"It saved you, so it was worth it." Valentine's expression shifted to one she had never seen on him before. It was almost soft. "I chose to let it out, Yelena. It was already beginning after the fight in France anyway. Saving you and Avallach was the excuse I needed to release it."
Yelena chewed her lip, hesitating to say what she wanted to. "You do know that it wasn'tentirelyreleased, don't you?"
Valentine nodded, just once. "I haven't been able to think about it. I don't know what I am, if I am not a dragon."
"Oh, you are definitely a dragon," Yelena said and smirked, thinking again of the dominance he had shown earlier. "A big, alpha dragon into making people submit."
Valentine read her expression and grinned back. "Only you, baby girl."
"You are fortunate that I wanted to submit. I'm an alpha too, you know," she said, letting some of the dragon come into her eyes. It liked looking at him as much as she did.
"I know, and I like it," he replied. "I wish you had shown it to me earlier. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble."
"Or gotten into lots of it."
Valentine's eyes heated. "There's still plenty of time to do that."
Yelena liked the thought of that far too much. "You make me feel volatile whenever we are in the same room," she admitted. "I don't know if I should worry about us tearing each other apart."
"Now you are just flirting with me." Valentine drank some more of his wine. "Do I scare you?"
Yelena shook her head. "Not even a little."
"Why?" he pushed.
"You like to play rough, like I do. Not just the sex, but with magic too," she said, needing to reassure him so he didn't run. "You like to be pushed to see what your limits are. It doesn't matter if it hurts. Then, when you realize once again that youhaveno limits, that settles you down because you are afraid of going too far. It's that side that's still afraid of going too far that makes you a good person, Valentine. I know to my bones that you would never hurt me intentionally. It's not who you are."
Valentine looked like she had taken a knife to him. "Why you? Why, of all the gods damned people in both worlds, did it have to be you that sees what no one else can?"
"Because we are the same." Yelena wished she had better words to explain it. "If my magic were working, I could test a theory and show you."
"What theory?"
"That we are like…reflections of each other. The same, and also opposite. Light to dark."
Valentine's brow furrowed. "But I know you have got a dark side. I've seen it. I've felt it."
"And you have a light side too. Gods, I'm explaining this all wrong," she said, struggling. "We work magically so well because our power levels are the same. Apart, we always struggle, but together we can create…"
"Balance. A magical balance," Valentine replied, and his eyes widened. "That's why whenever you sent me feedback and suggestions on my magic, it always worked so much better. It was easier. It…you're the silver."
She was going to ask what he meant when he held out his hands, and his magic rose like threads in his palm.
"This only began to manifest in such a way when you started helping me with my magic. Look."
Yelena leaned forward and stared in wonder as scarlet threads began to twist with silver. She could hear that silvery powersinging out to her own. "Fascinating. And you've only ever had the scarlet?"
Valentine nodded. "It was never so fine either. If my magic manifested visually at all, it was always scarlet. You told me in a letter to begin to use movement in my casting, and then the silver was there. The precision. I wound this around a whole building, sliced it out of its foundations, and tossed the whole lot into Dorcha."
"Now, who is flirting?" Yelena said, trying to lighten the sudden tension in the room.
Valentine laughed. "Is the thought of me causing wholesale destruction, making you hot?"
"It's the magic," she replied primly.
"It's both, and we know it." Valentine sent the threads across the table, and his magic licked against her cheek. Her own surged forward, and she gasped at the pressure building up that she had no way to release.
"We need to fix my hand before you do that again," she said, breathless.
