Lilith McLaren finished taking her sip, and slowly met Roman’s gaze over the lip of her tea cup. Lightning struck swollen and hot somewhere nearby, and the overhead café lights flickered.
“Her father is none other than the first love of my very long life,” said Lilith slowly. “The Great Black dragon, Bantariax.”
Chapter Nineteen
“How long do you plan to keep me here?” Her voice was stronger now that she’d eaten enough sugary food to feel safe in her powers once more. Dragons thrived on carbohydrates. Actually, humans did too. Apes were literally designed to live on carbs. But humans could deny themselves for a while. If a dragon tried to do so, people would die, and the dragon would eat the sugary foods anyway.
Then again, that sometimes happened with humans too.
Eva had left the couch and made her way to the fire place, where she gazed steadily into it, thinking of her young red dragon friend – and the man who was anything but the red dragon he’d been pretending to be. Being taken into another dimension by the dragon outlaw would have been reminder enough of her situation, but there was also the fact that he’d watched her the entire time she was eating. He was watching her still.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off her except to cook since they’d arrived in the parallel world of beaches and sea glass. She could feel his gaze on her, never ending. There was a weight and a heat to it, searing through her. But most disconcerting of all to Eva was that unlike Arach’s gaze… it wasn’t unwelcome.
Stockholm syndrome, she reminded herself forcefully. But when she did, she closed her eyes and hugged herself, because the words were laced with the worst kind of doubt.
“I can’t keep you anywhere you decide you don’t want to be,” said Calidum.
As always, his deep voice, melodic and calm, was like a kind of music that thrummed along the nerve endings of anyone listening. But it was the words themselves that caught Eva off guard this time. Her eyes flew open and she turned to face him.
Cal was leaning against the dark marble of the adjoining kitchen, his muscled arms crossed over his broad chest, his long, sculpted legs crossed at his ankles. He was dressed in the usual dark clothing from head to boots, lending to his tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome image. His charcoal gray eyes shone with a luminescence that almost gave off its own light.
Eva swallowed hard. Had she heard him right? She was free to go?
Sure, said her sarcastic inner thoughts. If you want to die at Arach’s hand.
And that was the power of Calidum right there. He knew that she knew that she had no choice but to stay with him. So rather than argue the fact with him, Eva lifted her chin and narrowed her gaze. “My personal feelings for you aside, we have to stop Arach,” she said simply.
Calidum said nothing for a moment, his beautiful eyes simply boring into her. And then, quite calmly, he said, “I couldn’t agree more, Eva. Do you have a plan?”
Eva blinked. What? The Great Gray was actually asking her for ideas?
“I….” She faltered, realizing that since this had all begun, she’d been far more concerned with her safety or the safety of others in each immediate situation than with fixing the overarching problems. She closed her eyes and ran a hand through her long hair. When she did, she realized it had reverted to its natural bright white color. “Shit,” she said softly. She really had been completely drained by the healings at the pier, Arach’s strange vampiric attack, and her even more unexpected retaliation. “Honestly, no,” she admitted.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to think. Suddenly, Calidum was speaking next to her ear. “What did he do to you, Eva?”
Eva jumped and spun, trying to step back. But Cal grabbed her arm and held it in a tight grip, using it to yank her closer. At once, she was pulling desperately to escape his grasp, but not for the right reasons. His nearness did not fill her with the loathing it should have. Quite the opposite.
Her head felt too light, too full, and her insides were heating up. Cal gazed steadily down at her as he lifted her caught wrist, and her sleeve fell back, exposing the twin bite marks Arach had so callously left there.
“Tell me something Eva,” he said intimately. “Did he do this?” He hadn’t even glanced at the marks; his eyes were focused on hers, which told her he had already noticed the dual wounds. He’d probably seen them when she was eating. Maybe sooner. She had forgotten who she was dealing with. The man before her was observant. Smart. Dangerous.
She didn’t bother confirming it; Cal obviously already knew that Arach had bitten her. So instead, she straightened in his tight grip and lifted her chin, feigning a defiance that was all too quickly giving way to something else. “I told you he had changed,” she said.
“Yes, you did.” He now broke eye contact and glanced down at the bruised wound along the vein on the inside of her arm. “And he seems to have developed a taste for you.”
Eva’s teeth clenched tight. She yanked her arm free of his grip, and he let her go. “I’m afraid one bite is all he gets,” she hissed.
Calidum smiled wryly. “Eva, everyone knows one bite is never enough.”
Evangeline glared at him. “What is your game, Korridum?” she demanded, using his real name because he kept using hers. “What the hell do you want from me?”
There was something tearing her up inside. Fear was there, yes. Fear of Amunet, the Entity, and Arach. But there was a second emotion growing solidly around that fear, something more powerful, something darker, warmer and unfamiliar. She found much to her displeasure, that she was shaking again. She hugged herself and flexed her muscles, willing him not to notice.
The Great Gray watched her in silence for a long time, his smile fading. “No games, Eva,” he said at last, speaking as if he were weary of the truth. “Arach will find you the moment you step past the walls of this dimension. I think we both know what he’s become.”
