She held out her hands in front of her, palms facing the blocked exit to the cave. Her hair waved haphazardly around her head, stirred by a breeze that no one else felt. Her eyes seemed to catch fire as they blazed with reddish orange flames.
Those same flames licked around the edges of the rock that Sorin and Wolfe had rolled in front of the cave, melting it. Until the boulder was welded into the mouth of the cave, and no crevice or crack remained.
“I thought you said you only do binding spells?” Ere directed the question with a suspicious sideways glare at Morgan.
“I did,” she retorted. “I just bound the boulder to the mouth of the cave, didn’t I?”
Ere didn’t look convinced, and neither was Wolfe.
Here was yet another female who hadn’t told them the full truth about who she was and what she was able to do. But now was not the time to coax the secrets out of her.
He looked around them. They were now deeply entrenched in what appeared to be the Dark Woods.
As the five of them wordlessly moved through tangled paths obstructed by dead trees, dry twigs and leaves, and mud bogs, Wolfe felt a distinct chill trickle down his spine.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been here before. Even though he hadn’t.
The deadened air, the musty smell, the strange, eerie sounds of unseen beasts, the leafless tree branches that looked like gnarled, boney fingers grasping at anyone who trespassed through these woods…
It was all so familiar.
And then he realized where he recalled the scene: in the recurring nightmare that had haunted him since his mother died.
This was the path he would take to the dragon’s lair.Thedragon he’d been hunting all this time.
He heard this earlier from Morgan, when she described the trail to Merlin’s prison. But he hadn’t realized what it meant. He hadn’t known he’d be living his nightmare right this moment. That the “men” he always traveled with in the dream to take down the dragon would be this small band of warriors, wit and witch.
Would they face inhuman monsters next?
Wolfe tightened his grip on sword and dagger. He’d be damned if he lost any of them on this quest.
A ground-shaking rumble shook through the forest.
Up ahead, the top of an ash-sputtering mountain loomed above the dense fog that covered its base. Soon, the dark pit of a large cavern yawned before them like the gaping mouth of a giant. The deep, echoing rumbles came from within.
Wolfe knew what creature made those sounds. There could only be one:
The red dragon from his dreams.