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Nyxaris had tried to warn me; through Florence, he’d told me what might happen. What it meant to do this. But there was no warning that could have fully prepared me for experiencing this myself.

I crossed Blake’s walls—he really hadn’t even tried to keep me out. He was too weak to put up his thrallguard defenses. Immediately I felt a different presence. Not Blake, someone else. Angry and red and terrible: Vorago. He was fury and flame, coiled inside Blake like a foul infection in a rotting wound.

I walked toward him, ignoring the pain he flung at me in a wave. He lashed out with his tail. I jumped easily around it. He was too weak to try again. I studied the dragon that had taken Blake. He was weak, but his fury was still so vast it was almost incomprehensible. Nyxaris was right: at some point, Vorago had ceased being a dragon. He’d become a demon of rage and fire. He ought to have taken the way out Blake had offered when he’d had the chance. It might have been more merciful than what I was about to do to him.

You are too late, Vorago snarled. If I die, the boy will die with me. I am all that holds the pathetic pieces of his mind together.

You’re wrong. I tried to keep my voice steady, but secretly I was terrified he might be right.

Vorago laughed. You used the Duskdrake’s blood. You have sealed both our deaths.

No, I said confidently. I haven’t sealed Blake’s death. I’ve severed you. I lifted my hands. “Neville!”

The world shifted. The fluffin was by my side, as if he’d always been there. He was small and glowing like a star, and unlike me, he was utterly unafraid. He barked once—sharp and self-assured.

And Vorago … died. Not with a scream or a struggle but with a whimper like a child might make. He had no soul left to save. He was simply snuffed out in a burst of light. The last traces of his fury collapsed and vanished.

Distantly I could hear Blake screaming. I didn’t turn toward the sound or look away. Instead, I watched Neville—this wasn’t over yet. The fluffin padded forward through the space of Blake’s mind, his nose low to the ground, his tail flicking as if following a scent only he could discern. He moved purposefully, searching for something.

And then I felt it, too. Another presence, but not Vorago, nor the boy Blake had once been or the man he had forced himself to become. This was both Blake and not Blake. This was pure dragon.

Blake’s true dragon lay hidden deep within him, starved and wounded and scared. It was furious—but in a different way than Vorago had been. This was the part Blake loathed about himself, the part he’d tried to bury and deny. The part that rejected the power and hunger that he knew embracing his dragon would bring. In seeing Blake’s dragon I saw the truth. I saw the darkness in him. Not the corruption Vorago had infected him with and which was gone now. This was the raw, terrifying will to violence Blake had always carried within him, passed on through his bloodline from generation to generation. The part of him that was willing to burn cities and shatter worlds, to kill if it meant keeping what he most treasured safe.

If it meant keeping me safe. This was love, yes, but twisted into something dark and dangerous.

Neville saw what I saw. He reached the coiled dragon, but he did not command. Nor did he fight. Instead, he sang. His small body glowed, and his voice lifted in a soft melodic trill as he accepted and took in both sides of Blake’s spirit, the split halves of his soul, gently urging them to reconcile. As he sang he healed, stitching dragon to man, raw anger to conscience.

But as Blake’s soul began to knit, something else began to fade. A frost crept inward, stealing away the boy who smirked. The boy who bled. The boy who loved me desperately and fiercely and with no regard for himself.

I pulled back, retreating up and out, ripping myself free of Blake’s mind with a gasp that tasted of blood and grief. The cavern around me slammed back into existence—and Neville sang on, tireless and pure, glowing like a firefly. Beneath me, Blake’s body was too cold, too still, his breath barely there. I yanked the dagger free from his chest and pressed it to my wrist. Blood welled up instantly, dark and hot, spilling over my palm. I lifted my wrist to Blake’s mouth.

Blake’s eyelashes fluttered as the blood spilled down his chin. He sputtered, gasped.

“Drink,” I cried, as at the same moment I leaned down and sank my teeth into his neck. I didn’t have fangs, but my teeth were sharp enough. The taste of him flooded into me. Iron and fire. I gasped against his skin, my fingers clawing into his shoulder. As his blood filled my mouth, the bond snapped tight between us, a current that rushed both ways at once, blazing awake.

Chapter 22

BLAKE

Like I said, it was a miracle, really, that Pendragon hadn’t killed me before this.

I remembered that day back in the library when she’d once teased me about doing it then and there. I’d still been with Regan then. I remembered holding her hand, pretending to be happy, all with the hope of getting a rise out of Pendragon. I’d been so desperate to make her jealous when the truth was even then she was the only one I wanted. She was the one I could never make myself stay away from. Me, the moth. Her, the flame. It all felt so long ago.

I remembered watching Pendragon in the Consort Games.Watching her struggle but survive—thanks to the power of my blood.

I remembered her lying under me in my bed. Her naked and me so fucking terrified of destroying the moment. I’d traced her freckles. I’d felt her shudder as she came.

I remembered when I’d almost fucking killed her.

That’s how I’d gotten to this point in the first place. She’d nearly died and I’d … I’d had enough. Anything had seemed better than that. Anything. And now—now here I was. But so was she.

I came back to myself in fragments at first. I felt sensation. There was heat. Pressure. Sound, or at least the absence of it. The fluffin had stopped singing. Dimly, I felt the little creature lift from my chest. Then he was gone.

The sweet taste of blood trickling down my throat hit me like a crash of thunder, power sweeping through me like a jolt of lightning. My heart lurched into a rhythm that felt much too fast—as if trying to remember what life was.

I tasted her.

I opened my eyes. Pendragon’s wrist was pressed to my lips, her blood rich on my tongue, intoxicating and heady. I made a ragged sound of protest, tried to pull back, panic flaring. This was wrong. I couldn’t hurt her again. I wouldn’t.