Dragon Riders Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Tell your friends!

  Book Description

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Next in the War of the Fae series

  Please leave a review!

  About the Author

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  Acknowledgments

  War of the Fae

  Book 9

  Dragon Riders

  ELLE CASEY

  Being an independent author, I depend entirely on you, the reader, to get the word out about my work. If you enjoyed this read, won’t you please leave a review online and recommend it to a friend? The more you spread the word, the more books I can write, and nothing would please me more than to put a new adventure in your hands every single month!

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  Jayne has returned to the compound, but that's the last place she wants to be. She desperately needs to go back in time to rescue the friends she left behind, solve the problem in the Overworld, and fulfill her duties to Biad on the Isle of Skye...but the Council has other ideas about where she should be and what she should be doing. Unfortunately for them, she's never been good at following orders or ignoring what her heart tells her. She might get more than she bargained for, though, when she takes matters into her own hands and jumps headfirst into the dangerous world of dark spellcasting without any backup.

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  CLICK HERE TO FIND OTHER BOOKS BY ELLE CASEY ON KOBO

  CONTEMPORARY URBAN FANTASY

  War of the Fae (10-book series)

  Ten Things You Should Know About Dragons (short story, The Dragon Chronicles Anthology)

  My Vampire Summer

  Aces High

  DYSTOPIAN

  Apocalypsis (4-book series)

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Drifters’ Alliance (ongoing series)

  Winner Takes All (short story prequel to Drifters’ Alliance, Dark Beyond the Stars Anthology)

  The Ivory Tower (short story standalone, Beyond the Stars: A Planet Too Far Anthology)

  ROMANCE

  By Degrees

  Rebel Wheels (3-book series)

  Just One Night (romantic serial)

  Love in New York (3-book series)

  Shine Not Burn (2-book series)

  Bourbon Street Boys (4-book series)

  Red Hot Love (3-book series)

  Desperate Measures Mismatched

  ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  All the Glory

  Don’t Make Me Beautiful

  Wrecked (2-book series)

  PARANORMAL

  Duality (2-book series)

  Monkey Business (short story)

  Dreampath (short story standalone, The Telepath Chronicles)

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  © 2018 Elle Casey, all rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without author permission.

  The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by purchasing a copy of this ebook only at author-authorized online outlets that serve your country. If you’re viewing this book without having paid for it, you are pirating this creative work.

  PIRACY = STEALING

  Elle Casey thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.

  DEDICATION

  For all of my War of the Fae fans who have waited so patiently for this book.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I WAS SITTING in my regular spot at the council’s table, staring at all the eyeballs bugging out of heads around me. Apparently, I had just unloaded a big pile of steaming, stinking bad news on their doorstep. The atmosphere was uncomfortable enough that I strained my ear toward the door, listening for the sound of Aidan’s moccasins hitting the stone floor. We were waiting for him to sprint back to us from his mission to fetch Gregale and the collective minds of the gray elves. Their job would be to untangle the giant mess I’d made trying to fulfill my duty to the fae, traveling to the Isle of Skye to visit with my dragon companion, Biad.

  I didn’t envy them the task; I was still pretty much completely in the dark about what exactly had happened and how I was going to move forward. One thing I did know, though…I had to get my friends back to the Here and Now as soon as possible. I felt sick over having been away from them for as long as I already had. Would they think I’d abandoned them? Left them to die in the middle of nowhere?

  Niles was the first to speak, but it wasn’t to me. “How do we know that the battle Jayne saw in the Overworld is actually happening now, in our time?” He looked first to Dardennes and then to the old man-witch next to him. “She’s been time slipping. She could have been watching a battle that already happened or even one that might happen in the future.”

  Nausea hit me after hearing that. Seeing the past was fine. The present, yeah, that pretty much sucked. But the future? That sounded too much like black magic to me. Like a scrying done up close and personal. I shivered involuntarily. I needed black magic in my life like I needed my ass pixelated.

  “I have to believe that she was seeing a present-time battle,” Dardennes said. “Falco was there and he recognized her. That eliminates visions of the distant past, at least.”

  He looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded eagerly. “Yes, that’s what happened. He recognized me pretty much right away, even though he was about to kick the bucket. I think if you want to know what’s going on there, he’s the one to talk to, not Gregale. I mean. . .that’s what I’d do. If I were in charge. Which I’m not. But still...” No offense to the gray elf or anything, but having been there in person is way more in-the-know than analyzing second hand facts and making educated guesses in my book.

