Chapter 25 INGA
I kept running through the same impossible questions. How do I get out? How do I get Klaus out? How do I reach Gideon?
I had no answers to any of them.
The villa was a palace, yes—but it was also a prison.
There was a phone downstairs, a black rotary thing on a delicate little table in the hallway, but even if I could sneak to it, even if I could dial… I didn't know Gideon's number. Elke didn't have a phone. Die Ecke had one, but I didn't know what to ask the operator for. I didn't know anything.
I hadn't seen any way to leave the villa yet, without an escort. I didn't have papers or money. I had no freedom. Every possibility dried up before it even formed.
So I sat stiffly on a velvet sofa beside Klaus, pretending to sip tea while my father smiled his polished smile. Everything about the room gleamed: polished floors, expensive drapes, silver trays. Everything in me shriveled.
Klaus leaned into my side without seeming to notice he was doing it, and I threaded my fingers through his. They were cold and a little sticky.
"Are you tired, Klaus?" my father asked gently.
Klaus didn't answer. This man was a stranger to him.
He had no memories of our father—had never met him, before today— and that was probably a blessing for him, because for me, it added to the torture of seeing my miraculously-returned-from-the-dead father in front of me, yet not.
He was nothing but a bad caricature of the man I knew and called Vati once upon a time.
Klaus stared at the door, squeezing my heart, because he knew. He understood more than any six-year-old should.
My father kept talking about how wonderful life would be now, how we'd never want for anything again, how we'd all live here as a model family, how I would learn proper values. How I would forget the lies of the West.
I pretended to listen. Inside, I was screaming.
And then—
Something shifted. There was no warning other than maybe a slight change in the air, a ripple of… heat, a strange prickling sensation that rolled over my skin, like the atmosphere in the room had thickened. I straightened.
Klaus felt it too—his fingers tightened around mine.
My father kept talking, oblivious.
"Vati," I said suddenly, cutting him off. "Do you hear—?"
The words died as the window behind him darkened. Not by a cloud or shadow. With something alive. Something vast. For a split second, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing: a hulking shape, bronze-gold scales catching faint moonlight, wings unfurling in a terrifying silhouette—
A dragon.
A DRAGON!
A scream ripped out of my throat before I could stop it, and I yanked Klaus against me as the window exploded inward. Glass rained like frozen stars.
The whole room shook.
The dragon landed in the parlor in a thunder of muscle and heat, filling the space like a living storm. The air around him shimmered with warmth, not burning my skin warm, but washing over me like a heartbeat.
Klaus buried his face in my side. My father stumbled back with a shriek. "GOTT IM HIMMEL—!"
Two guards burst in with rifles raised. The dragon roared.
A sound that rattled my bones but didn't frighten me.
Not like it should have. Not like it frightened the others.
Because as that roar rolled through me, something strange and impossible happened.
Recognition hit me. Recognition that came on a deep, primal level.
It came from a flash of those eyes. Those golden eyes.
The way they were burning. Fierce and familiar: Gideon's eyes.
My breath stopped, and my heart flipped.
That's him.
The thought wasn't logical, it wasn't even possible or sane, and yet, I knew.
Everything in me knew.
The dragon lunged, sweeping the rifles aside with one massive claw without hurting the men. Their terror won out, and they bolted.
As I stared at the dragon, his form rippled, shifted.
It looked like it collapsed inward. Bones snapped, wings folded, scales dissolved into skin, heat became breath, and then Gideon knelt in the shattered glass, buck naked, panting, eyes blazing with the same fierce gold I had seen glimpses of before.
My hands flew to my mouth. "Gideon," I whispered.
He looked up at me.
"Inga," he gasped. "Don't be scared. I'm sorry—I'm so sorry—I should have told you what I—"
I didn't let him finish. "GIDEON!"
I launched myself at him so fast we both nearly toppled backward. My arms wrapped around his neck, my face pressed to his shoulder, and tears spilled hot and wild.
"You came," I cried. "You came. I love you—I love you so much—"
His arms locked around me, one hand dug in my hair, the other crushed me to his chest like he never wanted to let me go again, like he needed me close to reassure himself I was real and here.
"Inga," he whispered in a broken voice. "I'd tear this whole damn city apart for you."
