“Not a chance, Claws,” Aeson immediately answers.
Tahir giggles. “Don’t be nervous; you don’t have anything that the scions haven’t seen before,” she offers sweetly, but I rear back like she just spit in my face.
“That’s disturbing as fuck. Never say that again,” I admonish. She just looks at me blankly. “I’m not getting naked. I just…” I flounder, unsure of what to say…how to explain. “If I ask you to turn around, will you?” I look at Lorn, hoping he’ll be the more reasonable scion of the two.
“No,” Aeson interjects, his blue eyes bristling with challenge, his bearing dark and stormy, like he’s itching for a fight.
My glare is fulminating, but he isn’t cowed as he squares off with me. Fury unfurls in my chest, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s exactly what I need to face this.
“Fine,” I snap, bending over to unlatch my boot. “I tried. If you fuckers lose your shit like the healers in the hospital were terrified you would, good. I’m going to enjoy watching you tear up your own shit.”
Chapter 14
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Lorn demands cautiously, but I ignore him and keep my eyes trained on his arrogant asshole of a brother.
My boot hits the carpeted floor with a soft thud, and several of the drakes immediately pinpoint the magic charm on my ankle. I reach for it at the same time Karis and Gatlin step in front of Aeson, and Nils and Urser pull Lorn back behind them. I run a finger under the smooth metal of the charm until I feel the release. Pinching it, the formerly solid charm separates, and the magic that’s been hiding my scars suddenly shatters and disappears as the anklet falls to the ground.
A shocked hiss is the first thing I hear as I straighten and face Aeson and the other drakes. I adopt the samefuck youstance that the commander was just aiming at me, ignoring the crescendo of outraged growls and the looks of utter dismay. The weight of their stares is laden with abject horror and distress as they take in the map of what I suffered at the hands of the Tainted.
Out of habit, I run my thumb over my forearm, sighing with relief when I finally feel the scars Wistan carved there. Aeson’s thunderstruck gaze tracks the movement, and then a horrified understanding fills his eyes as they slowly lift from all the cuts and slashes marring my skin. My answering stare is razor sharp daggers and icy contempt. I tell him with a single look exactly where he can shove the savage vehemence and pity now clouding his tempestuous face.
Rage simmers in his depths and smoke starts to stream from his nose. He takes a step closer, but Gatlin tries to stop him. Aeson rumbles a terrifying warning at the other drake, and Gatlin instantly freezes, dropping his gaze and tilting his head to expose his throat in a clear display of submission.
Pandemonium sweeps through the room as Aeson advances on me. Raw, undiluted power pulses out of him, and it sends the drakes already on the brink of a volatile shift careening past the point of no return.
“Who.”
Aeson takes another step.
“Did.”
And another.
“This.”
Tahir scrambles back, and several drakes shout orders for everyone to move out of the way.
“To.”
Blay charges. At first, I think he’s going to tackle Aeson, but he streaks past, diving for one of the massive archways instead. A mountain-sized purple dragon erupts out of him, the beast launching itself off the outer lip of the tower. An enraged roar reverberates through the dragon stone floors, walls, and ceiling as Blay’s dragon streaks away.
“You.”
Aeson is suddenly in front of me, waves of heat pouring off of him like morning mist off the waterfalls that flank this keep. I gasp as his power pools and eddies against me. The sensation is terrifying and somehow exhilarating. It’s like holding on to a live wire, knowing it could incinerate me at any moment but not being able to put it down.
Smoke billows out of his nose and mouth with each heaved breath, and his eyes have morphed into the bright blue predatory stare of his dragon. He reaches for me, but I slap his hand away, still riding the wave of anger his imperious bullshit has caused.
“Don’t push him, Ever,” Lorn barks in warning as Aeson snarls at my rebuke. “He’s balancing on the edge of a frenzy. Don’t tip him all the way over.”
Instead of listening, I bare my teeth in a snarl at Aeson when he eliminates the space between us altogether. The warning growl rumbling out of me doesn’t register in the slightest to the wild hurricane of a drake in front of me. In fact, it only spurs him on, and he answers my resounding threat with a thunderous one of his own.
His chest brushes against mine as he studies my face, drinking me in and swallowing me down. His rage confronts my own. My defiance baits his. We stand, two enemies on a battlefield, neither willing to cede to the other, and somehow, I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now. I’ve never felt more seen.
With a bellow that shakes the rookery, a dark blue dragon and then a blood red one follow after Blay and go plunging off the railless balcony out into the dusky sky. The chandelier above me shakes and clangs, threatening to shatter, but it holds.
It isn’t lost on me that the healers in the hospital were right to be wholly terrified of The Horde’s reaction to my scars. These dragons don’t know me. I’m nothing to them. And yet their response to what was done to me is undeniably visceral.
“How did this happen, Ever?” Lorn demands, his tone razor sharp and surprisingly pained.
