Chapter 4 THE DRAGON IN THE WOODS

Elara's POV

I had always wondered what it would feel like to fall through the sky.

As a child, I used to climb the old apple tree behind my grandmother's house and pretend I could fly. My grandmother had caught me attempting to jump from one of its branches when I was seven, and the punishment had been a week without sweets.

At the time, I thought she was being unnecessarily cruel.

Now, as I hurtled through what appeared to be an endless tunnel of darkness, I was beginning to understand her concerns.

I screamed.

Not a dignified scream—a terrifying one.

I screamed like a woman who had just discovered that gravity was a personal enemy.

"KAEL!" I called out to him, desperately searching through the darkness surrounding me. I couldn't see him anywhere.

"KAEL DRAVEN!" I called his name like he was the only one who could save me. What was I even saying? He was the only one who could save me.

Something moved in the darkness beside me, and a hand suddenly caught my wrist.

"Stop screaming!" Kael barked.

"STOP SCREAMING?!" I shrieked. "WE'RE FALLING INTO NOTHING!"

"I noticed!" He sounded frustrated, like he would have preferred falling into nothing rather than listening to my lungs testing their limits.

"THEN DO SOMETHING!"

"What exactly would you like me to do?"

I would have answered him, but a sudden, violent force yanked me sideways. My stomach lurched, and the surrounding darkness broke apart into streaks of blinding golden light.

For one brief moment, I saw hundreds of floating clocks.

Some were enormous, others no bigger than my fingernails. Their hands spun in opposite directions, and their faces displayed numbers I had never seen before. One clock even had what looked suspiciously like a boiling volcano painted on the glass, while the rest possessed interfaces entirely their own.

I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

Then the ground rushed upward to meet us.

"Oh, no," I gasped.

Kael tightened his grip on my wrist. "Hold on!"

I instinctively moved toward him, grabbing a handful of his shirt and holding on as if my life depended entirely on it—which, considering the circumstances, it probably did.

"I AM HOLDING ON!" I screamed, pulling my eyes shut as we neared the solid earth. I felt Kael's arms wrap securely around my waist as he spun us around, shielding me with his own body.

I felt the world turn completely upside down. And then we hit the ground.

Even though Kael did his absolute best to cushion the impact, pain still shot through my shoulder as we landed hard, rolled down a small grassy slope, and came to an abrupt stop against a thick tree root. We lay there together, staring up at the canopy.

For several seconds, I couldn't remember how to breathe.

Then, everything came rushing back in a dizzying wave. The watch. The blinding light. The floating furniture. The terrifying sensation of being dragged into an endless abyss.

And Kael, whose arm my head was resting on.

I gently turned my head toward him, only to be met by his striking silver-gray eyes, our faces barely inches apart.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, wincing as my bruised shoulder protested, and stumbled away until I hit another tree. I let my aching body slide down against the bark, my legs giving out completely beneath me.

When I finally looked back toward where Kael had been, he was gone. Panic spiked instantly.

"Kael?"

No answer.

I looked around frantically.

We were in a forest. Towering trees stretched toward the sky, their branches tangled together so thickly that only a few narrow beams of sunlight managed to reach the ground. Ferns and unfamiliar, glowing flowers covered the damp earth, and somewhere nearby, water rushed over stone.

It was breathtaking—and terrifying, because it was definitely not my shop.

I scrambled to my feet, brushing dirt and leaves from my clothes.

"Kael!"

"I'm here."

His low voice came from somewhere to my left.

I hurried around a thick oak tree and found him standing near the edge of a rocky clearing, examining the surrounding woods with an expression that suggested he was personally offended by them.

His coat was gone, his dark hair was a mess, and a fresh scratch ran along his jawline.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"Are you sure? You look terrible."

He turned his cold gaze onto me. I offered him a small, nervous smile, feeling suddenly very small under his intimidating stare.

"Just checking," I mumbled defensively.

"What happened to the watch?"

My smile vanished. Right. The watch.

I looked around the ground, searching the grass and ferns for any sign of the golden object. There was no pocket watch, no floating furniture, and certainly no convenient explanation for why we had been thrown out of my shop like unwanted trash.

"I don't know," I admitted. "The last thing I remember was the light. And then I discovered that falling was a horrible experience."

Kael closed his eyes briefly, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

I couldn't tell whether he was praying for patience or regretting every life choice that had ever led him to my doorstep. Honestly, I didn't blame him. He had only wanted his watch repaired, and instead, we had ended up in . . . well, where exactly were we?

