Page 32 of Flames and Blood

He steps up into the compartment, and what I do with the biggest moment of my year is give him instructions.

“The chain anchors to a plate in the floor. It’s solid. The left cuff has slack in it. I’ve been working it loose. Start there.”

He crosses the compartment and reaches for my wrist. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be fine. His hand closes over the left cuff.

Bare fingers. No gloves. His touch firm and certain.

I suck in a breath.

Nobody has touched me without gloves in over a year. His hands are cold, colder than the air in here, and mine are running hot with everything my dragon has just done to me. He notices. I feel him notice in the half beat before his grip settles. There’s a fraction of a pause, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Who sent you?” I look down at where he’s examining the cuff.

“We’ll get to that later.” He turns the cuff a quarter turn and stops, and his head tilts. “Right now we get you out of this box. Everything else comes after.”

He runs a fingertip around my wrist beneath the cuff, and a shiver runs through me.

“Runed,” he mutters, a thumb moving softly over the burns circling my wrist.

“Yeah.” My voice comes out hoarse, and I clear my throat. “All the way through. Not just on the surface. Nothing I’ve tried gets through it.”

He doesn’t say anything. Focuses on the cuff and wrenches at the weak spot. It gives. It also flares. Pain shoots through my wrist and up my arm. I scream before I can stop myself. The smell of burned flesh makes my stomach turn.

He recoils as if he’s been burned too. “Are you okay?”

“Ye-yes,” I manage. “Keep going. It’s breaking.”

He shakes his head. “It’s going to get worse. That’s its job. You’ll lose that hand before the cuff will come off.” He turns his attention to the floor plate. “This is safer.”

From the tone of his voice, this isn’t up for debate.

“How many did you bring?” I ask as I watch him. Muscles bunch and move under his shirt as he hauls on the chain.

“Two.”

“Two men?”

“Two good ones.”

“Against how many out there?” I listen to the shouts outside. There were six in this truck. I’m sure just as many in the other vehicle.

“More than two.”

“Well.” I put my head back against the wall. “That’s not…encouraging.”

He looks up at me, and for a moment, I’m frozen. His eyes aren’t just brown. They’re darker, flecked with something I want to lean in and look at properly. His hands stop for a second on the plate. Then they go back to work, and when he speaks, his voice hasn’t changed at all, which I notice, because everything else about him just did.

“Can you run?” he says without looking up again.

“I can try.” I look down at my legs. “I’ve been locked up so long, I’m not sure my legs remember how to work.”

He grunts in response. The plate doesn’t move. He shifts his grip and puts his shoulder into it, and it still doesn’t move. The runes in the metal glow beneath his hands.

Boots come up the road. More than a few.

He hears it before I do. His head comes round to the open door and back to the chain, and his hands don’t slow down.

“Shit,” I exhale.