Chapter 11
Nica: margaret i think i need a personal day
Margaret: is this about the billionaire
Nica: it’s about a lot of things. also his age.
Margaret: you said that already
Nica: it bears repeating
Demetri had faced executioners with less dread.
Nica sat behind the laptop, pale and furious, the old photograph glowing between them — his face, his former name, a life he’d buried seventy-eight years ago dragged up into the blue light of a screen.
The dragon went silent, which it did only when something mattered too much for even the beast to posture. Demetri closed the door.
Nica laughed without humor. “That seems appropriate.”
“I can explain part of it.”
“Part.”
“Yes.”
“Because of the law.”
“Yes.” She rose, the chair rolling backward to strike the worktable. “How old are you?” He could answer that. “Two hundred and seventy.” Nica stared, no breath, no movement, then looked at the photograph again as though the number needed a face to become real. “Two hundred and seventy.”
“Yes.”
“You were born in—”
“Russia. 1756.”
Her hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles paling. “That’s not possible.”
“No.”
“But it’s true.”
“Yes.”
“What are you?” The law closed around his throat like a hand.
He could tell her elves existed; she’d seen the evidence.
He could tell her his age; longevity alone didn’t identify a species.
But what he was — that truth changed her legal status forever, and every word of it carried her death. “I cannot answer.”
Nica recoiled as though he’d struck her. “You slept with me.”
“I know.”
“You came into my body knowing I had no idea what you were.” His shame burned hotter than dragon fire, and he did not look away from it, because she deserved to watch it strike home. “Yes.”
“Did you use magic on me?”
“No.” The answer shook the room, torn out of him with more force than he’d intended.
“Never. I would never alter your mind, your desire, or your choice. I have done everything possible to keep the magic from touching you.” It was the one thing he could give her without a single lie in it, and he gave it with everything he had.
Her face changed. “What about the heat. Last night. When you were inside me. Something happened.” He looked away. “What was it?”
“I stopped it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I can give.” Nica crossed the room — toward the door — and Demetri stepped aside before she reached it, because he had promised, and a promise was the last honest currency he had left with her.
The motion stopped her, and for one terrible second she looked surprised, as if she’d expected him to block her, as if some part of her had wanted a reason to stay and be angry rather than a clear road out.
“I will not hold you here,” he said, and it cost him more than the sword wound would.
The building shuddered. Not an earthquake.
Magic. A black line moved through the fog beyond the glass, then burst into blue-white flame against the outer wards, the whole western wall lighting up like a struck match.
Nica spun. “What was that?” A second impact struck, and the glass bowed inward and did not break, and an alarm sounded below.
Demetri reached her in two strides. “Stay behind me.”
“I’m tired of that sentence.”
“Be tired later.” The lights went out, emergency power flooding the room red, and Caelen’s voice came through the hidden speakers, clipped and fast. “Western breach. Enchanted projectile. Inner wards holding.” Another impact, this one from inside the house, and Demetri smelled it all at once — smoke and human blood and the sour, wrong magic of Faelar’s blades, a stench that made the dragon lunge against its cage.
Someone had already crossed the perimeter.
He pulled Nica behind the stone worktable, his hand at her shoulder, and for one instant let himself feel the frantic hammer of her pulse under his palm. “Do not move.”
“Where are you going?”
“To kill whoever entered my house.” Her face went white. He touched her cheek — one instant, the whole of what he could not say pressed into a single point of contact — and then he left, and left the warmth of her behind him like a lamp in a window.
The first hunter met him in the gallery, tactical black and a short sword glowing with elven runes, and swung for his throat.
Demetri caught the man’s wrist, but the blade changed direction in his grip and cut across Demetri’s forearm, and pain exploded as the weapon passed through dragon magic as if it were human flesh.
The hunter smiled. Demetri broke his neck — no hesitation, no mercy — and the body fell.
Two more came up the stairs, gunfire tearing through the gallery, and Demetri shaped the air into a wall so the bullets flattened and dropped, spent, to the stone.
The Chain burned at his wrist like a brand; the magic cost too much; his vision flashed red at the edges.
