“Then what? Scarlet, you can’t be here when this goes down!” He sounded angry, but Scarlet heard the note of panic in his voice.
Scarlet lifted her chin and smoothed down her skirt. “I’ll show you,” she decided finally. “Come with me.”
“Show me what?” Mal scrambled to follow.
Scarlet shot him a look over her shoulder as she led him back through her office. “What I really am.” She pointed to his shirt, slumped on the floor. “Put your shirt on.”
Chapter 13
Mal suspected he’d appreciate Scarlet’s suggestion to wear his shirt; the buttons at the wrists were gone, but he solved this indignity by rolling up his sleeves, walking fast to catch Scarlet. To his surprise, she did not pause at her office door, or head down into the resort, but led him out of the courtyard, past the entrance, along the low stone wall, and then plunged into the jungle before him.
Scarlet moved swiftly through the trees before him, flitting ahead as easily as if she was on a paved walk. Mal had glimpses of her ahead, as he clamored over roots and pushed aside leaves the size of tables to follow. Her skirt, which had seemed so conservative in her office—lack of undergarments aside—was hiked up above her knees and her long, pale legs flashed in the deepening green shadows.
At one point, Mal was astonished to realize that she was still wearing her modestly-heeled shoes, over ground that even he found challenging in flat dress shoes... and that he still seemed to hear the distinctive click that they made over tile.
Before he could reconcile this oddity, he was breaking out of the clinging shadows into an unexpected clearing. The sun was beginning to set; the sky above them was stained purple and gold in the hole of the jungle canopy above.
For a moment, Mal thought that Scarlet’s true form was too big to show him in a constrained space and she’d brought him here for privacy.
Then he realized that the clearing wasn’t empty.
In the center of the jungle-ringed space was a tree.
Mal was no arborist, but even he could tell at once that this was no ordinary tree. It wasn’t that impressive in size, compared to the gigantic trees of the jungle surrounding them, but it was still grand, as big as a house, with thick fern-like leaves and a heavy crown of brilliant red flowers.
Mal didn’t have to cast his power sight to know that it sizzled with power: power like Scarlet’s.
And it had brilliant red flowers: red like Scarlet’s hair.
She was watching him with something that might have been anxiousness in a lesser person.
“This is me,” she said needlessly, because Mal had put all the pieces of this puzzle together at last. “This is why I can never leave the island.”
“You’re a dryad,” he said in wonder.
“This is my tree,” she said simply. “This is my forest. This is my island.”
They had closed the distance to the tree and the branches bent down in greeting.
Mal reached up and ran his fingers through the feathery leaves. They curled around his fingers and stroked his arms curiously.
Scarlet gave a little sigh, and Mal turned to see her eyes half-closed in pleasure.
“It has been a long time since anyone really touched me,” she said achingly.
Questions crowded in Mal’s mouth: how did she grow here? What was her connection with the Lyons? How did her stunning power work?
And most critical: how could he protect her from the devastation of rebuilding the wyrm’s prison? Lettin
g the island become a battleground was no longer a palatable option... but it had always been the only option.
We cannot let her come to harm, his dragon wailed. But we cannot fail our destiny!
“I have photographs of you in England, from the sixties,” Mal said, confused. “You had brown hair.”
“Royal poinciana doesn’t bloom in England,” Scarlet said, as if it made perfect sense. She reached up and caressed some of the leaves; they twined around her fingers. “It only thrives in the tropics.”
“But... you were in England. How...?”