“Kade, you can’t go there!” she was saying, studying his eyes as though they might pop out of his head.
He blinked, wobbling on his feet. “Me. It was me sneaking up on you. With a knife!” He held out his arm. “My dagger. What the hell, Vee?” He gestured to his head. “This happened because I was trying to hurt you, didn’t it? I tried to attack you, your brothers beat me…” Nothing more came.
“You’re trying to make sense of things that aren’t going to make sense to you right now. Listen to me. We play…games. Sexy games. Like the mud wrestling. Sneak attacks. That’s all it was.”
She was lying to him. He knew it, felt it. She wouldn’t have been crying if they were playing sex games.
He pulled her hand closer, looking at a delicate gold wire and stone ring that wasn’t a wedding ring, and then released it and went into the living area. “No pictures of us or our wedding.” He went down the hall to their bedroom and snapped the light on in the closet. “No men’s clothing.” A dress. He remembered the little girl’s dress though. Confusion pounded in his head. She’d followed him in, now gripping the doorframe, her eyes wide. “We’re not married, are we? It was a lie to…what?”
“Keep you sane, Kade. It was a lie to keep you sane.” She choked on a sob, clutching at her upper chest. “If you go to the real memories, you will go insane. You might hurt yourself. Or me. I broke into the Guard prison to save you. Me, Mia, my brothers. We took a huge risk, but we did it.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “I will not lose you now.”
“She’s still lying to you, Kavanaugh.”
They both spun to find Ferro standing behind Violet. She screamed and stumbled away, Catalyzing instantly.
Ferro kept an eye on her as he faced Kade. “You’re right. You are not married to her. As a Vega, marriage is frowned upon. You were assigned to terminate her. Then you lost your memory, and she’s playing you. She’s a very dangerous person. You must take her out.”
The shard that contained the memory of him sneaking up behind her trembled, reverberating in his brain, and fell with a shattering crash. He clutched his head, groaning in pain as he sank to his knees. He got a glimmer of another shard, of Ferro…
“Kade!” Violet screamed.
He bounded to his feet, watching Ferro’s Dragon smash her bed and shove Violet through the window.
Ferro followed through the broken opening, his claws gripping her throat. “You will die,” he gritted out as they landed on the ground.
Kade launched himself out the window too, cutting his hand on the broken glass. Shards, like his memories. He instinctively started to jump into the fight…except he didn’t know what side to fight on. Violet, who lied? Who was a Guard target? His target. He must follow through on his orders.
Violet used her strong legs to shove Ferro off her. He rolled but instantly got to his feet. Violet was on hers, too. Blood dripped down her deep amethyst scales. Her wing was crumpled, probably enough to render her flightless. Ferro sent a stream of black mist at her, and it wrapped around her throat and dragged her toward him. She clawed at it, digging her feet into the ground and leaning her weight back.
Kade started to move up behind her but froze. He knew this feeling. He focused on the shard that had fallen, and it felt as though it were cutting right into his brain with its sharp edges. He could see all of them now, thousands of shards with a sliver of a memory in them. His boat. Mia as a child bawling over their father’s death. How Kade thought he should cry too but couldn’t. So many to search through.
“Kavanaugh, get her!” Ferro commanded.
The command brought him back to present, to Violet running away. Kade jerked into motion, tackling her. As a human, his size was nowhere near enough to stop her. He felt his dagger fill his hand, crackling with magick. Yes, that felt right.
She turned as he lifted his dagger, the point aimed at the kill spot just beneath her chin. All he had to do was drive it up into her brain.
“No, Kade, please!” She shook him off as the point touched the tender area, and he hit the ground and rolled. His body knew what to do, at least, using the momentum to get him back on his feet.
Ferro barreled toward a tree, but Kade couldn’t see Violet. His gaze went higher, and there she was, naked and human, climbing a large oak tree like a damned Fire Elemental. He saw the rope, and another memory flickered through his mind: Jessup swinging from one of those ropes and knocking him unconscious. Another memory that corroborated what Ferro had told him and contradicted her version.
She clutched the rope, ready to either assault Ferro or get away. Kade sent a bolt of magick at the rope, severing it the moment she started to swing down. She screamed as she fell, hitting the ground hard.
Finally, this was almost over. So why didn’t he feel triumphant? Ferro raced over, throwing a “nice job” his way.
Violet Catalyzed and struggled to get up, but Ferro pinned her with his body. His tail swished in the dirt, something Kade had seen Dragons do when they were about to go for the kill. Like a cat when it was ready to pounce. His dark wings stretched out on either side of him, the sign of an ecstatic or triumphant Dragon.
He remembered that.
“Kade, go,” she said, her eyes pleading with him. “He’s going to kill you, too.”
He’s a bad, bad man.
He saw a shard of a white room, of Ferro standing nearby. He tried to hold onto it, but it fell away. All he had was what he knew. Violet had lied, Ferro was his commander, and he was Vega. He followed commands. He killed when necessary.
“She’s trying to play you,” Ferro said. “Just like she’s been playing you since you got here.” Ferro turned back to Violet, leaning close to her face. “You have caused me much trouble. Cost me a lot.” He flicked a glance at Kade. “And now I am going to have the pleasure of killing you while I look in your eyes and taste your fear and sorrow.” Ferro extended one curved claw, nearly three inches long, and aimed for her kill zone. He brought it down slowly, torturously.
Everything Kade knew fled, leaving only what he felt for that Dragon on the ground. The woman she was. Shards reflected memories of holding her in bed. Her Breathing into him, healing him. His need for her, so raw and real. And even now, after he’d attacked her, she was warning him to get away.
