Somewhere in Amlada's western territory, in a manor built to announce its own importance, Marquis Ravendale was not having a good morning.
The reports had come in across three days, each one worse than the last. The tracking mages had followed the collar's signal until it went dark somewhere in the mountain ranges between Winterly's southwest border and Amlada's northwest. Then nothing. The knights he had sent hadn't come back. Their horses had shown up at the nearest town without riders.
Ravendale stood at the window of his study and thought about Princess Magenta.
The princess collected monsters the way other nobles collected art. Rare ones. Impressive ones. Things that demonstrated both wealth and access, the combination that mattered most in court circles. A fire dragon, young enough to be manageable, would have been the kind of gift that changed the trajectory of a proposal entirely.
Now it was gone.
He called for his steward.
"Mercenaries." He said. "The best available. And mages who can track. The collar gave a location before it went dark. I want them at that location and I want the dragon back."
The steward bowed and left quickly, because Ravendale's mood was the kind that made quick exits advisable.
••••••••
Back in Eryndor, Leigh was dealing with a different problem.
The oranges were gone. The last of the winter batch, which Celina had been planning to use for a preserve she wanted to try making with Azylan's guidance.
Gone.
The apricots that had just started to ripen on the eastern orchard edge, the ones Benneth had been watching with the focused attention he gave everything that grew, pointing them out to anyone who would listen as evidence that the soil amendments were working faster than expected.
Gone.
The cherries. Every single one.
Torra was standing at the cherry tree with an empty basket and an expression that had moved past outrage and arrived somewhere quieter and more injured.
Flame was nearby, looking at the middle distance with the particular stillness of someone who hopes that not moving will cause the situation to resolve itself.
It had red on his hands. And around his mouth.
"FLAME." Torra pointed at the basket. "I was going to FILL that."
Flame glanced at the basket.
Favio was looking at the orchard with the expression of a man performing arithmetic he didn't like the answer to. Benneth had crouched down near the apricot tree and was examining the bare branches with the grieved focus of someone at a loss.
I walked to Flame and smacked the back of his head without breaking stride.
The impact was enough that Flame went down, a small crater forming in the dirt where his knees hit, his hands flying up to cradle his skull.
From behind the tarantula enclosure gate, Frostina's laugh rang out clearly. She was watching through the slats with the satisfied expression of someone who had been on the receiving end of that exact sequence and found it considerably funnier from this angle.
She was still banned from the rum. The situation had not changed her appreciation of other people's consequences.
Flame's eyes filled immediately.
Torra crossed his arms and looked at him without mercy.
"Serves you right." He said. "You ate everything. I was working."
Flame made a sound that was attempting to be dignified and not quite getting there.
I grabbed him by the collar and walked toward the gate.
"Where are you taking him?" Torra called after us.
"Forest." I said.
The forest past the northern gate, deep enough that the settlement was no longer visible through the trees. I walked until the sounds of Eryndor faded and set Flame down on the ground.
He was still sniffling. Still holding the back of his head.
"Hunt." I said. "We're running low on meat. You've eaten enough produce for a week. Make yourself useful."
Flame blinked.
He looked around, then dropped into a crouch and pressed his nose toward the ground.
I smacked his head again.
He yelped and looked up at me with enormous, offended eyes.
"You're a dragon." I said. "Not a dog. You have mana. Use it."
He straightened slowly, looking uncertain in the way of someone who has been told they have a tool they've never been shown how to use.
"I don't know how." He said.
The words were small. He said them like he was admitting something shameful.
I looked at him for a moment.
He had been captured young, before anyone had taught him anything. Whatever he knew about his own magic was instinct and accident. Fire when he panicked. That was probably all he had ever managed, and the collar had made even that dangerous to attempt.
"Then I'll show you." I said.
Flame went still, like he hadn't been expecting that.
"Mana first." I said. "Let it out. Slowly. Don't force it, just let it move. Feel where it sits in your body and ease it outward."
Flame closed his eyes. His brow furrowed. For a moment nothing happened.
Then the air around him shifted. Faint warmth, uneven, flickering. He lost it and pulled it back and tried again.
Three attempts. Four.
On the fifth, it held. Steady and controlled, the warmth even and consistent around him.
Dragon constitution. What would take a human mage months to establish, Flame was producing reliably within minutes once he understood what he was reaching for.
"Now extend it." I said. "Push it outward from where you're standing. Spread it across the ground, into the trees, as far as you can manage. You're looking for presence. Anything with its own mana will register."
Flame nodded with his eyes still closed.
Then he pushed.
The gust that came out of him was not subtle. The trees around us bent. The ground shook. Every bird in range left their branches simultaneously and the undergrowth flattened outward in a ring.
Search magic was not supposed to work like that.
Flame opened his eyes and looked around at the flattened forest around us with an expression that sat somewhere between alarmed and impressed.
"There are armed people." He said. "Coming this way. A lot of them. I can't count how many."
I ran my own search. Quiet, contained, the way it was supposed to be done.
Mercenaries. Mages among them, two with tracking tools still active. A formation spread across a wide front, moving inward from the northwest, following the last coordinates the collar had transmitted before I destroyed it.
I looked at Flame.
Then I smirked.
I ruffled his hair once, which made him look startled in an entirely different way than the head smacks had.
"Want to do a hunt?" I said.
We got closer by teleport, Flame dangling from my grip, landing in the canopy above the mercenary formation. I set him on the branch beside me and we watched them move through the trees below.
"They're here for you." I said quietly.
Flame went still.
"If they reach Eryndor, the people there are in danger." I said. "I won't allow that. So you have a choice. Handle it, or I hand you back to them and deal with the problem that way."
Flame turned and stared at me.
His eyes went wide. Then something moved through them, past the shock, past the fear, settling into something harder and more certain.
He didn't want to leave Eryndor. I could see it clearly. The people there fed him and let him sleep without the collar and called him by a name that was his and didn't look at him like property.
He started to shift into his dragon form.
I smacked his head.
"Not yet." I said. "Follow my instructions. Think of it as training. Unless you want to be captured again."
Flame closed his mouth. Then nodded once, sharp and decided.
I kicked him off the branch.
He dropped toward the mercenary formation below and the shouting started immediately. I settled back against the trunk and watched.
His first movements were awkward. No training, no experience, just instinct trying to find its footing in a real situation. He took hits. He stumbled. One of the mages got a containment field around him for about four seconds before Flame burned through it.
I watched and spoke to him through a quiet telepathic thread, adjusting, correcting, pointing out the openings he was missing because he hadn't learned yet to read a formation.
He learned fast. His body found its rhythm before his mind had fully caught up to what his body was doing.
By the end, he was standing in the middle of the mercenary camp, wounded and breathing hard and the only one standing, with an expression on his face that I recognized.
The particular look of someone who has just found out what they're capable of.
I dropped from the tree and gathered the bodies. Every mercenary, every mage, every piece of equipment. I sorted through for anything that connected back to the collar or to whoever had sent them.
Then I opened a path and sent them home.
Marquis Ravendale's garden. Stacked neatly. Like returned correspondence.
I healed Flame's wounds while he was still catching his breath, running mana through him until nothing remained.
He looked at his hands.
Then at me.
"Will they send more?" He asked.
"Probably." I said.
He thought about that.
"Okay." He said.
We walked back to Eryndor, like nothing happened.