ONE
AISLING
Iwake screaming.
Fire erupts from my palms—wild, uncontrollable, scorching the sheets beneath me. The flames climb the bed frame, lick at the walls, cast dancing shadows across an unfamiliar ceiling. My throat tears itself raw with sounds I don’t recognize. Animal sounds. The sounds of prey cornered and dying.
Weight crashes onto my wrists.
A man. Massive. Pinning me to the mattress with a grip that burns almost as hot as my flames. Wild red hair falls across his face. A scar bisects his jaw. His gaze?—
Inhuman. Molten. Dragon.
“Easy, love.” His voice is rough, too loud, filling the space between us. “Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”
Liar.
The fire surges. He doesn’t flinch. His grip stays locked on my wrists even as the flames crawl up his forearms, singeing the dark hair there. His hold is iron, but not painful. Containing, not crushing.
“That’s it.” He speaks slowly, deliberately. “Get it out. Burn if you need to. I can take it.”
I thrash beneath him. Twist. Try to buck him off. He weighs a bloody ton and moves with me, absorbing every desperate attempt at escape without losing his hold. My wrists stay trapped. The fire keeps pouring out of me in waves I can’t control.
Can’t stop it. Can’t stop it. Can’t?—
“Breathe.” The word cuts through the panic. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Come on, you can do this.”
I try. Fail. My lungs refuse to cooperate, my mind refuses to quiet, and I’m burning and screaming and?—
The fire dies.
Not gradually. All at once. One second I’m an inferno, the next I’m empty. Hollowed out. Shaking so hard my teeth rattle.
The man above me exhales. His fingers loosen on my wrists but don’t release them entirely. Waiting for the next explosion.
Smart. I’d detonate again if I could.
“There you are.” A crooked grin splits his face. Burns mark his forearms—red, already blistering—but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Thought you might bring down the whole fortress there for a minute. Would’ve been impressive, honestly.”
I stare at him. At the rough ceiling beyond his shoulder. At the medical supplies arranged on a table to my right. Glass vials. Herbs drying on racks. Surgical instruments laid out on clean cloth.
Infirmary. My brain supplies the word automatically. Knowledge from my clinic in Cork.
Next my logical panic takes over: assess the environment, identify the escape routes, locate anything that could serve as a weapon.
Solid walls. No windows. One door. A man on top of me. The scalpel on the table, three feet away.
That gaze. That impossible heat behind his irises.
Dragon.
My captors are dragons.
The memory slams into me. Underground chamber. Channels carved in rock, dark with dried blood. Chanting in a language that made my bones vibrate. A woman’s face smiling as they drained me.Your blood sings. Let it sing for me.
I move.
Terror makes me fast. Faster than I’ve ever been in my life. I wrench my right wrist free, twist my body, and my fingers close around the scalpel’s handle. The man—the dragon—rears back on instinct, giving me the space I need to scramble off the bed and press my spine against the wall.
