Page 126 of Dream Reaper

“Monsters may look like men—and like elves—but the darkness inside isn’t something you can change.” He released her right arm and caught her chin in his rough hand, forcing her to tilt her head upward and meet his gaze. “You can’t fix us. You can’t control us. You just need to run away.”

She blinked furiously, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. “I won’t. I can’t! It’s my fault he’s here. I can fix him. I can fix you⁠—”

Jerrid yanked her closer, his eyes blazing with a surge of dragon fire. “You can’t fix me!”

Ava’s blood thundered in her veins, a pulse ticking in her temple. “You’re right. I can’t fix you because you aren’t really broken. You’re just confused about what really makes a monster.”

“I’m not⁠—”

A shudder rippled through Ava’s body, so fiercely that it hurt right down to her bones.

Would you two stop? Dragon roared. The real monster is out there!

Ava’s gaze slid past Jerrid’s shoulder to the battle behind them, a battle raging hotter by the moment. He was right. What were they thinking? They were standing around arguing the semantics of dragons versus phoenixes versus nightmare creatures from who knows where?

She yanked free of Jerrid’s hold and tried to dart around him, but he caught her around the waist and swung her away from the battle, away from the danger…

And away from the prince spiraling into an inferno of madness.

CHAPTER 30

JERRID

Jerrid tightened his grip on Ava’s arm as she struggled against him, her mutters growing angrier and more desperate by the minute.

She stomped on his foot with the heel of her boot, but Dragon sensed her intentions and had the good-naturedness to coat the top of Jerrid’s foot in a rippling layer of dragon scales mere seconds before her hard sole slammed down upon him.

Instead of breaking his foot, her boot glanced off the scales, slipped sideways, and landed in the grass.

“Ava, stop! Please!”

She wrenched her left elbow out of his hold and shoved hard against his chest, her teeth bared in a way that made her look wild and feral, like a thing born out of the forest and not from the great elf city with its wooden palace and blue fires.

“I can’t,” she snapped, “and you know it! We have to help him. We can’t just let him die. He came here to help us⁠—”

“If you interfere now, you’ll just get yourself killed.”

“And if we don’t interfere, he will be killed…and then he’ll kill the rest of us as he burns!”

Jerrid ground his teeth together and wanted to spit, At least choose the option where you might survive, at her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate his candor.

Stop, Dragon whispered, so quietly that Jerrid could barely hear him.

“Stop putting yourself in danger unnecessarily. Let me handle this!”

She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You can’t do this without me, and you know it, Jerrid Chrysalis! You need me. Why is that so difficult for you to accept? You and Dragon are stronger with me than you are without me.”

“I don’t feel stronger,” Jerrid snapped, swatting away her finger when she came at him again. “I feel like I’m fracturing into pieces!”

Please stop. Again, that whisper from the back of his mind, so fragile and weak…

“That’s your own fault.” Ava bounced up on her tiptoes, glaring into his face as if her eyes might burn him if she stared hard enough. “You were ripping yourself apart long before I came along. I’ve been trying to put you back together again.”

“Well, you’ve done a fabulous job of it, let me tell you. Your idea of ‘putting together again’ almost killed me.”

“It did not!” she argued and tried to jab him in the chest again, but he swatted away her finger. “It’s your stubborn refusal to work with Dragon that is killing you. Don’t blame me for that!”

Behind them, Prince Haryk shrieked, a chilling, ear-splitting sound that set Jerrid’s teeth on edge and vibrated through his jaw. He peered over Ava’s head as the phoenix and shadow continued to spiral and attack one another, the blue blazing more brightly and the shadows growing intensely deeper…infinitely darker.