Kiss of a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 1) - Paranormal Fairytale Romance (21 page)

He knew what that meant—and what it said about how he felt. Running off pell-mell to ensure her safety, first from Tytus, and now from whatever twisted games Zephan would play meant Lucian had already lost his heart to her. The consequences of that… he wouldn’t face,
couldn’t
face, not until he had her safely back again.

Between blinks, Zephan and Arabella appeared in the king’s chamber. He must have brought her by way of another door, but the surprise of that was quickly replaced by horror.

Blood.
She was covered in blood.

Lucian stumbled forward, but Zephan held up a hand, and an invisible force slammed into Lucian and threw him backward across the room. He crashed into one of the rock-hard walls of magical ice-energy that comprised the room and fell to the floor. He was instantly up again, seething hot dragonfire leaking from his mouth.

Brokk was laughing under his breath.

Zephan just smirked. “Oh,
do
try that again,” he taunted. “I would love to see how far we can take the game of
Mop the Floor with Lucian
before my father puts an end to it.”

Lucian ignored him, transfixed by the dazed look on Arabella’s face and the bloody condition of her body. Her clothes were torn from the waist down, and her gauzy, nearly see-through shirt not only wasn’t the one she had at the keep, but she’d obviously been cut across the chest and stomach. The diagonal red lines plastered the sheer fabric to her body, leaving a lurid view of her breasts underneath, smeared with blood. There was even a razor-thin cut across her cheek—it wasn’t bleeding any longer, but a smudge of it colored her cheeks. He hadn’t seen blood on a woman’s body since… he forcefully shook his head to keep his thoughts from diving down that black hole. The abyss where at the bottom lay his mate’s dead body.

“What have you done to her?” Lucian croaked.

His words seem to rouse Arabella, and her gaze finally met his. She frowned, those gorgeous green eyes still glazed, as if she was lost deep in her thoughts and troubled by them.

His heart sank.

“Only told her the truth.”

Oh no.
“About what?” His heart spasmed. Did Zephan tell her about Cara? Or the treaty? Both? The lies were so thick and heavy, they were choking Lucian.

“Well, I guess that’s for you to discover,” Zephan sneered. “But as you can see, she’s unharmed, relatively speaking. You can thank Tytus for her wounds… although, I suspect you already have. Clearly, I can’t be held accountable for those.”

“Arabella.”
Lucian’s voice cracked. “Tell me you’re all right.”

Her gaze had dropped to the floor but then found his again. “I’m all right.” But she frowned.

Holy fuck,
what did Zephan do to her? Lucian held out his hand, and it felt as if he were holding his heart in it, offering it up to her to crush in her slender hands. “Come with me. Let’s go home.”

“Home,
is it?” Zephan smirked again. “Well, I guess that’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?” He brushed her hair from where it spilled across her shoulder and turned her to face him. She didn’t fight it, but her gaze stayed trained on Lucian.

His hand still hovered in the air, asking her to take it.

Zephan used a single finger under her chin to direct her gaze to him. He stared deep into her eyes. “What will it be, my sweet young thing? Would you like to stay with me? I promise you won’t regret it. Or would you rather return to the lair of this…” He turned his head to curl a lip at Lucian.
“…beast.”

Arabella sent a tortured look Lucian’s way, searching his face.

She’s hesitating.
It tore into him as if Zephan had lodged magical blades in his chest, and he was slowly twisting them, degree by degree.

“You don’t belong here,” Lucian begged, his hand still out for her.

The frown drew deep and slow across her face. Then she turned back to Zephan. “I want to go home.”

He let out an elaborate, dramatic sigh. “Very well.” But the smirk tugging at his lips made Lucian’s blood run cold. The fae were nothing if not
complex
—lies within lies, always telling the truth, but never revealing their hand. Zephan was playing some kind of game here, and Lucian wasn’t foolish enough to think Arabella’s choice held a losing hand for the dark fae.

Zephan shooed Arabella away, then lifted his chin to Brokk. “As much as I’d love to strand them in the Mojave desert, that might run afoul of that pesky treaty.”

“Perhaps a return to the Drakkon keep?” Brokk smiled. “Not our fault if they tear one another apart.”

“Points for style, but no.” Zephan gave that fake sigh again.

“A return to the perimeter, then?” Brokk asked.

Zephan nodded, turned his back on them, and vanished.

Arabella was back to studying the floor.

Lucian realized his hand was still reaching for her.

He slowly let it drop to his side.

Every time she traveled through a magical door,
Arabella’s stomach lurched.

But when the tall fae from Zephan’s Winter Court escorted them to a rocky ledge on the side of a mountain, depositing her and Lucian there, it wasn’t the thousand foot drop off the edge that had her stomach still twisting in knots long after the fae guard left them.

Lucian stared off into the distance at the House of Smoke, all lit up from within, blazing a warm light that spilled across the night-shrouded mountainside around it. The fae had said something about the perimeter, and they must be near it, or at least inside whatever cloaking magic they used to conceal the House from the world. When Lucian turned to her, the torment and sadness on his face was too much for her to bear. Two parts were warring inside her—the part that wanted to throw her arms around him and take away that pained look, and the part that was terrified of touching him.