A low, rumbling growl echoed from a distance, cutting through my thoughts.

I looked up just in time to see dark, heavy storm clouds gathering rapidly above the treetops.

"Oh, wonderful," I muttered sarcastically. "Because being swallowed by a magical artifact and falling through the sky wasn't enough. Now we're going to get rained on."

"We need shelter," Kael said simply, turning on his heel and walking right past me.

"Brilliant observation. You should consider becoming a weather mage," I snapped.

He ignored me and started pushing his way through the brush. He was infuriatingly good at that—ignoring people with that straight, handsome face and eyes that revealed absolutely nothing.

I followed, picking my way over exposed roots and slick stones. We hadn't walked far when the first fat raindrops began to strike my face.

Within minutes, the sky completely opened up.

Rain poured relentlessly through the branches, soaking my clothes to the skin and turning the ground beneath my boots into treacherous, slippery mud. I tried to keep pace with Kael, but the man walked as though he had never encountered an inconvenient patch of uneven ground in his entire life.

"Could you please slow down?" I called out, wiping water from my eyes.

He glanced back over his shoulder. "Try to keep up."

"I am trying!"

A jagged flash of lightning instantly illuminated the dark forest.

The thunder that followed was so deafeningly loud that I instinctively covered my ears. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on a patch of wet moss.

Then I heard it—a strange, metallic chime immediately followed by an unmistakable clicking sound.

Tick.

I froze.

Tick. Tick.

My gaze snapped back toward the clearing. Something was hovering midair.

The pocket watch.

How did it get here on its own? I thought it would have stayed back at my workbench. And speaking of my shop, what if the watch had dragged the entire building somewhere else, just like it had done to us?

The mere thought made my stomach flip, but I shoved it aside, desperately trying to convince myself that my shop was still sitting safely in the heart of Bellwether, with Mara probably knocking on the front door to check if I was still open.

Its golden casing was split apart just like it had been before it sucked us in, the outer cover suspended several inches away from the main body. Tiny gears floated in the empty space between them, spinning wildly in opposite directions as thin strands of golden light connected each loose component. The watch hands continued to sweep backward, faster than they had in my shop, while vicious little sparks of lightning crackled aggressively around its edges.

I stared at it in disbelief. "How are you still doing that?"

It wasn't as though I expected it to answer. I was simply having a uniquely terrible day, and apparently, talking to inanimate magical objects was becoming a permanent habit.

Another blinding flash of lightning struck overhead, causing the watch to jerk violently in midair.

The separated pieces began pulling toward one another, rotating faster as though an invisible hand was desperately trying to force them back together. The golden light flickered erratically, and the tiny gears rattled against each other with a metallic shriek.

"Kael!" I called out, turning toward him. "I think your watch is acting up again!"

He was already moving toward it. As I took a couple of steps forward to get a better look, he threw a sharp warning over his shoulder.

"Stay back."

"Oh, now you want me to stay back? That's rich coming from the man who—"

A sharp, deafening crack tore through the air.

I flinched, throwing my arms up.

The watch suddenly snapped together with a heavy metallic click and dropped straight onto the wet mud below.

For a moment, nothing happened. There was no more lightning, no more pulling forces. But it couldn't be over—we were still undeniably stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I watched as its golden surface dulled and went entirely dark. I stood there, breathing hard, staring at the motionless metal.

"Well," I muttered, "that was aggressively dramatic. And yet, we're still stuck here."

Kael didn't respond. He was staring past the clearing, his silver-gray eyes fixed on something deep within the dense tree line that I couldn't quite make out.

"What is it now?" I asked, following his tense gaze. "If you tell me there's another magical clock floating around here, I'm going to—"

He bent down, scooped the watch off the ground, and grabbed my hand, pressing the cold metal directly into my palm.

Then, he stepped away from me.

"Hold onto it, and stay right here."

I crossed my arms defensively. "You really need to add some new phrases to your vocabulary. And quite frankly, I've had more than enough trauma from this watch for a lifetime."

He completely ignored me, walking with silent, purposeful strides toward the edge of the clearing where the trees grew thinner and the land sloped steeply downward.

I watched his broad back disappear between two towering ancient pines.

A second later, curiosity completely overrode my common sense. Naturally, I followed him. There was no way in hell I was going to stay behind by myself.