“What?” she asked. “A vampire? I can handle a vampire.” That latter bit was true. She’d dealt with her fair share of rogue blood suckers. She was a magnet for supernaturals of the opposite sex.
But what wasn’t true was the former bit, and she damned well knew it. She might be able to handle a vampire, but she’d thrown magic at Arach that she hadn’t even known she possessed, and he’d come away from it unscathed. He wasn’t just a vampire, and he was no longer simply a dragon. He was something else entirely.
“I won’t bother correcting you,” Calidum told her in a weary tone. “You’ve already figured out the error in your assumptions.” He turned his back to her and moved to the fireplace, where he braced his strong arms against the mantle and leaned in, closing his eyes.
Eva watched the muscles flex in his forearms, and she felt strange. That dark warmth inside her grew a little darker, and a little warmer.
Suddenly – she needed to know. She had waited for thousands of years. She’d kept it inside and she’d questioned it and she’d cried a million times. And now, here in this moment, with the very man before her, she simply needed the answer that time hadn’t supplied.
She licked her lips, steadied herself, and closed her eyes.
“Why did you kill him?”
The question came out less shaky than she’d expected it to. Conviction wrought by generations gave it force and power. The words filled the space of the luxury living room, and the lights in the chandelier dimmed. The fire in the hearth darkened, its flames taking on a blood red hue. The world stopped moving, and every living thing upon it waited in tense silence for an answer.
Chapter Twenty
Calidum raised his head, and from the side, she could see his raven hair reflected the strange dark light in the hearth. For the second time in as many moments, Eva was struck with how beautiful he was. Again, she swallowed hard. She needed the answer. She needed to know why Korridum the Great Gray had killed her father.
“How could you kill him?” she asked next.
The Legendaries were so powerful. It would have taken massiv
e amounts of emotion to bring forth the strength necessary to snuff out the life of one. She had always been so terribly, horribly confused. She just didn’t understand.
Slowly, gracefully, Calidum straightened from his position over the fire and turned to face her.
Oh crap.
The grayscale fire was back and blazing in the depths of his striking eyes. He was so tall… he loomed like a shadow in a dark dream, exquisitely overpowering. “You tell me, Eva,” he said softly, his tone cold. “You think you know what you saw.” Despite the fire in his eyes, his words felt like ice on her skin. “So tell me. Why would I kill him? How did I do it?”
There was a moment of tension, thick and hard that passed between them.
And then, despite his beauty, something inside Eva snapped again. It was that familiar sound inside, that cracking of the twig, and suddenly she was screaming at him. “It’s Evangeline, god damn you!” How dare he take that tone with her! “You fucking murdered my father!” She rushed at him, and for the second time that night, her body surprised her with a burst of unfamiliar power. She blurred into motion, moving much faster than she’d intended, and found herself in front of him the blink of an eye. There, she punched the Great Gray in the face with everything she had.
Calidum’s head snapped to the side. But that was where Eva’s attack ended. It shocked her. She stood frozen before him, her hand balled into a painful fist, her body shaking with rage and surprise. Her breathing was ragged, loud in the ensuing silence.
Slowly, deliberately, Calidum turned his head back to her.
Eva’s breath stilled in her lungs. Never before in the history of dragons had one dragon looked at another with so much palpable heat. “Did I?” he asked. She hadn’t even made him bleed. He was utterly composed, and yet she had the impression of a hurricane behind a single, thin pane of glass. “Is that what you saw?” He paused before he added quite intentionally, “Eva?”
Evangeline felt mired in his gaze, trapped in the conflagrations that mirrored his soul.
“Think carefully, Eva,” he said, again placing emphasis on her name as his tone lowered and took on a decidedly intimate note. “You were so very young. How certain are you of what you witnessed?”
The air was growing thick with magic. It almost felt like chains and cuffs, wrapping around her, holding her in place. He was larger than life… and so close. So very close.
Step back, her mind begged her. Distance. She needed distance. He was messing with her head and she couldn’t think any longer.
Eva let out a shaky breath and stepped back. But her heel never touched down; however fast she’d become, the Dragon King was faster. She felt his fingers grasp tightly around her wrists a split second before she slammed into the hardness of his chest. He then released one wrist to slide his arm around her waist and hold her fast against him.
He lowered his lips to within an inch of hers and asked, “Are you certain enough to pass judgment on me, my queen? As you have for thousands of years?”
Oh gods… “Let me go,” she commanded. But it sounded more like a plea.
Of all the things you could ask me to do, Evangeline, you ask the one I cannot.
His voice sounded in her head clear as day, echoing through the halls of her mind with so much presence, it made her dizzy. She closed her eyes against this new invasion, and his grip on her waist tightened. Her legs were going to give out any second now. She could feel it. He was having an effect on her that she had zero control over.
“Now then,” he told her, still whispering his words across her lips. “Why don’t we concentrate on something you actually do know? Such as the fact that the Entity has reunited with his queen, the goddess of hate has been unleashed on the world…” his fingers moved on her wrist, brushing gently over the dual bite marks Arach had left, “and the Traitor is hunting you.”
