1. Drakken #2
He paused, letting silence cool my temper. I stared at the canvas above me.
“She carried a magical scent I’d been hunting for nearly a century.
” Aelindor sat up on his bedroll, resting his forearms on his knees.
“You would’ve had to figure it out yourself.
That was the only way it would work. You needed to see her for yourself and watch her survive the barracks, the track, the Sorting before the truth could land without you killing her.
” His gaze held mine in the dim light. “And I won’t apologize for it when it comes to Max.
She’s too important, and she’s precious to me, to us. Tough love, little brother.”
Whenever he called me little brother, any knots in me would loosen.
But his words hit like a hammer to my middle, not because they were cruel, but because they were true.
If Aelindor had told me on day one that the starving refugee with the witch blood that smelled like sin to my dragon was also masquerading as a man, I would’ve reacted right away.
And reacting, for me, usually involved fire.
“Just get it over with, dragon,” Caspian said, his voice dropping back to its usual rough warmth. “Demons. A strike team. Max’s little sister. That’s where our heads need to be.”
“Speaking of demons,” I said, seizing the shift to tactical ground, “I believe Max is the catalyst.”
“Pin everything on my girl, shall we?” Caspian scoffed. “Next you’ll accuse her of dropping the Q-bomb before she was born.”
“And you’re so fucking blind when it comes to her,” I retorted acidly, hating him calling Max his. “When did the notorious Casanova pick himself as her guard dog, or pet?”
Caspian didn’t rise to the insult, but his wolf stared back at me.
“You still fucking don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
“Those demons came out of the DarkVeil to find the One,” I said, letting my own brand of disgust drip from my voice.
“That’s what Carroway’s linguist confirmed before a demon killed him.
No demons ever emerged from the Veil until Max showed up, and the coordinated wyvern attack happened on the same day she walked into our base.
Things start tearing at the seams at her appearance.
Do the math, wolf—if you can count past your own toes. ”
“Asshole.” Caspian bristled. “Your dragon can’t even put two plus two together.”
“Blame serves no one,” Aelindor cut in. “And even if all the incidents point to Max, it’s not her fault.”
“The pattern is there, burning in the data,” I insisted, despite a sudden shame spiking through me. Correlation wasn’t cause, and blaming Max for the monsters’ attack was the logic of cowards. “Pretending otherwise wouldn’t protect the Covenant.”
Aelindor sighed and rubbed his temples with two fingers. The gesture was so human, so unlike his usual cool manner, that it stopped me.
“You’ve always been a hothead, Drakken,” he said.
“Especially when it comes to the White Witch and anyone connected to her, you see red. I created this rift between us by keeping the truth from you, and I’m sorry for that.
” He lowered his hands and met my eyes. “But I won’t apologize for shielding Max from anyone, us included.
She’s the one thing I won’t gamble, little brother. Not even with you.”
I knew this shouldn’t have shocked me, but it still hit me.
The image of Max’s hands on Aelindor’s face as she pulled him into a kiss flashed in front of my eyelids. Aelindor had acted as if he’d waited centuries for this and he was afraid to even breathe in case it shattered what he had with Max.
I’d never seen him like that in all the years since he’d pulled me from the executioner’s block as a boy, lost half his men doing it, and told me I was worth the cost.
He didn’t date. He didn’t have flings. He showed no interest in any woman who crossed his path, and there had been many—beautiful, powerful, willing. He’d moved through them like a man walking through a crowd of ghosts, seeing none of them.
Until Max fucking Morning.
Then the cryolite cracked, as if the Fae heir had just woken up and stepped out of the frozen zone he’d built around himself since the shatter of the Shimmer and the burning of Evermere.
That kiss they shared had scorched through my blood like venom. I’d wished to be the one she reached for. The jealousy had been instantaneous and savage, a feral thing I had no practice fighting because I’d never felt it before.
I despised it and was ashamed of sinking so low.
All these years, I’d have given anything for Aelindor to be lighter, to feel something other than the weight of a shattered world and the burden of a prophecy that refused to come true.
No one knew what he’d been like before the Rupture—who he’d loved, what he’d lost in Evermere, what it cost him to rebuild from nothing while the rest of us were still learning to hold swords.
To see joy crack his mask open, even for a moment.
I should have been happy for him. My big brother. The man who’d saved my life and given me everything.
Instead, I’d slammed my foot on the gas pedal and jerked the jeep forward so hard that their mouths had come apart.
I didn’t understand this war inside me. The wanting and rage and grief all braided together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. Searing emotions I had no framework for coursed through my veins like molten lava, reshaping everything they touched.
Then everything in the tent froze as a raw sob, a scream, punched through the canvas wall.
It came from Max’s tent.
I was on my feet instantly, my hand snatching the broadsword from under my bedroll. Battle instinct flooded my system.
Caspian kicked free of his cover and scrambled upright.
“It’s Max!” Captain Obvious shouted.
Aelindor was out of our tent in a flash, already gone. Caspian and I shoved through the tent flap into the cold night air.
The DarkVeil loomed at our backs. The campfire had burned down to embers. Spartans were rising, hands on weapons, heads turning toward the sound.
Max’s tent was three strides from ours. Caspian reached it before me, ripping the flap aside and ducking in. I followed a half-second later, sword in hand, ready to slay whatever had gotten to her.
No demons. No breach. No blood.
Aelindor knelt on the bedroll with Max in his lap, his arms locked around her. Her face was buried in the curve of his neck, her fingers knotted in his shirt, her body shaking with sobs.
He wore loose trousers and a linen shirt, hastily pulled on, sleeves shoved to his elbows.
He’d kissed her to comfort her. I could tell from the way her lips were parted, from the way his breathing hadn’t quite steadied. The knowledge of it drove through the center of my chest like a hot blade.
Caspian dropped to one knee beside them, the wolf in him close to the surface—I could see the gold bleeding into his green eyes, the tension in his jaw.
“What happened, Max?” he asked in a low, urgent voice.
Her head lifted from Aelindor’s neck, and she gazed at him, her midnight eyes wide and wrecked, full of tears.
I’d never seen her in tears before. Not on the first day when they’d dragged her into my interrogation room, starved yet defiant, lying through her teeth with a spine made of steel.
Not when the mob came for her in the barracks.
Not even when my fire stripped her bare in front of a thousand soldiers.
And now she was ugly crying, the sound twisting my insides. Even my dragon went silent, the fire at the back of his throat dying. The armor of anger and distrust I wore vanished, replaced by an unguarded impulse to cross the tent and pull her into my arms.
But I didn’t move. I stood rigidly at the entrance, watching.