He snarled, and his jaws closed around the fae. Bones and blood crushed against his teeth until the screaming stopped, and he swallowed.
We need to get her out of that cage, Valentine prompted the dragon. Without having to beg, the dragon let go, and they shifted back into the form of a man. His clothes hung off him in useless scraps, but he closed in on the cage. It was the same as the one he had seen in his dreams.
Threads of Valentine's magic curled around the spelled bars. The wards on them tried to fight back, but they were useless against his single-minded fury. The bars of the cage door melted away, and Valentine tore them free.
The body was still covered in ice, but he knew she was only sleeping.
Valentine's hands heated with the dragon inside of him, and he lifted the female from out of the cage. She was frozen, but her limbs weren't in a state of rigor mortis.
"I'll have to ask how you do that," Valentine whispered. He ignored the cold burning his arms and chest as he carried Yelena down the ruined stairs of the walls, through the still blazing courtyard, and out of the hole he created in the walls.
Owain and Emyr had shifted to their fae forms and were freeing Avallach's unconscious body from the post.
"We need to get them to the healers," Emyr said, carefully avoiding eye contact with Valentine.
He growled and held Yelena closer. "Mag Argatnél is not safe for her."
"It will be if you are there," Owain tried to reason. "They both need help that we can't give them out here."
Valentine stepped back from them, cradling the girl closer to him.
"Listen, you dumb lizard, we aren't going to take her from you!" Emyr snapped. "How about we get them to Mag Argatnél, and then Charlotte can come and help us heal them? We can keep them safe, and you trust your sister, don't you?"
Valentine's human side pushed the dragon down a little further. "Only Charlotte. We go now."
He held out a hand, and the threads of his power burst from his fingers. They wove an archway, and with a push from his dragon side, the gap between it tore apart. The white and gray halls of the dragon stronghold appeared between its pillars.
"How the fuck is he doing that?" Owain demanded. "No one can make a portal into the city except for Taranis."
Emyr hefted Avallach up into her arms. "I don't even think he knows how he's doing it right now, but I suggest we do as he says."
Valentine let them go in through the portal first before following them. He turned and looked at what was left of the fortress.
Not enough,said his dragon.
The words came unbidden to Valentine's tongue, and he sent a dark curse flying through the portal. It hit the fortress and sparked along the stone. Within seconds, the structure and everything remaining inside of it turned to ash and crumbled.
Gripping Yelena's frozen body to his chest, Valentine shut the portal. He stared down into her sleeping face, covered in pale frost and still heartbreakingly beautiful.
"You're safe now, baby girl. You're safe," he whispered, and he silently swore to all the gods that he would keep her that way no matter the price.
10
Yelena was aching from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. It was a good healing ache that told her that the ice had finally released its grip on her, and warmth was flooding back through her system.
She opened her eyes slowly and blinked a few times. She recognized the healing wing of the palace by the smell of mint and lavender.
There was another scent in the room that sent a different kind of ache through her. It was ginger with citrus and a lingering note of hot stone.
Yelena breathed the scent deep into her lungs until she could taste it on her tongue. Her left hand was the warmest part of her, and when she glanced down, she saw the source of the scent.
Valentine Greatdrakes was asleep in a chair beside her, his body slumped forward onto the side of her bed. His hands were both wrapped around hers.
He's okay. Yelena breathed shakily, in and out, as tears filled her eyes. Her plan had worked, but the cost of it was brutal. She hadn'tlet herself think about it while in Cathal's cell. She couldn't doubt it. She knew it had been the only way. It still wasn't a comforting thought.
But there he was, alive and whole and perfect.
Valentine looked different from the way she had last seen him, too. He was leaner as if he hadn't been eating properly, and his aura was thick with magic.
