Light My Fire (38 page)

“What the heck is fugu venom?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“A venom so toxic, there is no antidote to it. It causes paralysis which is lethal one hundred percent of the time when injected into the blood. Shall I describe to you the
effects? The paralysis begins as a tingling of the skin, moving quickly to vomiting, dizziness, and weakness.
The muscles in your lungs are locked rigid, making it im
possible for you to breathe. Humans die of asphyxiation anywhere from five to twenty minutes later.”

“I’m not human anymore,” I pointed out, wishing like
hell Jim was here to help me. I expected it to arrive with
help at any moment. Surely Jim would have told Nora what was going on. She would probably call Rene, and
the three of them would come bursting in at the exact mo
ment I needed them.

Or so the scene went in my mind. Reality, unfortu
nately, had different ideas.

“No, you are not human. But what do you think will happen to your brain without oxygen?” Fiat leaned close,
his breath brushing my face. “The fugu poisoning will
strip your body of the ability to provide you with oxygen,
leaving you in a coma after ten minutes without air. I be
lieve an hour is all it will take to ensure that you spend the
rest of eternity brain-dead, your being trapped in a living
tomb from which there is no escape, unable to move,
speak, even think.”

A chill gripped me, horror crawling up my arms. I was
banking on my immortality to keep me from being seriously damaged, but I’d never considered being trapped in
my own body.

“You are so incredibly insane—” The needle burned as
it slid a little deeper into my neck. I shut up.

“Fiat, this is folly.”

“Stay back,” Fiat snapped at Gabriel.

“I merely want some answers, nothing more. What
do you mean you do not suffer from the weakness of
diluted blood? Your mother was human just as ours were.”
Gabriel’s voice was soothing, his body language deliber
ately relaxed to present no threat. He took a step toward
Fiat.

“Why do you assume so? Because there is an archaic
and asinine rule stating that no wyvern can be born of two
dragons?” Fiat laughed, the movement jostling the needle
so it slipped in a little more. I held my breath, my atten
tion on Drake.

His face was a mask of indifference, but his eyes, oh,
his eyes said everything his expression didn’t. They
burned with fury and deadly intention. Within him, dragon
fire raged so greatly I could feel it across the room. His
control of it was nothing short of miraculous.

Fiat laughed a cold, calculating laugh that made my stomach turn over. “Do not be so foolish, Gabriel. I am proof that the rule is just as outdated as your ideas of
democratic peace. My uncle was born to be wyvern of the
blue dragons, but he was too weak to stand up to me. I took his name, his fortune, his position within the sept, and when the time was right, I took the sept itself. And
now I’m on the verge of ensuring that I will rule the weyr
as was preordained. Dmitri, fulfill your destiny!”

Fiat really was insane. I knew that now, but being on
the wrong end of a poisonous syringe meant I kept that thought to myself. As I watched, mute with horror and
impotence, Dmitri shoved aside Drake’s sword, getting to
his feet.

“Do you yield?” he asked Drake.

Drake was silent, his eyes burning on Fiat.

“You must choose,” Fiat told him, smiling. “Which do
you value more? Your mate or your sept?”

“This is ridiculous,” I said, very careful not to move. “Even if you do turn me into a zombie, I won’t be dead, not technically. You won’t have destroyed Drake.”

“You think not?” Fiat looked back at Drake. “We will
allow him to make the choice nonetheless. Do you yield
the sept to Dmitri? Or will you sacrifice your mate?”

Dark power nudged at me, inviting me to use it again. I closed my eyes against the siren lure of it. There was something wrong with it, something that I instinctively
knew was bad, something that would ultimately end in
my destruction.

You are a prince of Abaddon now,
the dark power sang
to me.
You do not have to suffer fools such as Fiat. Use
the power you have gained to protect yourself. Use the
power to right the wrongs. How can something be evil
that is used for good?

I turned away from it, trying to pull Drake’s fire to
give me strength. I was a professional, dammit! I was a
Guardian, not a prince, no matter what fate insisted. I was
inherently a good person, and I would not walk the path of evil!

“I’ve told you before, Fiat,” Drake said slowly, his
voice deep and rough with emotion. “Both Aisling and the sept are mine. I do not give up what I hold.”

“No? Perhaps this will help change your mind.”

Before I could blink, before I could draw in a breath,
Fiat shoved the needle into me. Burning warmth filled my
neck as he pushed down the plunger, injecting the fugu
poison into my blood.

“No!” Drake roared, a horrible noise that broke two of the nearest windows. He leaped forward, but Dmitri was
evidently expecting Fiat’s attack on me, for he threw him
self at Drake, knocking both of them down at my feet.
The green dragons swarmed forward but stopped when
Fiat’s men hauled Drake to his feet, their guns pointing
directly at his heart.

Fiat released me. I staggered a step, then collapsed, my
mind numb with terror.

Use me,
the dark power suggested.

I was tempted. Oh, so tempted. I didn’t want to be a vegetable. I didn’t want to lose Drake and Jim and Nora
and everything life had to offer me. But before I could
make a decision that would damn my soul for eternity,
Fiat jerked me upward again. Drake snarled and lunged
forward, hauling Fiat’s three men and Dmitri with him.

