As the blackfire licked over the still corpse of the woman he’d loved, Ageon Dionos shivered in the heat of the late summer afternoon.

Sunlight filtered down through the trees, but the dark flames that wrapped around Riella’s body blotted out the golden beams. Blackfire consumed everything: light, wood, flesh, bone.

But not grief, Dionos thought as he cut his eyes to his Bellator. Caed stood just outside arm’s reach, hands held low and steady, palms turned toward the flames he controlled with his power. He stood so near, but somehow still managed to be on the other side of an invisible, immeasurable chasm. The same chasm that yawned wide inside Dionos’s own chest.

“Dionos.” The woman’s soft, sad words pulled Dionos’s attention away from his Bellator. He blinked and focused on the lined face of Riella’s mother, Tanaeris. He deepened the corners of his lips and held out his hands. She took them in hers and for just a moment, reality spun in a wild, tilting arc of pain and denial.

Tanaeris’s skin was soft, but her hands were strong. Like Riella’s had been.

Dionos blinked rapidly, willing the acid burn of tears away from his eyes. Tanaeris smiled softly, her own eyes glossy as she nodded in understanding and squeezed his hands.

“She loved you,” Riella’s mother whispered. “So much. From the time she was a girl, Caed was her everything. And then you entered her life and opened up her world. As much as I love him, he could never have done that for her. He . . .” She glanced over at where the mage still stood motionless, his attention fully consumed by his task.

“He loved her, too,” Dionos said. “As I did. As I do.”

Tanaeris nodded. “I know. I don’t . . . fully understand it, but I know my daughter. She needed you both.”

“We—” He couldn’t finish the thought. His throat closed as if a fist tightened around it, and Dionos looked away, eyes falling once more to the burning void that consumed his heart’s desire.

“Will you stay?”

Dionos turned back to meet Tanaeris’s eyes. Riella’s eyes, save for the color. Tanaeris’s eyes were bright green, where Riella’s had been the same deep mahogany brown as his own. As Caed’s.

“Both of you?” Tanaeris pressed. “You would be so welcome, you know. Even if it were not for the children. House Miontelrae would be proud to have you.”

The children.

Riella’s children, and Caed’s, though neither of them had ever claimed them. She’d borne them for her family, her House, so that they might continue on through the next generation. Tanaeris had raised them since they were infants. They were almost adolescents now. Dionos barely knew them.

“I don’t know,” Dionos said, hearing the crack in his voice as his gaze drifted back to Caed. “Once this task is ended . . . I don’t think he will be good company. I know I won’t be.”

“You don’t have to be company, Dionos.” Tanaeris squeezed his hands again. “That’s what I am saying. You were hers. That makes you family.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “But I—”

A shout of warning rippled from the other side of the pyre. Dionos spun just in time to see Caed swaying forward. With a muttered curse, the Ageon ripped his hands free and bolted to his Bellator’s side, just as Caed’s knees buckled and he collapsed to the forest floor.

***

A low groan pulled Dionos from his half-doze. He sat up straighter against the headboard and reached out to press the backs of his fingers to Caed’s forehead where the man lay curled beside him.

“I’m not a child with a fever, D.”

Caed’s voice rasped as if he’d just crossed the Great Eastern Desert. Dionos withdrew his hand and reached for the skin of watered wine he’d put on the night table.

“No,” Dionos said as he held the wine with one hand while Caed pushed himself up to a sitting position and scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re a Bellator who exhausted himself using blackfire for a funeral pyre. Here, drink.”

Caed took the wineskin and tipped it up, drinking greedily enough that Dionos could see a trickle run down his chin, even in the uncertain light from the low lamp he’d left burning.

“She deserves it,” Caed said, once he’d lowered the skin and wiped his mouth. “Lesser fire would not . . . she deserves it. Deserved it.”

“That she did,” Dionos said, taking the skin back and taking a drink of his own. When he lowered the skin, he noticed Caed staring at him oddly.

“What?”

“What? What are you doing in my bed, D? Change your mind about men?”

Dionos huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Sadly, no,” he said. “But you passed out from energetic fatigue. I wanted to be close to feed you energy if you needed it. Why? Have you changed your mind about men?”

“Believe me, if I did, you would be the second one to know.” Caed’s lips curved in the ghost of his usual smile, and then his face crumpled as he looked down and fisted his hands in the thin coverlet over his lap.

“How can I even smile?” he whispered. “How can I joke when my lovely blade is gone?”

Dionos knocked his knuckles lightly against the back of Caed’s hand. “She loved your smile,” he said softly. “And your jokes.”

“And now she won’t ever get to hear them again.”

“No,” Dionos said, his voice cracking against the stone of cold loss lodged somewhere in his upper chest. “She won’t.”

