Page 122 of The Blade in the Ashes
Andthisman? This man in front of me was apologizing to me because he thought I wanted money for her.
As if any sum of coins could ever capture Thea’s worth to me.
She waseverything—worth more than gold, more than my kingdom, more than this realm, more than my own damn soul. Anyone who saw anything different when they looked at her deserved to burn.
I moved in an instant, my hand wrapping around the blacksmith’s throat and slamming him against the desk he’d been working on with an echoing crack.
“Where?” Sparks and smoke fell out of my mouth, dragonfire burning through my lungs. My beast was wrestling for control, itching to take over my form, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold it back.
He blubbered, fingers wrapping around my wrist to try to pry me off him, but it was no use. My dragon’s strength refused to give an inch. I wasso at war with myself that I didn't notice when talons pushed through my fingertips, poking into his skin.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” he yelled, brown eyes going unnaturally wide. “They live that way!”
I followed the line of his finger, releasing him in an instant. He slid sideways, falling to his knees on the ground. The sword he’d been fashioning was still hot to the touch when I lifted it, but the scales that rippled against my skin stopped the heat of it from burning me.
“Who are you?” he cried, rubbing at the torn skin against his throat.
“I’m the—”
I stopped, my spine going entirely rigid as a sudden wind blew harshly against me.
Every muscle in my body locked. The beast inside me roared so violently that it left my ears ringing.
Hope blossomed in the depths of my heart, the feeling so beautifully foreign that I gasped.
That wind carried a distinct floral smell—a fragrance that had haunted every one of my nightmares and dreams since the day we’d fled the castle.
Thea.
She was here. She was so close that I could smell her as if no time or distance had ever parted us at all.
I took a deep breath in, filling my lungs with her, wanting to savor that smell. But the deeper I breathed her in, the more my hope faded into something infinitely colder and far more insidious.
The floral scent of her skin wasn’t only the smell on the wind.
I could practically taste her blood.
Any logical thought left my mind as I took off in a desperate sprint towards her.
ChapterThirty-Six
Thea
George bent at the knees, dropping me unceremoniously onto the floor of the very home Nessira and I had fled from only moments ago.
It felt like an eternity ago.
An eternity had already passed since the last time I had seen her alive.
The air in the house was stale—too warm from a hearth that was burning far too intensely. Footsteps sounded all around me, punctuated with deep male laughter, but I couldn’t find the strength to push myself up and look around me.
Not when the simple act of breathing sent fiery pain throbbing through my battered body.
“What did you do to this poor girl?”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Eloise rushing from the kitchen, wiping her flour-covered hands on a small towel.
In an instant, she bowed before me and brushed sweat-drenched hair off my brow.
