Page 24 of Dragon Kissed

“You’re standing between me and them.”

He moved aside at once. The path opened, and Nica did not take it. She looked at the doors, then back at him. “Are you going to hurt me?”

The question tore something open. “No.” He had answered kings with less certainty. “No.Never.”

“Are you sure?”

The dragon went quiet, as if it too wanted to hear the answer. Demetri released the broken stone; blood marked his palms where the rough edge had cut him. “I would tear out my own heart first.”

Nica’s lips parted.Too much.He’d given her too much — and not enough, never enough. He needed distance now: stone walls, the reinforced chamber under the western wing, Caelen outside the door with an elven blade in case the dragon took over. He turned toward the outer wall.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“For whom?”

He looked back at her, fog curling around his shoulders. “For you.”

Something shifted in her expression. The fear remained, and so did the anger, but beneath both, something warmer took shape — and the dragon leaned toward it like a cold thing toward a fire. “Demetri.” The way she said his name nearly destroyed him. She took one step forward; he retreated one. “Do not.”

Her gaze dropped to his hands, where the cuts were already closing. She watched the skin knit, watched the blood stop, and he could see the exact moment denial failed.

“You healed.”

“Nica.”

“I watched it happen.” The last cut vanished, and her face went pale. Demetri forced his hands open and showed her his empty palms — no claws, no wounds, nothing human could explain. He expected her to run. Every creature he had ever revealed himself to had run, or reached for a weapon, or begun the low animal calculations of prey.

Instead she whispered, “You’re afraid.”

The observation hit harder than any accusation. He had been feared for more than two centuries. Men begged before he killed them. Magical creatures fell silent when he entered a room. Nica looked at him and saw fear, and named it, and did not use it against him.

“I am not afraid of you,” he said.

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Of course it wasn’t. She moved closer, and this time he did not retreat — he could not; the balcony wall pressed against the backs of his thighs. She stopped just beyond his reach, her gaze moving over his face as if she were cataloging damage, reading him the way she read a page of the old language, patient and unhurried and terrifyingly accurate.

“You’re afraid of yourself.”

The dragon snarled. Demetri said nothing.

“Why?”

Because my sanity is tied to broken silver. Because every hour near you makes the dragon stronger. Because if I tell you the truth, the law demands your death. Because I have finally found the only woman I could ever love, and I may not remain a man long enough to win her.

“I am tired,” he said.

Her expression hardened. “That is a terrible lie.”

“It is not a lie.”

“It isn’t the truth either.”

No.It was only the safest piece of one. Nica shivered, and the pocket of warm air around her flickered with his slipping control, and Demetri pushed more heat into it before he’d decided to. Her gaze sharpened. “You’re doing that.”

He should stop. Instead he let the warmth remain, because it was the only thing he was permitting himself to give her. “You are cold.”