In a Dragon’s Dream by Riley Storm Page 0,43

else she told,” Rakell snarled, ready to continue the fight.

“She didn’t tell anyone,” the other fire dragon spat back, blood dripping from a split lip.

Rakell abruptly spun, lights flashing in across his eyes as pain erupted in his right temple.

“What the fuck?” he snarled, turning at the unexpected attack, fire blazing in his palms.

Laura threw up her hands in surrender, dropping the other rock she’d been holding. Rakell doused his flames, glancing down to see the first missile still shaking slightly at his feet from where it had fallen.

“Will you listen now?” Laura half-screamed.

Rakell shrugged, gesturing for her to speak.

Laura thanked him with a sarcastic bob of her head. “Now. Nobody told me. At least, nobody here did.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Laura

“This is how I know,” she said, putting the bag down on the bed.

They were in Rakell’s room now. Kristin and Blede had left, after being issued a subdued apology from Rak. It wasn’t great, but at least they hadn’t fought anymore.

“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing at the canvas bag.

Laura undid the braided drawstring, the faded white nylon faintly yellowed with age. Inside there were three old, bound books. She handled them with care, though they weren’t yet at the age to fall apart. It wasn’t the condition, but rather, the connection, that caused her to treat them so.

“These are my grandfather’s journals,” she explained. “From when he was alive, and a young man.”

“Your grandfather’s journals?”

Puzzled, Rak glanced at the books, then again at her. “I don’t understand. How does this share our secret?”

“Because my grandfather knew who you were,” she said, taking the oldest of the trio and opening the well-worn pages to a location she knew off by heart.

For the first few years, she’d read them near daily, reliving what it must have been like for him to discover such a monumental secret.

“How?” Rak wanted to know, sitting on the edge of the bed, running his fingers over the cover of one of the later journals. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“How well do you know your own history here in Five Peaks?” she asked quietly, wondering if perhaps she knew more than him.

“Very well,” he said, looking at her quizzically. “We make no secret of it to each other. It is part of our upbringing. The very reason we exist is why we are here. For the Gate, of course.”

Laura nodded. “So that’s true as well,” she said quietly.

“Yes. But…how do you know that?” Rakell’s eyes fell to the books. “How did he know that?”

“My grandfather served in the military from 1935 to 1947,” she said. “Does that help?”

Rakell looked at the books with a new appreciation. “Your grandfather was one of the survivors,” he said slowly.

“There weren’t many, from what I gather,” Laura said, the two of them only speaking half sentences, aware of what the other was referring to.”

“No, there were not,” Rakell agreed, nodding his head, picking up the middle volume and looking it over but not opening it. “Very few indeed. Though I don’t recall any named Fitzgerald.”

She smiled. “My mother’s maiden name was Whitesone, if that helps.”

Rakell’s eyes flew up. “Reggie Whitesone? He was your grandfather?”

“You know the name?” she asked incredulously.

“There were only thirty-seven survivors at the end,” Rakell said. “Their names are taught to all dragons born here in Five Peaks. We thank them for their service. For fighting side by side with us, even after finding out what we really were.”

“I was never quite sure what to make of that part of Grandpa’s journals,” Laura said, sitting down next to Rak. “A Gate, he kept referring to, as a thing. Capital-G important.”

“The Gate to the Otherworld,” Rakell confirmed. “Yes, it exists here in Five Peaks. It’s deep under Mount Verdant. Where the government did their testing.”

“So the legends of the old mines being used for testing nukes is true then?” she asked.

“Yes. Very. Though I suspect after that, the legends diverge from reality,” Rakell said with a wry smile. “The second explosion they set off triggered a number of landslides, opening up previous cave systems that were unknown. One of them led to a Gate to the Otherworld.”

“The Otherworld,” she said. “Grandpa never said what it was called. He just called it ‘the Gate’. That creatures came through. Things they had never seen before. Things that weren’t human.”

“Faeries,” Rakell said, nodding slowly. “And other beings. Trolls, Ogres, giants, vampires, shapeshifters and other creatures nigh on demonic.”

“They were losing,” Laura said, recalling the passages with ease now as Rakell confirmed everything