“Tell me the dragon’s name,” Cassandra whispered.
Then closed her eyes, grasped the Koenig’s hand, and let the memory wash over her.
Aedelmar had failed.
He’dutterlyfailed.
How could he have been so stupid? To leave her here alone while he and his men had rushed to save that village? He should have known it was a trap from the moment that messenger had arrived.
But his warriors were spoiling for a fight after a week of unexpected calm in this on-going war against Leonin Erabis’s Imperial designs.
Aedelmar’s own clan—the Cynn Drakan—was the last hold-out in the northwest continent. And they would not be as easily taken as the others.
Though his certainty faltered as Arran Zephyrus paced before him. Aedelmar knelt on the floor, held up by two of Arran’s soldiers. His jaw ached, his ribs smarted, and a trickleof blood ran down his chest where they’d slashed him with his own Typhon dagger.
He wanted to rip from their grasp and shred the room to pieces. But he didn’t dare.
Not when two of Arran’s other males were holding Priya at knifepoint on the bed. Terror brightened her eyes, but she kept perfectly still. Didn’t cry or beg or wail for her freedom.
Creator, she was so brave. One of the many reasons he’d chosen her as his mate.
His clan had been against their coupling in the beginning. Wanted a Windrider for their queen. But Priya, a bear bi-form, had won them over with her skilled hunting, her shrewd mind, her bawdy sense of humor. Plus her ability to drink every single one of his clansmales under the table. He was quite sure a number of them were just as hopelessly in love with her as he was.
She’d helped him hold the Cynn Drakan together during these past months of battle with the conquerors. They had argued bitterly about her marching into battle alongside him. He didNOTwant her putting herself in danger. One of them needed to survive.
He almost laughed at the irony now. The danger had come for her anyway. Right into their marriage bed.
“So,” Arran drawled, his braided copper hair glinting in the moonlight, “it seems we are at an impasse.”
Aedelmar grunted, and a soldier grabbed his bruised jaw and forced his chin up.
Arran plucked a small flute from his pocket, barely larger than a finger, and made a show of examining it. “Do you know how many times I have used this? Take a guess.”
Aedelmar said nothing, and the soldier dug a finger into an open gash beneath his ribs. He hissed in pain, Priya snarlingfrom the bed. “Answer him,” the soldier growled, twisting his finger into the wound.
Aedelmar released a pained laugh, tasting blood on his tongue. “You could blow it ten thousand times and she would never come to you.”
Arran nodded, flattening his lips. “You’d think I would have learned after the fiftieth or even the hundredth try that it wasn’t going to work. But, what’s that saying?” Arran directed the question to the soldier on Aedelmar’s right, the one whose finger still gouged his side.
The soldier answered immediately, a pet wanting to please his master. “Hope springs eternal.”
Arran snapped. “That’s the one. Hope springs eternal. Yes, it certainly does.” Arran’s flinty steel eyes clapped onto Aedelmar’s. “But not for you, I’m afraid.” The two soldiers dragged Priya from the bed, then forced her to kneel beside her husband.
She turned to him, her pleading gaze begging him not to give in. She was a fool if she thought he had a choice. If the cost of her survival was his life, then he’d pay it a thousand times over.
“Yourhopeends, but I will offer you one last piece of agency,” Arran said, his dusty brown boots clacking across the floorboards. “Tell me the creature’s name, and you will be the only one who dies tonight. Refuse, and I’ll kill your mate instead.”
Creator bless her, Priya steeled her shoulders and spat at Arran’s feet. “He’llnevergive it to you.”
Arran tapped a finger against his lips, his gaze trained on Aedelmar. “There are other ways I could wrench it from you, you know. Slowly and painfully, one strip of skin at a time. But that would require time that I do not have.” Arran nodded athis soldiers and the tips of Typhon daggers appeared at both Aedelmar and Priya’s hearts.
Priya strained against the soldiers’ grips. As if trying to tear her hands away to protecthim.
It shattered his resolve.
“Stop,” he whispered, “I’ll tell you.”
“No!” Priya shouted, agonized. “Do you really think thismonsterwill treat the Cynn Drakan honorably? If we lose her, our way of life is over. There will be no coming back from this. If you damn our people to save me, I willneverforgive you.”
