She nodded, her stomach flipping at the thought of being captured again. Yves had been careless once, mostly because Feng had been there, distracting him. Yves wouldn’t underestimate the twins again. This time he’d know all about the babies and Joy.
Her hands trembled slightly as she opened up the containers of palak paneer, vegetable korma, chicken tikka masala, samosa, and naan bread.
Crow Boy reached out and took her hand; his was large and calloused compared to hers. “You only need to find them. I’ll deal with the guard.” For a moment he seemed like an adult man, and then the moment was gone, and he was an exhausted, battered fourteen-year-old boy with the world on his shoulders.
“I told you: no charging in.” She smacked him on the top of his head. “We’re smarter than Yves. He’ll never see us coming.”
Crow Boy’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.
“Promise!” Louise smacked him again.
“I will do anything you ask of me, but I won’t let you put yourself in danger. If it comes to a fight, you must let me do what I’ve been trained to do. Alone.”
At the mansion, he had taken on half a dozen adults by himself. He taken out two and held his own for several minutes against four. Those he was fighting had been worried enough to call for help.
“Are you like some kind of super ninja warrior?” Louise asked.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
His shoulders shook again with silent laughter. “It is a long story of love and honor and loyalty, but the simple answer is yes.”
“Oh, come on!” Louise cried. “I know you’re tired, but we need to know everything we can about what’s going on. If we’d known what was going on right after our first visit to the museum, we could have stopped — stopped everything. As it was, we didn’t even get a message to our sister warning her or Windwolf.”
He laughed tiredly. “Geez, where do I even start?” He sighed and was silent for a little while. “My people were human once. We lived in what is now China during the time of the Warring States, over two thousand years ago. The first Wong Jin was a wise sage who had fallen out of favor with the Flame Emperor. He and his seven loyal and brave servants became bandits, kind of like Robin Hood and his merry men, if Robin Hood had a secret cave hideout that led to another world. Over time, they gathered hundreds of poor people to them in a remote mountain village on Onihida. Then one day—” He laughed. “You have to understand, we love to tell stories about Wong Jin. It gives us hope that someday — if we’re clever — we’ll outsmart our enemies and find freedom.”
“One day—” Louise prompted him.
“One day Wong Jin and his servants were out on one of their many adventures — which mostly involved stealing something and then escaping in a clever way — when they discovered Elfhome. And there, basically on the doorstep to that world, was Providence. Most men would have been frightened — and certainly Wong Jin’s men wanted to flee the dragon — but Wong Jin saw that Providence was an intelligent creature and so engaged him in conversation.
“The dragons had put Elfhome under edict. By the laws of his people, Providence could not travel to Elfhome, but he’d lost his daughter on that world. Fearing the worst, he pleaded with Wong Jin to find his child and bring her to him. He promised to reward Wong Jin richly if he succeeded. Wong Jin accepted the challenge. Providence marked Wong Jin so his daughter would know that Wong Jin was his Chosen. To make a long, long story short, Wong Jin carefully made his way through the elves’ defenses to find where Providence’s child had been entrapped. Only he arrived too late. The elves had already shattered the child to pieces.”
Louise thought of Joy and the eleven baby dragons all still inside Dufae’s chest. She and Jillian had been so focused on saving their siblings that they hadn’t stopped to consider where the baby dragons had came from. Dufae had known that the nactka were “loaded,” but had he understood that meant that each one had an intelligent creature locked inside?
“What did Wong Jin do?” Louise asked.
“He was about to return with bits and pieces of the daughter when he discovered that the elves had also created a hybrid, a dragon-elf child. Assuming that Providence wanted anything related to his daughter, Wong Jin stole the child and carried her back to Onihida. Somewhere along the way, things got complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“They fell in love.” Crow Boy said this like a typical boy; that love was weird and possibly icky. “By the time they reached Onihida, Wong Jin did not want to hand her over to Providence, nor did she want to leave Wong Jin. While his men were fearful of Providence, they pledged that they would protect her with their lives.”
“So Wong Jin brought to Providence all the shattered pieces of his child, including the female dragon-elf. He reminded Providence that he had promised Wong Jin a rich reward. For his prize, Wong Jin wanted the female, and only her. They braced themselves for a fight, but Providence knew that this would happen; it was why he picked Wong Jin to be his Chosen. He gave his blessing to their marriage and promised to watch over their people as their guardian. And to Wong Jin’s seven loyal servants, Providence gave magical powers so that they could guard his daughter.”
“So Wong Jin became your king and you’re one of the knights?”
“When you give thieves magical powers you don’t get knights in shining armor, you get super ninjas.”
“Wait, if you were humans, where did all the crow stuff come from?” Jillian joined them at the table. She picked up one of the samosas and started to eat it.
“For hundreds of years, life was good. The land was rich, our neighbors were distant, and we had our guardian, Providence. We had all that we needed, and Earth became a place of legend for us. But then about a thousand years ago, the oni came to our valley and captured Providence. Dragons have a dual existence. Their minds and their bodies can exist separately. His spirit came to our dream crow and begged for us to kill his body. If the oni intended just to kill Providence, it would be one thing, for it would have freed his soul. What they intended, though, was to shatter him down and remake him into a weapon of war. It would have been worse than what the elves had done to his daughter. He could not allow it.”
“But — but — why kill him? Why not save him?”
“What he asked was for the blood guard to sacrifice themselves. The oni had Providence in a magical trap. The blood guard would need to fight to his side. There would be no time to free him, only time enough to strike a killing blow before they would be overwhelmed. They were a thousand against an army. It was a slaughter on both sides. The Chosen One and all of the blood guard that fought that day died. But our people succeeded at what Providence had asked; we killed him, freeing his soul.”
“A thousand lives for one?” Jillian cried. “That was a win?”
“If the oni had kept control of his soul, the damage would have been worse. They had caught other dragons and shattered them and experimented. They wanted Providence to craft what would be basically a global living spell. It could reach for thousands of miles, affect millions of people, guided by his soul. It would be like an intelligent nuclear bomb, programmed to seek and destroy, and having no will of its own to resist its orders. As it was, they gathered my people together and experimented with just his body. They locked the survivors within one massive cage and cast one spell. Everyone was transformed; merged with crows that — that. .” He trailed off, his eyes widening slightly, and then he blushed and looked down. “You don’t need to hear all the gross parts. One spell and we were forever changed as a race. Providence shielded us from the worst that could have happened. Because of him, we still function as humans. Mostly. We have bird feet and we lay eggs. But we couldn’t fly. We didn’t have wings at first. Providence provided the spell for our wings.”