Chapter 8
Nica: he made me breakfast. a FORMAL breakfast. with a view.
Margaret: did you get the provenance files
Nica: he watches me eat like it’s a competitive sport
Margaret: Veronica. the files.
Demetri’s fingernails darkened, lengthened.
The stone cracked beneath his palms. Nica looked at the fracture, then at his hands, and fear entered her scent — light, sharp, unmistakable, and it went through him worse than any blade — and Demetri stepped away from her as if the balcony had opened beneath his feet.
“Lock the doors.”
“You’re standing between me and them.”
He moved aside at once. The path opened, and Nica did not take it. She looked at the doors, then back at him. “Are you going to hurt me?”
The question tore something open. “No.” He had answered kings with less certainty. “No. Never.”
“Are you sure?”
The dragon went quiet, as if it too wanted to hear the answer. Demetri released the broken stone; blood marked his palms where the rough edge had cut him. “I would tear out my own heart first.”
Nica’s lips parted. Too much. He’d given her too much — and not enough, never enough. He needed distance now: stone walls, the reinforced chamber under the western wing, Caelen outside the door with an elven blade in case the dragon took over. He turned toward the outer wall.
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“For whom?”
He looked back at her, fog curling around his shoulders. “For you.”
Something shifted in her expression. The fear remained, and so did the anger, but beneath both, something warmer took shape — and the dragon leaned toward it like a cold thing toward a fire.
“Demetri.” The way she said his name nearly destroyed him.
She took one step forward; he retreated one. “Do not.”
Her gaze dropped to his hands, where the cuts were already closing. She watched the skin knit, watched the blood stop, and he could see the exact moment denial failed.
“You healed.”
“Nica.”
“I watched it happen.” The last cut vanished, and her face went pale.
Demetri forced his hands open and showed her his empty palms — no claws, no wounds, nothing human could explain.
He expected her to run. Every creature he had ever revealed himself to had run, or reached for a weapon, or begun the low animal calculations of prey.
Instead she whispered, “You’re afraid.”
The observation hit harder than any accusation. He had been feared for more than two centuries. Men begged before he killed them. Magical creatures fell silent when he entered a room. Nica looked at him and saw fear, and named it, and did not use it against him.
“I am not afraid of you,” he said.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Of course it wasn’t. She moved closer, and this time he did not retreat — he could not; the balcony wall pressed against the backs of his thighs.
She stopped just beyond his reach, her gaze moving over his face as if she were cataloging damage, reading him the way she read a page of the old language, patient and unhurried and terrifyingly accurate.
“You’re afraid of yourself.”
The dragon snarled. Demetri said nothing.
“Why?”
Because my sanity is tied to broken silver. Because every hour near you makes the dragon stronger. Because if I tell you the truth, the law demands your death. Because I have finally found the only woman I could ever love, and I may not remain a man long enough to win her.
“I am tired,” he said.
Her expression hardened. “That is a terrible lie.”
“It is not a lie.”
“It isn’t the truth either.”
No. It was only the safest piece of one. Nica shivered, and the pocket of warm air around her flickered with his slipping control, and Demetri pushed more heat into it before he’d decided to. Her gaze sharpened. “You’re doing that.”
He should stop. Instead he let the warmth remain, because it was the only thing he was permitting himself to give her. “You are cold.”
“You’re standing in the rain without a shirt.”
“I do not feel cold as you do.”
“I noticed.” Her eyes dropped to his chest, unhurried, and the fear in her scent weakened, and desire returned — hotter, threading through the salt and rain until it was all he could smell. The dragon lifted its head. She wants us. She is confused. She still wants us.
She wanted him. He knew it with the certainty he knew his own name.
Every change in her reached him, every beat of her heart, every desire, the flush blooming across her skin like a tide he could read in the dark.
Her scent. He wanted to close the distance and take her mouth until neither of them could remember the questions hanging between them.
He could not touch her— not even if she asked.
Especially if she asked. “Go inside,” he said.
“I will have Caelen answer what he can in the morning.”
“What he can?”
“Yes.”
“Will that include giant red things flying over the Pacific?”
“No.”
She gave a short, disbelieving laugh — and then her gaze dropped to the silver links at his wrist, and the laugh died. “Your bracelet. It’s broken.”
“It was damaged.”
“When?”
