I couldn’t help but lean closer to the stone as my fingers trembled.

  The Cat didn’t move at all, even as I nudged him with my elbow.

  “Cat…”

  His snores filled the space.

  Lady Borsal’s eyes stayed on me like lasers, and even Indigo studied me.

  “Not pretty…” the little dragon said.

  It wasn’t.

  The stone had a weird, grey texture with faint white lines flowing through it. Yet, all I wanted to do was touch it.

  The wooden counter top trembled like ripples across a pond. Fear trickled up from under my feet, coming from Betty.

  The hair rose on the back of my neck and as I leaned forward, and I quickly shoved the Cat off the counter.

  His yelp didn’t help, though he leaped up on the counter between me and it.

  “Where did you find this?” he growled. “This isn’t safe.”

  Green energy splashed out from his paws, coating the area under the stone. The countertop solidified and the fear reduced.

  “Cat!” escaped from my lips.

  He turned to face me, his eyes going wide.

  Lady Borsal’s hand reached out, but somehow my fingers got there first.

  My fingers touched the surface of the stone and passed right through. Magic from inside me wrapped around it, and everything flashed gold.

  I blinked to clear the spots and lifted my hand. The strange stone now rested in the center of my bracelet. The white lines now resembled the bark of an ancient tree.

  Lady Borsal gasped at the change, but cut the sound off as quickly as she could.

  “Dragon, what did you do?” The Cat hissed at the dragon.

  “One who serves asked that I bring that to the one that saved the littlest of us, without a thought for herself.” Her voice held reverence as her image flickered once to that of a dragon. Red scales, piercing eyes, and a shadow of a body behind her. Her head bowed in my direction before the dragon shape vanished.

  “You speak of the Guardians…”

  “Guardians are gone,” whispered Indigo, sniffing the area where the stone had been. “Bedtime story for little dragons.”

  “They aren’t gone.” The Cat snorted. “That’s like saying the Dragons or the Fey are gone.”

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  “What is it?” I asked. My wrist hummed with power, and unseen tendrils of it branched out into my skin. They didn’t hurt. The opposite, in fact. It felt like they were always supposed to be there. Like something I’d been missing had finally come home.

  The Cat glared at Lady Borsel, who shrugged.

  “The legend said it was a bit of the tree itself, older than time.” Yet she wouldn't meet eyes.

  The Cat laughed out loud. “Good luck explaining this to whomever it belongs to.”

  I twisted my wrist to get a better look at the stone. No glimmer or reflection came from it, just a dull grey stone with lines like bark, that felt like someone.

  It registered as someone on my internal radar within the shop, too.

  The Cat chuckled in the background as my focus stayed on the stone. As soon as I touched it with my magic, it flared, and gold pushed out in a wave from me. Yet, none of the others reacted to it.

  A few objects in the shop flared in response, along with a slight outline around Lady Borsel. The outline had a thing connecting her to the center of the door. It floated through the air, twisting and turning like a piece of golden thread connecting her with something beyond the door.

  “Sable?” asked Lady Borsel. “Are you okay?”

  I blinked and realized I’d been staring at her chest where the thread had originated from.

  “I’m fine, the stone just did some weird things with my magic…”

  “What things?” asked the Cat. He nudged my elbow with his head rather aggressively.

  “It increased my fate magic, like, a lot.” I didn’t have any other way to describe it. The simple halo I used to have had evolved to outlines and connections.

  Everything went silent in the room, including Indigo, who had been tapping on the wooden counter with a claw.

  The Cat’s eyes went wide, then he glared at Lady Borsel. All the fur on his body stood up.

  Before he could say anything, I scooped him up in my arms and pulled him close.

  “It’s fine, Cat.”

  Indigo shook her head. “Want to fly?”

  Lady Borsel blinked, and then her cheeks turned red. “Unfortunately, I need to return to help with the lost one.”

  Indigo nodded sadly and scratched the side of her cheek with one of her claws. Faded purple scales flaked off.

  “Oh, little one, are you molting?” asked Lady Borsel. “No wonder you want to be flying. You need some good dry heat.”

  “Heat?” My mind went to the oven, and baking Indigo like a cookie.

  “The cool air can help take the scales off, but a good sand scrub, and some heat, works wonders.”

  “We can do that…” I smiled at Indigo and set the Cat back down. “Betty, can you lock up once Lady Borsel’s gone?”

  The Cat glanced at me and nodded.

  “I bet Betty can bring some sand up to the roof. Then we can make cookies again.”

  “Ohhh, I like baking the cookies.” Indigo leaped in my direction from the counter.

  ###

  Sable and Indigo turned toward the kitchen as I turned to face the dragon.

  “Your Guardian isn’t going to be pleased,” I grumbled. Sable had stopped me from saying something I’d have regretted, and I regretted very little. Still, I was thankful.

  “He’s old enough that this might have been in the realm of possibility for him,” she said with a frown. “The fates have their claws in her more than I understood.”

  “The Fates won’t touch her.” The words came out of my lips before I could stop them. Yet, everything inside me agreed. They were not going to destroy her life, or her family’s lives.

  The dragon hummed a little.

  “Be careful,” she warned. “Stranger things have happened, things that I never thought possible.”

  “You mean like that fate bond with you and the lost one?”

  “The odds were not in my favor to ever find that one.” Lady Borsel’s face went pale and her fingers clenched like claws. “Yet, here in this shop that I visited only for Sable, there he is.”

  I stretched out across the counter as the chatter from Sable and Indigo moved to the rooftop patio.

  “This shop has always been special.”

  “Special enough to have been cursed for?”

  I resisted the urge to freeze and licked a paw instead. Then blinked at the very cat-like action. They’d been happening more and more as the shape fought my instincts.

  Lady Borsel let out a sigh. “Good luck, Lord. I think we both will need it.”