It’s as if a knife twists in my gut, my lifeblood spilling from me. My mortal. My treasure.Taken.
“What happened?” I stalk to Lenka who looks up at me with sad eyes. Her flames are a dim green, barely lighting her wrinkled cheeks.
“You aren’t going to like it, Sire. Not one bit.” She takes a long drink from a flask of blue liquor.
“Where is she?”
“On her way to the Usurper’s Aerie. Or maybe there already. I?—”
“What’s happening?” Brin stands in the doorway, his pipe askew and hanging from his mouth.
“Sela has Larellin,” Faraday answers.
Brin’s pipe falls, cracking as it hits the stone.
“How did …” Brin looks around. “They didn’t breach the keep. I’ve been here the?—”
“They didn’t have to breach it.” Lenka’s eyes well with deep blue flames that flow down her cheeks. “I took Larellin to Churlytown.”
Rage, the likes of which I haven’t felt in centuries, rises inside me. “Why would you do something so foolish?” I grate the words between my teeth.
“Vander.” Faraday steps toward me, his tone chiding. “Don’t?—”
“Why?” I roar at Lenka, flame tears still rolling down her weathered cheeks.
She doesn’t flinch. “I did what I had to do for you, Sire. For the DragonKin. I’ll say no more than that. Throw me in the dungeon. I belong there.” She covers her face with her hands and cries into them.
Sprite hurries past me and wraps his arm around her shoulders, a defiant look on his face. “Leave her be.”
I don’t know what Lenka’s done, but it doesn’t matter. Not right now. What matters is that Sela has taken my Larellin.
“I’m going after her.” I stride out and down the hall, my wings unfurling as I leap and push myself up and back into the treasure cavern.
Faraday is on my heels. “You can’t go barging into the Usurper’s Aerie. That’s what they want you to do. This is a trap.”
“I don’t care!” I whirl and advance on him until we’re almost nose to nose. “They took my treasure. She’s mine. She’s afraid, Faraday. I canfeelher fear,” I snarl.
He blinks, surprise writ large on his face. “But that only happens when?—”
“When we meet our mate,” I finish for him.
“DragonKin can’t have mates. Not until the curse is …” His voice dies away. Then he asks, “How long have you known?”
“I didn’t know. Not until now. Not until I felt our bond.” I shift, my body changing and growing as Faraday backs away. “I’m going to bring her back.”
“We should wait for Fyan!” he yells at me as I take off at a run, coins and jewels scattering beneath my feet. “You can’t do this alone!”
“I will not abandon her!” I take flight, borne on the winds of the storm, lightning flashing as I command the sky and hunt my mate.
Chapter
Nineteen
LARELLIN
When we finally land, the jolt makes my bones rattle. I taste blood, my teeth clacking together so hard I bite my tongue.
The talon opens, and I fall onto my side on a stone floor. Torches flicker all around, and the dragon who’d taken me changes shape, her body shifting into the one from earlier.
