I turned and frowned at Davin, who was inspecting the fucking murder-button-panel-of-death on my father’s cell. It looked like someone had hit it so hard that the black button had popped out of place, but that wasn’t what Davin was looking at. He was looking at a tiny hole at the bottom, beneath the buttons.
A keyhole.
Oh jeez. Had we missed something that obvious?
I’d been expecting some kind of full-prison sort of lever that when pulled, opened all the cells.
I went straight to Tadhg’s body and...took a deep breath, because this was a dead body. Not like a vampire dead, but like...deaddead. He was cooling, his eyes still wide with shock but now blank as well, and the smell was...very bad.
Just the thought of what was causing that made me gag, and I had to take a moment to calm myself before starting to go through his pockets.
Davin came up on the other side of the body and knelt there. I glanced up and realized...his jacket wasn’t the only thing that had been burned through. The shirt he was wearing—one of his own—had mostly burned through, leaving only pale chest covered with a smattering of chest hair showing.
“Holy shit,” I said, staring at him, completely distracted from looking for...things. “Your shirt.”
He looked up at me, then down at the charred fabric, frowning at it. “I thought Caspian had forgotten the spell to protect us from fire, since the cat got hurt.”
“I did,” Caspian announced as he pushed the door to the room back open, marching into the hall. The vague scent of smoke followed him, but he looked none the worse for wear. “I apologize for the oversight, and clearly owe anyone injured an apology, among other things. Are you all well?”
But that didn’t make sense at all.
“Mates,” came the thready voice of Sexton’s father. “Bestowing all the base abilities of the dragon on the beloved. Strength. Constitution. Claws. Fire immunity. Congratulations.”
Once again, Sexton cleared his throat, reminding me of the purpose of searching Tadhg. Still, as I turned back to the body, my mind was whirling.
Congratulations.
Davin was immune to fire because of me.
Annoying that Twist hadn’t also become immune to fire, but we took wins where we could find them, and I loved the cat, but she wasn’t my boyfriend.
Davin wrenched the remaining bit of his shirt open, and then peeled it off like it was a button-down, tossing it aside. Then he cocked his head and reached for Tadhg’s neck, pulling out a leather cord, attached to the end of which was a key. He held it up triumphantly.
Everyone present seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Davin frowned, though, and motioned toward the entrance. “Let’s test it on the cell with the murdered woman. I’d rather not have it set anything off and kill the survivors.”
I shuddered at the idea, but nodded and followed him to that first cell on the left.
As Davin unlocked it, I stared at the remains of what had once been a dragon. Sure, she’d been kind of a selfish, speciesist jerk, but that didn’t mean she’d automatically deserved to die.
It would always be the thing that set good people apart from monsters, though. Maybe I wouldn’t mourn every death, noteven the ones I personally caused. Fuck knew I would never be sad Tadhg was dead. But I would also always mourn the necessity or the fact of killing, while monsters reveled in it.
Monsters like my grandfather had been.
The door unlocked, and nothing horrible seemed to happen, so Davin nodded and handed the key off to me. Like for some reason I was the one who had to release Sexton.
Well, maybe that was where Davin drew the line. He had come to help free my cousin, but perhaps actually letting him out of the cell was an annoying thought? I supposed it didn’t much matter either way. I trooped right down and opened the cell my cousin was in, then his father’s across from him.
Then I stopped and turned a full hundred-and-eighty degrees, pausing and turning back to Caspian when I finished. “Granddad?”
He smirked and lifted a brow at me. “Yes?”
“What the hell are we gonna do with all these dragons?”
CHAPTER 34
Less than ten of the imprisoned dragons knew enough about the modern world to be comfortable leaving the place and just walking back into it. Some of them had been so deep into imprisonment that the only people they remembered were their nearest cellmates.
Some of them had been in those cells so long that they needed serious mental help before they could so much as hold a conversation.