  Céline joined the conversation. “Gregale may not know what’s going on in the Overworld right now, but he will be able to help us come up with a plan for our next movements. I trust the judgment of the gray elves on this.”

  “But...I need to get back over there,” I said, anxiety filling my chest and making it ache. “I have to get back to my friends. I left them all behind in the middle of nowhere. I don’t even know where Tim is. He was with me almost to the door of the Overworld and then he just disappeared.” I was praying he hadn’t suffered anything worse than getting thrown off course by heavy duty dragon turbulence or something, but for all I knew he’d been zapped by a witch and sent into medieval times. Could he fly with armor on? I doubted it.

  Dardennes was holding up his hand to calm me down when th
e door opened, admitting Aidan with Gregale behind him. Aidan took his seat as Gregale bowed at the waist just inside the doorway. “I came as fast as I could. I hear we have a catastrophe on our hands.” He spared a glance in my direction. There was no censure in his eyes, so I just shrugged, letting him know he wasn’t wrong.

  “Catastrophe doesn’t even begin to describe what we’re dealing with,” said Red in an angry voice.

  I’d always pegged Red as a bit of a drama queen, but I couldn’t say as I disagreed with his assessment this time. All the blood I’d seen on those angel wings was just wrong, wrong, wrong. Next level wrong. Strike a deal with the devil to make it stop wrong. I’d been to the Overworld a couple of times, and on both trips I’d seen battles going on. It wasn’t how I’d always pictured heaven to be. Were my fantasies about heaven just the empty-headed imaginings of a naïve human girl, or had the Overworld only recently become completely messed up? I had no way of knowing and neither did anyone else at this table.

  I hated to think it was my fault that this stuff was going on, but I did tend to cause a ruckus wherever I went as an elemental. But in this case, I was pretty sure it wasn’t me at the root of the issues they were having up there. How could it be? Ben was the one spending all his time there now, not me; if anyone were to blame, it should be him. I snorted as I imagined him pissing off all the angels by bossing them around and acting like an arrogant assbag. It was a definite possibility. I was considering suggesting this as a working theory for the gray elves to start with when Gregale interrupted my thoughts.

  “Aiden was kind enough to fill me in on the details as delivered earlier by Jayne. My understanding is that many of our fae brethren have been left either in another time or a realm we are not aware of.”

  “Yes. And the Overworld has become overrun with demons and other creatures from the Underworld,” added Red in a gruff voice.

  “Truly?” Gregale sounded scared.

  Dardennes gave him a curt nod. “Yes. That’s the gist of it.”

  Céline cut in. “We need to determine our first order of business moving forward. Do we intervene in the activities of the Overworld, or do we put that aside for now and send Jayne to fulfill her duty to the guardian of the portal to the Underworld? Or do we work on both situations simultaneously?”

  I raised my hand, waiting for someone to recognize me, but Red spoke up before that could happen. “We have no business in the Overworld. Whatever is happening there needs to work itself out without our interference.”

  I slapped my hand down on the table, making everyone around me jump. “Wrong answer!” As usual, the old coot was pissing me off. “If you think sitting down here while the Overworld collapses above our heads is a good idea, then you’ve obviously been drinking a few too many buggane martinis during your time off.” I felt seriously off-kilter after making this announcement—almost dizzy. I gripped the edges of the table to steady myself. It had seemed like the right thing to say when I was there in the moment, but now, immediately after, it didn’t. I often spoke without thinking first. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. My face started to burn with embarrassment.

  Red frowned at me and opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by Niles.

  “I agree.” The dwarf glanced at Red and mumbled, “Not with the martini part. Drink as many of those as you want; it’s none of my business.” He raised his voice to continue as Red sputtered wordlessly. “If the Overworld collapses, we’re the ones who are going to suffer. Somebody is meddling in affairs they have no business meddling in again, and if the Overworld is falling, we must go there and help. They aided us in our hour of need, and we are honor-bound to do the same. I can have a team of dwarves ready in less than an hour.” He looked seriously ready to chop off some kneecaps. I could picture him sharpening his axe to a razor’s edge on a grinding wheel and grinning with mad, demon-killing glee as sparks flew off the blade.

  “While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Niles, I believe our time would be better spent reviewing the facts and analyzing them to find the best solution before we make any rash decisions,” Dardennes said. “This situation is unprecedented.” He looked to Gregale, ignoring Niles’ scowl. “What can you tell us about our situation that hasn’t already been discussed here?”

  “I would very much like to ask a few more questions of Jayne before I offer any theories, if that would be permitted.” He glanced at me for a moment before looking to Dardennes and waiting for his response.

