that could hold me.”
Avery grunted. “He couldn’t build it himself, so he tricked you into doing it for him!”
“Exactly. Fairies may not be as strong as other supernaturals, but they are brutally clever. This blacksmith had lost half his herd to the monster, and he built the cage in record time. And I, believing I was doing the right thing, used my magic to make the cage unescapable. We placed it in the field with a cow as bait. And what do you know, we caught ourselves a dragon.”
“You did?” Avery asked. “I didn’t know any other dragons were here.”
“That makes two of us. I’d never seen a dragon like that before. It was small like a whelp, with odd-shaped wings and teeth. It didna look like any dragon from Paragon. I wondered if Scotland had grown its own, ye ken, so I went inside the cage to see what we were dealin’ with.”
“Lachlan trapped you?” Avery’s voice held all the despair he’d felt that day.
“Aye. Turns out the illusion of the dragon was bait for me. Lachlan’s mind control doesna work on me, but his illusions don’t require psychic manipulation. They’re damn near impossible to detect, even by supernaturals. Once he had me trapped, he shot me with a poison arrow and moved me and the cage into the dungeon. Then he used his power to convince everyone that the dragon had killed me but that he had slain that dragon. Later, he made them forget I ever existed. That’s when he became laird.”
“Just like that?” Avery stared at the stars.
“Fairy mind control is a significant force to reckon with, at least for humans.”
“Not dragons.”
“Nay. It didna work on me, although Lachlan’s cunning is almost as dangerous. He tricked me into the cage after all. Tricked me before I ken whit he was.”
“What a dick.” Avery yawned again, adjusting herself in her makeshift bed.
Xavier hadn’t heard a man referred to as a dick before, but by her tone of voice, he surmised it was an insult. He nodded in agreement.
“So I canna return with ye because I must take back the castle and free my clan from Lachlan’s hold on their minds. Most of them are na better than slaves, ye see.”
When she didn’t say anything for a long time, Xavier moved closer to better see her face. She released a loud, rattling snore. Smiling, he backed away from her, but he did not follow her into sleep. Instead, he slipped out of his breeches and transformed, allowing his inner beast to take control. As he spread his wings and lifted into the sky for the first time in two years, he thanked the goddess of the mountain for answering his prayer and sending him the sharp-witted beauty with fire in her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
An annoying and persistent rustle woke Avery from a lovely dream where she was somewhere warm, sipping cocoa and reading a romance novel by candlelight. She waved a hand by her ear, trying to cling to the pleasant image in her head, but the sound kept coming. The dream slipped away, replaced by the feel of hard ground and a morning chill that made her shiver.
She gave up and opened her lids.
Two large brown eyes set in a furry face stared at her, close enough their noses almost touched. Startled, she lurched and smacked the top of her head on the log.
“Ow.” She rubbed the aching spot and sat up.
The furry little man she’d met earlier in this place stared back at her, holding up one of her last two remaining protein bars.
“Oh, it’s you. Are you hungry again? You seriously need to move closer to town.”
He waved the bar excitedly as if asking her permission. She noticed then that the contents of her bag had been dumped next to the fire. She groaned, grabbed the leather satchel, and started tossing items back into it. Had he taken anything else? She tried to remember everything she’d packed. She was too tired for this.
“You made a mess. All you had to do was ask me.”
The furry man held up the bar again in response and spread his lips into a smile that seemed to house too many teeth. She couldn’t stay angry at that face. The man reminded her of a dog with his furry skin and soulful eyes.
“Oh, all right. You can have it,” she said. “I have one more in here for breakfast.”
He moved as if to bite into the bar, wrapper and all, and