Fairy Magic Read Online Free Page B

tattoos covered one side of his chest, curling around his shoulder and down his arm past his elbow. The markings looked familiar somehow, but Naomi couldn’t recall where she’d seen them before. She did recognize the dragon patterns inside the tattoos. Only the most powerful mages dared to enchant their skin with dragon tattoos. Those tattoos were called the Dragon’s Mark. Legend said dragon tattoos fed on weaker magic, draining the host to the verge of death. Well, this mage didn’t look dead. Naomi’s eyes dipped, following the smooth muscles of his chest. Nope, not dead at all. In fact, there was enough life in him to fill a whole room of sexy dragon-marked men.
    She lifted her gaze to meet his—and immediately regretted it. His eyes shone like liquid gold and burned with hard, unrelenting power. A magic as ancient as the dragons themselves burned inside of them, singing a mournful melody of days long since passed. Naomi found herself mesmerized by his magic—mesmerized and deeply afraid. Like standing before a terrible and beautiful predator, she couldn’t move. Her feet were frozen to the ground, her breath burning in her throat.
    He was almost upon her. Even trapped inside of her fear, she couldn’t help but admire the sight of her imminent demise. The man with the dragon tattoos looked like an ancient volcano god. Sweat beaded his hairline, glistening like tiny crystal dewdrops on his short black hair. He moved with the forceful confidence of a wildfire about to consume everyone and everything in a river of flames. In other words, he looked good enough to eat. Skip-the-dinner-and-head-straight-for-the-dessert good. And he still had his arrow aimed at her head.
    Well, no one was perfect.
    “You have a shadow,” he said, as though that were the most curious thing he’d ever encountered.
    “That’s strange?” she asked, every instinct in her body buzzing in panic as he stopped in front of her.
    He towered over her, as large as a grizzly bear—no, a dragon. Definitely a dragon.
    “People here don’t have shadows,” he said, indicating her moonlit shadow. “Here, people have no connection to the outside world. They have no or little magic. Every drop of magic has dripped from them, leeched slowly away over the centuries.”
    “And where exactly is here?” she asked.
    “Hell.”
    Naomi looked around, his gaze darting from the ash snow to the pink leaves. “The spirit realm?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    She cleared the hot ash from her throat. “How deep?”
    “The second circle.”
    The second of nine circles. As far as hell went, things could have been a lot worse.
    “It looks so different here,” she commented. “The forest and mountains seem to go on forever.”
    “In this realm, the Alps and the Black Forest have grown to cover much of central Europe,” he said. “Except for a few spots.”
    “The Fire Plains,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
    “Yes. If you’ve been there, I trust you’ve met the beast masters.”
    He looked around, as though he expected them to jump out of the trees. Oddly, he didn’t look concerned by the prospect. No, he looked eager, like he’d enjoy nothing more than to confront the beast men and tear them to shreds with his bare hands. And he could probably do it too. God, he was terrifying.
    She swallowed hard. “You’re not…”
    “Dead?” Gold fire sparked in his eyes. “No. Like you, I’m very much alive. Alive and trapped here. How did you come to be in this realm?”
    “I’m not sure how I got here.” Or whether she could trust him. She left off that last bit. After all, it was rude to insult someone she’d just met—especially if that someone was a big, scary dragon.
    A shrill cry cut through the night. A chorus of howls and yelps answered it.
    “The beast men,” Naomi said. “They are tracking me.”
    He shook his head. “No, they are tracking me,” he said, pivoting to shoot an arrow through the head of a beast as it broke