The Adversary by Thea Harrison

Chapter Two

When Dragos woke he lay in a small forest clearing.

The scene was profoundly quiet, broken only by the distant rustle of wind playing through the tops of trees, along with the occasional warble of birdsong. The sunlight shining through tree branches dappled soft green grass, and the air felt heavy and hot like a summer afternoon.

It felt good to sprawl at his leisure, ankles crossed, and hands locked behind his head as he contemplated the patches of cloudless sky overhead. He could lie there all day, with no agenda and no need to do anything. He wasn’t hungry and felt no need to hunt. There weren’t any enemies he had to fight, nobody he wished to see or speak to…

(But that felt fundamentally wrong. His bones were very old. They had solidified when the earth was formed, and they knew better. Something deep within stirred and began to push back the overwhelming urge to sleep. There was someone he badly needed to see. He could almost picture her beautiful face…)

But in fact, there was nothing urgent for him to do but nap. The forest clearing, the wind and birds, and the picturesque sky would all be there to enjoy when he woke up. He had all the time in the world.

(But the sky, the sky, the sky was so much more than a pretty scene to contemplate. Like the someone he couldn’t quite remember but needed to see, the sky was somehow elemental to his existence.

The sky meant freedom and storms, fierce sunlight warming his wings. The entire limitless expanse of sky was his true domain.

Wings, he told himself. Don’t forget you have wings. Your life is so much more than this tiny, petty place. No matter what smaller creatures may call you, you are the emperor of the sky. And you have someone you need to see.

He threw off the somnolence that weighed down his human limbs, climbed to his feet, and…)

He woke up.

And lay in a small forest clearing.

The scene was profoundly quiet, with only the distant rustle of wind playing through the tops of trees, along with the occasional warble of birdsong. The sunlight shining through tree branches dappled the soft green grass, and the air was heavy and hot like….

(Hold on. You’ve thought these things before. Wait and watch, and you’ll recognize what comes next.)

…a summer afternoon.

It felt good to sprawl at his leisure, ankles crossed, and hands locked behind his head as he contemplated the patches of cloudless sky overhead. He could lie there all day, with no agenda and no need to do anything at all. He wasn’t hungry and felt no need to hunt. There weren’t any enemies he had to fight, nobody he had to see or speak to…

(There’s your lie. There’s someone missing. You can’t feel her, that light, feminine presence that is so fundamental to your life, and you should be able to. You made promises to each other. It is so much more than love that you share, although you share love too.

That’s a truth that runs deeper than anything in this scene.)

He woke.

(And every thought that ran through his head was a lie.

He couldn’t feel Pia. That was the truth beyond which nothing else mattered…)

When he woke next, he remembered everything and knew he was trapped in a spell.

Don’t tense up, he told himself. That was what triggered the imperative to sleep.

Relaxing, he let the narrative run through his mind while he contemplated the details of everything around him. Individual blades of grass pressed into his skin. He could see the colorful wings of a bird flitting from tree to tree, feel the somnolent heat of the summerlike day.

But his presence was so ancient and vast that it did not quite fit into the small, inadequate narrative that someone else’s magic fed him, and for some reason he could not access his Wyr form.

The spell was very well done. If he had, in fact, been human, perhaps it would have worked more completely. He could see how it might be possible to drift forever, content to sleep the rest of his life away. The sleep imperative would keep the prisoner compliant.

His brain, however, was too capacious to be captured this way for long. And whoever had cast the spell hadn’t taken into account the dual nature of the Wyr or the extraordinary depth of the mating bond. You might take away the conscious awareness of that bond, but the Wyr would still know in the most essential part of them that something was deeply, desperately wrong.

Stretching, he rolled over and climbed to his feet. He kept his movements slow and casual, the surface of his mind easy and relaxed, letting the spell narrative flow.

(…In fact, there was nothing urgent for him to do but nap. The forest scene, wind and birds, and picturesque sky would all be there to enjoy when he woke up. He had all the time in the world….

Sleep. Sleep. The only thing he needed to do was sleep.)

I can sleep in a moment, he let himself think, feeding it into the narrative. After I get a drink.

(He needed nothing. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t thirsty. He wasn’t lonely. He could relax into a deep, refreshing sleep. Sleep. Sleep.)

In a moment.

(Sleep.)

