Adrissu started to answer, but a sudden, painful awareness of another dragon made him shudder. A dragon was approaching from the northeast, and rapidly. It must have been Tyrsun, he thought angrily, biting down the panic that was bubbling in his chest. He had to get away from here.
“Yes, that’s fine,” he stammered, turning aside. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just realized, I left my coin purse at the tavern. Let me go get it. I’ll come right back, I’m sorry, how foolish of me—”
“Oh, that’s alright,” the first man said affably, completely unaware of the imminent danger approaching them. “Here, let me show you the exit. I’ll get an order form started for you, so you can just fill out the details when you get back.”
Adrissu followed him back to the door that they had come through, internally seething at his comfortable pace. Once they were back in the showroom, Adrissu hurried for the door, nodding and agreeing absently as the man pulled out a sheet of parchment from the desk. But he was out the door before the man could even finish his sentence, calling out behind him, “I’ll be right back.”
The sky was clear when he looked up, but he could still sense Tyrsun getting closer. Adrissu was on the western side of town, so Tyrsun wouldn’t be anywhere near him when he flew over the city, at least. But still, Adrissu couldn’t risk being seen. He hesitated for a moment on the street, then hurried through the alleyway and behind the building, heading south to get as far away from the dragon as he could.
It was barely a minute later that he heard first a warning horn, then distant shouts—then the unmistakable roar of a dragon. Adrissu winced and pressed himself closer to the building he was slinking past, every instinct in him desperate to get away from the other dragon, to flee its territory as quickly as he could.
“I know you’re here!” he could just make out the dragon shouting, anger rumbling through his voice. “You think I wouldn’t sense you inmyterritory? You think I wouldn’t know that you’re here? Hiding like a human—coward!”
Adrissu remained motionless, waiting for the dragon to draw closer. It was only a matter of time before he was found—still he could sense Tyrsun circling the city, drawing closer with each pass—and then he heard the heavy flapping of wings and knew that he was close. A shadow passed over the sunlight that was streaming down through the alley, and Adrissu flinched, but it was too small to be the dragon.
He looked up toward the rooftop, seeing a silhouetted figure standing above him, and it felt like his heart stopped. He couldn’t make out the man’s features, but everything within him felt pulled toward the person, hismate.
Adrissu stood stunned, motionless for a heartbeat that felt like minutes, then a shadow passed over them both. The hulking red form landed heavily on a rooftop on the opposite side of the alley as his mate, ignoring the other figure as his burning yellow eyes turned toward Adrissu. His vibrant face split into a cruel grin that showed his rows and rows of pearly, razor-sharp teeth.
“Found you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Adrissuhadneverbeenso at a loss for words in his life. His mate wasthere,maybe peering down at him, maybe focused entirely on the dragon—he had no idea what he was going to do. He wanted to reach for his mate, protect him from Tyrsun’s terrifying visage, yet the red focused only on Adrissu. He wanted to show his submission to the other dragon, as was custom when in another’s territory, but he knew that Tyrsun was unpredictable at best, and might take that opportunity to cause him true harm.
Instead, he held his hands up in a display of non-aggression.
“I have no ill intent toward you,” he said, his voice trembling even to his own ears. “Please accept my sincere apology. I was friends with your parents—Heriel the Red, and Naydruun the Blue.”
Tyrsun seemed to hesitate at that, his yellow eyes narrowing suspiciously. Adrissu did not expect that to move him, though. The red leaned even closer to him, embers flickering in his mouth.
“You are no friend of mine,” he hissed. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”
“I’ll leave right now,” Adrissu continued, but a strange mechanical sound from above interrupted him. He and Tyrsun looked up at the same time—the dragon snarled, but Adrissu still couldn’t quite make out exactly what was happening.
The weapon, Adrissu realized; and without being able to truly think about what he was doing, he reached out with his magic and shoved his mate just as a loudbangexploded through the alleyway. Several things happened all at once. Light and steam burst from a long, narrow rod that the figure held in both hands; and at almost the same instant, a second rush of magic sent the steam flying away from his face and body—the wards Ned had mentioned. Tyrsun let out a hideous shriek, pain and rage roiling off him; and when Adrissu looked, the segment of his wing that was closest to his shoulder had been torn to shreds, gushing blood down his body.
Above, his mate staggered with the force that had changed his trajectory and tumbled from the rooftop. With a shout, Adrissu reached out with his magic again to try to break his fall.
The elf tumbled down next to him, though he kept a tight grip on the weapon even as he fell. Adrissu only had an instant to look for injuries, marking his mate’s fair skin and dark hair on a body that was nearly as tall as his own, before Tyrsun swiped at them both with his claws, howling in agony.
“I’ll kill you!” he roared, light spilling from between his teeth.
They had to get away. Adrissu threw himself to the ground beside his mate, grabbing his wrist with one hand and snapping his fingers with the other. The surrounding air lurched as he teleported them, as far away as he could manage, far enough that Tyrsun could not sense where they were. The light around them warped and shifted, and as all the energy drained from Adrissu’s body, they were no longer in the alley.
He brought them to a small clearing in the forest that surrounded Wintergrove: the place where he had touched down several miles from the city itself. He had never teleported himself so far before, and as his mate stumbled to his feet, Adrissu could only roll over with a groan. His limbs felt impossibly heavy and his head swam, unable to tell which way was up, until his mate entered his line of vision, peering down at him from above.
“Why didn’t you let me kill him?” the other man snapped, and the icy rage in his voice pulled Adrissu’s attention back. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position, but something pressed against his chest—the weapon, he realized with a hot surge of fear. It was long and narrow, much more narrow than the broad augmented crossbow that he had seen once before, with a polished wooden handle housing a heavy trigger. The metal was fastened to a thick, flexible tube on the end closest to his mate, and Adrissu’s eyes followed to where it connected to a strange, square device on his hip. That must have been where the steam was generated, he thought, which was certainly an improvement to Kipp’s design with its heavy canister affixed to the crossbow’s handle.
“We need him alive,” Adrissu panted, forcing himself to look away from the weapon and into the face of his mate.
He realized with a somewhat pleased jolt of surprise that the other man was an elf, exceedingly beautiful in that otherworldly way, despite the sour expression on his face. His eyes were a brown so light that they appeared golden, and his hair was raven-dark, pulled into a long, loose braid that flowed over his right shoulder down almost to his waist.
“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t have killed you both,” the elf pressed.
“Kill me, then,” Adrissu groaned, letting his head tip back. He felt like he had fallen from the top of his tower—silently, he resolved to never again try teleportation at such a distance—so he couldn’t fight his mate off, even if he wanted to. “You know what I am. Who I am. You wouldn’t be rid of me for long.”
He felt more than heard the elf above him spit in indignation. For a long moment, both were silent, then slowly Adrissu risked lifting his head again, opening one eye to peer up at the other man. He was looking down pensively at him, a bitter expression on his face. Then, finally, he sighed, looked away, and lifted the weapon away from Adrissu’s chest.
