But it was time to focus; and focus I did, though it was incredibly difficult to start. I stared into the candles until their image burned into my eyes. I blinked the tears away and inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again. The fire danced in my vision, tempting and offering so much. There were no words I could gather, no thought that allowed me to do what needed to be done. Instead, I focused on the candles.
Then I breathed life into the eggs. I willed them to crack, to shatter right then and there. It was their time to be born, their time of becoming. I knew it would work, knew that I was a witch of power and skill. Though I was a little rusty, this was something that any spell slinger could do. I'd just been the only one around when they needed me.
When they needed me.
That touched my heart and kept going. I focused on the eggs and felt something touch my consciousness. A keening not unlike the whelp in the crate drew me in, tugged me along, and vanished.
The candles died with a gust of wind that came from nowhere. Without the help of the dragons, the lights came back up in the house. I looked around, frowning, then looked back at the perfectly smooth eggs still sitting in front of me.
Eskal hurried forward, ignoring the sizzling of the still-hot wicks against the undersides of his arms. He snatched up the black egg and looked it over.
I fell back to the couch, exhausted. But the last thing I saw before my eyes fluttered closed were the tears in Eskal's eyes, and the heartbreak on his face.
I'd fucked it up.
They hadn't needed me, after all.
Chapter 12
Eskal
Olivia fell asleep on the couch as I examined each egg, looking for any fracture, any crack.
Any sign of hope.
Nothing. The shells remained as unbroken as they had been before we had retrieved them. Had we revealed the supernatural world to a handful of humans only for the universe to tell us that we were not worthy of the whelps within those eggs?
I swallowed down the tears. Grown men do not cry over small matters such as it was, nor do dragons. The black egg, as dark as my scales, reflected my face in the bright lights of the living room. I sniffed and wiped away the single drop that rolled down my cheek.
"If you will pardon me," I whispered, then left the room before any of my flight could swarm the nest.
Would it have worked if it had been another woman? Another man? I was unclear on the exact requirements of the ritual. It was a simple thing, for all I knew. The candles awoke our inner fires. They drew us from the sleep within the shell, like a rooster's crow once brought farmers from their beds.
Had they been the wrong sort of candle? Did they require lighting with flint and steel? I didn't know. There was so much I was uncertain of.
The omega matriarchs of our flights taught the younger males how to prepare nests for awakenings. But Mother had always kept promising to teach us later, never allowing us to see what happened when her human mates helped her to bring us into being.
I closed the door to the library and sat among the books. A thousand titles, all beautiful and holding wonderful stories within them. Some charted our migration throughout the world. Others told stories of us roasting innocents and running away with their treasure or their women. Most were incorrect about that, but I'd known a drake or two who had been interested in such matters.
None of them offered the advice I needed. And I certainly wasn't about to call Alashia and admit that we had failed the eggs. She would attempt to pressure us into giving them over to her; perhaps the whelp as well. She would say that we were unworthy, that the great Mother had decided we were not ready to bear young.
I wished I was angry my little witch. How could I be? She had gone above and beyond her calling to assist us. She had done everything in her power to gather the eggs, to attempt to hatch them. In the end, she had been so tired that she had collapsed as soon as the ritual was complete.
Perhaps she was ready to be a mother. That was why she had hatched her own egg. I stared at the ceiling, letting it blur. The tears didn't matter if I was by myself, and no one was about to disturb me in the silent reaches of my library. I dashed them away again when they became too much, wiping the back of my hand on my robe.
How long did the eggs have to remain in stasis until we were ready? Until we had managed to hatch them? It was unfair to them, as it was unfair to us. They deserved life, every shred of it. We dragons were fading from the minds of mortals. Did we have to cause a ruckus to invoke the whelps?
If buildings had to fall, I would do it. I would expose every human in the world to dragonkind once again, make the magic flow crimson with their blood, if that was what it took to bring my young nestmates to life. I dug claws into my chair and growled. In the dark of the night, in the skies above under which the humans slept, fire would come down in a blazing sheet that swept the lot of them from their miserable lives.
And then, I would ask Olivia to perform the ritual again.
If she failed, I would request
