Wynn pointed through the empty space where the front window used to be. “In the early days I survived by begging on that corner. Back then therewas a pub nearby that would leave its doors open. It helped to keep me warm on the coldest nights. Plus, there was the hope one of the customers would get drunk enough to toss me a coin on their way home. Eventually I discovered that I could sense magic, and better yet, I could enter places no one else could go and steal the stuff inside. Axton would buy them from me.”
With a small shake of her head, Wynn cautiously picked her way through the rubble. She didn’t know what she hoped to find, but they’d come this far to get answers. Even if they couldn’t locate Axton he might have left a clue behind.
“Eventually I refined my talents so I could locate artifacts that were powerful or rare. Or a combination of both. I could sell them for a lot more money and I stopped coming here. A pity I didn’t bank some of that cash.”
“What did you do with it?”
Wynn heaved a sigh. Her early days of poverty should have taught her to prepare for the future. Wasn’t there some famous quote about learning from the past to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over?
Instead, her deprivation had encouraged her to indulge her most excessive desires without concern for the future. Maybe because she knew in the back of her mind there was no guarantee she wouldn’t once again lose her memories and be forced to start over. Or maybe she was just the sort of person who lived for the moment.
Whatever the reason, she’d gone through a fortune.
“Fancy hotels. Fancy clothes. The finest parties. In fact, I was at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Good times.” Her lips twitched, sensing Azh’s disapproving gaze as she headed to the back of the shop. “Plus, I could never stay in one place too long. Eventually a demon or one of the Cabal would get grumpy about the number of their precious artifacts that were disappearing. Or sometimes I might sell them something that wasn’t as powerful as I’d promised. I would have to disappear and start over in a new location. Usually somewhere across the Continent. Or even across the ocean.” She shrugged.
It hadn’t usually bothered her to take off and invent a new identity. There was something exciting about a clean slate. Why be stuck in one place for an eternity? Unless she was stuck in that place with a dangerously sexy dragon who could dance flames over her naked body and breathe fire...no. She abruptly shoved aside the distracting thought. The pawnshop might be abandoned, but there were plenty of things left behind that could kill her. “Although I never had to beg again,” she continued, focusing on the shelves that had been ripped from the walls. “At least not yet.”
Azh clicked his tongue. “You never have to worry again. Unlike you I’ve kept a close guard on my treasure.”
Wynn chuckled, enjoying Azh’s aversion to such lavish wastefulness. The knowledge he was willing to accept her own excesses by sharing his carefully preserved treasure was oddly endearing.
“So the cliché about a dragon being obsessed with his hoard is true?” she asked, stepping over a glob of magical items that had fallen from the shelf and melted together.
“The only thing more precious to a dragon is his mate,” Azh assured her, then without warning, he sent a blast of flames directly in front of her, forcing her to leap backward. “Don’t move, Wynn.”
She sent him a startled glance. “What’s wrong?”
“The power I sensed from outside is under the rubble at your feet.”
The flames spun until they were a tiny tornado, searing away the upper layer of charred artifacts. Wynn lifted a hand to protect her face from the sudden blast of heat, her eyes narrowed as the flames created a blinding glow.
It took a moment for her vision to clear once the fire vanished. Slowly lowering her arm, she studied the spot that Azh had cleared away. The glob of artifacts had turned to liquid, draining away from the center of the flames. A shocking display of the raw heat that he’d released. Only one item remained on the blackened stone floor. A silver medallion in astonishingly pristine condition.
Hanging from a plain silver chain, the medallion was the size of a quarter and etched with a strange design. It pulsed with a soft silvery light in the dim shadows, as if it held a powerful magic.
Wynn gasped. Not because she was surprised that the medallion had survived the fire. But because she recognized it.
“My necklace,” she rasped.
Azh moved to stand next to her. “You’ve seen it before?”
“I was wearing it when I first woke up on the banks of the river.”
He sent her a startled glance. “That was yours?”
Wynn shrugged. “I guess it belonged to me. I was wearing it. Of course I could have stolen it, I suppose. Or whoever left me there could have put it on me.”
When she’d awakened she’d been wearing a tattered robe that looked as if it’d come out of a trash heap and her hair had been coated with a thick layer of grime. Only the medallion around her neck assured her that she hadn’t been dumped by her family who assumed shewas dead. No one would have left a piece of jewelry that was pure silver on a corpse. Especially one that had been tossed away like trash.
Azh leaned forward to study the necklace. “How did it get here?”
“I pawned it to Axton the second night I came into London.” At the time she hadn’t realized that Axton was a demon. Or that the medallion might hold magic. She just knew that she was cold and hungry and in desperate need of shelter. “I was standing on the corner and he gave me enough money to eat and find lodging for an entire month. I should have known he was ripping me off.” She snorted, trying to sense the magic that pulsed in the silver. It was there, but weirdly it didn’t reach out to her. Was it because she’d already absorbed whatever magic was inside? Had she used it before she knew what she could do? She pursed her lips. “Axton would never have kept it all this time if it wasn’t valuable.”
“Or they kept it for their personal use,” Azh suggested, cautiously reaching down to hold his fingers above the necklace. “There’s a power attached to it.”
Azh hissed, swiftly yanking his hand back as the medallion sizzled with warning.
Wynn arched her brows. What could make a dragon flinch?
