Of course, the only evidence I had that they might want me there was that they’d brought me to their camp in the first place, and the one who’d done that obviously hated me. But the othershad liked one thing about me, at the very least, and I could work with that. I was used to courtiers, and these dragons weren’t half so duplicitous.
Did I want to stay? For a while, maybe. Until I figured out what to do next.
Now that I’d seen them, there was no way I was bringing Evander a dragon’s head. Not even because I didn’t think I’d manage it before they burnt me to a crisp. They were just?—
The sun shining off their scales. That rumble that preceded the gout of blue flame that’d come at me. Sapphire eyes sparking with anger.
Dragons were beautiful.
I didn’t want to kill them. Didn’t even want to try.
I scrubbed myself clean, careful with the bruised parts of me, but there was no rush. No one called for me that I heard, and Harri knew where I was. Perhaps they thought I’d just left and they didn’t care.
In any case, I had a few minutes to sink neck deep in the water and let my muscles relax.
A whip of air caught my attention, and I opened my eyes groggily to see a blue dragon flying over the tree line. My lips twitched upward.
The last dragon was coming to wash up as well. Maybe I could get him to soften to me.
Only, he dove down and parted his massive jaws and I saw the light bloom in his throat.
“Oh fuck.” I sank under water just in time to see a wall of blue flame close over me. The water’s surface made it ripple, and when I burst free from it, gasping for air, the trees all around the pool were already lit up.
The way the underbrush burned made a space around the spring large enough for a dragon to land, and even the day before, the blue dragon hadn’t seemed so massive.
Of course, I hadn’t been naked in front of him the day before. Armor made a man feel less vulnerable than he really was.
I scrambled in the pool, but my feet slipped on the smooth rocks. Water splashed behind me—the sound of a man running through the pool—and a fleshy weight hit my back a second later. I crashed into the stones that separated the little pools of heated water, tumbling over one with a grunt.
But the dragon was on me. Even as a man, he was enormous, and I was in no fighting shape. He grabbed my shoulder and tossed me onto my back. The stones dug into my shoulders, but I couldn’t think about that.
I’d never seen fury like what flashed in his eyes then.
“You killed my sister,” he snarled.
I didn’t.
I wanted to protest, but his hands closed around my neck. Both of them. He squeezed so tight I couldn’t gasp in a single bit of air. Panicked, my stomach clenched, and every instinct screamed at me to fight him—claw at him, punch him in the stomach, gouge out his eyes—his pretty fucking eyes.
But that wouldn’t do any good. He’d overpower me, and everything ached and?—
I reached for the air instead. The air in his lungs. I spread my fingers wide, clasped them in a fist, and jerked it through the air beside me.
Then he was the one gasping for nothing. He let me go to claw at his own throat, and I scrambled back.
I let the fist go to keep my balance, and he sucked in a sharp breath before throwing himself at me again.
I’d made it over the low rock wall, but his arms were long. He pulled at my ankle and only the water allowed me to slip free of him. I couldn’t outrun him or overpower him.
I threw my arms over my head, curled up tight, and the yell that escaped me was unmanly at best. “Stop!”
High pitched. Frantic. Terrified.
Moons above, I didn’t want to die screeching like a child.
But the sound of it brought him up short. His fists never fell, no brutal grip tore at my limbs. Trembling, I lifted my head to see him crouched above me, his chest heaving.
“I didn’t kill your sister,” I rasped. “I swear.”
