Chapter 2 #3
“You got better?” I finally managed, realizing what an idiot I sounded like as soon as the last word left my mouth.
“Eventually.”
“I have so many questions,” I said as Gary slithered closer to my elbow, leaving a trail of nervous shine.
I so hated when he did that, but he only gooed me up when he had something important to say.
It was a boundary we’d established eons ago.
Well before snail mucin became all the rage in fancy Korean skincare.
The idea of rubbing any Gary parts on my face made me throw up in my mouth a little.
“Well, that's not ominous at all. Tansy, darling, we should probably discuss our exit strategy,” Gary whispered so low I could barely hear him.
“There is no exit strategy,” Baz said without turning around. “She's already coming. The only question is whether you'll be ready when she gets here.”
As if in response to his words, the curse flared so hot, I gasped. My vision went white. For a second, I could feel her. Illanya. Like she was standing right behind me, breathing on my neck, whispering my name.
Found you, little spark.
The plate exploded. I didn't remember standing, but suddenly, I was pressed against the wall, hyperventilating, while Baz stood between me and the door like he could see something I couldn't.
“How long?” His voice was different. Harder. The kind of voice that had given orders in situations where orders meant the difference between living and dying.
“I don't… What?”
“How long until she gets here? The curse just pinged her, didn't it? She knows exactly where you are now.”
I tried to do the math, but my brain was static. “Tomorrow? Maybe tonight if she pushes it?” The words came out on autopilot. I didn’t know which was scarier: the fact that I knew the answer, or the fact that I didn’t know how I knew.
“Then we have a lot of work to do.” He grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door. “Can you ward?”
“Basic stuff, but with the curse—”
“Can Gary?”
We both looked at the snail, who somehow managed to look offended despite not having eyebrows.
“I'm a familiar, not a hedge witch,” Gary sniffed. “But yes, I can ward. A hell of a lot better than she can, by the way.”
“Good. You'll need to create a secondary perimeter. Something that will slow her down but not stop her.” Baz pulled a box from a high shelf, setting it on the counter with surprising care. “Stopping her will only make her angrier.”
“Speaking from experience?” I asked.
“Yes.”
He opened the box. Inside were scales. Dragon scales. But not red like Illanya's. These were deep blue, almost black, with edges that caught the light like razor blades.
“They’re so pretty,” I said as I reached toward it.
“Don't touch them.” He pulled on leather gloves before handling one. “Dragon scales hold grudges. These are from the one who killed me. They'll recognize similar magic.”
“You kept scales from the dragon who killed you?”
“I kept insurance.” He placed three scales on the table in a triangle pattern. “Dragons respect power and preparation. When she arrives, she needs to know you're not undefended.”
“I am undefended. I can barely keep my magic from exploding every time I have a feeling.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me. Not at the disaster I was, but at something else. Something he recognized.
“You're not undefended,” he said quietly. “You have a familiar who'd fight gods for you. You have a curse that's made you into a magical bomb. And you have me.”
“Why?” The question came out raw. “Why are you doing this?”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he wouldn't answer, but eventually, he did, “Because I know what it's like to lose everything to dragon fire. And because I think you're worth saving. Even if you don't.”
The curse absolutely lost its everlovin’ mind at that. Every piece of metal in the kitchen suddenly magnetized, flying toward me like I was the world's most pathetic magnet. Spoons, forks, the toaster, three pans, and a cheese grater all tried to stick to my skin.
Baz raised one hand, and everything froze midair.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
“I can't—”
“You can. The curse wants you to panic. Don't give it what it wants.”
“Easy for you to say!” I said while facing down a butter knife that hovered an inch from my eye.
“Actually, it's not.” He stepped closer, inside the orbit of floating kitchen supplies. “The dragon who killed me? She was my mate.”
Everything crashed to the floor. The curse went silent. Even Gary stopped breathing.
“Your own mate killed you?”
“Dragons don't handle rejection well.” His smile was sharp and sad. “She decided if she couldn't have me, no one could. Sound familiar?”
It did sound familiar. Kind of how the beginning of the end of our relationship went. One day, we were fine, the next day, I was second-guessing our future together and said I needed a break. It all went downhill from there.
