Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

The bearded one said something in a language she'd never heard before; Zane responded from over his shoulder, brusque.

The Others inched closer.

Zane glanced back down at her. "They want to hurt you," he whispered, framed in velvet and gold. "You know that."

"Yes."

"I'll stop them as long as I can."

She felt her throat close and set her teeth against it. She made herself smile at him, made her voice flat, calm.

"Why don't you kill them instead?"

"Because, Princess," Zane said, "sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And as you've thoroughly mucked up my plans, this is the best I can manage at the moment. I'm sorry."

"That's quite all right. Kimber's here now, anyway." Mari looked him up and down through her lashes, holding her smile, then added softly, "You should run."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He smashed through the roof. There was no real reason not to. It was the most expedient way in.

It was a wooden hip roof, sloped and tidy. He descended upon it in full form, hind feet first, his wings straight up behind him for velocity. Against the roar of wind and blood filling his head, the Alpha slammed into a new wave of sound: that of a thousand Others glancing upward, witnessing a dragon of blue and red iridescence descending from the dark evening sky, talons extended, eyes alight. Their screams bounced off his scales. He plunged straight through that shimmer of sound, hardly noticing the humans pointing and scattering along the cobblestone streets. Horses galloped madly away, taking riders and coaches along with them. Vermin and cats and dogs, birds and cattle, all of them shrieking, fleeing, with Kimber as the center of their panic.

The last thing he saw before hitting the roof was a woman in a wig and shawl shedding posies behind her as she ran, her skirts hitched up with both hands, a straw basket still tucked into the crook of an elbow banging against her side.

He tore through the shingles. There was a pair of chimneys, too; red bricks and splinters spewed outward like confetti, tumbling through the air. It was swifter than the blink of an eye and he felt no pain; there was only her, still below him, her colors and scent. A cloudy, curious song surrounding her.

He took out floors. Chairs, beds, chandeliers, tables. All of them empty of Others, because they were still below—and then he was there too, on the ground level, his talons digging into the floor as he skidded to a stop in a large parlor full of pillowed sofas, ripping up rugs and chunks of hardwood. His wings slashed furrows along the walls; paintings crashed; sconces shattered, pungent oil splashing in great clear drops across everything.

He lifted his snout and opened his mouth and revealed his fangs to the Other rushing at him from the doorway.

The Other had a pistol. Still running, he raised his arm and fired, a spark of molten heat that ripped high through Kimber's chest, embedding against something that crunched. A bone.

It was hardly a remarkable feat; Kim took up nearly the entire chamber. So all he had to do was wait for the man to sprint near enough, then bend forward and snap off his head.

The body ceased its forward momentum. It dropped to its knees, and then to its side. The Alpha spat out the head, stepping over the dead man and into the corridor beyond without a second look.

The next human also had a pistol, but he appeared older, more hardened, and he didn't waste his shot. Instead, he stood his ground as the dragon stalked forward, Kimber's tail whipping back and forth, taking out the plaster and walnut walls of the hallway in huge, concave holes. Only when Kimber was near enough to see the spittle on his beard did the man pull the trigger. Kim Turned to smoke, so easy, and then at once back to dragon.

The bullet passed harmlessly through him, thunked into a wall behind him.

The Alpha's lips curled back, the closest thing he could manage to a smile in this state. The sanf man shouted something then whirled about, retreating to a hall to the left.

She wasn't there. Kimber smoked by it—in case there was another gun—and found her chamber, ill lit, crowded with shadows and furniture. The shadows began to flicker; he Turned back to dragon and let loose his fury.

He tore the tops off the lower two bedposts right away. She thought it might have been his wings that sheared them off, but more likely it was his tail, thick and strong, a set of eight razored gold barbs lined neatly along its end. With the iron posts gone she was able to lift both her feet high, still trailing chains but no longer bound to anything fixed.

The chains at her wrist were too short for her to sit up. So Maricara drew her knees to her chest and flipped her body backward; it tore the blanket apart right away, the pins snapping free, dull silver sprinkled across the blue covers. She rolled until her feet met the wall behind the headboard and the chains slapped against the plaster. She used her momentum to finish crawling downward, until she could rise to her knees with her arms twisted before her.

Kimber was a spiral of color and stealth, a glittery reflection from every mirror. He radiated heat; he blurred with every sinuous movement, nearly too fast even for her to follow. One of the sanf still dodged him, though, grunting with effort—it wasn't Zane, who had apparently heeded her advice. He was no longer anywhere in view.

From the mess and confusion of man and beast, something hot struck her in a spatter across the throat. Blood. Kimber's blood.

In the very same instant, she saw him wobble, drop to one knee. His body struck the bureau with the oil lamp at last. It teetered and fell and shattered with a pop into a rosebud of flame, a bud that opened and spread into a fume of soft rising noise.

