Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (16 page)

“At least you’re answering my calls now. I suppose I should be grateful. You missed a lovely wedding, by the way.”

Esme winced at the acid sting of her grandmother’s voice. “How’d you know I was home?” Was this even home?

“The security system tripped. I was going to hire an investigator if you didn’t pick up this time.”

Esme managed to not stick out her tongue, although the effort made her exhausted. “Thank you for giving me such leeway. For obvious reasons, the wedding is very much off.”

“Yes. I saw the news. So much crime tape. Not the way we cancelled engagements back in my day.”

To her consternation, Esme felt a laugh churning up like a bubble in tar. “Grand-mère, there are persistent rumors that you poisoned your first husband.”

“Rumors only,” her grandmother said briskly. “As is polite.”

Perhaps Grand-mère would’ve made a better dragon queen.

Or warlock’s bride.

“Did you know?” she asked softly. “That Lars was a…” She couldn’t say warlock, in case her grandmother was innocent to some degree.

“A bastard? Darling, all men are.”

No, they weren’t. Or maybe she’d just been lucky that her first time hadn’t been with a man.

“But getting caught with contraband?” Grand-mère tsked. “Bad form.”

Considering the Nox Incendi had framed Lars for that, Esme thought it was almost funny her grandmother most disapproved of getting caught. She shook her head—oh no, she hadn’t even considered what she was going to do about her missing hair? A wig, maybe? At least she had confirmation Grand-mère didn’t have cameras installed in the townhouse…

“The society matrons are still buzzing about the wedding or lack thereof,” Grand-mère went on. “I liquidated what could be saved and donated the food to that shelter where you volunteer.” She clucked again. “What a depressing place.”

Esme gritted her teeth. “The battered women there have only one thing to be happy about.”

“A kilo of Almas caviar and a seven-layer gold champagne cake for brunch?”

If she could breathe fire over the airwaves… Esme said pointedly, “Fleeing their abusers.”

“Well, we needed the photo op after the wedding fiasco. Since you weren’t around.” Grand-mère’s voice was equally testy. “But it’s too soon to have you back. There’s a finance minister’s protégé in Switzerland—”

“No.”

“—who would… What did you say?”

“I said no.”

“What’s wrong with Switzerland?”

“Nothing,” Esme said with strained patience. “Although there’s probably something wrong with the minister’s flunky if you picked him.”

“He’s younger than some, handsome, and rich as only the Swiss can be,” Grand-mère snapped. “Not to mention far away from here.”

While Rave was centuries old, sometimes half serpentine, and rich as the Swiss could only dream of. And he was far too close. A temptation she’d never be able to forget.

Was there any place in the world, any person who could make her forget?

At the moment, she couldn’t even remember why she wanted to forget.

Oh yes, because the king of mythical beasts deserved a mate who could stand fiercely beside him. Not one who could barely stand up for herself.

“I’m not going to Switzerland,” she said firmly. “I’ll head down to the shelter tomorrow since I didn’t expect to be gone so long.” She’d make sure Grand-mère hadn’t been a total cunt to the women who’d endured so much. Maybe they’d take some sort of consolation in knowing she’d made a terrible mistake, despite her opportunities. And maybe she’d find some strength that they’d been able to walk away under their own power, meaning there was hope for her too.

Her grandmother was silent a moment. But only a moment. “I’ll send a car around tomorrow. The driver will have your ticket.”

Grand-mère was never going to believe in her, so it seemed the perfect time to ask… “Did you love him?”

“Which one?”

“Any of them.”

Another considered silence, longer this time and tinged with some deeper emotion. Could silence even be so fraught? It had to be the borrowed ichor still singing in her blood and body.

“I might have loved one,” Grand-mère said at last. “Under other circumstances. But it seemed too risky. And then he died. So.”

Esme rubbed her hand across her bristling crown, her eyes closed. As tragic love stories went, that one left a lot to be desired.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what? You weren’t even born,” her grandmother said testily. “And wouldn’t have been if those other circumstances had been.”