Silence fell like a weight between them. Caed reached for the wineskin again and drank, then handed it back to Dionos and pushed himself over to the edge of the bed.

“What was Tanaeris saying to you?” he asked as he stripped his sweat-stained robe off and walked over to the washbasin. “I saw her corner you. I should be surprised that that woman would stoop to playing politics at her only daughter’s funeral, but I’m not.”

“Be kind,” Dionos said, letting out a long sigh. “It wasn’t political at all. She was inviting us to stay.”

“Here? In the home of one of their fucking ‘Twenty Noble Houses’? I’d sooner trek down to Cievers and whore myself out to their new . . . what are they calling it now? ‘Imperial Battlemage Corps.’”

“You could do that,” Dionos said mildly. “They’re building a mage academy there, you know. You could do a lot of good teaching the next generation of mages.”

“As if they’d let me teach them properly.” Caed flipped his hand in a dismissive gesture and splashed water on his face before reaching for a towel. “What they’re teaching isn’t magic, D. It’s . . . procedure.”

“Can’t magic be procedural?”

“Not the purest form of it.” Caed dried his face and hands and dropped the towel on the floor, then reached inside the battered wardrobe for a dark linen shirt. He pulled it on, then dug around in his nearby knapsack before pulling out his favorite leather trousers. “Magic is just energy pulled through the mage’s synapses and directed by the will of the mage. All that extra oxshit is for amateurs who are too scared to Work without limitations and rituals to contain the energy. But none of that is necessary.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Dionos said as he, too, stood up. He’d dressed earlier, but he grabbed his pack and began gathering the few belongings he’d pulled out during their stay. “That’s the kind of information that the next generation of mages should learn, don’t you think?”

“Why? Their teachers already know it. Or some of them do. The way they’re teaching now . . . it’s intentional, D. It’s a matter of control. Mark my words, within a few generations, magic will be limited to this new ‘nobility’ of theirs. Hedge-mages and common magic will go the way of the dragons.”

“Hunted to extinction?” Dionos asked with a wry twist of his lips.

“Precisely.” Caed said. He turned back to face Dionos, his brown eyes red-rimmed but clear. “Look,” he said. “I didn’t say anything before because . . . what did it matter? Riella was so sick, and I couldn’t heal her—”

“Magic can’t heal illnesses, Caed.”

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Caed snapped, then shook his head hard enough that the short strands of his hair fell into his eyes. He shoved them back and blew out an explosive breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”

Dionos stilled, then put his pack down and walked across the room to draw his Bellator into a hug. Caed resisted for a long moment, and then sagged against him, drawing in a ragged breath.

“How are you so . . . all right, right now?” Caed whispered as he leaned his forehead on Dionos’s shoulder.

“I’m not.” Dionos reached up and wrapped his hand around the back of Caed’s neck, then leaned back enough to press his forehead to the slightly shorter man’s. “I’m so fucking far from all right, I don’t even know where it is right now. But you’re here and I have to—”

“Take care of me.” Caed stiffened and backed away. “Dragon’s breath, D. I didn’t even think. I-I will release you—”

“No!” Dionos growled the word and reached out to clamp one hand around Caed’s bicep. “Caed. No. Please. That’s not what I’m saying. I agreed to the geas of my own free will years ago. Nothing has changed. I’m still your Ageon.”

“One thing has changed,” Caed whispered, dropping his gaze to the floor. “You agreed because you loved her. She’s gone. You don’t need to—”

“Shut up!” Dionos tightened his fingers until Caed looked up at him and jerked out of his hold.

“I’m serious, D.”

“So am I. Yes, I loved Riella, and yes, she’s the reason I initially agreed to the geas after you both saved my life. But may the Red Lady bleed me dry if I’m going to walk away from you after almost a decade together!” He scrubbed his hands over his face and sucked in a breath before forcing his voice to a normal volume. “You’ve been my brother through all the chaos after the war, through Riella’s illness, through everything. I’m not handling this . . . this grief alone, Caed. And neither are you! You can’t ask that of me. Or yourself.”

Caed looked at him for a long moment, his warm mahogany eyes glinting in the lantern’s dim light. Finally, he nodded and held out his hand. Dionos clasped it and felt the rush of Caed’s power surging hot under his skin as it flowed into him and back out again.

“Besides,” Dionos said quietly. “You binding me has been the only thing keeping some of your friends and colleagues from killing me where I stand. They haven’t forgotten who I was, you know. They look at me and still see the enemy general responsible for the deaths of hundreds of mages.”

“You could still be my Ageon,” Caed said softly before he let go. “That mage school you mentioned . . . they’re modifying the geas bond—”

“No. We’re already bound, Caed. Just as we were with her. Just leave it.”