My knees gave out. I would have hit the floor if Baz hadn't caught me, his hands steady on my arms. The curse shrieked at the contact, sending sparks racing over my skin, but he didn't let go.
“There were other…extenuating circumstances at play. I highly doubt your dragon wants to kill you,” he said firmly. “But I know how she thinks. How she'll attack. What she wants.”
“How can you know what she wants?”
“Because these types of dragon curses all ultimately want the same thing.” His hands tightened slightly. “To bring you back. It isn't meant to kill you, Tansy. It's meant to break you. To make you so miserable, so desperate, that you'll beg her to take you back just to make it all stop.”
“I won't.”
“No,” he agreed. “You won't. Because we're going to break it first.”
“That's impossible. Dragon curses can only be broken by the caster or by…” I stopped, the words catching in my throat.
“Or by killing the dragon,” Baz finished. “I know.”
The way he said it, calm and certain, made it clear which option he was voting for.
“I don't want to kill her.”
Despite all the bad, there were good memories too. Illanya hadn’t always been a psychotic, raving lunatic. Things were almost storybook perfect until they got bad.
Very, very bad.
“Then we'll have to get creative.” He helped me stand, keeping one hand on my elbow until he was sure I was stable. “But first, we need to survive her arrival. Can you fight?”
“Sometimes I can explode things.”
“Good enough. Gary, I need you to—”
A sound cut through the air. Low, rumbling, like thunder that came from the ground instead of the sky. We all froze.
“What was that?” I whispered.
Baz moved to the window, scanning the tree line. His shoulders tensed. “She's definitely not coming tomorrow.”
“What?”
He turned back to us, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked genuinely worried.
“She's already here.”
* * *
“Define here,” I said, proud that my voice only shook a little.
Baz's jaw tightened. His muscles jumped beneath his skin, and his entire body went still in a way that reminded me of animals during the hunt. The ones where the predator freezes right before it strikes.
“Half a mile out. Maybe less. She's circling.” His nostrils flared slightly.
“You can smell her from half a mile away?”
He didn't answer, but his expression shifted, his eyes darkened, and for just a second, I could have sworn they flashed a rich molten gold. Not brown. Not human.
“Get away from the window,” he ordered. Despite all the crazy, my hooha went a little tingly when his voice dropped an octave and he got all demandy.
No. No. Noooo. Gotta hold it together, girl. This is not the time!
Apparently, I didn't move fast enough. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed my wrist, and jerked.
I twirled like we were ballroom dancing as he pulled me against him and pressed me between his rock-hard body and the wall.
The full-body contact had sparks showering off my skin like I was a veritable human firework, which was a thousand times worse than the last time, but he didn't let go.
“When I tell you to move,” he said quietly, dangerously, “you move.”
The rational part of my brain wanted to argue.
The rest of me was too busy processing the fact that he was pressed against me, all solid muscle and barely contained…
something. Energy? Anticipation? His chest rose and fell with deep, controlled breaths, but I could feel his heart hammering against his ribs.
“Baz?”
“She doesn't know about me,” he said, still watching the window. “That's our only advantage. Her ignorance might make her overconfident.”
“She's a dragon. Overconfidence is their default factory setting.”
His lips twitched. Almost a smile. “True. But you said her dragon side comes out when she's emotional.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, emotional dragons make mistakes.” He finally looked down at me, and something in his expression made my stomach flip. “We're going to make her very, very emotional.”
Gary cleared his throat from the counter. “If you two are done with whatever this is, perhaps we should discuss the fact that there's a homicidal dragon in the front yard? Pretty sure she’s not here with a friendly smile and a basket of blueberry scones.”
Another rumble shook the house. Closer this time. The windows rattled in their frames.
“She's testing the wards,” Baz said. He still hadn't moved away from me. If anything, he'd somehow pressed in closer, like his body was a shield between me and the outside world. “Looking for weak points.”
“Will they hold?”
“For now.” His hand was still on my wrist, thumb pressed against my pulse point. Could he feel how fast my heart was racing? “But we need to set the trap before she breaks through.”
“What trap?”
