“Ask me something,” he demanded, softly. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He hadn’t denied it. Aelia felt all the blood rush from her face.
“What are you doing here?” She folded her arms over her chest, trying to fight the pulling feeling that was trying to drag her back to him.
“I came to settle some old scores,” he replied immediately.
“What does that mean?” Aelia shook her head, refusing to accept any more of his vague bullshit. Not now she knew she might be tied to him by some freaky, magical bond.
This time, he hesitated, pursing his lips as he thought of his answer.
“When we were exiled, it was a massacre. Our own generals turned on us, poisoning every man, woman, and child in the King’s army, making us near defenceless. They slaughtered nearly all of us. The lucky ones were murdered in their beds, rendered completely paralysed by the neurotoxin they’d slipped into our food. The rest died slowly, only half in control of their bodies as they tried to flee.” Keeran’s expression had darkened, a hint of cruelty entering his tone. “That night will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“You were there?” Aelia gasped. He looked too young to have been fighting in the War of Two Kings. She was only a few years old when the war had ended, far too young to remember anything of it, and he was only a few years older than her. Or was he…
The Dragons were immortal, she realised with a jolt. She suddenly wished she’d paid more attention to the stories told in Callodosis about the Dragons. As a child, she’d been too engrossed by the legends, the warriors, the battles. If only she could remember some of the details.
“I was there,” he admitted. “I was a child when they turned on us but, by the end of the war, both sides had recruited the children of Dragons into the army. Once Shifted, even a young Dragon is a formidable force on the battlefield.”
Her historical knowledge was limited, but even she’d known that the Dragons had begun to involve their young in the bloodiest war in Demuto’s history. But knowing it had happened and seeing someone it had happened to were two very different things. Aelia shut her eyes against the horror that rose like bile in her throat.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said, shakily.
“In some ways, I can understand why they did what they did,” Keeran continued, picking up a twig and twirling it absentmindedly between his fingers. “The Dragons had lost themselves, had succumbed to the darkness that lives within us all, and we were tearing the country apart in a pointless war. But Aelia, if you’d have seen it, you’d understand. Dragons fell screaming from the sky on wings that couldn’t support them or were shot down by the artemians they'd fought alongside. Some couldn’t even get airborne, so they were butchered on the ground, speared over and over until they succumbed to blood loss.”
“Why. Are. You. Here?” Aelia bit out, despite the nausea curdling in her stomach at his words.
Keeran lifted his chin, his eyes defiant and unapologetic.
“I came back to kill the generals who turned on us. To track down any of them who still live and make them pay for what they did to us.”
Aelia’s shoulders slumped a little, and she dropped her eyes to hide her relief from him. He wasn’t back to try and reclaim Demuto; she hadn’t stumbled upon some immortal uprising. The Dragons had ruled them for centuries, the closest things to gods to walk the earth. There were other immortals across the world, other forms of magic that blessed the immortals of other countries, but in Demuto, Dragons were the pinnacle of power. The last thing she wanted was to be involved in their return.
Revenge, however, she could understand.
“Us?” Aelia said, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself. “There are more of you?”
A muscle in Keeran’s jaw twitched, his fingers clenching and unclenching where they rested on his knee.
“I fled to the mountains to the South with one other Dragon, Khaled. He died last year. To my knowledge, there are no other Dragons in Demuto.”
“I’m so sorry.” Aelia didn’t know what else to say. In a few short minutes, the little he’d told her about his past revealed more trauma than any one lifetime should hold. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be the last of your kind, how lonely that must be.
“What are you thinking?” he ignored her apology, his eyes searching hers.
“I’m thinking I’m an idiot for not working it out sooner,” she admitted, with an attempt at a smile.
“About the pair bond?”
“No, about who you are,” she said quickly, her eyes narrowing. “Why? When did you figure out the … pair bond?”
Her tongue tripped over the words, feeling unnatural and alien to her. She’d heard of mating bonds being formed; many of the legends told over campfires revolved around them, but none of them spoke of one formed between a lower artemian and a Dragon. She didn’t even know it was possible. It was a type of magic reserved for the immortals, a connection tying two souls together in a bond so powerful, so unbreakable, that death itself was the only thing that could sever it… and even that rarely ended well.
“When I kissed you, the night the thieves attacked.” He flicked the twig he’d been playing with into the fire, watching it burn with a hard intensity. The light of the flames flickered over his profile, drawing attention to the perfect line of his jaw. She hadn’t had much of a chance to unravel her feelings about whatever it was connecting them, but he had, and he definitely didn’t look happy about it. The realisation knotted painfully in her stomach.
“Is there nothing we can do about it?” she asked, half hoping he’d say he didn’t want to, half terrified that there was no escaping it.
He didn’t look away from the flames, but a muscle in his jaw feathered.
