Page 57 of Dragon Kissed

Armand rose, blood at his mouth. “She was an administrative wife. One female among thousands.” Benedikte’s grief became something colder than rage, something that made Nica’s chest ache for him. “She was Sigrid.” Armand smiled. That was his mistake. Ryker’s hand closed around his throat and lifted him from the floor. “You will answer every charge, and you will pray Benedikte does not receive custody after sentencing.” He dropped the councilor, and the executioners bound him in silver chains.

Nica looked toward Lady Mireya, whose face had gone pale. “The Witness?” Mireya flinched. “I signed the accident finding. I was shown altered evidence. I believed?—”

“You did not look,” Benedikte said. Tears filled her eyes. “No.”

“Then you were useful to them.” Ryker ordered her confined separately.

The hearing had changed. Nica was no longer the most urgent criminal in the room. But the executioners remained,and one looked at her. Waiting. The cold finger down her throat again.

Ryker returned to his seat. “Demetri. You concealed an exposed human. Killed hunters without notifying the council. Allied with a dragon under death order. Intended to resist lawful execution.”

“Yes.” Demetri’s hand closed around Nica’s, warm and certain. Ryker looked at their joined hands. “Do you claim her?” The word carried legal force; she could feel the weight of it settle over the table. Demetri’s body tightened. Nica spoke first.

“I claim myself.”

Every head turned. Demetri’s dragon made a sound that might have been laughter. Ryker’s gaze sharpened. Nica’s hand shook inside Demetri’s, and she let it, because she was done pretending she wasn’t afraid; being afraid and doing the thing anyway was the only kind of courage she’d ever had. She continued anyway. “I understand your law sees me as a danger. I understand humans have hunted your people. But I didn’t choose this knowledge. I didn’t choose the book. I didn’t choose fate.” Demetri’s grip loosened — not releasing, giving her room, the way he’d given her room every time it counted. “I do choose him.” His breath stopped.

Nica looked at Demetri, and the hall disappeared. No king. No executioners. No silver swords. Only the man who’d caught her before she hit the ground and spent every day since refusing to let fate become ownership — who’d stopped the fire twice, who’d stepped out of every doorway she wanted to walk through, who was dying and hadn’t told her because he’d rather lose himself than take her by fear. “I love you.” Ruby fire filled his eyes. Her voice shook, and she let it shake. “I love you, and I’m terrified. I don’t know how to promise forever without feeling like I’m signing someone’s death warrant. But leaving didn’t protect me. It didn’t protect you. It only made me miserablesomewhere else.” Fifteen years of running, and it had never once outrun anything. She was so tired of running.

Demetri lifted her hand and pressed it against his lips and closed his eyes, and the dragon pushed one word through the distance between them, gentler than she’d have believed a dragon could be.Mine.Nica’s heart answered before her mind could veto it.

She looked at Ryker. “I have not agreed to the bond.” Demetri’s eyes opened, pain entering them, and she tightened her hand. “I need the final truth first.” He went still. Nica turned back to him, and made herself ask the question she’d already half-answered. “What happens to you if I say no?”

No one spoke. Demetri looked toward Caelen. The elf held the broken Chain and placed the dark silver links on the table.

Understanding arrived slowly. Then all at once, the way the worst arithmetic always did. “The bracelet.”

“It was a sanity anchor,” Demetri said. “Benedikte broke the primary magic. Caelen preserved part of it temporarily.”

“How long do you have?” He did not answer. Nica looked at Caelen, her stomach dropping through the floor. “How long?”

“Hours,” he said. The room tilted. Demetri moved toward her; she held up one hand; he stopped, obedient even now, even dying. “You were dying. And you didn’t tell me. Because you thought I would agree to the bond to save you.” Because he’d rather she chose him freely or not at all, even if not-at-all cost him his mind.

“Yes.” Anger and love collided so hard she could not separate them, the two things she’d spent her whole life keeping in different rooms. “You absolute bastard.”

“Yes.” A laugh broke through her tears, wet and furious and helpless.

Then the estate alarm screamed. Faelar’s map flared gold, every point in San Francisco igniting at once, and Caelen turnedtoward the ward display. “The gates are open.” Lirien stared. “Impossible.” Armand laughed from inside his chains. “I was not the Gate.”

The western wall exploded inward — fire, stone, and shattered glass — and hunters poured through the breach carrying Faelar’s weapons. Demetri pushed Nica beneath the table as gunfire tore across the room. Ryker shifted, black-gold wings shattering the ceiling. Benedikte became blue scales and storm. Armand broke one hand free of his chains and held a black stone carved with the imperial gate rune. Nica saw him raise it. “Caelen!” The elf turned. Armand threw the stone into Faelar’s map. Gold light went black. Every ward in the estate failed.

Demetri roared. The sound began human and ended as something else, something with no man left in it. His body expanded, ruby scales tearing through clothing, wings erupting, the table flipping away. His eyes found Nica, and for one second Demetri remained inside them, holding on, holding on — and then the broken Chain gave its final pulse. The man disappeared. The dragon lowered his head and growled at his mate.

CHAPTER 17

Margaret: the news is calling it a “gas explosion” at a cliffside estate

Margaret: that’s where you are. isn’t it.

Margaret: Veronica.

Blood. Fire. Threat. The dragon knew only those things, and knew them the way it had known them before there were cities, before there were men to build them. Stone broke beneath his claws, and small creatures ran through his territory carrying blades that smelled of elf pain and old death, and he killed them — one beneath his foot, one between his teeth, another with fire. A black-gold dragon above. A blue dragon beside. Enemies, all of them, until proven otherwise. He opened his throat.

A voice reached him.Demetri.From behind the overturned table. Female. Human. Small and soft and easily broken, and yet the whole of the beast turned toward it.Mine.The dragon turned, and she stood in smoke and falling dust, pale hair loose, blood on her mouth, blue eyes that did not flinch from what hehad become.Home.The word rose from a place older than rage. He moved toward her.

Someone stepped between them. An elf male. Known. Family. Threat? The elf raised empty hands. “Demetri.” Wrong — that was the man’s name, and the man was gone, drowned somewhere beneath scale and fire. The dragon advanced, and the elf did not move, and behind him the female shouted. “Caelen, get out of the way.”

“No.I promised him.” The dragon smelled fear — not from the elf, from her — fearforhim, notofhim, and the distinction pulled at something buried beneath the rage, a thread of gold in the red. No one feared for a monster. No one ever had.Nica.The name came from deep inside, surfacing through centuries of dark water; the man moved once in the depths, then sank again.