“Stop! Gabriel can draw out the poison!” Fiat yelled
above Drake’s continued roars of fury. “But he will not
do so unless you yield.”

I turned slowly to look at Gabriel. He stood a few feet
away, his arms crossed, his face guarded.

“So much for being a mediator, eh, Gabriel?” I asked him.

His gaze held mine for a moment, then dropped.
“There are things you do not understand, Aisling. If it helps, I genuinely regret you are caught up in this.”

“How easily the lies slip off your tongue.” I turned
away from him, my stomach roiling at the thought that I
had ever considered him a friend. No doubt it was Gabriel
who had tried to kill me in Paris. Or perhaps it was a plan
worked up between him and Fiat.

My breath caught short in my chest as I realized the
sickness I felt was more than just Gabriel’s betrayal. I
was physically sick as well... . The poison was begin
ning to work.

“There is still time,” Fiat said calmly, glancing at his
watch.

He held me back with one hand, while it took three of
Fiat’s men and Dmitri to keep Drake subdued. I glanced be
yond them to where the green dragons had stopped. They
were huddled together, clearly unwilling to risk their
wyvern’s life. Tears pricked in my eyes at the thought that I
wouldn’t get to know them.

“Gabriel can save her. All you need do is yield.”

Nausea hit me in the gut with the subtleness of a mule kick. I fell to my knees, dry heaving as my body racked
with the need to purge itself.

“See how she suffers. The paralysis will begin to take effect on her lungs soon. She will struggle to breathe, but
it will be no use. Her muscles will not allow her to draw in the so desperately needed oxygen. You have”—Fiat looked at his watch again—”approximately fifteen sec
onds before even Gabriel’s skills as a healer will be
useless.”

Another wave of nausea hit me. My stomach cramped so bad, I thought I would pass out from the pain. I wiped my mouth and looked up to where Drake was held, tears
blurring my eyes. I was having difficulty breathing, my
lungs not seeming to hold any oxygen. I panted, trying
desperately to get some air.

Drake’s green-eyed gaze held mine for a second.

“I love you,” I told him, jerking with the attempt to bring air into my lungs. “I always will. Dead or alive or
in a coma, I will continue to love you.”

Drake’s hands fisted, his jaw tight. Fire burst up in a
ring around him, but it didn’t faze any of the dragons
present. I willed Drake to say the words I needed to hear,
begged him with my eyes to acknowledge what was
between us. He stared back at me, mute, and a little piece
of my heart shattered.

I doubled over again, caught in an agony of vomiting,
gasping painfully for air in between retches. This was it. My brain would die, but my body would go on, which
meant Drake would continue to live.

Without me,
my heart cried.

It doesn’t have to be that way,
the dark power answered, and to my horror, I started to pull on it for strength.

“I yield.” Drake’s voice was hard and filled with agony
of his own. “Gabriel, help her!”

Thick, fetid power flowed up from the ground, wrap
ping itself around my tortured form.

“Get her on her side. I will draw the poison before it
disperses any further.” I was aware of Gabriel’s voice, of
hands helping me, of the sharp sting on my neck and sub
sequent hot flow of blood, but it was the dark power that caught my attention and held it. I pulled harder on it, fo
cusing it to push the poison back, keeping it from spread
ing. I knew there would be a price to pay for using it, but
at that moment, closer to death than I ever had been, I was
willing to take that chance.

My soul wept.

₂₃

“She will survive. The poison hadn’t dissipated too
much,” Gabriel’s voice said above my head.

I heard it but didn’t pay much attention to his words. I was too busy being stunned. There was no other word to describe my emotions but
stunned,
although
stupefied,
disbelieving, and flabbergasted
weren’t far behind. As I
lay on the ground, supported by Drake, my body gasping
in great lungfuls of air, my brain stopped battling for a moment with the realization that I’d used dark power to
save myself and pointed out the momentous event that
had just happened.

Drake had given up his sept for me.

“Why?” The word croaked from my throat as I twisted
my head to look up at him.

His eyes glittered hotly at me. “Why do you think?”

“Is this some sort of weird political move?” I couldn’t
think of any other reason for Drake to willingly give up
the sept. I knew he was attracted to me, I knew he would
honor me as his mate for the rest of our lives together, and
while I suspected his feelings for me were deeper than he
was comfortable with, I was under no delusions as far as
love went. I wasn’t absolutely certain Drake
could
love—
as committed to the sept as he was, it was quite possible
that it just wasn’t in his chemical makeup to be able to
love both it and me.

“You are crying,” he said, touching my face. His
fingertip was smeared red.

“Answer my question, Drake. Is this all a plan of
yours?”

An odd, irritated look flashed across his face. “You
know me better than that. I do not give up that which I
possess.”

“Then why did you do just that?” I tried to prop my
self up but was still too shaky to do it on my own. Drake
helped me into the nearest chair, giving me a glass of
water to rinse out my mouth. Gabriel had Fiat cornered,
arguing about something. I didn’t care what their problem
was. The two of them could go to hell for all I cared.