Soon… I will find you, Devon thought, careening lower in the sky to get a better look at the mountains and forests passing by under him. It had been days now without a trace of Gemma, and while it would have made any rational man sick with worry, it just made him angrier. How could he let this happen? His princess, snatched from his very paws, from his own home.
Disbelief still wracked him, driving him to desperate passes like this, flying much too low to remain unseen in the hopes that he would catch a whiff of her sweet honey and vanilla scent or sense where she was. So far, no luck.
He had been searching since he discovered her and Jolly missing. The man’s betrayal was another thing he could scarcely fathom. A family, who had seemed so loyal to the Bluewing cause, now stealing what was dearest to him? It would have hurt less if they’d taken all of his gold. His heart was teetering on the edge of breaking. And that, Devon knew, was no simple problem to fix for a dragon.
Proud and majestic, few things could rattle the ancient beasts, but when their loyalty was betrayed or their mate perished, no dragon could go on for long.
It ate them up from the inside out, leaving nothing but a husk of scales and bitter regrets. As much as Devon was determined to not let that happen – avoiding hurt like this was just the reason he had never tried finding his mate – he seemed powerless in its wake. He had to find Gemma. There was no other way.
The first place he had checked to the great chagrin of Remington’s wife Cassiopeia was the Redblade mansion. Having heard years’ worth of tales of the malice and wickedness of the Bluewings, the woman was less than helpful in locating Gemma. In fact, she had been outraged both at the insinuation that her husband could have anything to do with it, and then at the notion that if he, in fact, did have something to do with it, that she would help a Bluewing uncover it.
Devon had to hand it to Remington – he had picked a woman vile enough to complete him. Or, fate had picked her for him, whichever way it went.
After that, he had scoured through every known location the Redblades had inhabited, finding empty cottages and mansions all over the world, stocked with aggravated servants not quite willing to work with a hated Bluewing. He had no proof that Remington was behind it all, but his gut and his heart were in agreement – no one else would do something quite as despicable.
His rage soothed the exhaustion in him, wiping it away each time he thought of what could be happening to Gemma. Devon was sure she was not dead yet – he would feel it in the very core of his being, and that sensation was not something that was easy to miss, as his father Dayton had told him after his mother died.
“It is like your world unravels around you and all the colors are immediately sucked out of it. You don’t need to be told that she is gone, you simply know,” he had said, infinite sadness in his eyes – an emotion he had never seen in his father before his mother’s passing.
Devon was not yet properly tied to Gemma, but the connection was there, and he knew she still had to be alright. He just couldn’t find her quite as easily as he would have if their bond were sealed.
Time after time, his flights kept bringing him back to an incredibly dense thicket of forest in the far-off mountains of Colorado, their tips dotted with icy snow. But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t find a place where Gemma could have been held. The cold wind batted at him, fueling his frustration. Devon dipped lower, letting his massive wings bring him down on one of the secluded mountaintops.
He landed on an outcrop, long clawed feet scratching against the rocky surface as he touched down. His heavy tail curled around his feet quickly, bathing them in the warmth of his body. Dragons weren’t meant for cold, at least not fire dragons. Devon had never understood how the ice dragons of the north could tolerate the chill or why they enjoyed it, and he had certainly never picked up their fondness for it.
With smoke billowing from his nostrils, Devon surveyed the surroundings. He could see an almost unending blanket of dark green below him, stretching as far as the eye could see without anything to disturb it. He bared his teeth, breathing in the scent of the valley, looking for even the slightest hint of his beloved. There was something there, so faint that he almost missed it.
Devon’s eyes narrowed, his long serpentine tongue lapping at the air to smell it better. His wings rustled as he packed them on his back, shards of ice falling off of the black-blue scales from the long, cold flight.
Gem, where are you…
As if answering his wordless cry, Devon suddenly felt a pull. His eyes widened, and on reflex, his wings spread and he jumped into the air, his body knowing the right direction before his brain could catch up. She was calling for him, just like those times in the mansion when his heart had constricted with worry that something was wrong, only now it leapt for joy.