What if he were secretly a monster, just as Zephan said? What if he had simply been using her and manipulating her all along? That thought had her stomach doing Olympic-level gymnastics as she second- and triple-guessed herself. When had she
ever
been able to see a man’s lies and manipulations before it was too late? That familiar distrust of her own instincts was a poison rivaling the idea that Lucian had torn apart his own mate to get at the dragonling spawn he needed to survive.

“Let me take you to the keep,” Lucian said softly, his dark eyes flashing a glimmer of the golden dragon inside him. “You can decide what you want to do from there.” The pain on his face was too much. She didn’t care if it was past midnight. She didn’t care if they were standing on a cold, rocky ledge in the middle of the mountains. She had to ask him.
Now.

“I need to know why you did it.”

His wince was so painful to watch, Arabella felt like something physical was actually spearing through her.

Lucian dropped his gaze to the dirt at her feet. “Why I did what?” His voice was a whisper.

That soft question angered her. The heat of it welled up and mixed with her fear, and she threw the combination into biting words directed squarely at him. “Why did you kill your mate with your bare hands?” A sob followed the words on their way out of her mouth.
Why? Why couldn’t you be the dream man I thought you were?
That was the question she really wanted to ask.

He wasn’t answering her. Wasn’t moving. Just stared at the ground. It took her a moment to realize his fists had turned to talons and were clenching and unclenching.

A shot of terror struck her heart. She was alone with him. On a rocky ledge in the middle of nowhere. He could kill her in an instant, toss her over the side, and no one would ever find her body. She backed up, breath catching in her throat, but there was really nowhere to go—her body was quickly plastered against the stony wall of the mountain.

Her motion made him look up.

Tears were streaming down his face.

She gasped in a breath, and all her fear fled, even before he spoke.

“I loved her.” Tears dripped off his chin. “So very much.” His hands returned to human and hung limply at his sides.

Her heart was both breaking and swelling at once.

“She begged me to…” He seemed to be trying to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. He looked away, peering over the edge of the ledge, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he might simply step off. Of course, he could
fly
—he was a
dragon
—but
flying
wasn’t what was written on his face.
Pain. Despair. Agony.
If those runes that scrawled across his arms could spell out what was happening inside this beautiful man, Arabella was sure that’s what they would say.

He spoke to the gaping darkness below the ledge. “She begged me to save our child. She was sealed with dragonfire, made immortal and impervious to any normal scalpel or blade or anything short of dragon talons.” He turned to Arabella with eyes glistening in the moonlight.
“My
dragonfire sealed her.
My
talons ripped her apart. Our baby was dying, and he was burning his way out of her. I tried to save her by saving him and ended up killing them both.”

Her heart cried out for her to go to him. To believe his words and kiss away his pain. She hesitated only a moment, but then she realized—no man in the world could fake this. No man
would.
There was no excuse-making, no manipulation, just raw pain that she wanted to smother with her love.

She shoved away from the mountain wall and hurried over to him.

He stared at her fast approach and caught her shoulders, holding her away from him. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked, incredulous. “I killed my mate.”

“I heard.” She worked her hands up to hold his face with her two hands. She peered into his eyes. “I heard a story about a man with a horrible choice. A choice that broke him. You’re not to blame for that. You’re not to blame for any of it, Lucian.”

He blinked and stared at her. “I chose her for a mate.”

“And she chose
you,
didn’t she?”

He cringed, uncertainty pulling at the corners of his eyes. “She did.” He paused. “And I shouldn’t have allowed it.” Then he stepped back, pulling away from her, a scowl darkening his face. “Come with me.”

Before she could reply, he shifted into his dragon and bowed before her, beckoning her to climb aboard his glistening golden form. He was beautiful and powerful and glowing in the moonlight. She wouldn’t have said
no
under any normal circumstances, but especially not now—not on the cusp of him facing this dark secret he’d carried for so long. This horrible guilt for something that wasn’t his fault. She recognized it, saw it every day in her clients, her best friend, her mirror… that kind of guilt, trying to own something terrible that happened, as if owning it meant you could prevent it from happening again. That was a poison that would eat you alive.

If she knew nothing else, she knew
that.

Arabella practically leaped across the few feet between them and scrambled up on the warm, silky smoothness of his scales. Her feet were barely braced against the edge of his wings before he swooped into the air and banked toward the keep.

He was taking her to his lair.

And then she would show him exactly how she felt.

The feel of Arabella on his back
was a form of torture.

A sweet, hot, insanely sexy torture.

It was the perfect distraction from the insanity going on inside his head. This woman—
this woman
—was more than anything he deserved. In fact, he should run the hell away from her as quickly as possible because the chances of him resisting her were dropping by the second.

He told her.
He’d cracked open his chest and showed her everything broken and wrong about him, every reason she should run in the opposite direction, and she’d run across a steep mountain ledge to throw her arms around him. To
comfort
him, for fuck’s sake.

There was no more deadly strike she could have made directly to his heart.

He would take her back to his lair… and then he would send her packing. He could barely talk about what had happened to Cara. It had been years—decades, really—and the words coming out of his mouth had brought it all back. The darkness that threatened to take him down. The inescapable pain. There was no possible way he could go through all of it again.