Breath of Memory by Ophelia Bell

finds her with it. She’s stayed hidden her entire life, which means her parents must have sacrificed their last remnants of power to protect her. But now that she’s discovered her nature, it won’t take them long to learn of her existence.”
    “Why the hell would the Council let this thing be assembled if it takes power away from them?”
    “The Council is the reason we can use magic in the first place. They channel the Mother’s gifts to all of us, and they’re the reason we can even take these forms. Like it or not, we need them, but millenia ago, they learned the concentrated flow of their power into dragonkind made things too easy for us to assert our dominance over humanity.”
    He cupped his hands around his mouth and exhaled a breath. A dark, shimmering cloud emerged and coalesced into a perfect small sphere. While Corey watched, it floated slowly through the air straight at his chest.
    “The Verdanith merely concentrates the flow of power. Think of it as a prism. If the prism is in fragments, the sunlight is scattered, lacking focus and causing the beams to illuminate more dispersed areas.”
    Before the sphere reached Corey, Rafe expelled another breath that arranged itself in a shimmering grid in the path of the sphere. The sphere passed through, splitting into pieces that bounced with stinging collisions against his skin, each piece dissipating after impact.
    “Things are different now—dragonkind is different. Once the Verdanith is assembled, the concentrated flow of magic will return. The intent of our magic may be different than what you witnessed, but it would require less time and effort to achieve what we want, including making children.”
    Rafe placed a large, gentle hand against Jill’s bare stomach. “Changing our laws is another story entirely, however, but this is the first step to prove to the Council how different our goals are than they were three millennia ago.”
    “What were they then?” Corey asked. He remembered his first impression of dragons when he’d met Racha and imagined a throng of horny, flying beasts taking over the world and turning humanity into a horde of sex-crazed breeding stock. He knew better than that now.
    Rafe grinned. “Burning villages, stealing livestock, demanding virgin sacrifices in exchange for our protection of a kingdom’s citizens. Essentially wreaking general mayhem and fear among humans in order to force them to give up their most prized sons and daughters to serve our particular appetites. That is, until the dragon and human populations became unbalanced. After the Council dismantled the Verdanith and scattered its pieces, it became safer for us to hide among humans because they stopped hunting us out of fear. Over the centuries it became preferable. Now I don’t believe there’s a dragon alive who would do things differently. Humanity is no longer in danger of extinction at the hand of dragonkind. Quite the contrary—our numbers have dwindled to a dangerous level. If we want to survive, the hibernation needs to be abolished and we need to be allowed the power to breed at a faster rate. This would mean forgiveness for all the Unbound dragons in the world, in the process.”
    “Does Racha know this? She’s never expressed any other agenda besides assembling the thing so we can start a family.”
    “She does, but she wouldn’t speak about it, even to you. Her knowledge of Aris’s unborn child is enough of a risk without her suggesting treason. She’s the Queen, so her position is difficult. She must protect and see to the needs of the brood while upholding our highest laws. When you do talk to her, be careful what you say. Not out of any mistrust, mind you. Just don’t put her in a position that might force her to betray the Court’s confidence.”
    Corey raked his fingers through his hair and looked at Jill. She sat rubbing the back of her neck, lost in her own thoughts and seemingly oblivious to how alluring she looked. She was still