Hidden Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon Book 7) by Genevieve Jack (best book club books .txt) 📕

her dinner, she’d excused herself and gone to bed, hoping that sleep would improve her mood. When she woke early the next morning, Sylas was wrapped around her like a blanket, the entire length of his lean, well-muscled body spooning her from behind. The position made it exceedingly difficult to remember why she’d been cross with him. Not that it particularly surprised her. For the sake of efficiency, they were crowded in a tent with a four-person occupancy, their sleeping bag less than a foot away from Tobias’s, who was, at the moment, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. What else did she expect? This wasn’t a camping trip. They’d had to travel light. Only the necessities.

Still, if she stayed this close to those hard abs and his delicious smoky anise scent, she’d be tempted to pick up where they left off last night. This wasn’t the time or the place. Slowly and carefully she extracted herself from Sylas’s arms and tiptoed between the sleeping dragons. Pulling on her cloak, she slipped out the tent flap.

Sabrina had kept watch last night. The orb at her side gave off a strange, mystical glow. She turned to greet Dianthe, and her eyes betrayed her growing fatigue. Already, light streamed over Solaris Field. She supposed as a vampire, Sabrina would usually be in bed by now.

“I’m up,” Dianthe said. “You can sleep if you want. It’s barely dawn. Maybe you can get a few hours in before we leave.”

“I’ll do that.” Sabrina moved for the door of the tent but paused and turned to her. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you thank you last night. It was a brave thing that you did. If you hadn’t addressed the sprites, I fear blood would have been shed. It might have been mine.”

“It was the least I could do,” Dianthe said automatically.

“No.” Sabrina shook her head. “You could have done nothing or sent Sylas in after us. You were brave. You told me you fear the dark.”

She looked down at her feet. “Well, I’d forgotten this lake was populated by sprites. I should have warned you.”

The tall redhead moved closer to her. Sabrina’s gaze was intense, and she carried herself with the long-limbed grace of royalty. Dianthe knew instantly that she never wanted to cross the vampire. One of her pale hands came to rest on Dianthe’s shoulder.

“I am thankful that you are the brave, strong woman you are. It’s difficult to stand up to one’s mate, especially when one is married to a dragon. I know better than anyone. But it’s clear Colin was right. We need you on this mission. You’ve already made a difference. Never forget that.” Sabrina slipped inside the tent, leaving Dianthe alone to process the unexpected compliment.

She sat next to the orb by the fire and stared at the border of Nochtbend. None of them knew what to expect when they crossed into the kingdom of the vampires. What she needed was a vision. She needed to see what was ahead for them.

A seer could not control what she saw or when she saw it, but sometimes they could open a window to their mind in a way that invited a vision in. She thought of it like sprinkling birdseed in a cage and leaving the door open so the bird could fly in. It had been days since she’d had a vision. The trauma of the fire and her deteriorating relationship with Sylas had her tied up in knots.

It was time to loosen those strings. Her family needed her. The mission needed her. She couldn’t let Sylas or anyone else get in the way of what she’d promised she’d do. She owed Everfield that much.

Pushing all thoughts from her mind, she closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath. “You can do this,” she whispered to herself. Her mind relaxed. The door opened. And she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The vision started as a cramp low in her abdomen that rolled up through her stomach and stole the breath from her lungs before flooding into her head. Her lashes fluttered against the temporary blindness that accompanied her second sight. She tipped her head back. A rush of color and sound zoomed in—the Obsidian Guard, dressed in their red-and-black uniforms, trudged through the remains of the Empyrean Wood. Goddess no! They were back en masse. Why did they have shovels? Why were they digging in the ash? By Hades, there were hundreds of them.

“What are we looking for?” one soldier asked another.

“We don’t know, only that we need to find it before the rebels do.”

“That’s it? We’re just going to dig up the entire forest looking for something?”

The man shook his head. “The seer told her it was in a metal box, buried in the ash. Keep digging and keep an eye out for a group of four fairies. Our spies have spotted four known rebels in Everfield. They’ll be after the same thing.”

Dianthe snapped back into the present, her heart pounding. Frantically she looked around her, then toward the Empyrean Wood. She saw a flash of red moving among the charred tree trunks. A guardsman. Oh dear goddess, they were already here!

“Wake up. Wake up!” she whispered loudly, her head poked inside the tent. She grabbed Sylas’s toes and shook.

“Dianthe? What’s going on?” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“We need to go. We need to leave now.” She remembered that she’d left the orb unguarded and ducked out of the tent to return to her post, gathering it into her arms. The fire was still smoldering, and she kicked dirt to smother it. She prayed the guards wouldn’t see the smoke.

Sylas followed her from the tent. “What’s going on?”

“We have to leave. Pack quickly. Tell Tobias and Sabrina.”

“They’re already dressing. What’s happened? What did you see?”

“The Obsidian Guard is here in Everfield. They’re digging in the Empyrean Wood, digging up the ash. They’re looking for a metal box that they think holds something four rebels