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“I don’t know.” She waved a hand in his direction. “Something not quite this … dangerous looking.”
“You see the real me, not the projection. Like Risa. That is odd.”
What was odd was how sweetly my name seemed to roll off his tongue. Damn it, no. He was a reaper. I wasn’t attracted. No way, no how. I scrambled to my feet and put some distance between us before turning around.
“You have a reaper at your beck and call, and a goddamn dragon attached to your arm,” Ilianna muttered. “The day cannot get any weirder.”
With that, she left, closing the door behind her.
Azriel’s gaze met mine, his expression as unreadable as ever. “I believe you called?”
I nodded and shoved my arm toward him. “Do you know anything about this?”
He muttered something under his breath—the words musical despite my suspicion he was actually swearing—then stalked forward and grabbed my hand, his touch light but his flesh hot against mine. He studied the dragon for several seconds, giving little away despite the tension practically humming through his body.
“Where did you get this?” His mismatched blue gaze jumped to mine. “Tell me, immediately.”
“It was sent to me.”
“Where is the book it came in?”
I raised an eyebrow. “On the dresser.”
He walked around me and picked up the book, quickly flipping to the inscription page.
“You can read that?” I asked.
He glanced at me briefly. “Yes.”
“What does it say?”
He hesitated. “It is an incantation, set to release the Dušan the moment you touched the inking.”
“Does it say why I was given this thing?”
“No.” He snapped the book closed and dropped it back onto the dresser. “But their usual purpose is to protect the wearer when they are walking the gray fields or commuting the portals.”
“Given I don’t do one very often and the other never, what’s the point of giving one to me?”
“That I do not know.” He frowned and walked back. He touched my fingers again, lifting my arm gently. Violet fire rippled down the Dušan’s bright scales, and the obsidian eyes gleamed with awareness. Reacting to the touch, or the power of the man behind it? “It is an extremely strong one, though. Whoever made thi
s for you knew what they were doing.”
I stared at him for a moment, my mouth suddenly dry. “This was made for me? Specifically for me?”
“Yes. There are few left capable of making a Dušan such as this.” His gaze met mine again. “I suspect your father might be one of them.”
“But if the Dušan was made for me, how come that book is so old?”
He shrugged. “Modern paper does not hold magic as well.”
“So why in the hell would he even make one for me?” I ripped my fingers from his and stalked across the room, stopping at the window and crossing my arms. The traffic on the street below was a blur, muted by the electrochromic windows, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t really looking at it, anyway. “Damn it, tell me what’s really going on, Azriel! Why would he contact me—in any way—after all this time?”
“Because you are his daughter.”
He said it like that was a complete and obvious answer. I swung around to face him. “A daughter he hasn’t bothered seeing for twenty-eight and a half years.”
He made a short, elegant movement with his hand. His fingers were long, I noticed absently. Long and strong. “That is but a heartbeat in the life span of an Aedh.”
