plane, her expression had been grave, almost too serious; today, she looked like he’d interrupted her in the middle of a laugh.

  “Hello, can I help you?” she asked, wiping her hands on the apron that covered her summer dress.

  She had a slightly puzzled look as she finished, as though she, too, recognized him, but couldn’t quite place him.

  “Hi, I was told I’d find Petro at this address. Is he here by any chance?”

  She gave a single nod before turning toward the inside of the house and calling out, “Petro, someone’s here to talk to you.”

  Only a second or two passed before the door opened more widely and Petro appeared next to the woman.

  “Oh, hi. Chris, right? How can I help you?”

  With a tilt of his head, Chris indicated the wooden picnic table set under the thick canopy of an old tree in front of the house.

  “Could I talk to you in private for a moment?”

  Petro pressed a kiss to the woman’s cheek before coming out, barefoot and all. While the woman’s white apron had been pristine, his light blue tee-shirt was splattered with what looked and smelled like tomato sauce. Had they been cooking together? The idea sent a pang of longing through Chris; would he ever share something like that with Marigold?

  God, he really needed to get a grip on himself and focus on what he could do rather than lament on what he might never get to have.

  Petro sat on the table itself, his feet on the bench, and looked at Chris questioningly. Even after all the pedaling he’d done today, Chris couldn’t bear the thought of sitting still so he stood in front of Petro, his hands balled up in his pockets.

  “I’d like to have a look in your mind,” he said bluntly. “I want to see the place where you found Marigold.”

  Petro showed no surprise whatsoever at hearing him say Marigold’s name. Either he’d been told Chris had been to see her, or he’d been completely sure he would. Either way, he looked less than thrilled by the idea of opening his mind to Chris. He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned.

  “I can just tell you about it. What do you need to know?”

  “That’s the thing,” Chris said with a light shake of his head. “I have no idea what questions to ask, because I don’t know what could be important. But if I look at it through your eyes, I’ll see everything you saw, even details you might not be able to tell me about if I asked you about them. Memories work in a strange way.”

  “I don’t know,” Petro hedged, still reluctant. “No offense, but I don’t know you enough to let you roam through my thoughts.”

  “And yet, you were fine with me ‘roaming’ through her thoughts,” Chris pointed out dryly, “even when I told you I didn’t want to dive into a stranger’s mind without permission.”

  “Well, she’s not really a stranger, is she? She’s your mate.”

  Chris scoffed. “Something you neglected to tell me even though you knew, didn’t you?”

  Petro looked out toward the fields and nodded, sighing softly.

  “Yeah. I saw your mate tattoo after we freed you. I checked what your name was after you registered, but I was already sure by then. Marigold’s not a very common name, and I thought that since I’d had a hand at freeing you both, I might as well try to get you to see her. But I figured, just in case you two weren’t mates, I’d leave you an out, let fate sort it out.”

  “Fate?” Chris’ chuckle sounded a little bitter, even to his own ears. “Is that a name Lily Littlewings goes by? Why tell her about me if you really wanted to leave it to fate?”

  “I didn’t tell her,” Petro said with a little snort. “Honestly,” he added when Chris gave him a disbelieving look. “I’ve seen her only once since we flew to Sanctuary, and I had other matters in mind than you and Marigold, sorry to say.”

  Chris barely stopped himself from asking how she’d known, then. It didn’t really matter, did it? That wasn’t what he was here for.

  “I need those memories,” he said instead, pleading. �
��I’ve looked in her mind and it’s… a mess. She sees herself as a dragon and a child. Dissociated. Everything’s on fire. Monsters are attacking her, both parts of her. I need something to go on with, something that will help me make actual contact. I don’t know how else to get at it.”

  He held Petro’s gaze, willing him to see that there was no other way, or at least none that he knew of. Petro looked away first, his eyes turning toward the house just as the door creaked open. Chris looked back and watched the woman approach with two tall glasses filled with ice cubes and a pale yellow drink.

  “Lemonade?” she offered with a smile.

  Chris declined; he could have used a drink, yes, but right now he was too focused on getting those memories he needed so much. Chris on the other hand took one of the glasses with a warm word of thanks and took a long slow sip, delaying his answer that much further. The woman didn’t look quite ready to go back in; curious, Chris guessed. Petro soon enlightened her.

  “This is Chris,” he said, gesturing with his glass. “He’s Marigold’s mate.”

  The woman’s eyes widened at once.

  “Oh! Did she wake up for you?”

  With a bittersweet smile, Chris shook his head. “I’m afraid not. No reenactment of Sleeping Beauty here.” Wondering if her presence might help him, he added, “I was trying to get Petro to let me see inside his mind so I would know about the place where she was kept, but I think he’s a bit shy.”

  “I’m not shy,” Petro protested at once, even as the woman said, “I was there. I can tell you. Or show you. However your power works.”

  Startled by how easily she was offering up her mind for his perusal, Chris didn’t immediately reply, so that Petro interjected, “No, that’s fine, I’ll do it.”

  Shaking himself out of his torpor, Chris seized the opportunity in front of him.

  “Both of you, then. I can read you both at the same time and it’ll be like seeing the scene from multiple angles at once.”

  “You can do that?” the woman asked. “Neat! I’m Hazel, by the way.”