“People will say that we’re fucking.”

“Since when do you care what people say, Caedlorian?”

Caed’s eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline, and despite the sadness and pain still lingering in his eyes, the corners of his mouth deepened.

“Shouldn’t call me that, Ageon,” Caed said softly. “Bellene is outlawed and I’m a loyal servant of the emperor.”

“Not for mages, it’s not,” Dionos said, lowering his own voice. “And sure, you are, but which emperor?”

***

Despite Caed’s misgivings, they did end up traveling to Cievers. Tanaeris’s daily exhortations for them to stay pushed the mage into active anger, and Dionos persuaded him to leave rather than destroy their fragile relationship with Riella’s family.

Autumn’s gold dripped from the forest trees as they left, signaling the end of summer and the turning of the year. Still, the barely settled military situation from this latest round of clashes between imperial soldiers and yet another rebellious claimant to the imperial throne made traveling overland unwise, even for a battlemage and his Ageon. So, they traveled by boat and barge down the twisting, rocky tributaries of the mighty Zetsi.

The trip was long and cold, but eventually the walls of the notorious mage fortress loomed above them. The sun had been down for hours, and only the crescent Daughter lit the sky by the time the barge bumped against the small pier at the first of Cievers’s river gates. The river crew moved in a coordinated, complicated routine to secure the vessel before their captain gave Dionos a short, impatient nod. Dionos nodded back and gestured for Caed to hop across the small sliver of black river water visible in the moonlight. He followed quickly behind, and by the time the two of them had walked the length of the pier, the barge was back out in the current at the center of the river.

Dionos clapped Caed on the shoulder and gently turned him back to the worn dirt track that led up the Zetsi’s bank to the base of the Lyceum’s walls.

One of the guards at the gatehouse—a grizzled man wearing a sergeant’s stripe on the bracer of his imperial-style armor—looked long and hard at Dionos through squinted eyes, but as soon as Caed asked in a bored voice if there was a problem, the man shook his head and let them pass through the arched entrance to the fortress.

“Welcome to the Lyceum Belli!” Dionos turned toward the woman’s warm, melodious voice that rang out as soon as they stepped into the first bailey.

“Hello, Denara,” Caed said, stepping up beside Dionos and waiting with him while they watched the richly gowned woman descend the outer stairs from the gatehouse’s upper level. “I see the postwar unrest hasn’t cost you your love of finery.”

The woman let out a chuckle and ran a hand down the burgundy velvet of her outer gown. “This?” she asked. “Do you like it? I just had it made. By order of Emperor Sayar, you know. He’s very serious about the image he wants his Lyceum and Sanvari to project.”

“Mmm.” Caed’s noncommittal tone made Denara laugh again as she stepped forward to greet him with a kiss on either cheek.

“It’s good to see you, Caed,” she said quietly, taking hold of both of his hands. “It’s been too long. I want you to know . . . I am so sorry about Riella.”

Caed blinked rapidly and swallowed before nodding.

“Thank you, Bellatrix Denara,” Dionos said quietly, keeping his tone respectful. Denara paused and then turned to look at him with a much cooler expression than the one she’d given Caed.

“Ageon Dionos,” she said quietly. “You are still here, then? Still bound to your Bel?”

“As you see.” Dionos inclined his head slightly.

“Remind me, Ageon. Were your eyes always brown?”

Caed sucked in a breath. “Denara,” he said, warning threading through his tone. “Dionos is mine.”

“Yes, I see that. That is . . . we should talk, Caed. But perhaps alone? After you’ve rested?”

“Perhaps now.” Steel underlaid his words. “And anything you have to say to me, you can say to my Ageon. You should know that better than anyone.”

“Yes. Well. That is part of what we should discuss.” Denara let out a gusty sigh and dropped Caed’s hands. “Come along, then. If you’re not going to take time to settle in first, we’d best get this conversation over with.” She turned and picked up her skirts, then strode across the bailey toward one of the fortress’ many towers.

Dionos looked over at Caed, who lifted his eyebrows with a shrug. The Ageon let out a sigh of his own and gestured for his Bel to precede him. He would guard his back.

As always.

***

“Are you telling me that the Emperor thinks he can outlaw the geas?” Incredulity couldn’t mask the rage that seared through Caed’s words. Dionos smothered a wince as his Bellator slammed the silver goblet of wine down onto the table that sat between them and Denara.

Sanva Denara, he corrected himself. She’s to lead this new mage academy. What did she call it? The Lyceum Belli? They’re really flaunting the mage exception allowing them to use Bellenic words, aren’t they. Why, I wonder? Just because they can?