He finally stepped back, and I immediately missed his warmth. Which was stupid. And dangerous. And exactly what the curse wanted.
“Dragons are possessive,” he said, moving to the box of scales with predatory grace. “Territorial. She sees you as hers, even after all this time. The curse is her claim on you.”
“Tell me something I don't know.”
“She doesn't expect you to have moved on.”
I blinked. “I haven't moved on.”
“She doesn't know that. The curse will sell it,” he said as he bent over to pick up the leather gloves. He slipped them back on to pull out more scales, arranging them in a pattern I didn't recognize. “As far as she knows, you ran here. To another shifter’s territory. Into another male's den.”
Oh.
Oh no.
“You want her to think we're…”
“Together.” He said it so calmly, like he wasn't suggesting we pretend to be lovers in front of my batshit-crazy ex. “Dragons respect mating bonds. She can't kill me without consequences if she thinks I'm your mate.”
“But you're not my mate.” The words came out too fast, too desperate.
Something flickered across his face. Gone before I could identify it.
“She doesn't know that,” he repeated. Then, quieter: “The curse will sell it. Look how it reacts when I touch you.”
As if to prove his point, he reached out and brushed his fingers against the exposed skin of my neck. Even through the gloves, his touch caused the curse to explode with heat and light, magic crackling between us like lightning looking to ground.
“That's not— It's just because…” My voice trailed off.
“Because the curse recognizes a threat to her claim,” he finished. “It wouldn't react this strongly if there wasn't something for it to react to.”
My mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying we use what we have.” He turned back to the scales, but I caught the tension in his shoulders. “Unless you have a better idea?”
Another rumble. This time, the walls groaned.
“She's getting impatient,” Gary observed. “Tansy, darling, as much as I hate to agree with the…man, he has a point. Dragons are monumentally stupid when they're jealous. It might buy us time.”
“Time for what?”
“To figure out how not to die,” Baz said. He pulled something else from the box. A leather cord with a bear tooth hanging from it. “Wear this.”
“What is it?”
“A mate mark.” He held it out, careful not to touch me. “Temporary. Reversible. But it'll smell like me. Like my claim.”
I stared at the tooth. It was carved with tiny runes that seemed to shift in the light. “You just happened to have this lying around?”
“I told you. I've dealt with dragons before.” His voice was carefully neutral. “Will you wear it or not?”
The house shook again. Harder this time. A window cracked.
“Shit.” I grabbed the cord and pulled it over my head. The second it touched my skin, the curse went nuclear. Pain lanced through my chest as if someone had poured acid directly onto my heart. I doubled over, gasping.
Baz caught me before I hit the ground. “I'm sorry. The curse is fighting it.”
“You think?” I wheezed.
“It'll settle. Just breathe through it.”
“Easy for you to say,” I stopped. His eyes had one hundred percent gone gold this time. And his hands where they held me were warmer than they should be. “Baz?”
“She's here,” he growled. His voice had gone rough. Animalistic and feral. So. Fucking. Hot. “Stay behind me.”
The front door exploded.
Not knocked open. Not broken down. Exploded. Wood became shrapnel became tiny splinters became dust, in a massive surge of heat that should have incinerated everything in a ten-foot radius.
But it didn't.
Because Baz was already moving, pulling me behind him as his body began to change. Not fully. Not into whatever animal he was. But enough that his shoulders broadened, his hands grew claws, and when he roared?
I damn near crapped myself.
Through the smoke and debris, Illanya stepped into view.
She looked the same as always. Devastating.
Tall and lean, with scales that caught the light like rubies along her arms and throat.
Her hair was the color of fresh blood, falling in waves to her waist. Her eyes?
Dragon eyes of swirling silver, gold, and green, with vertical pupils. They latched on to me immediately.
“Hello, little spark,” she purred. “I've come to take you home.”
Then her gaze fell on Baz. On the way he stood in front of me. On the tooth hanging around my neck.
Her expression went from confident to confused to utterly, completely enraged.
“Who,” she said, smoke beginning to curl from her mouth, “the fuck are you?”
Baz smiled. All teeth. Not a nice smile.
“I'm hers,” he said simply.
And that’s when all hell broke loose.