Page 54 of Dragon Kissed

Nica crawled toward the ruby scales. “Demetri!” Rook raised the spear again. She grabbed the broken chain hanging from his belt and pulled, and the weapon jerked sideways, and Rook turned. Nica drove her knee between his legs, and he folded, and she seized the short elven blade at his hip. “You don’t know how to use that,” Rook said.

“I cataloged swords for three years.” She stabbed him through the thigh, the blade going in with an ease that sickened her. He screamed. Benedikte’s blue claws closed around him and threw him down the corridor.

Nica reached Demetri. The dragon lay on his side, blood pouring around the spear wound, his shape flickering — scales becoming skin, wings collapsing into arms — and within seconds Demetri lay naked on the concrete, one hand pressed to his chest. Nica dropped beside him. “Look at me.” His eyes opened. Still ruby. “Nica.” His voice broke on it. She touched his face, both hands, holding him to the world. “I know what you are.”

Benedikte shifted back several meters away. “Executioners will already be on their way.” Nica looked up. “What?” Demetri closed his hand over hers. “The law.”

“You said they’d kill me if you told me.”

“I did not tell you.”

“But I know.”

“Yes.”

“What happens now?” Demetri’s grip tightened, red scales trying to return beneath his skin — his control was failing, the Chain gone, the wound deep. “There are two legal outcomes.” Nica understood before he spoke, the arithmetic assembling itself the way it always did, merciless. “Death.” His eyes closed. “Or?” He looked at her, and the word came rough, torn out of two hundred years of being alone. “Bond.”

CHAPTER 15

Nica: margaret i’m safe

Margaret: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

Nica: it’s complicated. also there may be a hearing.

Margaret: a legal hearing? do you need counsel?

Nica: not that kind of hearing

Demetri expected Nica to recoil. She did not. That frightened him more than any recoil could have, because it meant she was choosing to stay in the same room as the truth, and hope was the one thing two centuries had taught him not to trust.

They returned to the estate beneath enough magical concealment to hide an army. Benedikte carried the captured Gideon Rook in iron restraints in a separate vehicle, and Caelen and Lirien sealed the grounds before anyone crossed the threshold. Nica stayed beside Demetri. Not touching. Not leaving. He was fiercely, pathetically aware of the exact distance between them — eighteen inches, the width of the fear she hadn’t decided what to do with yet.

The spear wound had closed, but green magic still burned through his nerves like acid poured into the seams of him, and the Chain was gone, and his dragon pressed against human thought with every heartbeat, closer to the surface than it had been in sixty years. He had hours. Perhaps less. None of it mattered until Nica knew the truth. All of it. He would spend the last clear hours he might ever have giving her the thing she’d asked for and he’d refused, and let that be the last honest act of a long life if it had to be.

They sat in the translation room because it was hers — her choice — the manuscript between them like a third party to the conversation. Caelen and Lirien waited near the doors. Benedikte stood by the windows, a dark shape against the fog. Nica looked at Demetri. “What are you?”

“Draquonir. A dragon.” The word he had been forbidden to give her fell into the room and did not kill her, and something in his chest unclenched a fraction.

“A man and a dragon.”

“Yes. Two aspects. Distinct, but not separate.” The dragon stirred, pleased to be discussed.Tell her I am the better half.Demetri ignored him. Nica noticed the shift in his attention, read it off his face the way she’d learned to read everything. “He’s talking to you, isn’t he? What is he saying?”

“Frequently, that I am an idiot.” Her mouth almost moved. “What did he say just now?” Demetri considered protecting his dignity, decided it was worth nothing beside the chance of that almost-smile. “He told me to tell you that he is the better half.”

Nica looked down, and this time the smile appeared — small, painful, precious, the first one since the bunker. The dragon preened, insufferable.She likes me.

“She knows nothing about you,” Demetri muttered.

Nica looked up. “This is going to take some adjustment. Explain the bond.”

Demetri’s entire body tightened. Here was the ground he’d been circling for four days, and now she’d walked them both onto it. He forced himself to speak. “A Draquonir may recognize one person as a fated mate. I recognized you the instant I caught you.”

“The scent. The shaking. The way you looked at me.”

“Yes. And I knew there would never be anyone else.” The truth again, easier this time, worn smooth by how many times he’d swallowed it.

Nica walked to the windows. “Did fate choose for me too?”