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People only ever saw what they expected, rarely what was actually there.
“If you walk around Old Dortam looking like—” Her head moved up and down as her eyes raked over him. “You, you’re going to cause a scene. Or someone else will harvest you. And then I’m out a Dragon heart as well as a boon.” Cvareh would appreciate it if she’d stop discussing cutting out his heart, but he knew better than to say so.
Ari didn’t remember crossing the room, but she now loomed over the Dragon. He looked up at her and she could almost smell his fearlessness. The man was confident in his ability to beat her, nearly to the point of arrogance. It was almost enough to make her scream. Almost enough to make her throw him down onto the floor and rip off an ear just to show him she could. Just to show him why he should be afraid.
“Ah, Flor, if he wants to point guns at his face, why don’t we let him? It’s not like the shot would kill him. Maybe he should learn the hard way and have to sit around a few weeks like a blob while he grows back part of his brain,” Arianna quipped unhelpfully.
Arianna did not act for herself. She hadn’t taken on Dragon organs for pleasure or self-centered power. She didn’t help Cvareh for his own sake, or to use his boon for personal gains. She’d done it for her mission, for Loom, but most of all for her vengeance.
Adulthood just meant finding the variety of crazy that resonated the most with you and doing it until you died or it killed you—whichever came first.
“Arrogance and confidence are not the same, but both will get you killed.”
Their eyes met and he felt the same urge as he had last time—the want to drown in her.
She lowered her hand, her stare wavering but not breaking. Her eyes challenged him to say something, to move for her again, to do anything. She threatened the same in kind. He could read every twitch of her muscles. She wanted to level the score, to put him in as vulnerable a position as he had just had her. What was equally terrifying and thrilling was in that moment, he would have let her.
There was nothing like this feeling. She had experienced much in her twenty-two years of life. But the sensation of someone stripping her down to an essence that even she couldn’t describe was incomparable to any other situation she had found herself in.
By the time she opened them, she had made up her mind. “Cvareh, have you ever made a Chimera before?”
It wasn’t every day you had the opportunity to meet another gear that fit so well against your own.
But it equally illuminated something else she never expected. Everyone she’d met in her life could be organized into two categories: those who fit in seamlessly, and those who didn’t. She never expected Cvareh to fall in with the former, rather than the latter.
The look she gave him almost made the feeling worse. Did she realize how her eyes pleaded? Was she aware of the softness in the slope of her shoulders, or the way her hand had crept closer to his on the railing? Cvareh instinctively responded in kind, his body language unfurling to meet hers, to face her chest to chest as they had so many times.
Cvareh didn’t know what they had seen. Because this wasn’t the Arianna he knew. At every turn the woman seemed like she was someone different. Every bit of clarity he’d gained into her true nature only served to confound him further.
Don’t let the shadows of the past smother the possibility for a bright future.”
They both half sidestepped in weak attempts at dodges. Claws cut through gray Fenthri skin. Daggers tore through Dragon bone and muscle. And gold exploded on both sides. Where Leona had expected a heart, her fingers landed on something metallic. All training faded in utter confusion as she ran the pads of her fingers over its square shape. She gasped, blood bubbling up her throat from the dagger in her chest. “What are you?” She whispered, staring at the place where her fingers protruded from the other woman’s chest. Gold blood streamed down the Wraith’s garb, identical to Leona’s. She tried
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The woman twisted her dagger, once, twice. She spun it in place, pulverizing Leona’s chest cavity. She felt bone shatter under the blade, sinew stretch and snap against its edge. The Wraith stepped away, reaching for Leona’s chest. She was going to eat her heart. Leona wheezed. She clung to life, clung to her duty. It was the best death a Rider could hope for, a death while serving their King. She clung uselessly and weakly to the woman’s forearm as the White Wraith ripped the remnants of her heart from her chest, bit into it, and ended the life of the King’s Master Rider.
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.
For a woman who looked like she was made of stone and steel, she was soft and warm. She was strong, and yet in that moment seemed so fragile under his hands. He opened his mouth again, letting more blood—more magic—seep into her. 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.
He opened his mouth again and her tongue pressed against his, her mouth moving to fit his hungrily. Her teeth raked against his lip and blood smeared between them. Cvareh’s fingers pressed around the back of her neck, and he almost held his breath. He wanted to stop time for her, with her, so that he could savor her shamelessly for another long moment. But he pulled away, meeting her open eyes—they glowed the color of lavender in the night, heightened by the flood of his magic.
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. “I finally know what you taste like,” she whispered. If she had asked, he would’ve let her have a second chance at the flavor.
yet a mind imprisoned was not a mind that could think great thoughts.
But a soul driven by vengeance was a selfish soul. A soul driven by vision was a generous one—one that bore itself before others and put the needs of the many before the needs of the few.
Oh, Yveun Dono, you make this too easy. He thought he was calling her bluff while she watched him play right into her palms. House Rok certainly hadn’t stayed in power for so long because they possessed the most wit of all the Dragon houses. “Very well. I will gladly go with you. I haven’t seen my brother in far too long.” She smiled easily, flashing her canines. The King stood, furious. “If you are lying, I will kill you.”
“I’m not lying.” “Then lead on, Petra’Oji, and we will see where we stand when the sun falls.” She led without hesitation or concern. She’d stalled the King’s demands for an audience long enough that Lord Agnedi had turned his lucky eye on her. Cvareh had arrived just that morning. And a few hours was plenty of time to hide a glider, position her brother where he needed to be, and mask the curious scent of the Chimera who traveled with him. Petra smiled as she mounted her boco, running her fingers through his feathers. She rose to the sky like a proverbial curtain. The stage was set and the
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