Keeping his movements gentle, he continued to misdirect the spell, not by fighting it directly, but by deflecting the imperative. If he fought, it would probably knock him out again. But as long as he kept his surface thoughts focused on sleeping “soon” or “in a moment” the imperative didn’t trigger.

In the deepest part of his consciousness, while he had studied everything around him the dragon had also taken stock of the scene. He realized the forest neither looked like the Other land of Rhyacia, where he, Pia, and twenty thousand other souls had come to settle, nor did it look like Earth.

It was too generic.

It didn’t exist.

The spell wasn’t just a narrative to keep him snared in sleep. It encompassed everything around him.

Whirling, he grabbed a sharp stick and stabbed himself in the hand. The stick passed painlessly through his palm. He had a brief, lightning bolt realization.

It wasn’t just that the scene itself was an illusion. Or that the spell was inadequate to hold the consciousness of an ancient Wyr.

His body was part of the illusion.

Darkness struck like a rattlesnake.

He came awake raging and threw the full force of his fury at the spell, and the details of his cage dimmed.

And there she was, his beautiful mate, staring pointblank into his face. She looked entirely unlike her usual mild, good-natured self. Her face was ruthless, her jewellike eyes glittering with hate.

Holy hells, she looked hot.

“If my husband is dead,” she said, “then I have nothing to lose, do I?”

Dragos heard himself start to laugh. Shock and realization struck again. THAT IS NOT ME. Outrage surged, and he fought for control—then he felt himself convulse.

Everything became crystal clear. It was night, lit by the cool light of the moon and the pagan gold of nearby bonfires. He was fully grounded in his body, and he lay on trampled sand on the beach. Behind Pia’s shoulder, all his former sentinels stood in the ring, watching with cold, wary expressions.

He tried to move and discovered he had been bound in chains. He reached for his Power, but he couldn’t access it. Reached for his dragon form, but he couldn’t shapeshift either.

Lightning fast, he remembered almost everything. They had spent months planning their move from Earth to the Other land of Rhyacia that held a vast stretch of what Dragos had thought was unoccupied land.

But something had lived here once. A massive network of ruins lay under the new settlement that hugged the shore of the gigantic lake. He and Pia had been inspecting the ruins, had found a sarcophagus, and then something had poured into his body like black ink into a well, and he had flung himself into a shapeshift to try to drive it out.

He had been trapped in a bubble of illusion while that thing had taken over his body, and it was blazingly clear that an unknown amount of time had passed. Pia wore makeup and different clothes. She had fixed her hair. The sentinels had had time to travel from earth and arrive in Rhyacia.

How much time had passed? Hours? Days?

He caught a glimpse of another personality, existing alongside him like a shadowy snake.

And, thank all the gods, Pia knew.

Dragos had just enough time to snarl telepathically, Do what you need to do.

Unconsciousness roared at him with the force of a freight train, and darkness enveloped him once again.

The next time Dragos came awake, he found himself sitting by a forest pool and staring into the calm, glass-like water. His reflection stared back. Dispassionately, he studied the brutal features, the shock of black silken hair, the ruthless mouth.

Some people would call his conscience inadequate. Some thought he was an abomination.

Here is your adversary. This is the man you need to fight. He has stolen everything you valued about your life.

Kill him now.

Reaching out, he touched the surface of the water and watched the visage of the man disappear in ripples that flowed outward to the edge of the pond. Lifting his hand and clenching it into a fist, he waited until the ripples subsided. Then he looked into his own hard, glittering gaze again.

The game had changed, and he recognized this one right away. This was a mirror spell. He was supposed to fight himself until he committed suicide.

But now Dragos remembered everything. He knew who he was—Wyr and dragon, the Great Beast, ruler of demesnes, and Pia’s only mate forever. Something foreign inhabited his body and wanted his inconvenient consciousness out of the way for good.

He thought of the time lag. Had that thing touched Pia? Dared to make love to her? If he had thought he felt rage before, it was nothing compared to the tsunami of towering fury that washed over him then.

“I’ve got your number now, you son of a bitch,” he whispered, deep in the privacy of his feral dragon brain. “And I’m going to crush every miniscule part of you.”

Thatwas a stone cold fact. Now it was only a matter of time.

He fed the spell what it wanted. Soon, he would go after the hard-eyed male staring back at him in the reflection in the water. He just had to make a plan of attack first.

