AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I never said that.”
He gives me a dangerous smile. “Not out loud, but I could smell it on you at the funeral pyre, and I can smell it on you now. You craved their deaths.”
Maybe I did. With a gut-knotting sensation, I recall my last thoughts before I was about to be hurled onto the funeral pyre.
I hope the dragons burn them all.
I’m about to ask him if he can read minds, but I’m distracted as he reaches for my throat. His hand is huge, made even bigger by the jointed armor that covers the backs of his hands and each finger, and I flinch away from him. I’m not fast enough, however, and he gently brushes my hair back. At the same time, he draws me closer to him. “I need to see your neck.”
I stiffen, and my hands land on his bloody chest plate. “Why?”
A gentle finger caresses the nape of my neck. Past the invader’s arm, his dragon is watching me with intense focus. Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t see it—or perhaps he does—and he heaves a sigh of relief.
“Previet k’len,” he groans, closing his eyes and leaning down to rest his forehead against mine.
How strange this man is. It’s clear he doesn’t want to kill me, but I can’t tell what he does want. I study him while he holds my face in both his hands. His nostrils flare slightly as he breathes, and despite the blood spattered on his face, his strong features are entrancing. He’s the most striking man I’ve ever seen, and he’s holding me like I’m the most precious thing in the world to him.
The silence is excruciating, and I blurt out the question that’s upmost in my mind. “What do you want?”
He opens his eyes and gazes at me with an expression so full of yearning that it makes my heart jolt. “You.”
“But I don’t know you.”
“You will.”
That sounds like a threat. Cold wind cuts through my clothes and I shiver.
The invader takes his cloak from his shoulders and wraps the huge garment around me. I’m enveloped in warmth. For a moment my nostrils catch a tantalizing scent, and I’m consumed with the need to smell it again. I breathe in deeply. I even raise my elbow, bury my face in the cloth, and inhale. Smoke from fires. Blood and metal. A musky suggestion of the man standing before me. I thought there was more, but I must have been mistaken.
I lift my gaze to his neck, right where the wind is teasing his long hair. For an insane moment, I feel the urge to beg him to lift me up in his arms so I can bury my face right there.
I want…something.
The invader is watching me closely and seems to be holding his breath.
“What?” I ask.
He hesitates, and then shakes his head.
“Have we met before? Apart from at the funeral pyre.”
“We have never met. It’s impossible for us to have ever met before.” He smiles, and his hard, chiseled features soften into breathtaking good looks. This man is preternaturally handsome.
“Are you a demon?”
His smile widens and then he laughs. The sound delves deep inside me, warming me from the inside out. “Only to my enemies. I’m Maledinni, just like you. My name is Zabriel.”
Zabriel. I’ve never heard that name before, and I doubt he’s telling the truth about being from Maledin. He must have invaded from another country, but where did the dragons come from? I would have heard if there were dragons and riders in another land near ours, unless the Brethren kept the truth from us. It seems like something they would do.
“And your name?” Zabriel asks, wrapping his cloak even tighter around me and drawing me into his arms. The fur collar tickles my cheek.
I want to tell him it’s none of his business what my name is, but the same warm, liquid feeling as when he held me in his arms on dragonback is stealing over me. The night wind teases strands of his long hair.
He’ll save me? Protect me? But men don’t save. They punish and gloat and take what they want while inflicting unimaginable pain and torment.
But this man feels…different.
“Isavelle,” I whisper, gazing up at him.
