The Priestess and the Dragon (Dragon Saga Book 1, Wattpad Version)

Chapter Eighteen

Suzume threw up her hands and shook her head furiously, her hair whipped back and forth as she did so. “You can’t blame this one me!” She stopped shaking her head and jabbed a finger towards Kaito. “I was at the old woman’s hovel all night. You saw me, you were there! There’s no way I could have awakened the god... if it even was a god. I’m still thinking this fox has something to do with the missing idol. Why was the acorn here? Maybe we should be investigating other explanations here!”

The pair of them stared at her with identical dumbfounded expressions. “Are you finished?” Kaito asked. He was grinning and it only intensified her embarrassment.

There’s no way I unleashed that god. Sure, a couple of strange things happened when I was here yesterday but when I broke Kaito’s seal I felt something. I felt my powers reaching out to the seal. I didn’t feel anything here.

She glared at him but it had lost some of its intensity. “Yeah. I’m finished.” Her shoulders sagged.

Kaito looked at Rin. “Tell us, other than a bright light and a bald man, what did you see last night?”

Rin sat down on the pedestal where the idol had been. She crossed her leg over her knee and her robe hitched up nearly to her hip. Kaito’s eyes flickered in that direction and Suzume’s temper, already frayed, reached a boiling point.

“Cover yourself. You look like something from the red district,” Suzume snarled at Rin.

Rin gave her a placid expression and pulled her robe down an inch. She cleared her throat. “I told you all of it basically. The god—or whatever he was—was sitting here where the idol used to sit, I’m assuming.” She shrugged. “He had a chain around his neck made of large coins and he was humming a tune. I called out to him and when he saw me he screamed. Then I screamed. He bolted past me before I could get anything out of him.”

“That’s all?” Kaito asked. He looked at Rin like he was chastising his child.

She smiled up at him and batted her long lashes. “That’s all, master.”

The way she said master made Suzume’s skin crawl. Get it together. You don’t care who he flirts with or how trashy she is. “I have to know, how do you two know each other?”

“That’s not important right now,” Kaito said, waving away her question. “If you did unleash this immortal, it means your powers are not under your control in the least, which explains why you were so irresistible to that spider...”

Rin’s ears perked up and swiveled towards Kaito. She looked at him with wide fearful eyes. “Spider?”

“A huge one whose poison caused vivid hallucinations before it drained its victim of all of its life energy.” Kaito wiggled his fingers and moved towards Rin.

She shrieked and ran away from him. He chased her around the pedestal. What is wrong with these immortals? Is everything just a game to them?

Suzume stepped in Kaito’s way. He nearly collided with her but caught himself at the last minute. She jutted her chin towards him. “We don’t have time for your flirting. We need to find this idol.”

“Jealous,” he purred.

She dodged his hand before he could touch her. She scoffed. “Hardly.”

Suzume stomped out of the shrine and out onto the road beyond. She looked both ways. If I were a god where would I go?

“He went into the woods behind the shrine,” Rin said. She pointed at a wooded area that led up the hill behind them.