Never fighting the spell directly, always deflecting, he turned his real attention to the problem of how to unravel the spell itself.

Possession was a tricky state to maintain. Dragos himself had possessed other creatures briefly before. It was easier to impose one’s will on simpler creatures, such as mundane animals, as opposed to those with more developed, sophisticated minds and entrenched personalities.

But possessing simpler creatures meant you also took on their limitations. And the older and more sophisticated the creature, the more difficult possession became, until it was like trying to ride a bucking bronco. Sooner or later, you knew you were going to be thrown off.

Without conceit, he knew that he had to be one of the most difficult rides anyone might try to take on. Even his body worked to throw off the intruder with the convulsions, fighting it like a virus.

Back in the ruins, his invader hadn’t known any of that. It hadn’t known who Dragos was, or what his capabilities were. It had just struck at what must have been the first likely candidate in thousands of years.

While Dragos placated the spell with surface thoughts, he studied its construction. Like the first sleep spell, it was elegantly crafted. It was larger and stronger than the first one, but it still wasn’t expansive enough to engulf Dragos.

And the details of the illusion felt thinner, less believable. The water rippled but it didn’t feel wet. There was no wind overhead in the forest’s trees, no birds. This one had been hastily constructed.

Either his adversary still didn’t understand who or what he was up against, which was a possibility, or he was distracted by what was happening in the physical world—and that was a certainty.

Reaching deep into the part of himself that the spell hadn’t captured, he started to whisper his own incantation.

Smoke from the dragon’s breath drifted along the forest floor, seeking the tiny, almost imperceptible cracks in the adversary’s spell. He could almost see the bubble of illusion flex in an effort to contain it.

But Dragos’s expertise spanned the history of earth itself. His magic could be both delicate and comprehensive. Inevitably, some of the smoke slipped out. Like computer malware, it began to corrode the hold his adversary had on his body.

The illusion of the forest thinned. He felt pain throbbing in various parts of his body. When he took a breath, he felt his real lungs expand. And he could feel the invader fight savagely against his assault.

Then a feminine scent reached him. The mating bond snapped back into place. There she was again.

She whispered in his ear, “Get out here now.”

It brought him roaring to full consciousness.

He shook his head to clear it, opened eyes that felt swollen and crusted, and growled, “I’m here.”

The details of this new scene came clear. He was sitting in a sturdy chair and shackled to it with chains. Hmm, those chains again.

They seemed disturbingly familiar. Tightening every muscle in his body, he pushed against their confinement, but they didn’t budge. If they had been ordinary shackles, he should have been able to break free.

Oh, these were definitely familiar.

Trampled sand lay underneath, and a large canvas tent had been erected around him. Nearby a fire burned in a brazier. He smelled his own sweat and blood.

Nearby, Rune and Graydon stood tense, expressions hardened into cold, professional masks, clearly ready to intervene if necessary. He jerked his chin up at them, and Rune gave him a slight wary nod in acknowledgment. After that, Dragos focused on Pia.

She looked drawn. Fine, almost invisible lines bracketed her gorgeous mouth. How much time had passed since the last time he had surfaced?

He hissed, “Did he touch you?”

She flinched slightly. It was just a twitch at the corners of her eyes, but it made him so psychotic he almost missed her steady reply. “It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”

“What did he do to you?” His deep growl made the tent shudder. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rune and Graydon tense. He said to them, “Get out.”

They hesitated and looked at Pia, who nodded. “It’s okay. We know he can’t get out of these shackles. Give us some privacy, please.”

Rune nodded. “We’ll be just outside. Call if you need us.”

Dragos waited until the other men stepped out. Deep within, he could feel the other entity fighting for control, but he would be damned if he would relinquish his hold on himself while his mate was here and vulnerable. They had too much to say to each other.

Even though he knew he should focus on the many important things they needed to discuss, only one thing consumed him. He snarled, “What did he do?”

She met the full blast of his rage with steely calm. “It wasn’t much—a little tongue in a kiss or two, a little T&A. He did exactly what I allowed him to do. I baited him with honey, and he fell for my trap. Because I knew immediately, Dragos. As soon as he opened his eyes, I knew it wasn’t you.” Her gaze ran down the length of his body, and her expression darkened. “Oh baby, I’ve seen you look better.”

