Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (10 page)

“Dying? I am. Or was.” He shook his head. No pain anywhere down his spine. “There’s no way the petralys contaminant could be banished from my body so quickly, not even by my…” He broke off, still shaking his head.

“Your solarys.”

A strange note in her voice brought him up short. “No. Not even then. I was too far gone, and the risk would be too great for my dragon to claim its true mate.”

She bit her lip. “Rave chose Piper, and Torch won Anjali.”

“Neither my brother nor my cousin suffered the petralys as long as I have.” He straightened. “And neither of them is reyex.”

“What…why does that matter?”

He met her bemused stare with his own wary gaze. “More than a simple solarys, the mate of the reyex must be a flawless reflection of the dragon spirit. It takes fearless power to face the beast that rules the Burning Night.”

“Flawless and fearless?” Her mouth flattened, and she stepped back, one arm angling across her nude body.

“On both sides,” he hastened to add. He stretched out his ruined wing. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to find my solarys, not like this. A mate to this shape would be…”

“As broken and ugly as you thought yourself to be.”

He opened his mouth to confirm. And then realized exactly how that would sound. “No.”

“You’re lying,” she said flatly. “You thought I was your solarys.”

Never had the cavern felt as much like a torture chamber as this moment. “I realized it might be a possibility when I was drawn to you as I’ve never—”

“Never in
how long
have you been locked up here?”

The emptiness of the space she’d opened up between them prickled over his skin. “I wouldn’t have let the dragon claim you, not without your consent and full awareness.”

“You’re saying you couldn’t let yourself…be drawn to me?” She averted her face, staring past his bad shoulder.

“Of course I wanted you.” He raked his hand through his hair, realizing he could feel the fine texture as sensation returned to his fingertips, tingling awake after too long asleep. “As the dragon does. But I told myself I would never hurt you.”

“Right, because I’m not tough enough to take your dragon,” she snapped. “First I fell for a guy who lied to me because he only wanted to use me for his death magic, and
then
I fall for a guy whose life is at stake and he still won’t let me in… I know how to pick ‘em, don’t I? Hopefully the third time really is the charm.”

At the thought of her with anyone else, his dragon bristled in fury. Stiffening, he glared at her. “Did you not want this? You came to me,” he reminded her. “I didn’t take anything you didn’t offer, freely.
Twice
.” Three times, depending on how he counted, but even his greedy dragon side wasn’t interested in tallying up anything at this moment.

She jerked back. “Yeah, I sacrificed myself this time instead of letting someone else do it for me.”

He tightened his fist to stop from grabbing her. That was the dragon lord he had been—taking without asking. Like Lars Ashcraft. Frustration sharpened his voice. “I didn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me.”

“Good thing,” she snapped. “Because apparently there’s not enough of me to save myself, much less you, much less all the Nox Incendi.” She grabbed his discarded cape from the floor and wrapped herself tightly though her long, slender legs were bare from the thigh down.

The dragon wanted to unwrap her again like a cache of plundered riches to find the treasure within. But the cocoon made him think she wasn’t ready to fly. And who was he, a dragon-man with only one wing, to think he could teach her?

Despairing, this time he couldn’t resist reaching toward her. “Esme—”

She punched him in the chest, right above his heart. At first he thought she was striking out blindly but then she lifted her hand to show him.

“No blood,” she said. “The scales are disappearing. Now I guess you can find someone flawless and fearless to match you.”

He looked down. She was right. Where the jagged edges of his dragon hide had been, only rough patches of skin remained. He turned his head farther to follow the flex of his misshapen arm. He extended it to see the membrane had shrunk, the joint yielding easily. Astonishment loosened his jaw; if this kept up, he’d have his arm back, his life, his clan, his power as reyex.

A flicker of movement caught the dragon’s attention: Esme fleeing for the elevator.

He went after her. But a stride away from her, she wheeled to hold out her hand. Though her flattened palm was unmarked by his fading scales, something in her was torn. He saw it in her dark eyes.

“No,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

“I did,” he grated. “I would have. But you are my—”

“Nothing,” she interrupted. “We have nothing. I thought we did. I thought…I was the ghost to your shadow, but that’s not going to be enough anymore, not for a king.”

