Free Shifter by Kailin Gow Page A

what it’s like to be human. It’s that love that makes the difference.”
                “I love you too, Fallon,” Briony said, because that was true. No matter how complicated everything else got, that would always be true.
                Their third kiss was as passionate as any they’d ever had, their hands roaming over one another as they kissed deeply, ignoring Archer’s presence in the background completely. Briony felt the moment when Fallon’s fangs appeared, but that was okay, because hers were there in the same moment. They stood back, looking at one another and then laughing.
                “We need to go,” Briony said.
                Fallon nodded. “Both of us?”
                “Both of us. Archer?”
                Archer stepped out onto the palace balcony, hopping up onto the rail as lightly as an acrobat. He shifted then, and the difference seemed impossible, the way it always did. One moment there was just a good looking boy their age standing there, the next…
                His dragon form didn’t make the balcony creak, but that just suggested that it had been reinforced to withstand it. The giant, golden form of the dragon perched there like some great bird, Archer’s wings spread out so that they caught the light and shone. Briony clambered up onto his back easily, while Fallon climbed up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. Briony liked that. So often, it seemed to be her relying on him.
                Archer leapt into the air, and for a second he hung there, giving Briony a perfect view out over the waterfall beneath, with the rainbows hanging in the falling flow. Then he dropped along it, plunging down through the billowing cloud while Briony clung to him and Fallon clung to her, his wings pulled back tight.
                They spread again, and Archer leveled out, taking them out over a panorama of fields and forest so far below that they seemed somehow unreal, like a patchwork quilt or some kind of child’s drawing.
                “Find a gate for us, Archer,” Briony said. “Get us back to Wicked.”
                Archer roared his assent and wheeled, obviously scanning the ground below. He seemed to find what he was looking for, because he picked out a line of flight and set off along it, a swooping golden arrow through the air. He took them lower now, low enough that they could make out occasional figures in the fields and pick out the details of scattered houses, where Hugtandalfer lived and worked. Briony saw creatures below too, winged griffons flying closer to the ground, a giant tall enough that he dwarfed the trees beside him.
                Then she saw something that gleamed golden in the sunlight, as bright as Archer’s scales were. It seemed like a simple beam of light, or maybe the reflection of something below, down in the middle of a stretch of woodland below.
                “What’s that?” Briony asked, pointing.
                Fallon followed the direction of her pointing finger. “I’m not sure. It looks like something in the woods, reflecting. Here, it could be anything.”
                That was true, and Briony was about to let Archer fly past it when she felt the tingling of the scepter head. It lay against her chest, worn around her neck like a pendant, and the metal of it was suddenly warm against her skin.
                “The scepter is doing something,” Briony said. “I… I think it might have something to do with whatever’s below.”
                Archer circled the spot where the gleam had come from, flapping his leathery wings in slow, graceful movements, almost hanging in the air. While he did that, Briony tried to pay more attention to the head of the scepter, trying to work out why it would respond like that and what there was about whatever was below that was so