Page 4 of Dragon Kissed

He mentally reached for his dragon. He knew the answers, but felt he had to ask, just to be sure.Old one, do you know how Benedikte got us here? Are you well enough to fight?

The dragon took his time answering.He dragged us from the water. Closed the worst of our wounds. Restarted our heart. We can fight, but we will not win. We are still weak. He is fully healed. I have never seen a recovery this fast. Be careful. He is on this hunk of floating death. He is destroying it piece by piece, feeding a fire the way a human would instead of using dragon fire. Clearly he is deranged.

Clearly.Demetri’s lips twitched at the dragon’s affronted tone. No dragon old enough to breathe fire would ever choose the human method. It was beneath them.But could there be another reason?

That I do not know. But I think he waits for us.

Demetri gave a mental nod. So, the blue dragon was waiting for them. Given the circumstances, it was no surprise. He didn’t know why the crazy dragon had saved him, but questions were starting to pile up. He took a few minutes to look around. At nearly two hundred feet in length, there was no word for the “hunk of floating death” but luxury yacht. Or superyacht. And standing at the bow was a man of maybe thirty-five, with dark blond hair plastered to his skull, wearing the face Demetri remembered from a wedding long ago in Brussels, his eyes the color of a winter sky over the North Sea, and nothing of the happy man Demetri remembered was left in them.

Benedikte.

He'd used the elements to clothe himself in navy trousers slung low on his hips. His bare chest was powerfully built and badly scarred — and dragons didn't scar easily. Several of those old wounds looked as though they should have killed him. Demetri found himself wondering what in the world Benedikte had been doing for eight years, and why, holding every advantage, he was hesitating now. A truly crazed dragon would have torn his throat out the second he had the chance. Instead, he was calmly feeding papers, charts and logbooks into a bonfire on the deck.

Like dry kindling, the paper burst into flame almost immediately. A broken chair came next. Not far from the fire, covered in blood, were the same bodies he’d glimpsed before the attack. Human. All dead.

Demetri spat blood onto the deck. He was healing. Too slowly. "You killed these humans." He jerked his chin at the fourbodies. "Civilians. Out for an evening. Did you even see them, Benedikte, or did you just come down through the cloud and bite, to find out if your teeth still worked?"

"I saw them. They crowed with glee, thinking they’d caught me in their trap. Thinking they could kill me. As soon as the tables were turned, they squealed for mercy. Unfortunately, I had none to give."

Demetri approached cautiously. Dragons were dangerous. Rogue dragons were unpredictable at best. Benedikte was in a class of his own. "You used to be a king." Scratchy from the smoke and disuse, his voice came easier with each spoken work. "A ruler your people loved. There are children in Antwerp named for you — do you remember that? Look at the humans, Benedikte. Tell me you see what you've done."

Benedikte turned and looked, moving his gaze across each body in turn — a woman, a man at the door, two crew — the silence stretched, filled only by the crackle of fire and the slap of water against the hull. When he brought his eyes back, he stated matter of factly, "You see four dead people on a boat."

"Innocent humans. Dead at your hands."

"You see what you were programmed to see. You were told I was crazy, a rogue dragon that must be put down before I could hurt innocent humans. You do not see the truth because that would interfere with your view of the world."

Demetri laughed. It hurt less than it had a minute ago. He coughed blood into his palm, looked at it, watched the next breath come up clearer. He pushed another thread of magic into the collarbone, and the bone re-seated with a click he heard through his teeth. He breathed through it. "I am nearly as old as you, dragon. You speak in riddles, like a man who's been alone too long and mistaken his own voice for wisdom. There are bodies on this deck. There is blood on your hands. Speak plainlyor finish what you started, because I am tired, I am healing as fast as I can, and I have no patience for prophecy tonight."

Benedikte's mouth moved, not quite into a smile. "Had my intention been to kill you, you would never have seen me coming."

"Then why am I here?” Demetri set his other palm to the wound on his flank and poured more heat in. The gash closed another inch. “You’re practically sending up smoke signals. If not to lure me here, why bother?”

Demetri’s dragon rumbled,Why do you question him? If he wants us dead, let’s get on with it.

Patience, old one.

I have had centuries of patience. I am out.

Benedikte stepped closer, his dragon rising through his flesh — blue scales blooming and receding across his brow, his eyes kindling to a glowing blue — and closed the distance until their faces drew level. He smelled of salt and storm and old smoke, and under all of it something colder: the long iron tang of a grief that had outlived its first wound and hardened into something far more dangerous. “I have no desire to kill you. I never did. You are not the one I came for.”

“You hunted the humans.”

“I did not know they were human until I got here.”

Demetri held very still. "Then who did you come for, if not these people? Why are you here?"

You will know. Sooner than you would like. Later than you should have.Then Benedikte spoke aloud, his voice dropping, softer, closer to the man Demetri had watched laugh eighty years ago. "I am sorry to bring you into this war. But I must."

"Benedikte —"

"Look at the blade over there." Benedikte gave the order with dragon fire rising in his human throat — a thing Demetri had never seen another shifter do.

He had already seen the dagger and dismissed it as a feeble human weapon, but he looked again — not at the blade— the pommel.

Firelight slid across polished steel, revealing a spiral branching into three elegant lines.

Demetri could almost believe himself alone inside his own mind, his dragon had gone so quiet. Still.