“Not as such,” Denara said, her tone calm and conciliatory—even if she looked carefully only at Caed and never met Dionos’s eyes. “The emperor knows very well that it’s the mage families that put him on his throne . . . and that we will remove him just as quickly if we must. But his concern is a valid one. The men and women of this land have known nothing but magical war after magical war for generations. And even now, eight years after we’ve crowned a strong emperor, rebellions and unrest plague the land. The people need more from us. They crave stability and order.”

“I thought that’s what we were giving them with this Battlemage Corps business,” Caed spat. “Mages under control of the emperor, governed and policed by his noble counselors, the sole purview of the twenty families . . . or whatever oxshit you’ve come up with.”

“That is part of it, yes,” Denara said. “But do you know why common folk fear mages?”

“Because we’re a fractious lot who have a habit of throwing fire and energy around when we lose our tempers?”

“Because we can control other people, Caed.”

Caed shook his head. “We cannot. That’s a myth. Mages can only compel their Ageons, and only under specific circumstances.”

“But they don’t know that,” Denara said, and this time she was the one to set her goblet down emphatically. “Like it or not, that myth persists, and unless and until we are able to demonstrate to the world that we do not control other people, we will never have the stability this nascent empire so badly needs. That is why we are changing the binding ritual.”

“You will weaken the geas. Mages won’t be able to pull as much energy without using their Ageons as conduits.”

“There will still be energy exchange between Bellator and Ageon,” Denara said, leaning forward. “And more powerful mages will still be able to channel through their Ageons as a failsafe. It will just not be as . . . all-consuming as a geas bond. And it will perforce be the Ageon’s choice.”

“It always was.” Caed’s words dropped to a low, dangerous growl. Dionos slowly lowered his hand to his lap, where it rested on the hilt of his bastard sword.

“It doesn’t have to be. Not for everyone.” Denara spoke quietly, but her words were iron-hard. “And you know that. You used it to keep us from executing this piece of—”

“Careful, Denara.”

Denara sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes briefly. She picked up her drink and drained it before setting the cup back down and opening her eyes. For just one moment, Dionos saw the burning cold hatred in her gaze before she blinked and focused instead on Caed.

“My apologies,” she murmured. “I know that he is yours and therein lies the problem. It is the geas that gives me—and the emperor—the reassurance that your . . . Ageon . . . will not cause problems—”

“Sanva Denara, it’s been years—” Dionos started

“And my entire Working circle is dead!” She turned on him, baring her teeth like a fog cat ready to strike. Anger and hatred and old, old grief shone wild in her eyes. “Do not speak to me of how long it has been! I have heard my Ageons’ screams every night since I watched them burn!”

Under the table, Caed lightly kicked Dionos. A reassurance, and a warning.

“Denara,” Caed said softly. “Bella, look at me.”

Denara sucked in a ragged breath and turned her eyes back to Caed. “Why have you kept him, Caed?” she whispered. “When you bound him, we thought it was to punish him. But you kept him. Why? They were your friends, too.”

“My reasons are my own, dear friend.” Caed reached out with his other hand and gripped hers. “You know I never explain myself.”

Denara let out a somewhat watery laugh and turned her hand over to squeeze Caed’s. Then she pulled her fingers away and pushed up to her feet. She grabbed the pitcher of wine and strode to the other side of her study, where she worked with quick, staccato motions to refill the vessel.

When she returned, she refilled her own goblet and Caed’s but ignored Dionos’s. He pressed his lips together and shifted his foot back to protect his ankle from Caed’s second kick under the table.

“You will not give him up,” Denara said once she’d resumed her seat and taken another sip of her wine. It wasn’t quite a question. When Caed said nothing, she let out a breath and nodded. “And thus the crux of the matter. Your Ageon must be fully bound in a geas. Neither I, nor the other elected Sanvari of this Lyceum will accept a lesser bond. Anything else would allow him too much freedom to . . . retaliate.”

Dionos sucked in a breath, but Caed’s free hand tightened into a fist and a surge of energy—raw and angry, and flavored with deep, aching grief—ripped through him.

He hates this too, Dionos realized. He hates the way they think of me, the way they look at me. But he isn’t saying anything. Why? Caed’s never been known for his even temper . . .

“And yet the emperor has asked us, quietly, to do away with geas-bonded partnerships. We can’t have you visible . . . and you would be, here at the Lyceum.”

“So, what, then, do you suggest?” Caed asked, his tone completely neutral.

Denara blew out a breath. “I have a . . . quest, I suppose you could call it. Although that seems rather dramatic, it’s the best word that applies. And you’re rather uniquely suited to the task, actually.”

“How so?”

