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Og rolled his eyes.
“Now, I’ll be blunt,” I rushed on, keeping control of the conversation. “I think I possibly released a god, but I don’t remember why or how. And I need to know.” I pointed at the sky.“There are demons in our Ley Lines. They’re not doing anything now, but they did, and they will.”
Caoimhe swallowed. “I got called to a Ley Line once. A group of human wiccans made a pentagram in the Ley Line outside my house and diverted a bit of magic. My sister and I had to destroy their pentagram a few times until they put it somewhere else.”
I shared a laugh with her. “So, you understand.”
Caoimhe nodded. “It was small, but yeah, I do.”
“I need to know how you got on the island,” I tapped the table. “The details of how you got off the island and what your exact deal with Marduk was.”
Lux refilled my glass, and Caoimhe began her story.
The nymph and her family lived in a small, primarily supernatural town which only saw ten babies in the last fifteen years. Her sister fell in love with a wolf shifter, and both her sister and the baby died in childbirth. It destroyed Caoimhe’s world. Desperate for answers, she spiraled down the rabbit hole, which was the internet, where she found other supers having fertility problems and the fixes they’d come up with. Some thought mixing races and powers was slowly killing off the supernatural community. Caoimhe’s experience with her sister supported that theory. So, she sought out another who used elemental fire. Which is how she stumbled upon the applications to become a dragon’s wife, and it became her obsession. Only she had magic, which was against Scalehive’s policy.
The deal with Marduk was in three parts. One, make her appear human so she could participate in the trials. Two, get her and her new dragon mate off the island and to her hometown so they could have a family. Three, financially set them up so they would want for nothing.
“But you didn’t specify a timeline in step two, correct,” I asked. “Or a dollar amount in step three?”
Caoimhe's eyes shimmered, and she looked down at the table. “The way he worded it…I thought he would be my child’s godfather or he’d have her on the weekends. I feel so dumb admitting that. But he made it sound like he just wanted to help me. My sister was my world when she died.” Tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know. I thought if I did something, it would fix the hole she left in my life.”
I stood and pulled Caoimhe’s chair away from the table so I could wrap her in a fierce hug. Tears dotted the corners of my eyes. “It’s okay to hurt. Pain makes all of us do stupid shit. Marduk’s a tricky bastard. I have no doubt he twisted his words and made you feel safe. No one’s judging you.”
While I let Caoimhe cry, a freshly showered Rehan quietly joined us, sitting next to Lux to enjoy the view. My guys talked amongst themselves to give us the appearance of privacy.
The nymph slowly composed herself and rested a hand on her stomach. “What’s going to happen to my baby?”
I walked back to my seat, jerking my head toward Cikku, Marduk’s eyes and ears. “Exactly what’s meant to happen. Eight months is a long time. Now.” I sat. “You filled out the dragon’s application, and thanks to Marduk, you appeared human and came to the island like any other, right?”
Caoimhe nodded.
“How did you leave the island?” I asked again.
“Doctor Raba,” Caoimhe said.
I clenched my fists. I knew that ass hat had something to do with all of this.
“Marduk gave me a bag of gold and some,” Caoimhe made a few circles with her hands. “Well, I didn’t really look hard at it, but it looked like a kit for a science lab and told me to say it was a gift from Brad.”
“Brad?” Og looked at me.
The name meant nothing to me, and I shrugged.
Caoimhe continued. “Doctor Raba took all of it from me and sent us to a boat with one of King Ryker’s creepy henchmen. I wasn’t on the island long, but they always felt wrong to me. I peeked under this one's cowl, and she literally had no eyes.”
“How could she see then?” Og asked.
I shared a look with Lux, who tapped a single metal finger against the colorful table.
Caoimhe shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got the one peek before she shut the door of the shipping container.”
I hadn’t seen an orphan over sixteen at the air temple, and at the time, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask where they went after the orphanage. The fire king had a small army of cowled dragons who used ‘technology’ to harness all the elements, even raw magic… except they didn’t use technology at all. They were the grown orphans. They had to be. Doctor Raba’s kindness clicked into place. He was grooming them for the fire king’s army. Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure I listened to him recruiting one of the kids when I’d lounged under his table.
Lux clenched his jaw, and his face flushed with anger as if he drew the same conclusions.
All of this had begun at least thirty years before I arrived on the island or released Gorm. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Everything was connected, and I needed my memories back to figure out how.
I gestured for Caoimhe to continue.
