Releasing Yelizaveta’s hands with a small squeeze, Petra admitted, “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to stay.”
A friendly chime echoed outside in the hallway. Silas tensed and turned toward the door. Hiking up her skirt, she shoved her feet into her heels and explained, “That’s the warning bell. We have five minutes before the ceremony starts. Yelizaveta, I need you to run back to the initiate hall. I want you and all the other initiates to leave the grounds. Kitchen and custodial staff, too. I don’t care what they’re doing. Get them outside untilIsay it’s safe to come back. Okay?”
The young dragon’s complexion went ashen. “But your grace, we can’t?—”
“You can and you will,” she interjected. “Above everything else, you keep yourself safe. If you run into any of the Protector’s men, you have my permission to roast them and then fly away as fast as you can.”
Yelizaveta’s voice was barely a whisper when she replied, “This is very scary.”
“It is,” Petra replied, voice thick, “but that only means it’s time to be brave. Never forget that we don’t walk alone — and our goddess is not just love and sunshine. She’s also scorched earth.”
Pressing a kiss to Yelizaveta’s clammy cheek, Petra tried not to let the initiate see her uncertainty. She didn’t want to see fear in the dragon’s eyes. She also didn’t want to be right about any of this. A large part of her hoped that they were wrong, and they’d done all this for nothing.
The ceremony would go off without a hitch, there’d be no attack on the Tower, and she’d look like a paranoid fool.
But she didn’t think so, and that meant she had to make sure her people got out.
Petra reluctantly released her initiate and hustled across the room. She grabbed Silas’s shadowed hand and felt a little bit of her fear release when he immediately tangled their fingers together.
“We’ll go out through my office,” she explained, reaching for the door.
“Wait!”
They turned their heads to look at Yelizaveta, who’d spread her wings wide with agitation. Looking perfectly aghast, she exclaimed, “Your grace, you can’t do the ceremony without yourcrown.”
Before Petra could summon a response or say it really didn’t matter, the dragon had already darted into her bedroom to hunt for Glory’s Crown, the heavy headdress she was forced to wear for important events.
Silas’s lips curled into one of his knife-sharp smiles. “Do I finally get to see you in the sexy crown?”
Giving him a warning look, she primly informed him, “It’sceremonial.”
“Ah, baby, you know how much I loveceremony,”he replied, conjuring vivid memories of their time on the altar. His hungry gaze slid down her body. Glory wasn’t particularly prudish, so most of Petra’s ceremonial outfits were composed of plunging necklines and form fitting cut. Despite the stress of the situation, it was something he seemed to appreciateverymuch.
“When this is done, I want you to keep that dress on,” he ordered. “I’m fucking you in that.”
Face flushing, Petra murmured, “If we get everyone through this alive, I’ll wear whatever you want me to.”
Silas clicked his tongue. “A dangerous bargain.”
Leaning in close, she whispered, “Couldn’t be more dangerous than the other one I made with a demon, right?”
A pleased rumble rattled his chest. The shadows around her throat pulsed, and something hot zinged across the electric current of their bond.
Yelizaveta burst from the bedroom waving the gold crown in the air. Rushing over, she shoved it into Petra’s hands. “Here!”
“Thank you, Yelizaveta. Nowgo.”She gently pushed her toward the door with one hand. The dragon looked like she desperately wanted to say more, but there was no time. “Remember what I said, okay?”
“Okay,” she squeaked, hurrying out of the room.
Petra dared to lean a little bit into the hall to watch her go as she fumbled to get the crown on. Fashioned to look like a blazing sunrise bisected by the horizon, it was a regal but uncomfortably heavy thing she normally spent a long time fussing with in order to get it to sitjustright.
She was still adjusting it when Silas took her hand and began to lead her to the service corridor that connected the residential buildings to the cathedral proper. He moved at a swift clip, and as they walked, his shadows gathered around around him and along the walls, spiderwebbing out until she doubted any tiny movement would go undiscovered by their seeking tendrils.
The corridor was blessedly deserted, however, and by the time they made it to her office, she was pretty sure she’d gotten the crown on straight.
The rumble of voices, hushed but undeniably excited, made the cathedral’s sturdy concrete walls vibrate. The building energy and the urgency of what they had to do hummed in her bones. Her mind went blank. She didn’t check her reflection in the mirror by her desk like she normally did before a service. She didn’t feel the gauzy material of her veil as she plucked it from the hook on the wall and draped it over her crown and face.She didn’t go over what she planned to say. She didn’t think of anything except getting through the next few minutes, seconds even, and making it out onto the other side to finally, finally have a future worth fighting for.
Turning to Silas one last time before she pushed the door open, Petra lifted her veil and rose up onto her tiptoes for a hungry, lingering kiss.