She moaned softly, unable to stop the sound from escaping her throat. His touch on the wounds was blatantly sexual, sending electric currents of sensation through her.
“You might not have a plan, Eva, but I do,” he told her next, moving slightly so that his lips were beside her ear, causing goosebumps to rise over her flesh. “It’s been my plan from the moment you turned around in that mall, and I knew you were my queen.”
He nipped gently at her ear lobe, his teeth clenching the soft flesh to send rivulets of unwanted pleasure through her before he pulled away again and laughed softly. The sound sank into Eva’s bloodstream, infiltrating her from the inside out. “Would you like me to share it with you?”
“Fuck you,” she whispered helplessly.
His laughter continued to caress her. “You got it in one.”
She was cocooned in an awakening desire that sapped at her strength and resolve. But somewhere deep, deep inside, her bullied willpower reached out a scrawny hand and begged her to take hold. And because she was who she was – she did.
“I am not your queen,” she told him, a slight amount of that rescued will lacing her words to give them strength. But her eyes were still closed, and her legs were still weak. “I would never be queen to my father’s killer.” Because I remember, she thought. I remember his body, his death, the end of my family. And you standing over it all.
Calidum’s body was hard, unyielding, and as still as a monument against her. The fire in the hearth went from dark red to black and white, the color leached from it by magic. The air in the living room almost seemed to buzz with unspent power.
Eva opened her eyes. It was a mistake. He was gazing down at her with cruel and hard resolve. His blazing eyes claimed her, searing her with a hunger that took her breath away.
“I can make you forget.”
Eva’s heart skipped. Her eyes widened.
It was an offer… or a promise.
It was a reminder of who and what he was and the fact that he was more powerful than she could hope to imagine. And that if she wanted him to, he really could make her forget. The images that haunted her memory her entire life – he could make them go away. And the pleasure he would give her when he did would quite probably drive her mad.
She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly swollen with emotion. The truth of it was, she did want to forget. And as much as she desired whole heartedly to deny it, the Dragon King felt good against her.
No, she thought. Good wasn’t the right word. Because her body was hurting, he was burning her up, and he was unyielding and in control and she was helpless in his arms. Good wasn’t what this was.
This was scary and heart hammering and exciting and confusing as hell. This was…
No! Don’t you dare say it! Don’t let him do this to you!
In that moment of firmly forced clarity, Eva realized that the powerful dragon holding her in his arms might be holding her in another way. He might be using his power on her even then. To force her hand, to make her submit – she didn’t know why, exactly. But it was the only explanation that made any sense to her just then. It was the only reason she could think of that Eva would be responding in this way to the man who killed her father.
But he said he didn’t.
Eva wanted to claw her own chest open just then. In human form, she had one heart. Dragons in their true forms had three. One heart fed their body by pumping blood, one fed their spirit by pumping magic, and the third and most important heart pumped knowledge through the ethereal veins of a dragon’s expanded mind. At the moment, that was the one she wanted to kill. Anything to bring an end to the warring thoughts and emotions running rampant through her.
But she’d never taken her true form, not after all this time, and what were the chances that if she ripped out her one heart right now, it would be the right one?
She was thinking nonsense. Her thoughts were ridiculous. It was yet more proof that she was being driven to madness by the Dragon King. Yet more reason to tear her heart out and cut it in two.
“Well,” said Calidum gently, “we can’t have any of that.”
With that, the
tall, dark dragon slowly let her go. It was painfully gradual, as if it were the last thing in any world that he wanted to do. But his fingers loosened around her wrist and his arm slid away from her waist, and the man who seemed to command the universe stepped back from Eva.
Cold and space now crowded around her, offering her air, and yet stealing something vital from her at the same time.
She felt bereft. There was no other word for it.
She shook her head at him, hugging herself for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “What have you done to me?” she asked. It had to be some kind of magic, some insidious spell he’d cast on her. She had never felt so weak or confused or utterly out of control in her entire draconic life.
Chapter Twenty-one
What have I done to you? he thought with mystified incredulity. Not a goddamned thing. Which is a hell of a lot less than I want to do to you.
His body ached with need. Pain was literally moving through his bloodstream, incinerating everything along its path. There was a wicked magic inside him absolutely begging to be let out so it could do its job. He would have her swooning, naked, kneeling before him. He could have her on her back on his bed, legs spread, wanting and waiting.
Liar, he told himself. It was all darkly wishful thinking, because she would put up a fight the likes of which no one in the realms had ever seen. He would win eventually, if by sheer need alone, but the entire world would come down around them in the process. She was strong. Beautifully, wonderfully strong.
He knew who her parents were.
Calidum gritted his teeth together and felt the prick of fangs. They’d come out as he was holding her, and when he saw how she reacted to his touch on the wounds Arach had left, he was filled with an intense mixture of his own anticipation and outright jealousy. He wanted to sink his own teeth into them, reclaim them as his own. The way a dragon was meant to do when he took his mate.
At least it wasn’t her throat, he thought. That, Calidum wouldn’t have been able to stay away from for long.