Chapter 55 #2
But five months later, when he walks through that door with five minutes until close…
I can’t help it. I drop the curtains. Lock up early.
All the yearning collides at once, and wandering hands with desperate mouths become a heated moment of me laid out on the counter while he shows me how much he loves me.
I’d never even kissed a man before him. Even more than he was before—he becomes everything to me.
The next few weeks we spend every free moment together.
Speaking of our future, how we can make it work.
Eventually I trust him with my mother and my’s illness.
Constant shared confessions of love. And moments of passion.
He takes me back to the inn he’s staying at.
I have him in the rundown forge.
There’s even a moment we’re stuck in a downpour, him thrusting into me as he has me pinned against a tree.
For the next two years, he comes to Kilamber every six months. It’s like no time has passed at all, and yet the time between is excruciating.
Until the last visit, he proposes a way we can be together.
Forever.
“Lyra!” Devin’s hands find my cheeks, cradling my face. “Lyra, can you hear me?”
When I’m able to shove the weight off my eyelids to peek at him, he’s kneeling before me. Mouth parted in miserable fear. As our eyes connect, heavy, slow breaths keep me moving.
He grabs my hands and places them on his stubbled face. “Look. Look at me, Lyra. We have to go. We have to get out of the castle before the beast finds you, otherwise you’ll never be able to leave.”
More and more glimpses of us fill my head.
My breath comes out in stolen gasps and shudders.
I remove my hands from his face and hold onto the chair’s arms, trying to force myself up.
Powered by my newfound memories, I stand, even on shaking legs.
Then take a few steps back from him. Forming the words between the pound in my head, “You and I...”
Realization dawns over him, turning into a wide smile as he nods. “Yes. Yes, love. You remember?” He reaches out for me.
Shuffling back from him, I stumble until I find a wall to brace myself. “How could you?”
His face twists in confusion. “What? Lyra—”
“How could you bring me here?” My voice wavers on the last word. “You’ve used me as bait!”
He shakes his head. “Lady Bethany and I thought we had this under control, that the beast could be contained under very specific rules and timing. But he’s getting stronger by the night, unpredictable, and…” He shakes his head. “Lyra, I love you. I would never, ever put you in danger.”
“You knew what he was, didn’t you!” I cry, pointing at the door behind him. “And yet you still brought me here. Knowing my illness weakens me.”
“Your illness isn’t weakness. It’s power.
And magic calls to magic.” He takes a single step toward me.
“We had it all planned out. Don’t you remember?
It was your idea from the beginning. You know I love you.
Just as you know that I couldn’t marry you given our positions.
I’m bound to the King, and because of my position I can never wed or have children.
But this…?” He waves a hand out to the room around us. “This was our best chance.”
My eyes narrow. I can’t think through the pain pulsing in my head. “Best chance at what? You planned for me to win his hand?”
“Yes,” he hisses, another two steps closer.
“And Lady Bethany was in on it, too. Your magic would undoubtedly lure the beast to you as his choice. His mate. You’d be dubbed Queen.
Wed into riches beyond your imagination, and your family wouldn’t have to suffer ever again.
You’d live here. Then you and I would be together forever, at last.”
I edge back farther, slipping further and further into the room. “How would you and I have been together, if I were wedded to someone else?”
Shaking his head like it’s all so easy, he says, “Cyrus wouldn’t have to know. The weeks he’d go to the Dragon Academy? Or traveling for royal business? You and I could spend all those days, nights, and weeks together.”
My hands begin to tremble, heat pulsing through me at a pace I’m struggling to slow. “You mean an affair?”
“He’s not a man that can love,” he says with a sigh. “His heart was taken long ago. As the days pass on, he becomes more beast than man. Dragons cannot love—they just mate.”
“He’s still a man. He still has a heart. You…you painted him as a monster. As a beast with no feelings and….” I swallow, shaking my head. “Had I known, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. This is wrong.”
He grabs my hand. “This was your idea, Lyra. You wanted to do this. You said—”
“No!” I shake my head furiously, ripping my hand out of his. Not wanting to believe I would not only agree to a scandal like this, but to initiate it? How could the past me have been so careless?
“You said that our love knew no bounds,” he whispers gently, following me as I edge around the room.
“If you truly loved me—”
“Then what?” He searches my eyes. “I would burn down kingdoms for you? I would kill for you? I would let you marry another man, so I might get a sliver of your time? There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.” His voice hitches louder, desperate. “Can’t you see that?”
“That’s not me,” I whisper. “That’s not the person I want to be. If it was, she’s dead now. And I have no desire to bring her back.”
“Lyra, please,” he urges, trying to close the space between us again.
He has me cornered in the room. “It was a mistake bringing you here, I know that now. We thought we could manage the dragon in Cyrus by feeding him human blood and drugging him. I should’ve known when I found him pressing you up into the marbled column that the beast would be too strong.
We hadn’t known he would try to breed you so soon. ”
My mouth drops open before I clench it shut. “Breed me so soon?” I hold out a hand, warning him to stay back. Anger bubbling inside of me at such an animalistic word. Like I’m nothing but a bitch to be bred.
“Yes. An heir is needed. Even if it weren’t physically possible for you to carry a dragon-human hybrid, you’d come to me. And I’d be the one who made you an heir.”
That thread tying me to the beast pulls eagerly, wanting to drag me through the walls. Beckoning me. The magic pulsing through my bloodstream heats at the call. My own magic crests and crashes, intermingling with the beast’s. Wanting more. Craving more.
“Release me,” the beast calls. “Let me free, and I will paint the walls with blood.”
My voice adopts that midpoint between mine and someone else’s. “I have to go.”
As I make my way to the door, Devin grabs me. “Lyra, stop! This isn’t you! He’s calling your magic! He’s too strong, he’ll destroy you!”
I rip out of his grip, trying to dodge him as he attempts to capture me. I get two steps away before he seizes my forearm, and I twist. The heat of a fire within me roars to the surface, and I swing with my other arm and slap across his face.
Stunned, when he turns back to me, his cheek is blistered red. Four deep gouges rake across his face, blood welling then trickling.
Taking advantage of his shock, I run again for the door. As I capture the doorknob, he flings up against me, pinning me to the door with his chest as I try to scramble for the way out.
The beast roars in my head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice,” Devin whispers in my ear.
Ripping my arms back behind me in jerky movements, he pins them to my lower back and shoves my face against the wall.
As the magic surges in me, prepared to do the unthinkable to get through the door, a cloth is shoved over my nose and mouth.
“Shh,” he hushes. “Close your eyes. It’ll all be over soon. I’ll keep you safe, love.” He presses a kiss to my temple.
I fight against him, bucking and writhing. But each pull of a breath in my lungs slows my heart, weakening the magic racing in my blood.
The previous flashes of visions I’ve had in my head blink out one by one. The last thing I see before everything fades to black is a four second flash that repeats in a cycle.
A young woman with long blonde hair and stark blue eyes. Freckles dust her nose with a glisten of spent tears trailing down her cheeks. She sinks her fingers down into the soil, then pulls up a round black stone.
No.
A black dragon egg.
The black dragon egg. One that’s been missing for ages.
Then it repeats. Over and over. Ingraining deeper each time.
Until everything fades to darkness.