Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (14 page)

He crowded closer to her. “I thought you could be my solarys because you
are
my true mate. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to accept me. But you gave me back my hand.” He spread his fingers in front of her face. “You returned my dragon to the skies.”

She stared at his hand blindly, but then her dark eyes focused. She grabbed his wrist, twisting his fingers to show him. “You’re burned. Because of me.”

His palm was blistered. He grunted as the pain finally reached him. Apparently his tender new skin wasn’t quite as tough as his old dragonhide. “I’ll survive,” he growled.

“For now,” she said ominously. “Ashcraft won’t stop. He’ll be back, and under a warlock’s influence, how much worse could I do? If you don’t care about yourself, what about the rest of the Nox Incendi?” She shoved his hand away and whirled to face Torch. “You are the clan enforcer,” she challenged. “What would you say to a sleepwalking time bomb in your midst?”

Torch shook his head. “I’d say you’re being a little melodramatic.” But his jaw tightened and he slanted an uncertain glance at his liege.

Bale wanted to shake the rest of him, shake them both. But he turned to Anjali instead. He wondered what his sire would’ve made of the brash female, unconventional even by today’s standards. He didn’t think the old dragon would’ve considered that she might be his closest ally in this situation. But he wasn’t interested in playing by old rules anymore.

“How do you break the connection of a fetish like these?”

Her hazel eyes widened. “I don’t know. I didn’t even believe in any of this myself until recently. I’ve just watched the same movies you have.” She squinted. “Well, maybe not. But what Ashcraft did here is some unholy mix of voodoo and alchemy. At best I’d be guessing, and even at blackjack I was never good at guessing whether I should hit or stand.”

Torch made a noise. “It’s math and strategy…” But he subsided when Bale glared at him.

“I am your reyex,” Bale reminded him. “Find me a strategy that does what I say.”

His cousin glowered.

“Break the likeness to the fetish,” Anjali said abruptly. “The sympathetic magic works because of the connection between doll and quarry.”

“But the fire hurt Esme,” Bale said. The only place he wanted her to burn was in his bed.

She jolted past him. “I’ll risk it.”

He moved to pursue her, but Anjali stopped him with a hand on his arm. The arm that had been a wing until Esme gave him a reason to emerge from his shell.

“She doesn’t want to be trapped,” Anjali said. “You don’t get a say here.”

Bale rolled his eyes to his cousin, but Torch only shrugged.

Esme spun away from the work bench. Steel glinted in her hand, the edge of the scalpel bright.

Bale could only watch helplessly as she hacked at her hair. Handfuls of the pale strands drifted to the floor, crisscrossing over her black ballet flats before she kicked it away and threw the figurine down on the pile.

She stood there, slender and wild, his warrior maid, her dark eyes huge and devouring in her vulnerable face. “Burn it,” she whispered savagely. “Burn it all.”

Inhaling sharply, he held the breath a moment, tasting her rage like a sweetened brimstone. He clicked his teeth and exhaled.

Considering he and his dragon were only recently reunited, the gout of fire might have done worse to his innards than her scorched braid had done to his hand, but he refused to let any flame but his burn at her command.

It blazed so hot and fierce, the acrid stink of charred hair and fabric never had the chance to rise.

Esme started fixedly at the withering doll until Torch guided her and Anjali back from the blistering heat. “C’mon. We have everything of value here.”

“The other dolls,” Esme said, resisting his tug.

“Keep burning,” Anjali told Bale fiercely. “Not the dolls, but the walls. Sink this whole place beneath the purifying power of salt and set them free.”

***

Esme stared numbly at the salt castle crumbling beneath the waves.

Bale and Torch had flown her and Anjali to the waiting boat along with their stolen goods and then circled back—their wings glistening in the night—to burn down Lars’ stronghold.

There was nothing left to hold.

She touched her bristling scalp, feeling weirdly lightheaded. Maybe a lingering aftereffect of destroying the fetish.

Or maybe just cutting off all her hair which had been the
one
pride of hers that even Grand-mère had admitted was truly beautiful and no one else’s.

And now it was gone.

“It grows back.” Anjali tugged her hand down.