  “By all means,” Dardennes gestured at me. “I’m sure our elemental would be more than happy to fill you in on the details.”

  I huffed out a sigh filled with frustration and worry. “Yeah, I have no problem sharing details, of course, but we’re running out of time. And I think it’s pretty obvious what we need to do.”

  Gregale lifted his eyebrows at me. “And what would that be?”

  I let the words tumble out of me, even though a part of me was afraid I was going to say the wrong thing and turn everyone against me. “We have to go back to Ish’s time and find our friends, first, and then we have to tell Biad we’ll be with her shortly so she doesn’t get her undies in a bunch over me not being there on time, and then we have to go kick some major ass in the Overworld.” I looked at the faces around me, hoping to see some affirmative responses, but all I got were empty stares.

  The old lady witch who almost never spoke in meetings piped up. “What is this ‘witch’s time’?”

  I rolled my eyes. Now was not the time for me to be dealing with fae who were hearing-challenged; I didn’t need any encouragement to start yelling. “I didn’t say witch’s time. I said Ish’s time. Ishmail Windwalker, the dragon rider guy. I don’t know what the year is where he’s living, because apparently they don’t even have calendars there, but that’s where we need to go. That’s where all my friends are waiting for me, and I can’t just abandon them there.” I couldn’t help but think about how big and empty my bed was going to feel without Spike in it, and how boring and quiet my life would be without Tim blabbing and farting in my ear all the time.

  “Very interesting,” Gregale said. “No calendars. What else can you tell us about this time?”

  “I don’t know…not much. He didn’t have normal clothes on. Everything seemed to be made out of an animal hide or something. And he fed me something that tasted like skunk gristle. Oh, and they have a seer in their village, and if the seer thinks you’re a witch, they cut your head off, burn it, and put it on a stake outside the village to scare people away. They’re really not into the fae thing over there. To them fae means gay, and apparently they’re pretty homophobic.”

  Gregale was nodding, his arms folded over his chest and his finger tapping his chin as he stared out into space. “Interesting. No calendars. But you say they know of dragons?”

  “Yeah, they know of them. Ish said they’re rare, though…that most of the dragon riders have died and warriors have killed a lot of the dragons off, so…”

  “And Ish…did you get an idea of his age?”

  “He told us he was nineteen cycles old. They count four seasons as one cycle. But I really don’t get why this matters. I just need to go back there. Who cares what the exact year is or how old Ish is?” As far as I was concerned the fae sitting around the council’s table should have been panicking like I was, but they all looked completely calm. It only made me feel worse, like I was the only one who really cared, and it wasn’t going to be enough to save my friends.

  Gregale fixed me with a very patient stare. “In order to send you back somewhere, we need to know where and when that somewhere is.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling colossally stupid. “Yeah. Okay. I can see how not knowing that stuff could be a problem.” My heart sank to the floor. I felt like my chances of getting back had just gone from a hundred percent to ten.

  “Not necessarily.” Red was entering the conversation again, having moved past my suggestion to the group that he had an absinthe drinking problem. “D
id you use your elements there?”

  “Yes!” I sat up straighter in my chair, excited because it felt like we were finally getting somewhere. “I did. And they were totally different.”

  “How were they different?” Céline asked, leaning toward me.

  “They felt younger…more sparkly. More energetic.” I shrugged, knowing my explanation wasn’t making a lot of sense. “I could tell that it didn’t have as many memories as the elements do here.”

  “Memories?” This question came from Aidan.

  “Yeah. The Green carries memories in it of all the things that have happened and all the people who have passed through.”

  “How do you keep track of it all?” Gregale asked, sounding mystified.

  “I don’t.” I grimaced, knowing at least half the people in the room would think my explanation was beyond dumb, not to mention completely naive. “I just kind of ignore that stuff.”

  “Do you think it would be possible for you to focus on or narrow in on any particular memory that you’ve previously ignored?” Red asked. He shared glances with the old lady next to him.

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “Red, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Dardennes said.

  I frowned at the silver elf who was always trying to harsh my mellow. “Let the guy speak, would ya? He’s the only one besides me coming up with any ideas here.”

  Dardennes raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing, clearing the way for Red to speak his piece.

  “We could cast a Moment In Time spell.”

  Céline shook her head, her expression showing fear. Dardennes looked angry.

  “I saw one of those go really sideways once,” Aidan said.

  I glanced at his arm and noticed it was a little extra hairy. That told me more than his words ever could.