Page 46 of Dragon Thief of New York
“You know my son?” Kat asks.
“I knowofyour son,” the High Priestess corrects. “I’ve waited a long time for him.”
I share a confused look with my mate. She chews on her lip and clutches the hem of her shirt between her hands, wringing it nervously.
I risk standing up so I can wrap an arm around her. “What do you mean by your replacement? What do you want with our son?”
Kat tenses, and I worry that I might have overstepped by claiming him as mine. He might be mine biologically, but I’ve had nothing to do with raising him. She’s done all the work without support or help from me. I have no right to claim him without talking to her first. But to my surprise, she immediately relaxes into my side.
“Come.” The High Priestess sits cross-legged by the fire and pats the floor near her. We all hesitantly join her. Despite the flames nearby, the tile is cold, and the chill soothes something inside me.
We stay quiet, waiting for Raba to speak again. She doesn’t. She just stares at the fire.
I clear my throat. “Can you help my mate get her memories back or not?”
“Ican’t,” the High Priestess answers, a note of sadness in her voice. “But Lincoln can.”
“What do you mean?” Kat scoots a little closer to me, and Otto moves a little closer to her so we’re all huddled together across from the High Priestess.
“How can Lincoln help?” I ask.
“I don’t know, exactly.” The High Priestess stares into the fire, an absent expression on her face. “It was different for my parents than it will be for you.” Her sigh weighs down the room. “They failed in their attempt.”
“Your parents were like us?” Otto asks.
She gives him a sad smile. “Not exactly. But yes. My mother was human when she conceived with my dragon father.” She stares into the fire with a contemplative look. “All the high priestsand priestesses are conceived before a human woman enters the pools. It’s very rare and only happens every millennium or so.”
“Millennium? So you’re… woah.” Otto’s mouth hangs open. “You look…”
A small growl tears out of Kat. She looks surprised at it, but I understand the impulse. I don’t like Otto thinking about how good someone else looks any more than Kat does. And this woman is gorgeous. She doesn’t look any older than Otto, despite having just implied that she’s hundreds of years old.
Raba smiles at Kat with a twinkle in her eyes and a slight curve to her lips.
Otto draws Kat into his lap, wrapping his arms around her from behind and kissing her temple. “It was just an observation. Don’t worry. You’re the only beauty I see.”
Kat clears her throat, glancing at me almost as if she’s looking for reassurance. I chuckle softly and take her hand.
She looks back at the High Priestess. “So, my son is a dragon?”
“Not exactly.” The High Priestess draws shapes on the stone floor as she speaks. “For now, Lincoln won’t be able to shift. But he’s not quite human either. He’ll have his own abilities that will manifest if he reaches twenty-three.”
Twenty-three is the age of maturity for dragons. My eyes narrow on the woman behind the flickering blue flames. “What do you mean,if?”
Raba stands, and it feels as if the room shrinks around her while she expands. There’s a fierceness to her now that wasn’t there a minute ago, a hard edge that makes me shiver.
“There are three paths before you.” Her voice is no longer soft and welcoming. It echoes as if it’s coming from everywhere at once. “One, you choose not to attempt the challenge Lincoln foresees. Two, you attempt it and fail. Three, you attempt it and succeed.” Her eyes meet Kat’s, a fierce blue fire burning in the center of her pupils. “If you do not attempt the challenge, Lincoln will die before he reaches maturity.”
Kat gasps, and Otto tightens his hold on her while I jump to my feet. “That isn’t fair! What if we’d never come and didn’t know?” My body strains with tension, scales peppering my skin, heat flaring through my veins. “Our choices shouldn’t affect him!”
“And yet they do.” The High Priestess lifts her chin and narrows her eyes at me.
“And what happens… if we fail?” Otto asks quietly.
“Whether you fail or succeed your memories will return, but if you fail, you’ll be separate from each other. Never able to get close or find one another again.”
“I would find you,” Otto says, his tone as hard as stone. “In any world, in any lifetime, I would find you. I would stay with you.”
My throat closes up at his words. I wish I’d had that kind of stubbornness after Kat rejected me. I wish I’d had enough strength to fight for us harder, to stay with her through each reset of her memory so I could help her raise our son.
