Page 124 of Kingdom of Dance

Idric’s dark scales glinted in a myriad of hues as the light leaped up at him, while he continued to tug and pull as if bound by invisible ropes.

Another grunt escaped Obsidian, and Zinnia gave his fingers a squeeze, avoiding the burned skin.

“Is it hurting you?” she asked anxiously.

He gave his head one curt shake. “Not exactly,” he managed through gritted teeth. “I think—I think it’s almost over.”

“What’s almost over?” Zinnia demanded.

The tension began to ease from Obsidian’s shoulders, and the rattling of the vibrating crystals grew quiet, then stilled altogether. The dragons were still focused on Idric, winding down slowly rather than stopping their magical assault all at once. Obsidian pushed himself up onto his knees properly, pulling away from Zinnia’s grip. She reached for him again, but he jerked away.

“Don’t touch me!”

Seeing her face, he grimaced apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I just don’t want to hurt you. They poured so much magic into the air…I don’t have enough control to shield against it. I absorbed so much, I feel like I’m going to burst. And I’m not at all confident I can control how it will come out.”

“Yes,” came the faint voice of Princess Penny from behind them. “That’s a good way to phrase it.”

The Fernedellian enchanter seemed to have fared better. Seeing Zinnia’s curious eyes on him, he gave her a wry smile.

“With age and experience comes better control,” he informed her. “I’m usually well able to take mastery of any power I’m exposed to, even in its rawest form. But I’ll acknowledge that went far beyond anything I’ve ever felt. I also can feel magic inside me which is not properly under my control.”

“What do we do with it?” Obsidian asked, a little desperately.

“Just hold on,” the older man said. “Our blood might be able to absorb it, but you and I can’t wield true dragon magic. It will return to its masters soon enough. Already I can feel it tugging back toward the dragons.”

Obsidian nodded, his face screwed tightly as he apparently experienced the same sensation.

“What changed?” Zinnia asked, her eyes back on the elders. “Why did they get so angry?”

“They found the layer of concealment magic he’d placed over the whole land.” The gravelly voice issued from Rekavidur, revealing that he was listening to the humans’ conversation. “Hearing my account was one thing, but seeing it for themselves was much more confronting. They’ve broken it now.” His face set in a look of great concentration, and Zinnia had the impression that he was testing the air around him somehow.

So, the dragons would regain their farsight. They would probably need Reka to teach them how to use it, Zinnia reflected wryly.

“This outrage goes beyond anything we comprehended.” Tanin’s cold voice alerted her to the fact that the dragons had finished their assault. There was no emotion in either face or voice as he declared Idric’s sentence. “You are banished.”

Against Zinnia’s expectations, Idric made no attempt to argue. Instead, he swiveled to face her and Obsidian, his movements unhurried.

“You think you have won,” he said calmly. “But in time, the rest of the colony will see in you humans what I do. You are a blemish on the land and a threat to our peace. It may be long after your children’s children are dust in the ground, but eventually my kind will tire of living alongside your squalor.”

Zinnia just glared back at him, not willing to waste words on the slithering reptile.

“I speak in broad terms, of course,” Idric continued. “After the unforgivable wrongs you have committed against me, you personally will not live to see your children befoul the land.”

And before Zinnia even grasped his intention, his head shot out, jaws open and razor-sharp teeth gleaming as he lunged straight toward her head.

She didn’t even have time to scream, but Obsidian had clearly understood the threat more quickly. In a dark blur, he threw himself in front of Zinnia, the air shimmering visibly around him as he shouted words that were incoherent to her untrained ears. With one hand he shoved her backward, and a painful shot of pure power went into her at the contact, so that she cried out involuntarily. The last vestiges of the dragons’ magic, perhaps, the power not in Obsidian’s control.

Obsidian must have felt the foreign magic leave him, but he didn’t falter, raising his other hand before him in a defensive gesture. From the floor, where she’d fallen, Zinnia could see the crystals on the ground spin in place, as if in response to Obsidian’s raised hands. Were they providing additional power to his protective enchantment? Would it be enough?

Zinnia had always understood that no human power could hope to match a dragon, but whether because a tiny trace of the dragons’ leaked magic lingered in Obsidian still, or because her soldier had greater power than she’d grasped, Idric’s head seemed to ram into an invisible wall, actually jerking backward from the impact with Obsidian’s magic.

But it wasn’t just his magic, she realized. Princess Penny’s voice could be heard behind her, muttering words of her own as she leaned forward, as though pressing against a barely contained force.

“Penny, be careful,” Zinnia heard Prince Rian mutter. But the enchantress didn’t respond to her husband, instead inching forward step by step until she stood alongside Obsidian.

Zinnia scrambled to her feet, fear coursing through her at the sight of the two young magic-users facing off against a dragon whose devastating power she’d witnessed firsthand.

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