Page 45 of Dragon’s Rogue

But here she was. Somehow, they were connected. But how? Could she still be one of the Three, even though she didn’t know where the Seal was?

Through the aftermath of their loving, he felt a sudden intense darkness like a storm about to break. Then a voice thundered through the room.

WHO ARE YOU? I SENSE YOU. I FEEL YOU THERE. COME TO ME!

It was so loud it seemed to fill the air—and yet he felt like it was speaking in his mind. Every piece of art Blaze owned trembled with the force of it.

COME TO ME! SET ME FREE!

Then the door to the vault burst open, and dark fog billowed out.

Chapter 23

A few miles up the ridge, in the dragons’ lair, the ground trembled. The coffee in Thorne’s cup swayed and sloshed. He whipped his chair around and studied the computer screens, massive spikes appearing on all his graphs.

Earthquake? What the fuck? He tapped the keyboard to pull up a geographical overlay, looking for the epicenter of the quake.

Oh, hell. There were three dots on the monitor. Three centers. Under Mount Hood, where the Draken Lord’s tomb lay. Here in their lair. And…

A few miles down the ridge. Under Blaze McKenna’s house.

Fuck.

Zane and the woman had gone looking for the Seal. If they’d found it, and damaged it…

The cave trembled again, harder.

For a moment, he froze. Should he head for the tomb? Or for the Seal, and Zane—who he’d grown to love like the brothers they pretended to be? His emotions warred with his responsibilities—but there really wasn’t a choice. The most important things were all in the same place.

Thorne didn’t bother to head for the rooftop. He slammed through the doors of the Batcave and ran down the underground corridors. Past his lair. Down another echoing tunnel, to an opening in the hillside masked with shrubs and magic.

Tyr! he called out. Get to the monitoring station!

On my way, Tyr responded, his mental voice sounding startled. What the hell’s going on?

No clue. I’m going to find Zane. If it looks like the tomb’s going to blow, then…

Shit. Then what?

He noticed how Tyr didn’t even bother trying to get him to finish that sentence. If the tomb went now, there wasn’t a fucking thing they could do about it. Even if Tyr were in the tomb itself.

He tried not to picture what would happen if the Draken Lord rose with Tyr there—his charming, loyal, annoying brother dwarfed by the power of an ancient Draken Lord.

Although if it happened, they were probably all dead anyway.

He ran harder, air knifing into his lungs, and burst through the spell and the underbrush at the mouth of the tunnel without stopping. He launched himself into the night air a thousand feet above the city, Changing as he fell. His huge, midnight-blue wings snapped out, bearing him upwards, and he caught an updraft and banked, heading for Blaze’s house.

Praying they could avert disaster.

Zane and Blaze sprang apart, staring at each other.

Every piece of gold in the artifact room reverberated in a jangling, discordant cacophony. Blaze’s eyes were wide, her whole body on the alert. “Did you hear that?”

“Could anyone possibly have missed it?”

Blaze had already pulled away from him and was racing for the vault, shouting protection spells as she ran. Zane followed. Inside the vault, amid the black fog, the wooden box was vibrating on the shelf, rattling everything around it.

Blaze went to grab the box. “Don’t touch it!” Zane said.