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But Ari had learned, the hard way, that fighting for an ideal meant nothing if the people it was meant to benefit died in the process. She was not a proud creature. She was a creature that did what must be done.
Magic that could be used to manipulate the physical world.
It was that power he sought, to change the natural order and challenge the laws of the world.
It had been the Alchemists who developed the first Chimera. The Rivets were the ones who'd soused out the refining process in their steel mills and all the applications for gold. The Revolvers were close behind, eagerly finding further uses in their guns and explosives. It was the Harvesters who supplied them all with their base materials and the Ravens who moved the entire world—people and goods.
The only way arrogance and confidence are similar is that both can get you killed, Arianna.
What had made Arianna into the woman she was. A woman who outclassed Dragon and Fenthri and Chimera alike.
Pantheon above save him, he might care for the woman more than he’d ever bargained for. That brash and unfashionable Wraith had lived up to her word from New Dortam. She had stolen his heart after all. Cvareh looked forward again, grimacing inward. Yes, let the first woman he’d developed any kind of confusing but substantial feelings for be a Fenthri. Not just any Fenthri, but that Fenthri.
He didn’t like this delicate Arianna. He wanted the woman he knew back. He wanted the woman who would challenge him at every turn. Drive him crazy. Push him to the edge that made him want to cling harder and beg for more. He wanted it all. He wanted her to always be at his side, threatening to cut him if he was stupid.
She didn’t push him away, she didn’t scold him, she didn’t reach for her daggers—if she even still had them. Arianna stared up at him, and he stared down at her, holding her face, holding her in the small corner of the world in which they existed. And if he were to exist nowhere else, ever, he would be content.
It was no wonder she’d been able to grow any fondness for the Dragon. She just hadn’t been willing to see it until that exact second.
They were kept sequestered like livestock and expected to produce, yet a mind imprisoned was not a mind that could think great thoughts.
He’d felt the spark too. The scales had tipped, and the subconscious drive that had pushed Arianna to get him to the Alchemists’ Guild now was transferred to him. He was hers. The boon contract had been fulfilled.
