“The burst of flame that erupted from your hands when my men restrained you in the caves.” His gaze never wavers. “Wild. Uncontrolled. Not dragon flame.”
Think. I need to think. “You’re mistaken. Stress does strange things in confined spaces. Maybe your men saw what they wanted to see.”
The commander steps closer, menace in every line of his body. “We know what we saw.”
The senior officer raises one hand, stopping the commander’s advance.
“Let me be clear.” His patience is thinning now; I can hear it in his voice. “We have ways of extracting truth.”
He gestures. The commander produces a small device. Metal and wires, energy crackling faintly across its surface. A taser. Obviously I know about them. Never thought I’d be this close to one.
“I’d prefer cooperation,” the senior officer continues, almost conversational. “But I’m not opposed to persuasion.”
Terror floods my veins, but I hold his gaze.
Don’t let them see you break.
“Do what you want. I don’t have anything to tell you.”
The commander moves the device toward my arm. Sparks crackle.
Everything inside me rebels. Terror and rage surge together; instinctive, primal. My dragon claws at the suppression, desperate to protect me. I jerk back, but there’s nowhere to go. The chair’s bolted to the floor.
He touches the device to my skin, and pain explodes through me. I can’t help myself; I scream. And then, despite the cuffs and the strange suppression from whatever is in this damn mountain, my dragon takes over.
Heat floods my veins. My vision blurs gold at the edges.
Then scales glitter across my forearms.
Platinum-silver. Iridescent. Beautiful. And damning.
They ripple up to my elbows before the cuffs flare brighter. Within an instant, the scales stop spreading, halted by the cuffs.
Both men freeze.
The scales fade, leaving only pale skin and the faint afterglow of suppressed power.
But it’s too late. They saw.
The senior officer rises slowly, never taking his eyes off my arms. He circles my chair, studying me from every angle like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
“Dragon manifestation. Partial shift.” His voice is quiet, clinical. “But you accessed it despite cuffs calibrated for full suppression.”
The commander’s confusion bleeds through: “How is that possible? The dampeners should—”
“Unless she’s not just witch.” The senior officer stops in front of me, understanding dawning in his expression.
“The fire in the caves wasn’t imagination. It was witch-fire.” He tilts his head, pieces falling into place. His lip curls. “Dragon scales. Witch flame. Hybrid.”
I can’t hide my reaction fast enough. Can’t stop the way my breath catches, the way my eyes widen just a fraction.
His smile is cold triumph. “There it is.”
He starts pacing, thinking aloud. “Hybrids are… an abomination. The bloodlines shouldn’t mix.” A pause. “And when they do, the parents go to extraordinary lengths to hide the children.”
I say nothing. There’s nothing I can say that won’t make this worse.
“Platinum scales.” His eyes narrow. “That coloring is distinctive. Rare. The Arrowvane line produces platinum dragons.”