Esme let her arm drop and looked up at the vaulted ceiling. “Well, I love you, Grand-mère.” And she did, she realized, even though she probably shouldn’t bother. “For what it’s worth.”

“It’d be worth about a hundred million if you decided to love the minister’s lackey.” But there was a note of fondness in the exasperation, Esme thought.

Or so she told herself.

After agreeing to read the talking points Grand-mère’s lawyer had drawn up after the wedding was cancelled, Esme walked through the townhouse.

It was both smaller and emptier than she thought it should be. The white walls seemed to press uncomfortably close, and she wished Piper and Anjali were in the great room with a bottle of good wine and pot brownies. She’d have to call them and try to explain. Although what she would tell them exactly—

She drifted through the kitchen and her senses flared with warning.

She wasn’t alone after all.

Whirling toward the butcher block, she reached for the black handles jutting from the heavy oak. Oh dammit, why hadn’t she ever learned to cook? She’d told Piper to take the good knives when she’d moved across town to be closer to her job, but she could’ve done better than old steak knives—

A heavy hand closed on her shoulder. “Oh no. You aren’t going anywhere.”

He thought she was running? She spun along with the momentum of his tug and lashed out with the knife. Too short, too dull.

She put everything she had into the blow and buried the blade in Lars Ashcraft’s left bicep.

Too bad it hadn’t been his heart. She snarled.

Eyes wide, he staggered back a step, half turning, and wrenched the knife out of her grasp.

She raced the other way, back toward the hall. Why why
why
had she left the quiet safety of the Keep? She could be in Bale’s arms right now—

A scream jolted from her throat, nowhere near as loud as the panic button on the security panel just beyond her fingertips as she fell with Ashcraft’s arm around her throat.

Chapter 16

Bale spent the day at the Nox Incendi retreat in the mountains. The weather was awful, spitting rain and circling winds obscuring the view of the canyon bowl below the atrium house, but he stood at the triangle-paned windows, staring out, and brooded anyway.

Would’ve been easier to brood in his old, dark, prison cavern. But he’d torn down the rock walls, and the gleam of new light on the ancient jewels and coins had reminded him too much of the shine of his ichor on Esme’s skin, the brightness of her eyes when she let him deep into her body.

If he’d had his solarys, it would’ve been a good day to lounge beside the blue-green, spring-fed pool under the citrus trees with their blood oranges gleaming like rubies and the limes like emeralds, the fragrant waxy flowers shining like diamonds.

All right, apparently even this place reminded him of his treasure. Of her.

He was aware of his brother and cousin when they arrived, but they stayed back with the statuary of dragons taken from all cultures and times, so he was able to pretend they were just more stone.

Like he would’ve been, if not for Esme.

Who had dumped him, and his heart was still in freefall though he kept waiting for it to hit bottom.

That was going to hurt.

Finally he turned to face the others. “Say what you’re going to say so you can go away.”

“You should go after her,” Torch said.

Bale shook his head at his cousin, who lounged with his denim-clad hip perched on the muzzle of the Chinese dragon fountaining water into the pool. “She made it very clear to me that she had no desire to be my solarys. That is why she left.”

“Dude, we’re dragons. Since when do we let treasure or anything else get the fuck away?” When Bale arched one questioning eyebrow at him, Torch straightened awkwardly. “Er, my liege. You should go after her.”

“Coin has no choice, gemstones no desire,” Bale said quietly. “My solarys is more than my treasure. She must be my queen. And she must want that more than…anything.”

Rave nodded. “The Nox Incendi deserve that.” His storm-cloud gaze sharpened. “But what do you want?”

Twisting his lips wryly, Bale turned to the window again. “You have to ask?”

“No, but you have to answer. As reyex, you’ve never had to answer to anyone.”

Bale spun back to face him. Even Torch looked appalled and faintly amused in a you’re-gonna-get-it-now sort of way.

“I’ve never been free to,” Bale growled at his brother. “Every word, every action, every facet of every jewel has to be honed in service to the clan.”

Rave inclined his head. “I heard our sire’s lectures, same as you,” he admitted. “But those were other days. The clan then didn’t face our risks.” The clouds in his eyes parted, revealing the clear blue, and it was equally clear who he was thinking of when he added, “Or rewards.”

