She wasn’t alone. Of course she wasn’t. Four guards, lined up either side of the door, because what better place to lie in wait for anyone else who made their way in here after their mistress?
“I can’t let you wake him,” Julian told her.
She pouted. “Worried he’ll be upset you kept him locked away so long?”
“He’s the greatest threat our people have ever faced.”
“Don’t ‘our people’ me, dragon.” She made a jerky gesture, and two of the soldiers stepped forward, drilling equipment in their arms. “You’ve kept your magic to yourselves for too long. Once my mate is free, you’ll be forced to share your powers with the rest of the world.”
She saidmy matelike other people might saymy car.Julian’s scales prickled. But his dragon was still trapped beneath the collar that would choke him if he tried to shift.
Could she be reasoned with?
“The Soul-Eater having our powers doesn’t mean the rest of the world having them. It meanshimhaving them. And taking everything else he touches.”
“For me.” Eloise’s voice was dreamy, but she stared at the creature in the ice like a cat at a mouse hole.
“You seem very sure of that.” He prowled around the other side of the ice column. Two of the guards followed him, keeping their distance but not letting him hide behind the frozen bulk of the Soul-Eater. “What makes you think this is going to work, anyway?”
Ten minutes, he’d told Nikolaidis and his unknown rat friend. Enough time for them to see the archives dissolving into nothingness, realize they were on a fool’s errand, and escape.
Maybe they would find Francine.
“What makes me so sure? It’s my fate.” She glinted another smile at him. “The same way poor dear Frankie was your fate. What a shame she didn’t make it.”
“She’s alive.”
“Oh?” Eloise blinked, then shrugged. “I’ll put her back on the list, then. Because honestly, our boy in there could do with abitof cleaning up.” She tapped a rhythm on the ice column. “Like, what is all that? Did he just snap up whatever animals he could find? Ew.”
He clenched his fists. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“How are you going to stop me? By getting yourself killed?” She glanced at him, looked again, and grimaced. “Is that one of Daddy’s collars? Ugh. Iknewhe had a mole on my ship.”
Had it been ten minutes? Did it matter?
He threw himself at the guards. And they attacked at the same time. Pain grated along his side, and his vision went gray.
Dragonsbane.
But not enough to kill him.
Eloise smiled down at him. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? I know that if you die, we’re all trapped down here. So be a good boy and stay quiet while I save the world.”
He watched helplessly as the guards drilled into the column of magical ice. “It isn’t going to work,” he managed to say through numb lips.
It shouldn’t work. It couldn’t.
Could it?
“Dose him again,” Eloise ordered, not looking at him. “Or shut him up some other way, I don’t care. Just keep him alive until my mate is freed.”
Eloise placed one palm against the glass-like column, reaching up to where the Soul-Eater stared out through slitted, mad eyes. Her own eyes were shining.
“Soon,” she crooned, then snapped over one shoulder, “What’s taking so long? Give it to me.”
Her assistant handed her something that looked like a gun, with a vial of a moonlight-shining liquid inside it.
“What the hell is that?” Julian asked, as his vision shrank to a circle of light surrounded by gray.