He crossed the distance before they could reload.
One went through the balcony rail into the fog.
The second stabbed upward, and the blade entered beneath Demetri’s ribs, deep, white pain blinding him as the hunter twisted it.
Demetri roared, dragon fire filling his mouth, and swallowed it before the flames could emerge — Nica was twenty meters away, and human walls burned, and there was no fire in the world he would risk reaching her.
He caught the man by the jaw and drove his head into the stone column. Once. Enough.
A scream came from the translation room. Nica.
The dragon took him — not fully, enough — scales erupting over his arms, claws tearing through his fingers, his spine lengthening with a crack that bowed him, and he reached the room before the change finished.
A fourth hunter had come through the service passage and held Nica against him, one forearm across her throat, a blade at her ribs.
Her face was calm. Too calm. He knew that calm now; it was the same one she’d worn coming out of the shower, the composure of a woman long practiced at surviving alone. Her eyes found Demetri’s, and held.
The hunter saw what stood in the doorway — a man half-become monster, ruby-eyed, scaled, filling the frame — and his grip faltered, and Nica drove her heel onto his foot and threw her head backward.
Bone cracked. The man cursed. Demetri crossed the room, and the hunter shoved Nica aside and swung, and Demetri caught the blade in his palm.
The elven edge cut through scale, and he felt every millimeter of it, and he did not release it.
He closed his bleeding hand around the metal and snapped it.
The sigil flared. A blast of green magic threw him back into the wall, and the broken Chain screamed — magic tearing through his skull — and the dragon surged toward full form, too large for the room, too close to Nica.
Demetri forced the shift down, his bones cracking back into human shape one agonizing inch at a time, because the alternative was a dragon loose in a stone room with the only thing in the world he could not risk.
The hunter lunged. Nica picked up the heavy brass lens mount and struck the man behind the ear, and he stumbled, and Demetri rose.
The hunter never reached the floor alive; Demetri’s claws entered his chest, found the heart, and stopped it.
Silence fell. Nica stood six feet away, staring at his hand inside a dead man’s body.
Demetri withdrew it — blood covering him, his own and others’, scales still marking his shoulders, ruby light burning in his eyes — and Nica’s face held terror.
The dragon recognized it, and pain tore through them both, the old familiar certainty that everything he was would always, in the end, frighten the things he loved. Demetri stepped back. “Nica.”
She looked at the dead hunter, then at the wound pouring blood down his side. “You’re hurt.”
“Stay away.” Her gaze snapped up. “The blade—”
“Stay away from me.” The dragon snarled at the order.
Nica ignored it and crossed the room, and Demetri retreated until the wall stopped him — a two-hundred-year-old dragon backing away from a woman in a bloodied blouse, and he could no more have touched her in that state than he could have breathed fire in her direction. “Nica.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I can heal.”
“Then do it.”
“I cannot control the shift.” She reached for him, and he caught both her wrists before she touched his chest, her pulse hammering beneath his fingers.
Fear. Desire. Determination. All of it hers.
None of it altered by anything he’d done — he had made sure of that, whatever else he’d failed at. “Go,” he said.
“No.”
“I killed three men.”
“They came here to kill us.”
“I am not human.” Her breathing stopped. The words had escaped him — not species, but enough, more than he’d given her in three days. Nica looked at the scales on his chest, at the ruby still fading from his eyes. “I know.”
“You do not.”
“Then tell me.”
“I cannot.” Anger flashed through the fear. Good. Anger was safer; anger did not leave. “You’re impossible.”
“Yes.”
“And bleeding on your carpet.”
“Yes.”
“And I am still here.” The truth struck him harder than the elven blade had.
She pulled one wrist free, and Demetri allowed it, because he could deny her nothing, and her palm touched his chest above the wound.
The dragon quieted immediately, the way a storm drops when the wind turns.
The shift receded. Scales vanished beneath her hand, and Nica felt it happen, her eyes widening.
“You do that,” Demetri said, low and undone.
“Do what?”
“Bring me back.” Her face softened. That was more dangerous than fear — fear he knew how to survive; this he did not.