Broken Path, Starless Tail - 32. Chapter 32

“Jesus Fucking Christ. Pick a problem to have a hissy fit about and stick with it will you?” He was getting whiplash trying to figure out who was snarling at him and why. Getting met with a golem, told to make an appointment, and having to trudge up all those stairs to meet in their exalted tower room just so they could be all on high was pissing Beckett off.

Badmouthing his dragon, not answering his request for help, and now freaking out about him being human—or not human—had created a furor. Different council members were hissing or barking or whatever they did that didn’t make sense as speech, at least to him.

He’d met a lot of helpful beings on this journey that had looked like ordinary animals, but these mages were fucking strange. They looked like animals but not, and they were not helpful.

Coming out from hiding behind the largest being that looked like a giant pile of rocks covered in weeping moss and waving branches—with a few bright eyeballs rolling on top—came another human. He had on dark green pants tucked into leather boots, a black tunic cinched with a wide gold belt that held many different pouches dangling from it. His skin gleamed dark under the light from the sparkling torches.

Beckett stared, non-plussed, into the mage’s golden eyes. They were literally glowing and the tiny tendrils of his hair was moving a non-existent breeze that Beckett would have given his left nut to feel to cool himself off.

So not a human, even if he looked like one.

“I don’t think blasphemy is necessary, though I have been accused of it by many in my day. Are you ready for answers yet?” His smirk was unmistakable.

Beckett gasped in a sharp breath, the sucker punch of realization socking him in the gut. He was speechless, which was saying something because he always had a bitchy comment, according to Colby. It had gotten him more than one detention.

“You!”

“I told you that you’d come to me.”

“I didn’t know you were here!” Valrinda had explained that humans only came once an age, but those who did were magi. The only humans who could survive the trip through the portals were some form of magic user. It was why he had known that Beckett wasn’t a human despite not showing any magic, and why he wasn’t surprised that Parallax sent him on the quest to find his star.

He didn’t have magic to travel through the portal, since Parallax sent him, so many creatures had been confused until his manifested, but now Beckett had his inner fire and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Lightning crackled between his fingers. “What are you doing here? Did you send that thing to attack Val? Are you trying to steal the star?”

The man laughed. “No, of course not! That would be my brother.”

What. The. Fuck.

“Did you get the mages’ help?” Valrinda asked as Beckett trudged out of the city. The guards didn’t pay any attention to him as he left, but he was no threat to them as tired as he was.

Fucking stairs.

Beckett went straight to Valrinda and collapsed against his neck, leaning his whole body against his warm scales. A thin wing came around to cocoon him. “No. Yes, but no.”

“What does that mean?” Valrinda’s voice echoed in Beckett’s head and chest where he leaned into him.

“It means that mage asshole we saw outside the other city who was warning or threatening or trying to help me—I haven’t decided which—was there, and he offered to take me to an active portal.”

Valrinda’s whole body heated as he hissed, the scales turning hard as stone. Damn, he was an impressive beast. Beckett stroked his neck, soothing him. “Did he threaten you?”

“Try the other way around.” Which was probably ridiculous if he was a mage and had been here for an age or eon or whatever. He, and his brother who was the dangerous one, probably had magic oozing out of their pores or something gross like that. Stupid fuckers wouldn’t get away with anything sketch if Beckett had anything to say about it.

Valrinda certainly would shut that shit down.

“He’ll be here at first light. Can we just find somewhere I can lay down? My legs are killing me.” Beckett was whining a bit, but he appreciate the care Valrinda took in urging him to climb up on his neck and flying them to a protected bunch of rocks where they could hide for the night.

The morning was going to come soon, and he needed to make a game plan with Valrinda. He had one mage who said his brother was after the star they desperately needed to get to Parallax, the same mage who promised he would lead Beckett to a portal for no more reason than to thwart said brother and restore the magical balance that had been upset when Parallax had lost his star.

Call him suspicious, but Beckett wasn’t buying it. No one was that fucking altruistic. Sure, maybe the mage did want to stick it to his brother, and maybe the magic did need to be balanced, but there had to be something else in it for him.