“Evil warlocks’ burning castles?” Esme shook her head. Was that a phantom pain of her missing hair brushing her cheeks. What was she supposed to hide behind now? “I hope that place never grows back.”

“It won’t. It’s salted earth now.” Anjali lifted her head to watch the incoming dragons.

Esme refused to look. But she sensed him, was drawn to him with everything in her. Even though there wasn’t anything to her.

But how could she not be falling in love with him when he was everything rich and powerful and beautiful?

Too weary to be appalled that she loved him, she clutched at Anjali’s hand. “How do I sever it?”

Anjali glanced at her distractedly, most of her attention still on Torch. “What? Sever what? There’s nothing left of your hair, and, girl, let me tell you, that was literally whack.”

“The entanglement between me and Bale,” she said patiently. “How do I break the true mate link?”

Anjali’s hazel gaze snapped down. “Why would you do that? You’ll kill him.”

Esme spoke quickly, aware the shifter males would be landing in moments. “I have to break it to save him. He told me the dragon hasn’t staked its claim yet. And it can’t.
I
can’t be what he needs, not this way.”

Frowning, Anjali stepped away from her. “I know your charmed life wasn’t as glorious as it might’ve seemed sometimes. But now it is. You hit the jackpot, girl! Why would you throw that away?”

“I’m not throwing it away—I’m setting him free. I gave him back his wings. Now…” She let out a harsh breath. “I guess I need to find mine.” She peered at her friend. “Am I being the stupid bitch everybody always thought I was?”

“Piper and I never thought that.” Anjali hugged her. “We thought you had a really nice apartment that was way too big for you alone.” She pulled back, her hazel gaze searching. “With him, you would never be alone ever again. Even after you die, he’ll fall into the stone sleep atop your grave, a monument to the mate bond.”

“Maybe I need to be alone.” Esme watched her dragon lord hover, his wings beating a shimmering mist of salt spray, while Torch dropped to the back of the boat and shifted. “I need to finally figure out who I am before I can offer that to anyone else.”

Anjali gave her another fleeting squeeze and went to her mate.

Joel cleared his throat. “Sorry to eavesdrop”—he touched his ear, making her cringe when she suddenly remembered his shifter-sharp hearing—“but if you ever need a place… Wolf-shifters know what it’s like to find yourself on the run.”

She’d always been too paralyzed to run. Now… Now she was afraid she was running
away
instead of running
to
. But she mumbled her thanks.

The alchemical Alcatraz was destroyed, the veiled island no one knew existed now gone and the poppets sleeping at the bottom of the lake where no one could control them. The illusion that had hidden the walls failed as the castle burned, exposing the conflagration to anyone who happened to look that way, but the late hour and the low clouds would hopefully limit the witnesses. Anyway, the lake soon swallowed the flames, though the red and gold tongues continued to lash under the dark water. Dragonfire was too powerful to easily extinguish.

Esme suspected that the dragon fever burning in her blood would keep burning too.

Chapter 14

Esme huddled in her plane seat, chilled from the salt spray dampening her clothes.

Didn’t help that for the first time since she could remember, the back of her neck—heck, her whole skull—was exposed. What had she done?

Anjali and Torch had decided to fly back with them, leaving the big sedan with Joel, both as thanks for his help with their impromptu barbecue and in case they needed his pack’s help later. He’d enthused over the sleek vehicle, but he gave Esme a silent nod after he dropped them off at the airfield.

What was she supposed to do with that? What was she supposed to do at all?

The quick flight to Vegas yielded no insights. Didn’t help that it was late and she felt wrung out, her insides as empty as when she used to purge exactly fifteen minutes after every meal. Except back then, she used to at least get a little boost of queasy satisfaction that she was controlling her fate.

Finding herself as a voodoo doll had pretty much ruined that whole illusion of self-determination.

One of Torch’s security men picked them up from the Vegas airfield in a stretch limo. It all felt very familiar, and she realized it seemed the same as when she and her friends had arrived for her alleged bachelorette party, a last girls’-night-out before her marriage to a wealthy society scion.

Now Anjali and Piper were mated, and she was broken…and broke.

When Bale handed her out of the limo—maybe her last limo ride ever—she stared up at the walls of the Keep. It was an illusion too, like Lars’ place, but built for indulgence and diversion. Still, it seemed as unreal as she felt.

