“Invading our world with a hundred dragons instead of thousands… that’s a different scale,” I mutter, as Esme clings to Dayn. “No pun intended.”
“I just freed you from your brother’s grip!” she snaps. “And now you want to go back to another? Haven’t you been imprisoned long enough—first at Heathborne, and now here, in your own home?!”
Dayn's chest rises with a slow, deliberate breath. The tunnel walls seem to tremble, barely perceptible, but I catch it. Something radiates from him in waves that make my skin prickle.
“If I don't try to stop this now, while there’s still a fighting chance… you’ll regret it. I assure you.”
His hands find Esme’s throat, thumbs tracing the line of her jaw, like she's made of porcelain instead of murder and magic. “I'll buy you both time to escape. But you need distance from me, Esme. As much as possible.”
“Wait—”
And there it is—the classic shut-up kiss. Because apparently when you're a thousand-year-old dragon, you never learned to just say “please be quiet.”
I should look away from this PDA nightmare, but it's like watching a nature documentary where the deadly viper suddenly starts purring. Esme “I'll-gut-you-with-my-shadow-blade” Salem is practically pudding in his hands. If my eyes could take photos, this would be prime blackmail material.
Then—poof—he's gone before I can even get a word in.
“Hold on—” I'm literally talking to dust motes now. Typical dragon. All dramatic exit, no practical details.
Esme stands frozen, fingertips hovering near her lips. I grab her shoulder and shake.
“Esme.”
“What?” Her eyes refocus slowly.
“Your dragon ghosted.”
“Typical,” she mutters, then straightens, something hardening in her expression. “We're following him.”
I open my mouth to protest. “But he just told us?—”
“To hell with what he told us.” Esme's eyes flash dangerously, her fingers curling into claws at her sides. “I've followed him into blood bonds, addiction, abduction, near-execution, and a godsdamned wedding. I'm through taking orders.”
Before I can argue, darkness envelops us both as her shadow cloak materializes, and I brace myself for impact and regret.
37
DAYN
The memory of her kiss still lingers on my lips, the taste of her still coating my tongue—cinnamon and darkness and that indefinable essence that is purely Esme.
Her scent drifts to me. They’re right on my heels. Of course they are; I’d expect nothing less from her.
“Not this time,” I whisper, and I burst through the service door at the far end of the palace’s back quarters. It is now too dangerous for her to remain here.
I thunder past startled servants and disoriented guards, everything blurring around me. With a single, sharp inhalation, I shed my clothes. In the center of the stone garden, my dragon form explodes into being. Statues crumble beneath my hind claws. The city’s screams tear at the air as I stand vast and black and furious—too enormous for Draethys’s walls to hold much longer.
Below me, palace guards scramble, helpless to flank me without collapsing the ceiling. They’ve never even glimpsed the sky, let alone faced an ancient dragon like me or any of my brothers.
Amid the pandemonium, my eyes lock on the faint runes carved into the eastern wall—the ward meant to suppress blood magic. Without hesitation, I part my jaws, fire roaring up my throat with the fury of countless generations.
I incinerate the warding. The stone blackens; metal veins melt; the runes flicker and die.
“Dayn!” I hear Esme’s voice from below.
Her voice draws me like a beacon. There she stands with her sister across from the palace's eastern wing, half-hidden amid the chaos I've created. The panicked crowd rushes past them, eyes fixed on the massive black dragon with molten gold eyes—on me—rather than two darkblood witches in their midst.
“Leave.”I growl, a sound that rumbles from me like distant thunder. I thrust the word at her mentally. A full release of her blood magic ensures she has the easiest chance of escape.