“Last night. The night I came to the auction house.”
“Is that why you’re afraid of yourself?”
Demetri held her eyes. Nica’s intelligence is becoming a threat to us both. “Go inside.”
She studied him another long moment, then nodded, and the relief came too quickly. He should have known. She crossed the balcony, passed through the doors, and stopped on the threshold.
“Are you coming?”
“No.”
“You told me I shouldn’t be outside.”
“You should not.”
“But you should?”
“I will be fine.”
She folded her arms, and his shirt — her shirt, the thin wet cotton — did nothing to conceal the shape of her breasts. Demetri fixed his attention on her face and held it there through sheer discipline.
“Come inside,” she said.
The dragon slammed into him. Yes. His fingers curled. “Nica.”
“You said I control who enters my rooms.”
“You do.”
“I am inviting you.”
There were battles he’d entered with less caution.
He crossed the balcony, the invisible warmth moving with her, and Nica closed the glass doors and locked them.
The mechanism clicked. Demetri stared at the lock.
His mate had locked him in with her, sealed the two of them into a warm room with the sea roaring beyond the glass, and the dragon laughed low and delighted.
She trusts us. She is reckless. She trusts us.
Nica pulled a folded blanket from the sofa and held it out. Demetri looked at it. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Dry off.”
“I am dry.” Steam still rose faintly from his shoulders. She stared. He looked down: the rainwater had already evaporated off his skin. “Right,” she said. “Of course you are.”
He should leave. Instead he watched her cross to the table and pour tea from the pot Lirien had left hours ago, watched the line of her bare legs, the loose fall of her hair, the small domestic grace of a woman making tea at two in the morning for a man she’d watched turn to scales. “It’s cold,” he said.
“I drink cold tea.”
“You forget tea until it becomes cold.”
She glanced at him. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything you tell me.” The words stopped her. Again. Too much. But it was true, and he found he did not want to take it back — he had two hundred years of memory crammed with the faces of the dead, and he had made room in it, without deciding to, for every small thing she’d said.
Nica poured a second cup. “For you.”
“I do not want tea.”
“I don’t care.”
He accepted the cup. The liquid was cold; he warmed it between his palms without thinking, and steam rose, and Nica stared at the cup, then at him. Demetri drank. Her mouth twitched. “You are the strangest man I have ever met.”
“I have been called worse.”
“Recently?”
“Frequently.”
She sat on the sofa and drew her bare feet beneath her. Demetri remained standing. She looked at the empty space beside her; he chose the chair across from her instead, because the space beside her was the most dangerous place in the house, and the dragon objected. Closer.
No.
Coward.
Disciplined.
Old coward.
He ignored it. For several minutes the only sound was the sea, striking and withdrawing, striking and withdrawing, far below. Nica held her tea in both hands, the warmth he’d put into it curling steam past her face. “You said you intend to court me.”
“Yes.”
“Does this count?”
“No.”
“Good. Because it’s terrible.”
His mouth moved, and this time he could not stop it. Nica stared, and Demetri realized he was smiling — the expression felt unfamiliar on his face, unused, like a door swollen shut for years and forced suddenly open. Her gaze softened. “You should do that more often.”
“What?”
“Smile.”
“It is not a useful activity.”
“It changes your whole face.”
The smile vanished — not because he wanted it to, but because the tenderness in her voice reached too deep, into a place two centuries of discipline had walled off, and something there ached.
Nica looked down at her tea. “I’m not going to ask again tonight.
What I saw.” He said nothing. “But I’m not forgetting it. And tomorrow, I want actual answers.”
“I will give you every answer I legally can.”
Her gaze snapped up. “Legally?”
Damn. He had survived assassination attempts with fewer errors. “What law prevents a billionaire from explaining why he sprouts scales?”
Demetri set the cup down. The damaged Chain pulsed once, pain shooting from his wrist into his shoulder, and he hid the reaction. Nica saw it anyway. “Your bracelet is hurting you.”
“It is stabilizing me.” The truth slipped out. Her face changed.
“How?”
“I cannot explain.”
“Demetri.”
He rose, and the room tilted; for half a second his vision burned red, and the dragon shoved forward, hard, and Demetri caught the back of the chair. Mine.
Not now.
Nica stood. “What’s wrong?”
“Stay back.”