Anj brushed past her and murmured, “Get some sleep. I’ll take the ash-hole’s stuff to Piper, and we’ll all talk in the morning, yeah?”

Esme nodded numbly. Did she look like a bobblehead, or was that just her imagination? What happened to puppets when their strings were cut?

She found herself on the private elevator with Bale, the door opening to his cavern.

Oh, so she just let herself be led…

But she gasped when she saw what he’d done.

The columns of living stone still stretched from floor to high above, and the inset gemstones still glimmered like shattered rainbows. But instead of the unrelieved shadows pooling around the rocks, the rich darkness of night poured through the windows that had been revealed going all the way around the cavern. Shards of broken rock still clung around the edges of the glass in melted chunks.

She pivoted slowly. In one direction were the scintillating lights of the Strip, seething with activity. The other way was the wild splendor of the mountains and the desert beyond. Silhouetted between the two extremes, Bale stood like the lord he was.

Well, fuck, he really did have everything, and she was a fool to want less.

“I didn’t think it could be more amazing,” she said.

He ducked his head, almost bashfully. “When you walked out, I, ah, had a moment.”

She gave him a wan smile. “That involved a sledgehammer and a flamethrower apparently.”

“Or one bad-tempered dragon.” He dragged one hand through his hair. “Which I don’t mean to sound like a threat.”

She let out a soft sigh. “I didn’t take it as one.” She set herself on a curving inbound path toward him. “I know what you are, Bale, remember? Noble reyex, beautiful man, strong dragon.” She stopped an arm’s reach from him.

He looked down at her, his dark eyes half hidden by the fall of his lashes. “But?”

“But nothing.” She was the nothing with all the lacking, but that wasn’t his problem. She took the last step remaining between them and reached for his hands. She brought them both to her chest. “Thank you for burning that fetish.” She shivered. “It was…an ugly thing to see myself reduced to that.”

He threaded his fingers through hers. “That wasn’t a true reflection of you.”

True enough to set her hair on fire. Anyway, it didn’t matter if the reflection was true or not, as she’d learned from her years of purging; the mirror would neither kill her nor save her. Only she could do that. But she wasn’t going to argue with him, not tonight.

“You see more for me than I do for myself,” she said quietly. “I want to give that back to you.”

He stiffened. “I don’t want to take anything from you—”

She shook her head, which felt less weird this time, like she was getting used to the loss of her hair already. “Think of it as a gift,” she said. “For the dragon lord who has everything.”

Holding onto his hands, she raised herself up on her toes to kiss him.

He resisted for a heartbeat, his lips closed tight, and she didn’t blame him. The first time, he hadn’t wanted her to see him, but he’d given her pleasure such as she’d never known. This time, she didn’t want him to see her. But she would give him everything she had.

She traced the seam of his mouth, coaxing.

With a harsh exhalation, he slid both hands out of her grasp and gathered her close with a grip anchored on her hips. The bulge of his erection pressing at her belly instantly made her wet, and she moaned breathily.

“I want to hold you,” he rasped. “Now that I have two hands to do it.”

“I want more than that,” she admitted. She lifted her arms above her head. “I want to be naked with you.”

That eliminated his hesitation. He skimmed the mock turtleneck inside out over her head. For once, hair didn’t get all in her face. He crouched at her feet, peeling off her leggings one foot at a time, and she looked down. More hair there now. She touched his black locks.

He looked up. “After what happened today, I thought you’d be too…”

“Freaked out?” she supplied.

He tilted his head into her palm. “Something like that.”

“I was,” she said. “But if I’m not going to let anyone control me anymore, then what better way than to get wild with a dragon-shifter lord?”

His jaw flexed. “Is that what this is? A booty call, prelude to a ghosting?”

“Yes,” she confessed. “But also a light in the darkness. The darkness is in me, but you are my fire, the fever in my blood.”

With a hoarse curse, he surged to his feet and swung her up into his arms in the same motion. Not so long ago, he would not have dared, she thought, doubting the strength of his crippled wing. He wouldn’t have thrown around
booty call
and
ghosting
with such angry ease. Now, nothing would hold him back.