“You’re an artificer, and you’re half-Bellene.” Denara held up her hands quickly. “Now, no one is questioning your loyalty, Caed. We all know what you and Riella did during the war. The emperor owes you his throne as much as he owes it to anyone. That’s yet another reason—” Her eyes flicked to Dionos and then back to Caed as she cut herself off and took another drink of her wine.

“What does my mother’s bloodline have to do with anything?”

“We know that before they were defeated, the false emperor’s Bellene allies created magical caches and strongholds throughout their territory, but particularly in the northern forest and mountains. I need someone to find and catalogue them. Bring anything we can use back here to the Lyceum to be studied, and to teach our next generations of imperial mages.”

“Denara, the Bellenes knew so much more about magic than we did,” Caed said. “Do you really think you can hope to understand what they’ve hidden away? Most mages can barely read their language.”

“But you can,” Denara said. “And as I said, you’re an artificer. You can decipher their grimoires; you can understand their creations! If anyone can find the places where they hid their devastating magical weaponry, it will be you. And maybe—” her eyes flickered to Dionos again before she blinked and turned away.

“It won’t be easy, Caed. There are still sympathizers in those woods who are looking for any excuse to prey upon law-abiding imperial citizens. But if anyone can find what’s out there, it’s you.”

Caed pulled in a deep breath and lifted his eyes to Dionos in a question. Dionos met his gaze and gave his Bellator a slight nod.

This is an elegant solution . . . and in the end, she’s right. He can do this, and it might be just what he needs to give him purpose now that Riella’s— Dionos cut the thought off, but not before the anguish of loss hit him in the breastbone and robbed him of breath. He reached for his wine, but the goblet was empty, and Denara—the vindictive bitch—hadn’t refilled it.

“Fine, Denara,” Caed said, his voice barely audible through the sudden high, ringing hum in Dionos’s ears. “We’ll do it.”

***

“I hated this forest during the war,” Caed grumbled weeks later, as he and Dionos slogged through the frigid water of a tiny mountain stream that ran through the densely packed trees. The autumn leaves had already fallen this far north, revealing the tiny, fang like thorns adorning the naked, interwoven branches and vine-covered undergrowth.

Thus, their current path up the stream, despite the slick moss-covered rocks. Slipping and falling wouldn’t be fun, but it was better than being stabbed by a thousand thorny knives at once.

“I still hate it, if I’m honest,” Caed went on, his words breathy and underlaid with fatigue.

“It’s almost sunset,” Dionos said quietly behind him. “Do you want to turn back and make camp? We can try again tomorrow.”

“If we turn back now, the fog cat will likely move out of range of my seeking spell, and we won’t get another chance to track her back to her den.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Dionos muttered. “What if she turns back and attacks us?”

“You’ll protect us,” Caed said dismissively. “And my spell will warn us before she turns back.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Positive.” Caed was, if nothing else, confident in his magical abilities. He paused, one hand on the trunk of a tree, and looked back over his shoulder at Dionos. “What’s got you so on edge?”

“Tracking a magical apex predator back to her den isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. If she’s got kittens or cubs or whatever, she’s going to kill us, you know.”

“If she’s got cubs, I’ll knock them all out with a spell. This is important, D. This is the best lead we’ve had yet on the location of one of the Bellene caches Denara was talking about. Fog cats are instinctive magic users. They’re drawn to high concentrations of magical energies. We’re just lucky she attacked that village—”

“Caed. She killed a young oxherd. Don’t say shit like that.”

“Sorry. You know what I meant. By and large, fog cats avoid human populations, so the fact that she’s anywhere near a village during breeding season at all is indicative—”

Thunk.

Warborn instinct had Dionos tackling Caed into the stream, shielding his Bellator’s body with his own armored form. Thin, blue light rippled in the air as more arrows impacted Caed’s hastily erected energetic shield.

Once Dionos saw the shield, he let out a breath and scrambled back to his feet, ripping his sword free from its sheath. The green-tinged light that filtered through the trees glittered along the steel blade and flashed in the cat’s-eye stone in the pommel. Dionos set his feet as well as he could on the stream-slick rocks as a man wearing dark, tattered clothing and a hood charged at them through the trees.

The bandit had training, Dionos realized as he ducked out of the way of the man’s rusted spear. He brought his blade down quickly enough to sever the bandit’s unguarded wrist, then followed up with a twisting slash to the man’s center mass. The bandit crumpled, nearly taking Dionos’s sword with him.

More arrows flew through the air, only to spontaneously burst into flame as soon as they drew within arm’s length. Power surged through Dionos’s body, lighting fires of rage beneath his skin, and he reset into his ready stance as he waited for more of the bandits to attack.