Bale snapped his teeth and sent a spark flying toward his brother. It was fledging behavior and bad manners. Torch snickered.

With another glare for his irrepressible cousin, Bale said, “Regardless, I am still reyex. But that wasn’t enough for her.”

Rave gave him an ironic smile. “Is the reyex who she wanted?”

The fire inside Bale spiraled higher, the ichor running fast and hard. When he’d been half stone, these feelings hadn’t plagued him so. He’d made hard decisions for the Nox Incendi—banishing Torch’s line for their insurrection; building the Keep to protect them in the human world, which had been controversial at the time, considering dragonkin had more of a history of breaching castles than living in them; holding the clan apart from the world.

Maybe those hard decisions had been easier when he had been too frozen to care.

Now everything felt too close, too bright, his nerves alight. But what could he tell his brother and cousin—that he’d rather be stone than miss Esme?

He stalked away from them, stripping off his clothes as he went, and threw himself into the teeth of the storm.

The crosswinds tried to toss him down the mountain, and a warning rumble of thunder told him it was only going to get worse. Once he’d flown this wildly in a frantic effort to stave off the petralys, and when he’d lost he hadn’t been able to fly and it had nearly broken him, body and spirit.

Now he flew for no reason at all.

The dragon took him into the heart of danger. It didn’t care he was liege to the clan, that his brother and cousin were shooting him worried looks through the glass, that some hiker or hunter might wander along the ridgeline and see him. The beast wanted the freedom of the sky and the lash of the storm.

It wanted what it had found with Esme.

He barrel-rolled into the wind, letting the rain wash along his belly scales with eager fingers, the heavy sails of his wings blown taut.

He had his life back because of her, light and flight too, but if she wasn’t with him to share the riches, none of it mattered.

If she didn’t want to be his queen, he would be lord no more.

Without conscious thought, he spun upright, surging forward with a powerful downstroke. The path took him out of the protected bowl of the canyon, out where the storm was worse and anyone might see. And his dragon searched the horizon for the next city northward.

Salt Lake, where he knew Esme had returned to her life which had been so rudely interrupted by warlocks and dragons and magic and passion.

The spines along his long neck prickled, sensitive to changing air currents.

And something else in the wind.

She might not want the link between them, and he had no intention of imposing himself on her, but they were bound together, entangled. And though she’d tried to cut him of—along with her hair—they were still more alike than she was willing to admit. And through that link, as much as he knew she did not want him, he also knew she needed him.

Turning end over end in the sky, he arrowed northward with great sweeps of his wings. Behind him, he knew Rave and Torch would be frantic, watching him getting smaller. But the dragon wasn’t going to explain or wait for an airplane. Not when it felt its mate calling.

***

It was almost dark when he plummeted straight out of the sky above the Salt Lake marina. Through the gusting salt spray, only one pair of startled eyes tracked his fall.

Luckily it was the wolf-shifter, as Bale had hoped.

Joel hustled across the deck of the boat, pulling a slicker from among the life preservers. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“I need the car we left with you,” Bale said. “Also, I’m afraid I’ll need you to drive as well. And can I borrow your phone? And maybe your pants?”

The wolf-shifter blinked. “I figured it was too good to be true. Happy to help. Sure. And not a chance.”

As all good shifters did, Joel had extra clothes. The t-shirt hung loose around Bale’s flanks, but at least the shoulders were wide enough, and the jeans had been laundered hundreds of times to softness.

The footwear called flipflops, though, were atrocious. Esme would laugh at his awkward stride.

She
would
laugh with him again. He would allow no other outcome.

But the prickle in his guts told him he didn’t have that power.

In the car, Bale called his brother.

“Esme’s in trouble,” he said.

Rave let out a sharp breath. “You’re in—”

“What’s her home address?” Bale didn’t have time to hear his brother’s concerns. He hadn’t let himself look at the reports Torch had made about her, fearing that he’d break down and go after her.

Well, he
was
, technically, but only because she was calling to his dragon.