He glowered. “You came to me when I was weak, broken.
That
is what you wanted?” When she didn’t answer, he stiffened, as if the stone blight was seeping back into his spine. “You didn’t want the kingdom and its riches—only the beast trapped in darkness.”

She turned her face away. “Because that’s where I was.”

For a heartbeat, the dragon surged in him, ready to force its claim if she so desired the darkness. But she deserved more. He stepped back, opening his hand wide and flaring his wing. “Go.”

The elevator opened as if at command.
Open sesame? Open Esme.

But she was as closed to him as the walls of the Keep had ever been.

Chapter 10

And to think she’d giggled at the thought of Bale sneaking through the Keep in just his cape, yet here she was doing the same thing.

Payback was a bitch.

Happy hour
, she texted her friends.
On me
.

She was almost done with her third drink by the time Piper and Anjali sauntered into the Badlands bar ten minutes later.

Anjali eyed the level in the glass. “Are we sure this is happy?”

“I will be in another five minutes,” Esme groused.

Piper slid into the chair across from her. “Spill, girlfriend.” When Esme knocked back the rest of the drink, Piper grimaced. “Uh, I didn’t mean spill it that way.”

Esme touched the cool rim of the glass to her lip. It reminded her of the edge if a scale… “I only wanted to experience what every other woman has.”

“To be fair,” Anjali said, “not exactly
every
woman has had sex with a dragon-shifter.”

“Shh.” Esme glanced around anxiously. “Someone might overhear.”

“Let’s have a code word,” Piper suggested. “Instead of saying dragon” —she lifted her eyebrows when Esme hissed at her—“we’ll say… Uh, something with serpents?”

Anjali snickered. “How about trouser snake?”

“He said I could be his solarys,” Esme blurted.

Her friends were silent while the server brought the next round of drinks: martini for her, rum for Anjali, daiquiri for Piper.

“Would that be so bad?” Piper asked at last.

Esme goggled at her. “Yeesss.”

“Why?” Instead of knocking it back as she usually did, Anjali sipped at her drink. “You were born to be a queen.”

“That’s just it.” Esme clutched her glass. If she broke it, it would be exactly like a dragon’s cutting scale. “I was born to it, it’s what I was meant for, and…I still wasn’t good enough. Bale thinks he needs me to save his life, save the dragonkin. That’s the only reason I’d be his solarys.”

Anjali took another sip and said something that sounded very much like “Only? Boo hoo” into her glass.

Usually Esme let her friends’ eye-rolling pass, feeling ashamed to complain. But not this time. “Why do you think my eating was so disordered back in school?”

“Because of our impossible cultural standards of beauty?” Anjali mused.

Esme shook her head. “Because I used to think if I was thin enough, maybe I could slip out of my cage.”

“You almost died on us,” Piper said quietly. “Twice.”

“Maybe that would’ve been my escape.” Esme looked down at her candy apple martini with the swizzle-sticked cherry. “Living with you two finally made me realize there
was
more to live for. And when I started writing grants I felt like I was actually making a difference. But then…” She pushed the drink away. “Then I let a warlock spellbind me. And now I’m letting a dragon lord do the same, just in a different way. But I failed Lars—”

“Good for you,” Anjali interjected.

The alcohol made Esme wobbly inside, and she closed her eyes as if that would help. “But what if I fail the dragons too? I’m supposed to be Bale’s true mate, but what if I’m not…true enough to save Bale?”

Piper reached out to take Esme’s hand, rubbing her thumb over the obsidian cabochon. “You were always a true friend to us. Why wouldn’t you be enough for him?”

Esme looked down at the blackness in the ring stone. “He needed an escape from the blight that was killing his…” She glanced around. “Trouser snake. But once I gave him that, what else do I have to offer? He’s richer than me, more powerful than me…prettier than me,” she added with a deep sigh.

Anjali pulled away and sputtered into her drink while Piper shook her head. “Yeah, no, forget the code word. What matters is if you could see yourself with him, regardless of how he found you or what you can do for him.”

“See myself with him?” Esme muttered. “He fucked me in pitch blackness.”

It was Piper’s turn to sputter while Anjali sighed.

