“Whatever,” Tori mumbled. “This world doesn’t believe in magic anymore, outside of clans. Mages died with dragons centuries ago.”
Baldewin sat back in his chair and held out both hands to his sides, a small smile playing on his lips. “And yet we’re both sitting here, eating a nice meal, and enjoying the sun on a beautiful, summer day in Helsinki. A dragon and a mage.” He dropped both his hands to the table, and his smile dimmed a little. “Dragons and mages are fated to be together. We need each other for survival. You’ve been fighting and struggling for so long, Tori. You’re exhausted. Let us help you.”
“You do this with all the mages?”
“Yes. If we find a mage now, we immediately go to them and invite them into our clan.”
Tori leaned closer, his eyes narrowed. “What the hell do you think I am? Some stray dog that needs to be rescued? You gonna put me down if I don’t prove to be useful enough to your clan?”
Baldewin’s eyes widened so much Tori was afraid they’d fall straight out of his head. His mouth bobbed for a second, and Tori couldn’t deny he got a little pleasure out of flustering the dragon so thoroughly.
“No! That’s not what I meant at all.” Baldewin leaned forward, his hand jerking forward and then suddenly stopping as if he’d started to reach for Tori and then realized his mistake. Tori sat back, his arms folded across his chest. “No, Tori, you don’t need to be rescued. In the four days that Warin and I have watched you, we can clearly see that you are an intelligent, resourceful man who can survive just fine all on your own. But you also can’t look me in the eye and tell me you are happy with your life.”
Baldewin had him there.
Over the years, he’d learned to be a pretty good liar. It was about survival, about trying to smooth out the uncomfortable moments in life as much as possible. But even on his best day, he couldn’t lie about being happy.
“It’s important to us that all mages are safe,” Baldewin said as Tori remained silent. “Especially mages like you, who apparently have no clan.”
Tori let out a harsh huff of laughter. Baldewin was right but wrong. Unfortunately, Tori had one. He’d just had to escape it. And what did that sob story mean, anyway? “Sounds to me like a dragon clan desperate to save themselves. If you have no mages, you only have yourselves to blame. You shouldn’t have started the damn war.”
Baldewin’s brows compressed. “What does that mean?”
“My clan was friends with the Jaeggi; they told us the story. About how dragons betrayed them and started the war.”
Holding up both hands, Baldewin blinked a couple of times and shook his head, as if all the information Tori was throwing at him didn’t make any sense. “Wait, you do have a clan?”
“No. Not anymore.”
Baldewin’s confusion didn’t appear to go away, but he didn’t question it further. “Is that why you won’t trust me? Because you think we’re such disloyal creatures? You were taught that dragons betrayed the Jaeggi? We betrayed mages?”
Tori spread his hands in an obviously! sort of fashion. “The man finally buys a clue.”
“That is not what happened.” Baldewin’s voice dipped even lower until it was little more than an earthy rumble. “Oh, I have no doubt the Jaeggi saw it as a betrayal. But did you hear what the true betrayal was?”
“Does it matter?” Tori lifted his coffee to take a sip and almost sighed with pleasure. The magical beans that gave him life. He could feel it coursing through his system.
“It was a love affair gone wrong.”
Tori choked. Spluttering, he put the cup hastily down and then beat a palm to his chest, trying to clear his lungs. Baldewin reached forward, as if to help with this process, but Tori waved him off irritably. He didn’t want the dragon touching him.
When he had his breath back, he choked out, “W-what? A love affair?”
“Kaiser Jaeggi was involved with a wind dragon, Gagan Varma, for several years. But the dragon eventually found his true mate and broke things off. Kaiser went mad with jealousy. What he could not have, no one could. He set out to destroy the dragons, and his rage grew to the point that he wanted to destroy everything.”
Tori shook his head in denial. That couldn’t be true. Everything—his entire clan and their isolation—couldn’t possibly be built on a lie fed to them by allies. That…no, it couldn’t be true.
“Why would I lie to you about this, Tori? Why would I risk it when you can so easily check it?” Baldewin shifted in his seat and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. He tapped in a security code and held it out to Tori. It was more tantalizing than all the coffee in that café. More tempting than piles of money.
Baldewin was offering the truth.
Growing up, isolated from the rest of the world, he knew the leaders of his clan were censoring the information they received. History books in schools were written by members of their clan.
And when the internet finally arrived in their tiny slice of the world, he was aware that the vast majority of websites were blocked.
They said they were only protecting their clan. And as time went by, Tori had stopped thinking about it. He had bigger concerns—like surviving each day and escaping to finally live his own life.
Even when he started seeing a little more of the world when running to other towns, he never gave thought to the past. His present and future were much bigger concerns than what had happened between mages and dragons five centuries ago.
But if the Jaeggi had lied to the Taavi Clan…
And his clan leaders had lied to the rest of them…
Maybe they were lying about other things. Maybe he wasn’t a waste of a mage. Maybe he really could do magic. And maybe there was a mate out there waiting for him.
With trembling fingers, Tori took Baldewin’s phone from him, the glass still warm from where it had been pressed against the dragon’s body. Pulling up a browser, he typed in the search bar ‘reason for Dragon War.’ His heart skipped over itself when he hit enter and hundreds of hits filled the small window. So many articles. The dragons couldn’t have done all this, right?
Promising himself to do more thorough research later, he selected the Wikipedia page that would give him a quick synopsis. He read through it quickly, eyes widening as he took it all in. A love affair, yes, one that had gone badly. Kaiser Jaeggi, at the end of the war, lost his mind entirely and used a blood spell to wipe out all the major clans, ending the reign of magic in the world and sending the survivors scattering to all quarters.
Holy. Shit.
Tori sat there staring at the screen blankly for a long moment, reeling in disbelief and shock. This entire time, his clan had been hiding because of…what? A lie? Propaganda taught during a war long past? They’d been stuck in that miserable fishing village for five hundred years to avoid…what, exactly?
“You really didn’t know?”
At those quiet words, Tori’s head came back up. Baldewin didn’t sound accusing, more curious with a dash of surprise. Was this such common knowledge, then? “I was only taught about the war, never the reason for it.”
His hand tightened around the phone until the edge bit into his fingers. He dropped it and pushed it back toward Baldewin, not trusting himself to stop searching now. He was torn between wanting to know the truth, the entire truth about mages and dragons, about his clan, and wanting to know if the clan leaders knew what the truth was. Had they been taken in by the Jaeggi as well? Or had they discovered the truth and just perpetuated the lie to keep the clan under their control?