Page 63 of Dragon Kissed

“You were taking too long.”

The ward shattered. Caelen fell through the door, blood covering his chest, Lirien beyond him on her knees holding a golden barrier against three hunters. Nica ran to Caelen, and Demetri shifted his hands into claws and crossed the chamber. The first hunter died against the wall. The second swung Faelar’s blade, and through the bond Nica saw the attack from behind Demetri’s eyes — the strange doubled sight of it, his vision inside her own skull. “Left!” He moved before the weapon struck, her warning becoming his reflex, the two of them fighting as one nervous system, and broke the man’s arm. The third aimed at Lirien. Nica threw Caelen’s fallen knife, and it struck the hunter’s wrist, and his shot went wide, and Lirien sent a vine of golden light through his chest. Silence.

The estate burned.Part of the roof had collapsed, rain entering through shattered glass and hissing on hot stone, hunters fighting the king’s guards across the entry hall. Benedikte had Armand pinned beneath one blue claw, and the councilor held a black stone, gate magic pulsing through it like a black heart. “Destroy the stone!” Caelen shouted. Nica saw something Demetri did not — old Russian symbols carved along its edge, symbols from the manuscript, the pre-reform letters leaping out at her the way they always did. Not a gate. A transfer. “It’s moving the ward power!” she shouted through the bond. “He’s feeding it into the weapons.” Every blade in the hall glowed brighter. Faelar’s network had been inverted, the dead smith’s own resonance turned into a weapon against them.

Nica opened the manuscript pages inside her memory — the mating rite, fire freely received, power shared — and the answer assembled itself the way patterns always did under her hands,whole and sudden.Demetri.He felt her idea before she finished forming it, the bond carrying the shape of it between them: the bond could carry fire both ways. Dangerous. Untried. Perfect. Demetri opened his magic to her, held nothing back now, and ruby fire moved through the bond, and Nica took it — not as a weapon, as light — poured it into the silver mark on her back and spoke the old Russian line in Baba Yelena’s careful pre-reform vowels. “The true flame knows the stolen road.”

Every weapon answered. Gold sigils flared. Faelar’s hidden spell woke — the one he’d buried in torment, twenty years ago, trusting someone would one day read it right — and the blades turned against the black stone, threads of power ripping free of Armand’s hand. The gate stone cracked. Benedikte closed his claw, and Armand screamed, and the stone shattered. Every hunter weapon died — human steel struck dragon scale and broke — and the battle ended in seconds, as though a held breath had finally been let out.

Benedikte crouched beside the bleeding councilor. “You told them where she would fly.” Armand spat blood. “Sigrid was collateral.” Benedikte placed one hand over Armand’s heart, and blue light entered him, and Armand gasped — not death, something else — his scales vanishing, his eyes becoming human brown. Mortal. Stripped of the centuries, handed a single ordinary span to live out under the weight of what he’d done. Ryker looked at Benedikte. “That judgment was not yours.”

“No.” Benedikte stood. “It was hers.” No one argued. Somewhere in Norway a grave held a woman who had laughed at a wedding in Brussels, and the whole room seemed to feel her there.

Demetri turned toward Nica. She stood beneath the broken roof with rain in her hair and silver fire glowing through her clothes, smoke-marked and bleeding and utterly unbroken. Alive. Bonded. His — not a possession, a gift, a choice shehad made with her eyes open in a room full of executioners. The dragon looked through his eyes and did not roar, did not demand; it only settled, the way a thing settles when it has finally, after a very long time, arrived.Home.Nica heard, across the bond, and her face softened.Yes, she answered. And for the first time in two hundred years, Demetri’s mind became quiet.

CHAPTER 18

Margaret: I’m told you fired a werewolf today

Nica: he LICKED a reliquary

Margaret: he did what to a what

Nica: i’ll explain at the meeting. bring coffee.

Three weeks after the estate burned, Nica fired a werewolf conservator for licking a twelfth-century reliquary.

“It was one time,” the man protested.

“It was medieval silver with unknown magical residue.”

“I was identifying the enchantment. My tongue is more accurate than the equipment.”

“You are no longer allowed in Collection Room Three.” Nica pointed toward the door, and the werewolf left muttering about human bureaucracy. She held the pointing finger steady until the door shut, then let herself grin. Three years ago she’d been too timid to correct a mislabeled crate; now she managed a floor of immortals and threw them out when they misbehaved. Some things, apparently, a person could grow into.

Demetri leaned against the office wall, arms crossed. He’d watched the entire exchange without interfering, and that alone proved the bond had changed him — the old Demetri would have loomed, would have handled it, would have arranged the world before she could ask. “You enjoyed that,” Nica said.

“Immensely. I assumed all conservators tasted objects.”

“Do you taste everything you investigate?” His gaze moved over her, slowly, deliberately, and heat entered the bond — his hunger arriving in her own body warm and direct, the way it did now, with no wall between their minds to soften it. Nica’s face warmed. “That was not professional. You’re in my office. During work hours.”

“Yes.”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“No.” She threw a pencil. Demetri caught it — of course — crossed the office, placed it carefully beside her hand, and kissed her. Not carefully. Nica gripped his jacket, the bond carrying his hunger directly into her body and her own back into his, a loop that fed on itself; three weeks had not dulled it, and if anything every touch grew sharper now that nothing stood between their minds. His dragon stretched inside the connection, luxuriant.Desk.

“No,” Nica said aloud. Demetri lifted his head. “I said nothing.”

“He did.”

The dragon felt no shame.The desk appears sturdy.

“It is covered with provenance reports.”

Move them.

Demetri’s mouth twitched. “You encourage him.”