They did not disappoint. First two, and then three additional men charged at them. Caed stood hard against his back, shielding them from behind and delivering devastating attacks with lightning and blackfire as Dionos methodically cut the close-in attackers to ribbons.

He’d just dropped the last club-wielding attacker when a ragged, piercing scream arrowed at them through the trees. The blue shimmer of Caed’s shield reformed in front of them. A heavy thunk preceded another scream, and then the sound of someone crashing through the brush echoed up the rocky stream toward them.

A man burst through the undergrowth to their right. Dionos spun, putting his body between Caed and the threat, bringing his sword up to the ready. But the man didn’t even seem to see them. He clapped one hand to his shoulder, where a steady pulse of crimson fell from the raggedly torn flesh that had once been his arm. The man—desperately pale—took a single step into the stream before he slipped, or maybe his strength gave out. Whatever the reason, he fell forward onto the rocks, already red with the blood of his comrades.

Dionos just had time to identify the shape of an empty arrow quiver on the man’s back before the air blurred just beyond the shield. He heard Caed’s quick, hissed intake of breath as the strange distortion resolved itself into the unmistakable shape of a fully grown female fog cat.

She’s beautiful, Dionos realized as he stood frozen behind Caed’s shield, unable to do more than stare at her. Tawny golden fur underlaid mottled brown, black, and white markings that dappled her coat. Her large, triangular ears twitched backward as she leapt upon her prey, jaws closing about the throat of the dying archer. He heard the man’s last rattling gasp and watched in awe and horror as she turned to the bodies of the men he’d killed—or more accurately, almost killed.

He’d left two of them alive, he realized when she struck out again, tearing out the throat of one of the men Caed had hit with his lightning attack. She took a single bite of that man’s neck and shoulder before shuddering and backing away. She then turned to another whom Dionos had dropped with a deep belly cut. That man screamed loud and long when the cat swiped at his wound. He continued screaming when she dipped her head and closed her teeth around his exposed intestines. He writhed as she buried her face in his insides, her massive jaw working to quickly consume his flesh. When the man’s cries finally became reedy and faint, a low, rumbling sound replaced them. It drifted toward Dionos’s ears as the cat crunched through her victim’s ribcage.

She’s purring, he realized in horror. Like a pampered lap cat!

“How long are we going to sit here and watch this?” Dionos whispered raggedly.

“Do you want me to drop the shield?” Caed asked, his voice tight with strain.

“Not really,” Dionos said.

“Then as long as it takes for her to leave.”

Perhaps she heard him. For whatever reason, the fog cat lifted her gore-streaked, bloody muzzle and stared at them with eerie, honey-gold eyes. Instinctive fear shot through Dionos’s belly, but he found that he couldn’t look away.

“Laenakatea,” Caed said quietly behind him. The fog cat blinked slowly and shifted her focus to Caed, who eased up beside Dionos’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Dionos hissed, moving to block Caed from the cat’s predatory gaze.

“Following my gut,” Caed muttered. “Do you understand me, laenakatea? Do you know that word?”

The cat tilted her head slowly to the side, then gradually lowered her haunches to the ground. She looked at them for a long moment and lifted one massive paw to her face to begin licking the blood from her tawny fur.

Caed let out a long breath. “She’s relaxing,” he said.

“Yeah, because she’s got us trapped!”

“No, look at her. She’s closing her eyes and washing her face. She wouldn’t do that if she were going to attack us. I’m going to drop the shield. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

“Caed, what—” Dionos clamped his mouth shut as the iridescent blue shimmer between them and the fog cat vanished. The cat opened her eyes and looked at them but remained seated on her haunches.

“She does have young,” Caed said then. “Look, you can tell she’s nursing. And she’s thin. That explains why she attacked the village . . . and these men.”

“I just want to know if she’s going to attack us,” Dionos said, slowly bringing his sword to a low ready position.

“I don’t think she is,” Caed said. “I think . . . let me try something.”

“As if I can stop you,” Dionos muttered, but Caed wasn’t listening.

“Laenakatea, ermani te avedi nazaz maguria.” Dionos recognized the words as Bellene, but though he had a relatively good command of the language, his vocabulary didn’t stretch so far as all that. Maguria meant “magic,” that much he knew.

Did Caed cast a spell? No, I would have felt something. So, then what—?

The fog cat tilted her head in the other direction, then got slowly to her feet. Dionos tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, but she just slowly blinked once more. Then she turned and walked past them, heading upstream.

“What did you say?” Dionos breathed, but he closed his mouth with a snap when she stopped and turned to look back at them.

“Follow her,” Caed murmured behind him.

“What? Are you fucking crazy?”

“I asked her to show us the magic. She wants us to follow her.”

“You think she understands Bellene? She’s an animal!”