“It’s nothing,” he replied impatiently. When she looked as if she would argue with that statement, he said, “Pia, what they’re doing is working. Don’t let them stop now. His hold has weakened. I’m attacking him from within, and you need to keep up the pressure out here. He can’t fight both of us and win. I’m going to take him down. It’s only a matter of time.”

The first fracture appeared in her composure, and her lips trembled. As she pressed them together and nodded, he softened his voice and murmured, “Come here.”

She complied by straddling his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck. Hungry for every sensual detail, he nuzzled her neck and inhaled her scent deeply, while she ran her fingers through his short hair.

“You scared the living daylights out of me,” she said between her teeth. “One minute we were walking along having a creepy and yet somewhat enjoyable moment, and the next minute you convulsed and collapsed. I couldn’t feel you. Our bond had disappeared. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m so sorry you went through that,” he murmured. What if he had been the one to watch her collapse? To feel her presence disappear, along with the mating bond? A chill of horror ran underneath his skin, making his muscles quiver. He had never been good at empathy, but she constantly taught him more.

The delicate skin of her neck was exactly what he needed. He pressed his lips to the light pulse beating a rapid rhythm and her arms tightened.

Then she leaned back to examine him. “You really do look like shit.”

He shrugged that off. Bruises were bruises. Pain was pain. The most important thing was that it had a purpose. “You look like the best thing I’ve ever seen. I need to eat you up.”

A reluctant smile tugged at the edges of her lips. “What, are you flirting with me here? Now?”

“Here and always, lover. That’s a promise.” The part of him that inclined to wickedness wanted to urge her to take off her shirt, but if he lost control, he didn’t want the adversary to see her unclothed.

Angling his head, he leaned forward to kiss her, but with one hand flattened on his chest she pushed him back. Frowning, she studied his face, his eyes. “Can the invader see or sense what we’re saying and doing right now?”

He shook his head. “I’m convinced he can’t. We can sometimes sense each other as shadowy presences, but even still we can’t really see each other. When he has control of my body, I’m completely blocked from all physical sensation. He had trapped me in a dream. That was what I woke up to. It took me a while to work through that spell and to discover that not only were my surroundings an illusion, but my body wasn’t real either. Otherwise, I would have surfaced sooner.”

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.” She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his. “We had hoped the null spell shackles would dislodge him.”

Irritation roughed his voice. “Aryal was supposed to have destroyed them. I’m going to strangle her.”

“You’re going to have to get in line. She’s been working everybody’s last nerve.” She spoke absentmindedly as her fingers twisted in his shirt. “You’re sure he can’t sense us?”

Dragos checked himself carefully. “I don’t know how long this is going to last, but for the moment, yes. What is it?”

Digging into her jeans, she pulled out a small pocketknife, opened it, and pressed the tip to the ball of her thumb until it pierced the skin. As a small amount of bright blood welled from the tiny wound, she laid her thumb against a burn on his forearm.

They both watched as the burn mark healed. Bright, delicate energy traveled over his body, and every one of his wounds healed. She pointed to his arm. “Why does my Power work in spite of the null spell shackles, but your magic doesn’t? You can’t shapeshift either. And why didn’t the shackles knock that interloping asshole out of your body? How are you two doing whatever it is you’re doing to each other?”

“Your Power is an attribute, not an active spell. It simply exists, and my body responded by healing,” he said thoughtfully. “Shapeshifting is an ability, but it’s more like an active spell. It magically alters physical reality.”

“I don’t get the difference. Those wounds disappearing is a magically altered reality.” She snapped the knife shut and slipped it back into her pocket.

“One is magically passive. The other is magically active. That’s the only difference I can see.” He shook his head. “Or maybe you’re unique, and nobody else’s attributes would work. You’re certainly unique in other ways. As far as my fight with my intruder, that’s an internal struggle. It isn’t magically altering physical reality. Until we have more to go on, that’s the theory I’m going to work with. When we get out of this, I want to study these shackles a lot more closely.”

He certainly wasn’t going to be stupid enough to give them to Aryal again. Fool me once, motherfucker.

She shrugged, clearly irritated by the subject, and put her hands on his cheeks. Framing his face, she looked deeply into his gaze. “You said it was just a matter of time. How long before you expel him?”