Page 16 of Valentine's Day Treasure

Troy gave her the most endearing wolfy grin ever. She smiled at him and went back to prepping.

10—DangerousDragenDuty

Heather, riding on her dragon’s back, relaxed and leaned forward to lay her cheek on her dragon’s scales. They were deliciously warm. She kissed the scales, then sat back up in her seat, nestled safely between his dragon spikes like a saddle. They’d been flying for a bit, maybe almost half an hour, and Heather felt euphoric. Nothing made her feel as free and as invincible as flying with Graeme did.

She was a little damp from the snow, but not bad. There was a kind of steamy bubble around them, moving with them, and it kept most of the snow off her. Whenever she got too wet, she blazed fire around her, while protecting her clothes withdragenmagic, and then she was dry again.

She could see little on the ground. The snow was still falling thickly.

Are we going in circles?she asked inruhi.

Aye—to be sure of the bounding circle.

Heather didn’t think she’d heard him talk about a bounding circle before and she was about to ask what it was when Graeme explained.

Imagine Serenity sitting in the middle of a triangle, with the points of the triangle marked by the three statues around the town—the catamount statue to the west, the bear statue to the east, and the wolf statue to the north.The bounding circle will be similar to what your mathematicians would call the circumcircle of such a triangle, passing through each vertex and encircling the entire area. If I hide the gold as well as I ought and it is within the bounding circle, it will be safe.

How do you know Rhen wants her gold brought over?

I had a dream.

And that’s it? Just a dream?

Aye, that is the way of it, for all ofdragenhistory.

What does she look like?

Heather could hear the smile in his voice while he spoke.If I told you she was a great and scaly dragon, what would you think of that?

Really?

Graeme laughed softly in her mind. I havnae seen her. I dreamt I was in dragon form, sitting on a pile of gold, and the gold had a voice, and it told me, ‘we belong with ye’.

That doesn’t sound like much to me.How do you know it wasn’t just a dream?

It is neverjust a dream. It always means something.

When Heather didn’t say anything, Graeme added,It took me two hundred years to learn it’s never just a dream.

Heather stayed silent, thinking. Graeme was over 900 years old and he’d been in charge of Rhen’s gold for much of that time. Her own dream of the night before swam into her mind. She’d been a pinkish dragon with leathery wings, a long snout, and shimmery scales, which was not too unusual—she’d been dreaming of being a dragon off and on since she’d bonded with Graeme. In last night’s dream, she’d been walking through the forest on four strong legs, flexing her wings and thinking she wanted to test them, when she entered a meadow. In the center of the meadow had been a stack of gold bars. The stack had been waist high and four-feet long, with an item on top—a present wrapped in red and white paper with a silver bow—and then she’d woken and had run to the bathroom to puke.

I had a dream about gold, too, you know,she said, a bit of sass in her voice, anticipating a fun little bit of banter with her man, her saying dreams were just dreams sometimes, and him saying something smart.

Instead, Graeme, still flying, bent his neck back to look her in the eye, something she couldn’t remember him ever doing before.

Aye?he said, in an intrigued voice, then he looked forward again.Tell me all about it.

She described it to him.

Interesting,was all he said.

In front of them was forest, seemingly appearing from nowhere. Graeme flew up, skimming the trees.

Crimson Bluff,he said.

This might be a good place,Heather said.There’re caves up here.

Many, but it strikes me that this bluff belongs to thefoxenand they would sense the gold and look for it.

---