“The Bellenes trained fog cats and bound them as their familiars. I’m not sure exactly how, but I suspect it’s a similar process to binding an Ageon with a geas. My mother’s father told me stories about it when I was a small boy. He said his own grandfather used to hunt fog cat cubs to raise them and sell them to the mages. But then the wars started, and they became too rare and hard to find. But she knows the words. You saw her respond! Look at her now. She’s waiting for us. Go, D. I don’t want her to get frustrated and leave us!”

“Or decide to eat us like she did that bandit,” Dionos muttered. “Fine. But stay behind me and keep your shield ready.”

“Always.”

He slowly eased forward, fighting for purchase on the slick stones and death-churned mud of the forest stream’s bed. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the predator long enough to set his feet, so Dionos slid and stumbled a bit, but eventually, he got the feel of the stream and moved with more confidence.

She continued to lead them along the stream, turning to follow a branch they wouldn’t have seen without her help. The trees and underbrush crowded even closer, arching above the thin trickle of water and forcing Dionos and Caed to walk hunched over lest the thorns and twigs slash at their faces. Eventually, the ground tilted upward beneath their feet, until night found them scrambling over wet dirt and icy cold rocks on the side of a mountain as the sun sank behind it to the west.

“Follow close. Don’t lose sight of her,” Caed urged him, and Dionos threw a glare over his shoulder at the Bellator. Caed just gestured forward, and Dionos closed his mouth against the cutting remark that hovered on the tip of his tongue and turned back ahead.

Only to find the fog cat gone.

“Red Lady’s bloody blades,” Dionos cursed. “Caed, I—”

A tawny brown and white head, still liberally streaked with blood, poked out from between two rocks. The strangest sense of relief washed through Dionos, and he shook his head and scrambled forward.

“It’s a cave,” he said as he approached closely enough to see the fog cat turn and disappear once more into a cleft between two boulders.

“Are you sure?” Caed asked. “I don’t see anything.”

“Right there,” Dionos pointed to the spot where the fog cat had disappeared. “I would never have found it without her.”

In response, Caed summoned a small ball of bluish white magelight and sent it arrowing toward the spot Dionos indicated. Sure enough, the steady glow illuminated an opening just barely large enough for them to crawl through.

“I’ll go first,” Dionos said.

“Obviously.” Caed shifted his feet, impatience in the lines of his body. “I’ll send the magelight with you and be right at your back.”

Dionos nodded, then crouched down to worm his way through the tiny cleft. To his great relief, after a short, uncomfortable passage, the space beyond opened into a larger chamber with two branching exits. He took a look around but didn’t see any further sign of the fog cat.

With a swallow and a fervent prayer to the Red Lady—or hell, any of her sisters who might be listening—Dionos turned to give Caed a hand as he squeezed through the narrow entrance behind him.

“Where did she go?” Caed asked as he got to his feet and dusted his hands off. The magelight grew brighter as he sent the ball higher toward the jagged ceiling of the chamber.

“Not sure,” Dionos said, rolling his shoulders. It was warmer in here than it had been outside, and a faint hint of animal musk rode the air. “She was gone by the time I squeezed past the rocks.”

“Well, I suppose there are only two options.” Caed shrugged and stepped toward the closest exit: a narrow passageway even smaller than the one they’d just clambered through.

A low, warning growl issued from the small space, echoing off the rocks and reverberating through Dionos’s chest.

“Caed, get back!” he shouted, fear spiking through him as he reached out to grab his Bellator’s collar and drag him backward.

“No, it’s all right,” Caed said, his voice a little breathless as he stumbled backward while Dionos shoved his way in front of him. “I think . . . I think that’s just her warning. She doesn’t want us to go that way. I think her den is in there. Her babies.”

Dionos didn’t answer, keeping his blade low and focusing on the narrow opening from which the growl issued. The sound tapered off, and eventually disappeared altogether, and yet still he held his position.

“D,” Caed said gently after several minutes of silence had passed. “I think it’s all right. I think we can go. Let’s check this other opening, yes? There is something . . .”

“You check it,” Dionos said. “Call your shield first. I’ll wait here to guard your back.”

“She’s not going to— Fine.” Caed’s frustration mingled with the growing excitement in his words. “But stay close, all right? I don’t want to be trapped alone down here without my Ageon.”

Dionos nodded and backed slowly toward Caed as the mage stepped into the second passageway. It was tall enough that they could both walk upright, and it curved sharply down and away from that first chamber. As soon as Dionos lost sight of the narrow cleft where the fog cat had gone, he let out a tense breath.

“Keep your shield up,” he told Caed. “And let me slide past you.”

Caed did as he instructed, and they continued down the curving, twisting path under the mountain.

