A Dragon's Scorched Abandon

Chapter One

ChapteR

ONe

THE SWORD WAS supposed to bend.

Instead, it bit into the stage floor and stuck there, humming under my hand.

Long, black, edged in dull bronze, and buried two inches deep in a floor that had survived horses, exploding walls, and an actor who insisted he could drive a motorcycle indoors.

I put both hands on the grip and pulled.

It didn't budge.

"Fantastic."

The soundstage emptied twenty minutes ago. Half the overhead lights were off, leaving the fake Viking great hall in moody strips of gold and shadow. Tomorrow, three dozen extras would storm through those doors while I threw myself over a banquet table wearing a red wig and somebody else's cleavage.

Tonight, I'd planned to check the weapons, fix the fight captain's terrible knotwork, and go home before midnight.

The blade warmed beneath my palms.

Prop swords came in three useful varieties: rubber, aluminum, and expensive foam painted to look like something capable of removing a head. They did not hum. They definitely did not get warm when you touched them.

I crouched beside it. No maker's mark. No taped inventory number. The bronze lines along the blade weren't paint. They ran through the metal in narrow loops, too precise to be accidental and too strange to be decorative. I leaned closer.

"You should move away from it."

I came up with the rubber dagger from my ankle sheath in my hand.

The man standing beyond the banquet table was large enough to make the set look small.

Tall with broad shoulders that strained the seams of a dark coat.

Blond hair brushed his collar, and the low light caught hard planes in a face that would have kept a casting director from blinking for several seconds.

He didn't have a visitor badge.

I pointed the dagger at him.

His gaze dropped to the flexible gray blade. "I'm terrified," he said.

"You should be. I know eight ways to annoy you with this."

His mouth moved at one corner.

I didn't lower the dagger. "Studio's closed."

"I know."

"That makes the trespassing worse, not better."

He stepped around the table. His eyes looked hazel until he crossed through a bar of light. Red flashed around his pupils, bright as a coal under ash.

I blinked, certain it was a trick of the dim lighting.

"Don't touch the weapon again," he said.

"You mean the weapon somebody slipped onto my set?"

"It's not yours."

"We agree on something." I shifted sideways, keeping the sword between us. "Who are you?"

"Thore Akyd."

Of course he was. Nobody built like a siege engine introduced himself as Kevin. "Ariana Steele."

"I know."

I adjusted my grip on the fake weapon.

He prowled to a stop on the other side of the sword. Up close, he seemed larger. A thin scar cut through one blond eyebrow. No sweat, no hurry, no quick glance toward the exits. Either he had every right to be here or he had never considered the possibility of being caught.

"How do you know my name?"

"Your photograph is on the call sheet by the door."

I glanced at it.

He moved.

I kicked the banquet bench into his knees and went for his wrist.

Thore caught the bench one-handed. My fingers closed around his forearm, and heat punched through his coat. Not body heat. More like grabbing a mug fresh from the microwave. I released him before my skin burned and backed up two steps.

He set the bench down without taking his eyes off me. "The call sheet," he said, "is also how I know you perform your own fights."

"That was less impressive before you caught the furniture."

"You gave me little warning."

"That was the point."

This time, the smile reached his eyes. It made him look less civilized.

"Back away from the sword," I said.

"No."

"Great talk. Security can continue it with you."

I reached for my phone. The blade shrieked. Bronze light raced from the hilt to the point. The floor smoked around it, and the painted stones under my boots split with a sharp crack.

Thore's arm wrapped around my waist. We hit the floor behind the overturned bench as a strip of black metal tore free from the sword and spun across the set. It punched through the wooden throne where my head had been.

For one second, neither of us moved.

His body covered mine without crushing me. One hand braced beside my shoulder. The other spread against the floor above my head. His coat had fallen open, and beneath it he wore a black shirt stretched tight over a chest I could feel with most of my front.

"Are you injured?" he asked.

"Only professionally."

His brows drew together.

"That throne rents for twelve hundred dollars a day."

He looked at the blade sticking through it. "It was poorly made."

"You're paying for it."

"Agreed."

He rose first and held out his hand. I ignored it and got up on my own. His hand stayed where it was until I had my balance, then dropped.

The sword still stood in the cracked floor. The bronze glow had faded, but heat rolled off it hard enough to blur the air.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"It fired a chunk of itself at my face."

"A damaged mechanism discharged."

I laughed once. "Try again. There is no mechanism."

"You determined that quickly."

"I know weapons."

"So do I."

His gaze dropped to my right hand. A red line crossed my palm where the grip had rested.

"May I?" he asked.

"May you what?"

He held out his hand and waited.

I gave him mine.

His fingers closed around my wrist. His thumb swept once beneath the burn, careful and hot enough that I checked his skin for some kind of heating pad.

I pulled my hand back. "I'm keeping the hand."

"That would be my recommendation."

The sword gave another low hum.

His head snapped toward it. "Leave," he said.

"My set."

"Ariana."

I lifted my chin. "Give me one reason not to hit the alarm and let security sort this out."

"Call the number on your incident plan. Ask for Marta Velez."

I kept him in sight while I pulled up the production safety packet on my phone. Guardian Risk Management occupied the last line, complete with a local number and Marta's name.

That had not been there when I reviewed the plan on Monday. "What kind of consultant breaks into a locked soundstage?"

"The kind called after someone puts an unstable weapon among props."

"Who called you?"

"Stay behind the bench."

"That wasn't an answer."

"It was the useful part." Thore walked toward the sword. Heat bent the surrounding air, and his coat shifted as if caught in a wind I couldn't feel.

"You're very bossy for a trespasser."

"Please."

I stayed.

He wrapped one side of his coat around his hand and closed it over the hilt.

The bronze lines blazed. Thore's jaw tightened as he pulled the sword free. The split in the floor stayed put. So did the blue chalk mark along one edge, which meant I hadn't hallucinated the past five minutes. Probably.

He wrapped the weapon in his coat, hiding every inch of metal, and tucked it under one arm.

"Who put it here?" I asked.

"Someone who knew you would find it."

Cold slid along the back of my neck. "Who are you?"

"The man removing it."

"You caught a solid oak bench one-handed."

"It's pine."

"You know what I meant."

"If anyone asks, Guardian Risk collected a defective practical effect."

"That's a terrible lie."

"It doesn't need to be good, only boring." Thore crossed to the side door. Before he opened it, he looked back at me. "If another object appears that isn't on your list, don't test it."

"That's going to be difficult. Testing dangerous objects is most of my resume."

His gaze traveled over me, slow enough to feel. "I noticed." Then he was gone.

I stood alone in the fake great hall with a ruined throne and my rubber dagger still clenched in one hand.

I looked down at the crack. A ruined throne and a very ruined floor.

My phone rang and the production office flashed on the screen. I answered without looking away from the door. "Tell me somebody hired a blond Viking from Guardian Risk."

My coordinator answered, "Who's Guardian Risk?"

"Never mind. What happened?"

"Someone broke into the prop truck ten minutes ago. Don't touch anything until the cops get there."

I stared at the empty spot where the sword had stood. "What did they take?"

"That's the weird part. Nothing."

Nothing was missing because something had been added.