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But finally Visaruth holds up a hand as her other fingers dance across a plasma display.
And suddenly a door opens.
It’s so deafening inside the room the door has opened to, I can barely hear a thing. Draci fill the space and Visaruth pushes me inside. I turn, not ready to just be shoved into the middle of whatever action this is, but the door is already sliding shut behind me, becoming part of the wall. She’s gotten me here, but now I am all on my own. Great.
No one notices me, though. All eyes are glued on the two figures sparring in the center of the large circular room that seems like it was made to be an arena.
And there is First, my First, being pinned on his back by the horrible Commander X while cheers roar all around the arena room.
Twenty-Three
FIRST
This is not how it ends.
Not after all that I have done to be here.
Not after believing the worst of my beloved, flying for two hours without ceasing to my half-brother’s palace compound.
I landed in the center of his courtyard and immediately was surrounded by his soldiers. It was a foolish move, but all I could think of was getting my mate back.
My brother’s soldiers did not fight me in the old and honorable ways. They threw a net over me like I was a rabid dog.
I attacked them with my hottest Draconis fire, but they had backed away, and the steel net was fireproof. Instead, a system was rigged to pull the net ever tighter until I was caught as secure as any vizzeksbeast back on Draci.
It was humiliating, not least of all when I imagined my mate looking upon the father of her kits so.
Except that when finally my brother came out to me and spoke, he was confounded by my demands that he produce my mate. At first, I thought he goaded me to torture me. But when his mate flew from the palace demanding to know where I had stowed her best friend, the truth of the matter struck me.
My mate had not flown from me at all nor tried to contact her friend. Shak had not rescued her nor taken the shuttle.
No, the missing shuttle could only be explained one way—it was my own co-conspirators who had betrayed me. Of course they had. Ximena never had much use for me in the first place. If she had my offspring, why, then, there was no need for me at all.
I have studied war. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So I made my brother an offer. One which he was only too ready to accept, with his mate there squawking in his ear about Giselle. Her interest, at least, we had in common.
And, of course, King Shak, ruler of all Draci, had a shuttle at the ready.
Now, as I look up into the burning eyes of Ximena, a Draci a generation younger than my mother but a generation older than me, her ambition gleaming in her eye along with her glee at besting me, I grin.
It is true, she is strong. I have barely been able to fight off her advances and yes, she holds the killing blade that burns with blue fire only inches away from my throat.
But I know something she does not.
So I grin and flash my sharp incisors at her.
She growls and leans her weight into the blade. It sinks an inch lower when all of a sudden, out of my peripheral vision I catch sight of a Draci trying to fly near the circle of battle. What are they doing? Everybody knows there’s a sphere around the battle circle so none can interfere—
“First, no!” Giselle’s familiar voice shouting for me almost costs me my concentration and Ximena nearly gets the upper hand.
But she’s distracted too, especially when Giselle tries to fly into the sphere and is knocked backward with a blast of blue sparks.
It’s only with a century of hardening my heart am I able to take the second when Ximena’s attention is distracted to look at what happened. I spin out of her grasp and yank her knife hand backward behind her back. Only then do I look to make sure that my beloved is all right.
Giselle is moving at least—a hand to her head, but she’s sitting up. The barrier should only have stunned her. I move all my focus back to Ximena, knowing a second’s attention was all I could spare.
Right in time, too, because she’s flipping, head over wings and then she’s in the air again. I follow, my own knife outward. I try to leap into the air aiming straight for her exposed torso, but she twirls mid-air, fast—too fast for me to catch her wings. When my blade strikes, it strikes her blade.
The blast of light at the two blades striking is blinding, but I keep my eyes open anyway. A good thing too—because I have my eyes open when the blast comes.
