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He steps closer, crowding me, challenging me. “What about the rumors?”
His voice is silky now, but I know better than to take it at face value. I’ve pissed him off. “They say you have wiped out entire armies single-handedly. Destroyed empires. Ended dynasties.”
His gaze darkens. “Is that a question?”
“It’s a lot of innocent lives.”
Fury flashes in his dark eyes—nothing more than a tiny flame in the center of his irises. “Yes, my mother would be very proud.”
I ignore his sarcasm and the rage brewing beneath it. “Where is she now?”
“Gone.”
“Gone as in she ran to the store or gone as in…?”
“Gone as in she’s the one whose war crimes put me here in the first place. When they came for me, she ran. Left me to take the fall for her. Every clue I’ve found since then suggests she is no longer living.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” He watches as I process his words. I wonder if he knows I’m thinking about my own parents now. And how much I miss them. “She wasn’t a very good mother,” he adds as if that makes the loss matter less.
“Well, then, I’m sorry for that too,” I say softly.
Something flashes in his gaze. His expression intensifies, but it’s not grief or truth between us anymore. This is desire. The way his eyelids lower and his gaze flicks to my mouth.
He leans forward, and I hold my breath, hating that I have to stop him.
“Legion,” I say, my voice cracking because, in this moment, I actually want to let him touch me. To let him kiss me and claim me and never let go.
At the sound of his name, he jolts, and I can see the moment he remembers himself—and remembers all the reasons he can’t do this. Disappointment turns to a fury that I don’t fully understand.
Before I can figure out what caused the change, he backs away. “I have a meeting.”
“A meeting?” Didn’t he just ask me to go out sightseeing with him today? “Where?”
“What?”
“Where is your meeting?”
When he finally answers, his tone is curt, his expression completely closed off. “At the king’s residence.”
“Oh.”
He doesn’t say anything else before he turns and walks out.
His dark eyes flash with something that is so unexpected I almost miss it. Hurt. The death dragon is hurt. Not angry. The surprise of it leaves me at a loss. The idea that I could possibly have the power to hurt him, that he cares what I think so much, is not something I know what to do with.
I don’t go after him.
Maybe I should, but I have no idea how to heal whatever wound I’ve just opened in him. I’m still standing at the window in his room when I see him stalk through the gardens and onto the launch pad. He shifts, shredding his clothes, before diving off the side of the ledge and vanishing into the sky.
Chapter 23
Tori
An hour later, I’m sitting in the garden, surrounded by rosebushes now blooming black and gray, when I see Legion return. He doesn’t notice me, and after what happened earlier, I decide to keep it that way, ducking out of sight as he stalks through the gardens and into the house. Part of me wants to go after him. To pick a fight. Not because he deserves it but because it’s the only way we’ve connected until now. It’s familiar. Knowing I’ve hurt him is far more uncomfortable than knowing I’ve pissed him off. But I don’t get up.
Soon, the doors open again, and I glance through a gap in the rosebushes to see Legion re-emerging. He’s dressed in pants and a black tee that stretches across his broad chest, showing off his muscled arms. He strides toward the far side of the Keep before disappearing around the side of the estate. I frown, confused. The only thing over there is a steep hillside of thick trees, so I wait, unsure what he could possibly be doing.
