Night had fallen hours ago. Still, they waited, hoping that the rest of the world would fall into a deep sleep before they took to the skies and attempted to sneak up on the slumbering castle that housed the Heart of Magic.
Nya shifted beneath the tree she’d been sitting beneath for most of the day, anxious to get on with it already. While she still hadn’t made up her mind what she would do if she had the opportunity to use the magic contained in the stone herself, she reminded herself that this was meant to be a reconnaissance trip. There was a good possibility she wouldn’t get a chance to find the stone this time anyway. Slate would likely want her to stay with him the whole time. Perhaps the visions she’d seen of him in chains and her holding the Heart of Magic were from a future trip.
“It’s time,” he finally said, standing and stretching beside her. “We should go now, before the moon rises any higher in the sky.”
“All right,” she said, ready to go. She double checked her weapons and found them all to be exactly where they should be. Her knives hidden on her calf and beneath her arm, her sword at her side. Her hands and legs were as much a weapon as any of these.
Slate wasn’t shifting, though. He was looking at her. Nya met his eyes, not sure what he was thinking. She arched her eyebrows and waited. “Be careful, Princess,” he said, his voice soft and tinged with worry.
“I will be,” she promised him. “You, too.”
“If we get separated, promise me you’ll get out. Go back to your kingdom. My people will know that our mission failed if I don’t return in a night or two.”
Nya nodded, wondering what would happen if he didn’t return to the mountain. Could the people inside even get out to find food without him? A wave of guilt hit her as she considered she might cause them all to starve, including Gavin, if she didn’t make the right choice. Of course, once she had the Heart of Magic, she could lead her own forces up the mountainside to rescue her people and the other humans. The dragons who couldn’t shift would likely choose to come on foot and attack Beelzanborg to get their king back, and without magic, the evil kingdom might crumple. If that was the case, Slate would be free--free to come after her, the girl who had betrayed him.
He took a step back into the woods, and her eyes locked on him, wanting to burn the memory of his human form into her mind. His smoldering dark eyes, that perfect jawline, the way his physique caused an ache deep within her she had never felt before. If she never saw his face again, she wanted to remember him.
Slate shifted into his dragon form, hunching down for her to climb aboard, which she did. Once she was settled, he sprang into the air, leaping up into the sky above the trees, his wings flapping furiously as he fought gravity’s pull. Soon enough, she was soaring through the sky again, the forest beneath them. In the distance, she could see the walls around Beelzanborg, and beyond that, the castle sprang out of the darkness, torches lighting the turrets, marking the guards that would do whatever they could to keep them from breaking into their fortress and stealing the Heart of Magic.
Nya relied on her gifts to help guide Slate where he should go. In her mind, she could see several options of where they should land. When she told him to fly around to the far side of the castle and come in from the sea, she could see them landing on a rocky shore, not a single guard there to greet them.
It only took a few hours for Slate to make the roundabout trip. When he landed on the rocky shore, Nya slid off, her feet meeting the sand as he shifted into his human form. They’d have some rock climbing to do this way, but they were much closer to the castle than they would’ve been if they’d landed on any other side.
Slate hunched over and took a few steps forward, approaching the bottom of the cliffs that jutted out of the beach and formed a large wall around the castle. “Do you want me to get you closer?” he asked, implying he would change back into his dragon form and fly her up the side of the mountain if she wanted him to.
Nya closed her eyes and concentrated. She saw him in his dragon form, landing higher up on the face of the mountain as troops dressed in the black of Beelzanborg came pouring over the side, alarmed by the beating of his wings. “No,” she said, playing out the other case, where they climbed. She saw them scaling the rock and leaping down onto one of the castle turrets, undetected. “They’ll catch us if we do that.”
“Can you climb this?” he asked, looking from Nya to the steep wall.
She tried not to roll her eyes. The mountainside did look treacherous, full of jagged rocks and steep faces, but she would know where to put her hands before she placed them, thanks to her gift. “Yes, yes I can,” she assured him.
“All right then,” Slate said, though it seemed he was struggling to relinquish control to her.
With the moon rising behind them, the pair approached the sheer wall of rock and looked for places to take hold. Nya picked her first grip carefully, wedging her feet in between the crevices and pulling herself up, taking her time to make sure that every place she put her hand was going to be safe. The last thing she needed to do was cut herself before she potentially faced off against an army of evil warriors.
Slate was climbing much more quickly than her, but he also didn’t seem to mind when he cut himself. As she made her way up the rock wall, she saw traces of fresh blood and knew they had to have come from him. He waited for her a few feet ahead, about halfway up the wall. Refusing to be rushed and make a mistake, Nya carefully climbed to meet him, but he would go a bit ahead of her each time until they were both finally at the top of the cliff.
Breathing a bit heavily, her muscles sore, Nya took a moment to suck air into her lungs, not daring to look over her shoulder. While her experience riding a dragon lately had made her less nervous about heights, she wasn’t nearly as safe now as she would’ve been on Slate’s back.
As they peered over the mountain’s edge, it became obvious that they’d only have to take a few steps down from where they were standing, on the other side of the mountain, and then spring out over a small gap between the closest turret and the mountain face to be atop the castle.
“All right then,” Slate said, pulling back slightly. “We’ve got what we came here for. We can go now.”
“What?” Nya asked, confused. “What do you mean? We don’t have the Heart.”
“No, but we know the weakness in the protection of the castle. Now, I can go back and get my army, bring them around this direction, and we can attack.”
Nya shook her head. She hadn’t been expecting this. At no point had she seen them turning back from here. “No, Slate. We have to keep going,” she said. “We need to get in the castle so that we can find out where the Heart is.”
He stared at her for a long moment before shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous, Nya. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t,” she told him, sure of that. “It’ll be fine. I already told you, I saw it.”
He held her gaze for a long time before he finally took in a deep breath and said, “Fine. Let’s go forward then.”
Nya nodded, but behind his eyes, she saw something she hadn’t before. It was almost as if he knew, as if he could see what was about to happen as well. Nya sucked in air and felt out into the future, trying to find the best path for both of them. Was there a way they could both get into the castle, find the Heart, and get out safely? She hadn’t seen one yet, but that didn't mean it was impossible.
Or did it?