“Do you think this could be manmade?” Caed asked after a long moment, brightening his magelight even further and sending it ahead.

“Why do you say that?” Dionos asked.

“The floor is—well, if not smooth, exactly, it’s not as uneven and irregular as I would expect a natural passage to be.”

“Water could carve a passage smooth,” Dionos pointed out. “We did follow a stream to get here.”

“Yes, but there’s just something about it . . . I don’t know. I just feel something.”

“Danger?”

“No . . . not exactly. But I will tell you one thing, D. There is definitely magic here.”

With those portentous words, Caed gestured for him to lead on. Dionos rolled his head on his neck and turned to continue following the path onward. Eventually, a thick humidity dampened the air, making Dionos’s hairline bead with sweat. A dull roaring thrummed through the stone that surrounded them.

“What do you think that is?” Caed asked, his voice sounding almost giddy in excitement. Despite the fact that he felt no such joy, Dionos returned his Bel’s smile.

This is the most animated I’ve seen him since Riella died.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” he asked, and continued around yet another bend in the passageway.

Only to find himself at the threshold of an opening wide enough to drive two oxcarts through. Caed stepped up beside him, shoulder hard against his, and sent his magelight high, pumping energy into it until it blazed as bright as the Mother in the night sky.

“What is this place?” Dionos breathed, his eyes drinking in the vista in front of him.

Thousands of stalactites grew from ledges that ringed the chamber, forming layers upon layers of incomplete ceilings. The rock glittered as bits of mica and other reflective minerals caught the light and flashed it back tenfold. As Caed’s swelling light spread, it illuminated the black, rippling surface of a wide lake that stretched ahead of them, broken here and there by outcroppings of rock that jutted out from the walls. Directly to their right a cascade flowed down from high among the stalactites, catching on two ledges before spilling into the inky lake.

And just beyond the base of the waterfall, Dionos caught the gleam of red-gold scales. He squinted and leaned forward.

“Caed,” he said softly. “Is that . . .”

“Mother of Magic,” Caed breathed. “It’s a dragon.”

***

Fortunately for them, the dragon was dead.

“But how did it get in here?” Dionos asked as they stood on a ledge overlooking the corpse. It curled peacefully beneath the surface of the water, wings tucked tight, tail and neck wrapped around itself. It could easily have been asleep, had it not been lying as still as a stone in over three cart lengths of water.

“I have no idea,” Caed said. “For all we know, it could have flown in here to die and sealed the place intentionally. It certainly chose a beautiful place to rest, if so. No wonder the fog cat was drawn here. Dragons are magic. The ambient power in this place is—” He drew in a deep breath and then laughed. “It’s intoxicating, D!”

The mage turned to face his Ageon, his eyes shining with excitement. “Do you know what we could do here?”

“No,” Dionos said quietly, fatigue pulling at the edge of his mind. “What?”

“We could build a home,” Caed said. “Away from the aftermath of war and the politics and the prejudices. With the power in this cave, I could create a lab where I can test new spells and projects. I could bring my full library here and not have to worry about it being censored or raided! We could preserve everything the emperor and his pet nobles are trying to destroy!”

“What about Denara, and her ‘quest’?” Dionos asked, his voice rough. “You made her a promise, and if we don’t show back up, she’ll come looking for us. If for no other reason than to kill me if I’m not still bound to you.”

“We don’t have to stay here forever.” More excitement rippled through Caed’s voice, his eyes wide and glistening with possibilities. “We could go back to the Lyceum and take them some artifacts or rumors or whatever. Keep them sweet. Make them believe in our loyalty. But we could always return here! We could rest, D! We could rest, and we could remember her—” Caed’s voice fractured as a sob ripped through him and echoed off the rocks.

Before he realized he meant to move, Dionos had caught his Bellator—his brother—to his chest and held him tight as grief washed over them both like the water spilling from the cliffs high above. Tears filled his own eyes and for once, he didn’t blink them back. There in the darkness and privacy of the dragon’s final resting place, Dionos and his Bellator cried for the woman they’d both loved.

And slowly, slowly, they both began to heal.

Copyright © 2026 by Kacey Ezell

Kacey Ezell writes emotionally charged adventure fantasy and science fiction. She is a three-time Dragon Award Finalist for Best Alternate History and won the 2018 Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Readers’ Choice Award. She has written multiple best-selling novels published with Chris Kennedy Publishing, Baen Books, and Blackstone Publishing. Additionally, she is a retired helicopter pilot with 3000+ hours in the UH-1N Huey, Mi-171, and EC130 helicopters. She is married with two daughters. You can join her fan community and get free stories at kaceyezell.net/the-dragons-horde/