Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) by Cristina Rayne, Skeleton Key Page B

the
world. Now that I’ve met a real honest-to-God dragon, I don’t think that’s a
coincidence. Either dragons have been coming here from your world for ages, or
they came long ago and stayed long enough for stories of them to be passed on.”
    “Only the Ansi have the power to open portals to different realms,” Taron said, sounding
troubled. “If dragon-shifters have been coming to your world, then they are
doing so with their aid in absolute secrecy.”
    “If I were you, I would
keep a closer eye on the Ansi when you get back to your world,” Briana
said dryly. “It seems they may be up to a lot of sketchy things besides
stabbing the firedrakes in the back. I wouldn’t think a group powerful enough
to travel to different worlds would be satisfied being ruled by anyone, even
someone as powerful as a fifty-foot-tall fire-breathing dragon. Maybe they
really haven’t sided with the stone dragons in your civil war. Their actual
reason for helping to incite the war could’ve been to weaken both sides enough
to stage a coup of their own.”
    Taron fell silent for a
long moment. Briana almost regretted her words. Having a potential second
usurper come into the picture had likely never entered his mind, and now that
she had pointed it out, she had just added something else for him to worry
about along with his mountain of other worries.
    “Perhaps the Fates have
heard my pleas after all,” he said finally, an odd note in his tone. Then he
asked a bit more sharply, “You do still have the skeleton key?”
    Yeah, it’s giving my
thigh a new bruise as we speak.
    Briana frowned. Although
she hadn’t had the time or the desire to study it more carefully before she had
banished it into her pocket, at first glance and feel, the key had appeared to
be made from a glass-like substance. Should they be worried that it could crack
given how firmly it was being pressed between Taron’s scaly hands and her body?
    “I didn’t drop it if that’s
what you’re worried about,” she retorted, “but you might want to ease up on the
squeezing if you want the key to make it to England in one piece.”
    “I’m more worried about
it disappearing. I ran across more than one story that claimed the key was
indestructible—at least by fire, sword, or blunt force.”
    Although he probably
couldn’t see her face properly through the crack of his fingers, she scowled at
his eye, nonetheless. “After all the trouble you went through to get the damned
thing, do you really want to test that theory? Besides, I think my legs
have gone numb.”
    She was relieved to feel
the pressure around her body lessen slightly. “Better?” he asked, amusement
coloring his tone.
    “Not really, but I just
realized that we’re probably somewhere close to orbit right now, and I’d rather
not risk literally slipping through your fingers and falling to my death.”
    He chuckled. “We aren’t
quite that high up. Although traveling at a higher altitude would shave a few
hours off our journey, a human like you would both freeze to death—despite the
extra warmth radiating off my hands—or suffocate at those kinds of elevations.”
    “Oh, right…” Briana
replied with a grimace. “But—aren’t you worried about showing up on someone’s
radar?”
    “My scales prevent
that.”
    When it became apparent
that he wasn’t going to elaborate, she decided to let it go in favor of a more
pressing concern. “So, where are we right now?”
    “We’re nearly clearing Antarctica.”
    “What the hell are we
doing in Antarctica?”
    Somehow, she had thought
“taking the long way” meant going across the Pacific rather than the Atlantic
Ocean.
    “I managed to ground
Cabak in the Caribbean. I saw a storm brewing towards the south, and the added
ozone in the air was just the thing I needed to disrupt my scent trail. I’m
hoping he believes that I’m trying to get you back to my penthouse in New York,
or at the very least, not even consider the possibility