Raven glanced at Nathaniel. “We think…”
“We want to… suspend your life for a few hours so that we can put your soul into the same dimension we took you out of. Enough time for you to find Charlie and guide her out. Then once your soul is free, we’ll put it back into your body.”
Oh hell no. Harlow glared. “You must fucking be kidding! You want to kill him?”
“Only temporarily,” Nathaniel said.
“My ass!” Harlow tossed her hands in the air, breaking from Marius’s hold. Her gaze darted between Raven and Marius, whose expression was far too complacent. “He was trapped in there for three hundred years. What makes you so sure he’d even be able to find his way out this time?”
“Because he’s done it before, Harlow,” Raven said. “He would have been freed many times over if not for Eleanor’s spell. Dragons don’t belong in purgatory forever. Even dead dragons.”
A growl worthy of a dragon twice her size ripped from Harlow’s throat, and her eyes stung. “Over three hundred years! I won’t let you condemn him to that again. No! Marius, tell them no.”
“He’ll come back,” Nathaniel said softly. “He’ll know the way this time because he’s… He’s…”
“Tethered to you,” Marius finished, his gaze locking on Harlow. “That’s why Harlow needed to come and why she has to be here. We’re mated, so I can follow the bond between us, at least in theory.”
“In theory,” Harlow growled.
The sound of a child’s scream came from the symbol. Raven whirled and clawed open another window. “She can’t make it to the temple without you.”
“Fuck! What are those things?” Harlow stared in horror as the little girl dodged fireballs and was chased by a monster whose entire face consisted of rows and rows of eyes and razor-sharp teeth. Charlie ran back into a small dark cave.
“Fire planet,” Marius murmured. “She’ll never survive.”
Harlow’s mouth dropped open. Was her soul being torn in two? She couldn’t imagine her mate not going to rescue the girl. It was who he was. In her heart, she understood it, but the thought of him dying in front of her… Intentionally dying. She wanted to scream.
Marius tried to take her hand, but she yanked it away. She couldn’t breathe as he said, “I have to do this.”
Pain swallowed her. Inside, she beat the walls of her mind with her fists. She lay on the floor, kicking and screaming. Outwardly, she went as still as the statues in the garden. Hot tears carved paths along her cheeks. If he didn’t go, he’d never forgive himself. She felt it down the bond. She’d known he’d struggled with his self-esteem these past weeks. Going into the underworld might kill him, but staying behind when he knew he was the only one who could save Charlie would kill him in an entirely different way. The second was a slow, painful death. He’d never feel worthy of love or anything else if he didn’t do this.
She had to force her throat to work. “It’s your decision.”
“I have to. She’ll never survive without me.”
Eyes cloudy with tears, she mumbled, “I’ll be here when you’re ready to find your way home.” How had she found the strength to voice those words when what she really wanted to say was find another way, you’re not going anywhere?
Marius turned back toward Nathaniel and the queen. “Where do we begin?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In all the time since Marius had returned from the dead, he’d never thought he would voluntarily allow himself to be sent back to the underworld. He was a grown dragon and a fighter, but his nightmares frightened him deeply, all the way down to the part of him that remembered what it was to be a child, to be absolutely helpless.
Once he was separated from this body, he would not be able to shift into his dragon form, and his wings were only marginally useful in the fire-raining skies of the dimension where they planned to send him. Was there any guarantee he’d ever get out again? No. In theory, if he reached the temple with Charlie, he should be free, and Raven and Nathaniel should be able to pull him and Charlie back here. But reaching the temple was no easy task. If he died trying, his spirit would endure and be forced to start over, but what would happen to Charlie? She was there body and soul. Could she die there?
And then there was Harlow. His mate. If he died for real or was trapped on the other side, it would destroy her. Mating among dragons was their most sacred bond. He’d never understood before why dragons who lost their mates often begged for death. Now it made sense. He’d liked Harlow from the moment she’d approached him at the coronation. He’d grown to love her over the weeks they’d spent working together. But the night their dragons had chosen each other, their souls had adhered. Could they even be separated without cleaving one or the other in two?
But then, that’s what Nathaniel and Raven were counting on. His and Harlow’s relationship was an unbreakable tether that might anchor him to this world and guide him home from the temple.
While Nathaniel drew a symbol beside and tangential to the one with Raven’s model of the underworld, Gabriel stared at Marius, face etched with pain. His brother understood, perhaps better than anyone, what Marius was about to do. Without saying a word, his expression conveyed everything. Thank you for sacrificing yourself again, my brother, not for me but for her.
He thought of Charlie. He loved his niece. Everyone did. What kind of dragon would he be if he left her in that nightmare all alone? He gave his brother a nod of acceptance.
“Marius, it’s time,” Nathaniel said.
Harlow’s arms were suddenly around him, her eyes bright with panic. She pulled him to her and kissed him in a desperate, frantic way. “Come back to me. Do what you have to do, and then come home.”
Home. She was his home now, wasn’t she?