Both the dragon and the man leapt back. She saw Kimber shake his head in the bright new light, more blood shining slick down his scales. The man saw it too.

Mari gathered herself. She bowed her head and drew her arms inward, her breath held, then released—a groan that burned chest deep, the last two posts bending with her will, the iron screeching—

The links snapped, and she pulled free. Instantly she vaulted from the foot of the bed, found the sanf in front of Kimber—he held a sword, and the tip was dripping red—

She jumped behind him. She wrapped the chain still attached to her right wrist around his neck, and pulled as hard as she could. His back arched; he dropped the sword and began to gurgle, clutching at the links.

"You will not hurt him," she snarled in Romanian. "You will not—"

Voices were calling from some other part of the building. Human voices, coming closer, high-pitched. Flames from the broken lamp found a swathe of purple silk and leapt all the way to the ceiling.

Kimber Turned to man. He picked up the sword of the sanf inimicus, fire a glorious bright halo behind him, and pierced the heart of his enemy with one short thrust.

Mari released the body. She caught the earl by his arms and kissed him, a kiss so rough and sudden it hurt, and tasted of blood, and he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her back harder still.

A new human staggered to the doorway, a man in a uniform with a metal badge on his chest, his hand cupped to his face.

"Oy! You there! You two!" He glared frantically about the room. "You've got to get out of here!"

She pulled away, panting, her chest and stomach wet with the blood that still flowed from a hole too near his heart. By then the man had darted into the room, followed by another, both goggling from the lump of the fellow on the floor to the two of them, naked amid the flames.

"I can't Turn," she said to Kimber, under the gathering roar of the fire. "I've tried. I'm trapped like this."

"Come on!" cried the second man. He stooped to grab the body of the sanf Kimber had stabbed, dragging it along from under the arms. "Follow me!"

Kimber wiped a hand absently across his chest, smearing the red into channels with his fingers. He looked down at his palm with his blond hair in his face and then back up at her. Smoke lifted black and coiled around him, clouded into her lungs.

She coughed with both hands over her mouth, managing to ask, "Can you fly?"

His lips curled into something that was not a smile.

"Bloody hell," shouted the first man, back by the door, "what's the bloomin' matter with you two?"

The fire consumed the ceiling. It made a merry frame around the door. The man pulled back and vanished, and Kimber Turned, and Maricara climbed, chains and all, upon the powerfully broad back of her mate, the Alpha dragon, hooking her legs above the bones and leather of his wings.

She twined her fingers into his ruff. She clenched her thighs and ankles and hid her face between her arms as he twisted around with one smooth, powerful movement, his tail striking the outer wall.

Plaster sloughed away; burning embers whirled; brick went to dust. He hit the wall again, and again, and then there was a hole there, larger and larger, and fresh air, and the night.

Kimber clambered through it, his golden claws shining with firelight.

And all the people gathered around the blazing, elegant, gray-faced building set back on this mannered street in Threadneedle began screaming once more.

She kept her head down for most of their flight. The summer wind felt remarkably chill against her unclad body, but Kimber was warm, and that made it all right.

Maricara turned her cheek to his neck. She closed her eyes and traced her fingers along the pattern of scales that flowed from his jaw to his shoulder, discovering perfect symmetry, the rhythmic pull and release of his muscles beneath, magic made actual flesh.

I love you. The words circled through her, a magic just as potent as the body beneath hers. You're strong, you're going to live. I love you.

Drop by drop, one single splash of crimson at a time, his blood fell in silence down to the distant curve of the earth.

Such a silence also lived in the shire. It was as if with the loss of Kimber's blood—with the loss of his brother, and the maiden—nearly everything bright and vital had drained from the land as well.

The earl, naturally, did not die. His skin grew very pale; his face took on the smooth, hardened cast of ivory. He spent time alone in his quarters, more time than he clearly wished. She heard the servants whispering about it from their nooks and crannies in the mansion, how he directed the tribe from the darkness of his sanctum, how he would eat only sparingly, and sleep in short hours at a spell, day or night, in either his bed or hers.

She knew that already, of course.

He was powerful, and stubborn as she was, and he would survive. But he would need time for healing, and time had become the fresh new enemy of the drakon. No one knew when or where the sanf inimicus would next strike.

Darkfrith was a machine that slowly lumbered into gear for war, and Kimber still stood at its helm. The protections that had been in place before were strengthened, layered throughout the land from house to house and soul to soul. No one traveled alone here, not any longer. Not even Maricara. She'd told the earl and then his council of Rhys, and of Zane, and of Lia and the diamond. She'd even gone back to the place of her capture by carriage—she could not yet fly—but just as Zane had said, Rhys was gone. Neither she nor any of the drakon men with her had been able to unearth a hint of him.