Chapter twenty-one #2
I forced myself to stand, to step away from him even though every instinct I had was screaming to stay. To protect. To fight.
“No!” Dante was struggling against the zip ties now, his voice rising to a shout. “Don’t do this! Please, I’m begging you, don’t—”
One of the security men grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the door. I looked back one last time and saw Dante’s face—the desperation, the terror, the love—and nearly broke.
Then they were marching me out, and his voice followed me down the corridor—broken, desperate, calling my name over and over until distance finally swallowed the sound.
They led me down two flights of industrial stairs to a reinforced door marked with radiation warning symbols. Beyond it, I could see the chamber through thick leaded glass—a space about a hundred feet square, with three massive metal cylinders in the center.
“The uranium is in those containers,” one of the technicians said, his voice muffled through a protective suit. “You just have to convert it.”
I stared at him incredulously, and he looked away.
“And if I succeed?” I asked. “If I actually manage to fabricate it?”
“Then your mate goes free, and you get to live with the consequences of a little radiation exposure.” Odin appeared beside me, his expression satisfied. “A fair trade, I think.”
Nothing about this was fair, but I was out of options and out of time.
They opened the door, and I stepped into the chamber.
The door sealed behind me with a hiss of pressurized air, and the second door opened and I walked through. I was alone with I guessed sixty kilograms of one of the most toxic substances on Earth. I heard the release of a valve, and looked incredulously toward the door I’d come from.
I could feel the radiation already—a prickling sensation on my skin, a metallic taste in my mouth, from the poison saturating the air.
I moved to the cylinders in the center of the room, my hands already trembling slightly from the radiation exposure.
The metal sang to me—a discordant, poisonous melody that made my dragon recoil.
This wasn’t the pure, clean song of iron or steel.
This was corruption, decay, death given physical form.
I placed my hands on the vessel’s surface and felt the uranium inside. Sixty kilograms of deadly poison, each atom vibrating at a frequency that screamed wrongness to every sense I possessed.
All metals are but variations of the same song.
My father—the dragon who’d sired me over two centuries ago—had taught me that. Had shown me how to listen to the unique frequency each metal produced, how to sense the particular arrangement of atoms that made iron different from copper, steel different from gold.
But he’d never suggested I could change those frequencies. Had never even hinted that such a thing was possible.
I closed my eyes and reached deeper into the uranium’s song, past the surface discord to the fundamental structure beneath. If Odin’s father was right, if metals really were just variations on the same theme, then theoretically—
My dragon surged forward, and I felt my hands begin to heat. Not shifting, not quite, but channeling that primal fire that forge dragons carried in their blood. The temperature in the chamber spiked, and I heard alarms going off somewhere beyond the leaded glass.
The uranium’s song shifted slightly. Just a fraction, barely perceptible, but it was there.
Maybe this was actually possible.
I pushed harder, pouring more energy into the transformation.
Sweat was already pouring down my face, and I could feel my skin beginning to burn from the radiation, blood ran from my nose, from my ears.
My dragon was howling in protest, every instinct screaming at me to get away from this poison, but I couldn’t stop now.
I knew Odin and many guards were clustered outside, watching.
It was the signal Ignatius needed to rescue Dante.
Dante’s face flashed through my mind—bruised, terrified, begging me not to do this. The memory gave me strength even as my body started to fail.
I would survive this. I had to survive this.
The uranium’s song began to change more dramatically now. I could feel the atomic structure shifting, reorganizing itself into something new. Something that sang with a clarity I’d heard before.
My vision was blurring. Blood dripped from my nose, and I could taste copper in my mouth that had nothing to do with my dragon. Every cell in my body was screaming as the radiation tore through me, breaking down tissue faster than even dragon healing could repair.
I checked the clock on the wall through the leaded glass. Only four minutes had passed.
Only four minutes, and I was already dying.
But I couldn’t stop. Because if I stopped, if I failed, they would hurt Dante. Would take his fingers one by one.
I gritted my teeth and poured everything I had into the transformation. My dragon was barely responding now, weakened by the poison saturating the air. My hands were blistering where they touched the vessel, the skin blackening and peeling away to reveal raw flesh beneath.
The pain was extraordinary. Worse than anything I’d experienced in two hundred years of life.
But I kept going.
I thought about Dante. About the way he’d looked at me in my kitchen that morning, sleep-soft and trusting. About his laugh when I’d burned breakfast. The determination in his eyes when he’d kissed me despite all the reasons he shouldn’t.
About the way he’d said I love you with his face bruised and bleeding.
I couldn’t die here. Couldn’t leave him alone with these monsters.
I drew on reserves I didn’t know I had, pulling power from depths I’d never accessed before. My dragon responded with one final surge, and I felt the transformation accelerate.
The song shifted one final time, and I heard it clearly now—a pure, crystalline frequency that resonated through my failing senses.
Failing because the radiation had done too much damage. My nervous system was shutting down, my dragon retreating so deep I could barely sense it, my body finally giving up the fight to survive in this poisoned chamber.
My legs gave out. I collapsed beside the cylinders, my hands—what was left of them—sliding away from the metal surface. Through the leaded glass, I could see people moving. Shouting. But I couldn’t hear them anymore.
Dante’s face swam in my vision. Beautiful, bruised, begging me not to do this.
I’m sorry, I tried to say, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words.
The darkness was closing in now, and I didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.
My last conscious thought was that at least I’d bought him time.
The transformation had worked, and I prayed it had bought Dante the time he needed.
Maybe that would be enough. I hoped Ignatius would get there before Odin realized I was dead and couldn’t do this a second time.
Maybe Dante would forgive me for leaving him.