“The first time,” Esme clarified. “And the second time. The third time, at least there were fires—”

“You are really making up for lost time,” Anjali said. “But I wonder if you are thinking about this too romantically—”

“There’s nothing wrong with romance,” Piper said stoutly.

“Because,” Anjali continued with dogged persistence, “Bale is the lord of the…trouser snakes.”

“See? Being a lord
is
romantic,” Piper shot back. “Moreso if you’d stop saying trouser snake.”

“But there’s more to him than Torch,” Anjali said, “or even Rave. More responsibility, more risk.”

“And I can’t do that,” Esme interrupted. “I’ve never had to save anyone. I’ve always been the prize, not the hero.”

Piper eyed her somberly. “Maybe there’s more to you too.”

But there wasn’t, Esme knew. She’d never suffered any illusions about what she was made of—skin and bones—and what she was worth: nothing. Maybe all those grants she’d written had just made her more aware that need and merit was no guarantee of earning anyone’s consideration, and she was only as good as the last check she’d gathered.

To actually be down in the trenches with Bale, where she might actually fail and see the crash was too much. She wasn’t smart like Piper or strong like Anjali. She couldn’t take the pain Bale had endured or stand by him while he sought a future for the Nox Incendi.

“I can’t do it,” she mumbled. “I’d just let him down, and then…” Then he’d see right through her, that there was nothing to her except a pale imitation of the queen he needed, a mirage of beauty and fortune.

And he’d realize it quicker than most because of course a dragon would know its treasure intimately.

She stared miserably at her drink. “You guys must hate me too. I dragged you away from real problems with my stupid whining…”

At the same time, Piper and Anjali reached for her, and the clasp of their joined hands made their rings—sunstone, fire opal, and obsidian—twinkle.

She thought of the flaring gemstones in Bale’s cavern. “Why do they do that?”

“I’ve been reading up on magic.” Anjali grimaced. “Reading, me, the dropout. When I figure it all out, I’ll let you know, but there’s power in a crystal matrix. And more, there’s power in our friendship. In our connection with our mates. In what we love and hope for. Everything’s connected, and everything’s always shifting, adding power to the matrix.”

“That’s…interesting.” Esme eased her hands out of theirs.

Anjali sighed. “I know, I know. I didn’t want to believe in it either.”

“Anyway,” Piper said, “we don’t hate you
too
, because
he
doesn’t hate you.”

“He does,” Esme said. “Or he would, if he’d stop letting his…trouser snake do all the thinking.”

Piper sighed. “The code word works better than I thought it would.”

They got drunk. It’d been a long time since they got so drunk. It wasn’t even midnight when Torch sent a security detail to drag their butts upstairs.

“I’m so, so, so sorry,” Esme slurred. “This is all my fault.”

“Yup,” Anjali said. “Do you hear that?” she shouted into the one security guy’s shoulder-mounted radio. “It’s her fault.”

The guy grunted. “It’s her fault you drank too much?”

“They’re my friends,” Esme explained with owl-eyed intensity. “They did it for me.”

“You should see what we do for our enemies,” Piper proclaimed.

Everyone ignored her since she had kicked off her shoes and lost a crucial few inches. They dumped her into Rave’s arms at the top of a flight of spiral stairs leading down to—Esme peered as far as she could around the spiral—who knew where. Apparently Piper knew because she grinned in anticipation as Rave lifted her off her bare feet. She waggled her toes in goodbye and laid her head on his shoulder.

Torch took over Anjali at a set of double doors leading to a huge, domed atrium that Esme caught only a brief glimpse of before her friend poked her shoulder and said, “Have a
good
night.”

Then she too was gone.

Esme slumped between the three large security guys. She’d had bodyguards before and knew how it worked. They didn’t speak as they led her to the Amber Suite and opened the door for her. They ushered her through and left her there in the big empty room.

The golden light from the amber chandelier was pretty, but it didn’t scintillate with all the colors of the rainbow like Bale’s gemstone-encrusted caverns. It wasn’t even the sensual darkness of her own bed when he was in it.

But she couldn’t. She just…couldn’t…

She stumbled through a shower and into bed.

The nightmare grabbed her before her head hit the pillow.