There was a flurry of activity and protest as several people attempted to keep him in bed at once, with only marginal success.
Vael, the biggest dragon standing, grappled with him even as he argued, “Damn it, Taevas! What were we supposed to think? She was covered in your blood! She had the same suppressants in your system! She had no alibi or witnesses! And you were in her fucking car, on Grim’s door!”
“Because she wassavingme!” he bellowed. “And what did she get for it? Thrown in fucking jail! Where she’s probably terrified and confused and— If you don’t get her here in the next ten minutes, I’m going to hunt her down myself!”
Using his greater weight to pin Taevas down, Vael grunted, “Fine! We’ll release her! Just stay in the fucking hospital, for fuck’s?—”
Hele’s head popped between them, completely heedless of the possible danger of getting between two brawling dragons. Something keen shining in her inky black eyes, she asked, “Why do you want to see the strange woman so badly, cousin?”
Taevas cast her a wide-eyed look of outrage. “Because she’smine.”He looked around at the slack-jawed faces and, needing there to be absolutely no uncertainty going forward, he informed them, “She’s an Aždaja! She’s your Emand!”
Everything went very still. Even Vael, who’d been growling as he struggled to restrain his Isand, seemed to stop breathing. For several seconds, it was as if no one in the room dared move, let alone speak.
It was Taevas’s thundering snarl that broke the spell.
Vael released him abruptly, his skin ashen as he took one long step away from the bed. He didn’t blink or ask for clarification. He simply held Taevas’s wild stare as he lifted a hand to his ear, activating his comm implant.
“Radek,” he breathed, voice hoarse. “Bring the nymph to the hospital. Now.” There was a slight pause, no doubt as Radek askedwhyandhow,but Vael cut him off with the only explanation necessary: “She’s Taevas’s Chosen.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Things could’ve beena lot worse. She wasn’t sure how, exactly, but it had to be true.
Alashiya sat in the uncomfortable metal chair in the interrogation room, her wrists shackled to the shiny tabletop. She was slumped over, her forehead cushioned by her forearms, in an attempt to hide from the glaring overhead light.
She’d lost count of the hours she’d spent there.
So many dragons had come and gone that she’d lost track of them, too. Except for Inspector General Anneli Saar, of course. Vael had handed her over to the stern-faced dragon almost as soon as the m-gate opened on the side of the road. She’d been Alashiya’s main interrogator, though many more dragons had made an appearance, demanding answers she didn’t have or to just glare at her from the doorway.
She was fairly certain it was some sort of strategy to break her. It hardly seemed like it could be a coincidence that those glaring visitors came by like clockwork, alwaysjustafter she managed to snatch a moment of sleep.
What they hoped to gain from keeping her delirious with sleep deprivation, she couldn’t fathom.
Alashiya was past exhaustion. She was past hunger. She waspast the discomfort of the cold air piped directly onto her from above and below. She was past everything except the dull ache of worry for her husband, who’d been whisked away from her so fast, she hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye.
Her only comfort was that he was alive.
They hadn’t told her so. In fact, they’d refused to answer any question at all. But the hyphae didn’t lie. Taevas was alive somewhere not terribly far from her. That was all that mattered.
Alashiya desperately wanted to let sleep pull her under. It was a heavy drag on her mind, begging her to let go, but she’d been awoken so many times that it’d become muscle memory to jolt upright whenever she gave in. To keep herself from slipping, she curled and uncurled her right hand into a fist. The sharp burn of her scabbing marriage cut was a painful but invigorating stimulant.
With nothing else to do, she stared at her warped reflection in the shiny silver surface of the table, too tired to keep her head up but too paranoid to sleep. Her mind was a shifting landscape of abstract shapes and warped memories, but she still managed to pray that she’d done the right thing.
Her eyes closed.
It was no surprise to her when she jerked awake not a moment later. Skin prickling with awareness, she lifted her head just enough to see a huge, pale green dragon in black military gear closing the door with the heel of his boot.
Normally, she would’ve been afraid. Everything about him screamed of a threat. His face was all hard angles, his eyes narrowed, and his monstrously large fists clenched. A swirl of tattoos peeked above the collar of his tight black shirt, and when he took a step toward her, the whole tiny, sterile room seemed to quake.
But even as he advanced on her, tail thrashing behind him, she felt no fear. Only resignation.
Her fingers, half-frozen by the continuous blastof cold air, curled into tight fists against the tabletop.Whatever happens now, I know I did everything in my power to do what was right.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected, but watching the dragon kneel beside her chair wasn’t it. He said nothing as he immediately began to disengage the locks on the shackles holding her ankles to the chair legs, so she didn’t dare let herself feel relief.
The best she could hope for, she supposed, was that she was finally being put in a cell. At least there was likely to be a bed there.
For as big and deadly as the dragon’s hands were, he was shockingly gentle as he eased her ankles out of the metal restraints. That done, he stood up and, broad shoulders hunching, began to do the same for her wrists.