His words should have scared me. Hell, everything about this should have scared me. But it didn't.
Maybe I'd used up all my fear years ago, in those long nights crouched in the shelter with my mother while the bombs fell like the sky was breaking open. Some nights they were distant, a dull thud that rattled the lantern glass.
Sometimes they were so close, the world exploded, plaster rained down on us like dirty snow, the earth heaving under our feet as if it wanted to swallow us whole.
That had been fear. Real fear. The kind that crawls into your bones and stays there forever.
The kind that makes your body tremble and shake more than any chills ever could.
I remembered clinging to my mother, fingers digging into her coat, certain she could hold the ceiling up with her bare hands if she had to.
Certain she could keep me safe. Certain she would survive.
I'd been wrong.
But standing before Gideon now… That old terror didn't rise. Not even close. Nothing about him—his words, his fire, his fury—made me want to run.
Because every line of his body, every breath he took, told me one truth: He would burn the world down for me.
And for some insane, impossible reason, that was the most comforting thing I had ever felt.
No one had ever protected me. No one had ever chosen me.
No one had ever stood between me and danger.
In his presence, for the first time since the war began, I felt something I barely recognized: Safe.
Safe in the way only someone who has survived too many close calls can understand. Safe in the way that feels like stepping into warm light after years of crawling through an icy tundra. Safe in the way that made my entire body finally, finally exhale.
Klaus hovered behind me. He was trembling at first, but slowly, shyly, he stepped forward. Gideon reached out a hand, and Klaus ran into him too, burying his face in Gideon's chest as Gideon wrapped both of us close.
My heart nearly burst. Behind us, my father shrieked.
"DU TEUFEL! You monster! You will NOT take my daughter!"
I turned my head toward him, my eyes burning with unshed tears, my voice shaking with fury and clarity. "'He's not a monster," I said softly. "You are."
The rage that crossed his face… I'll never forget it.
Gideon rose, pulling Klaus and me with him. "We're leaving," he stated.
"You'll never make it out," my father hissed. "The guards—"
"Are unconscious," Gideon growled.
My father went pale, but he didn't try to stop us. Maybe he couldn't. Maybe he finally saw what real strength looked like.
Outside, the garden glowed pale under the moon. I grabbed Gideon's hand. "Gideon, how… how are we going to get out of here?"
He turned to me fully. "Do you trust me?"
A shiver ran through me, not of fear, but of certainty. "Yes," I whispered. "With my life. With Klaus."
His expression softened. Then he stepped back. And the man I loved exploded into golden flame and wings and scales. I gasped, stumbling backward with Klaus as the dragon lowered himself to the ground, enormous but… gentle. His eye was level with mine, bright gold, warm, waiting.
Then I understood. He wanted us to climb on.
"Komm," I whispered to Klaus. "He won't let us fall."
Klaus pressed against me. He was still trembling, but I could tell he was thrilled too.
"Cool!" he exclaimed.
When he climbed onto Gideon's back, he let out a tiny laugh. I climbed on behind him, gripping the ridges of scales along Gideon's neck. The warmth of his dragon form seeped into my bones.
Without warning, he launched into the sky.
I clung to Klaus, who let out a whoop of pure joy, high and bright, echoing over the rooftops.
Wind roared past us, cool and wild. The ground fell away.
And I felt free. So incredibly free, I let out a shriek of pure, undiluted joy!
Nothing I had ever experienced before in my life compared to this feeling of flying, of sitting on…
the man I loved… feeling his warmth between my legs, it was…
obscene. Arousing in a strange way that I didn't have words for. And comforting, all at once.
The villa shrank into a toy house. The city opened beneath us in all its broken, wounded beauty. A laugh escaped me—shaky, breathless, disbelieving.
I was riding a dragon.
I was riding Gideon.
The man I loved.
The man who had come for me.
The man who was taking me home.
The wind carried Klaus's laughter, my own, and the dragon's deep rumble of happiness.
And for the first time in years—Years!—I felt free.
If the flight had felt like a dream, the landing jolted me back to reality.
Gideon dropped into the ruins behind an old factory, wings folding in with the fluid grace of something ancient.
Klaus and I slid off his back as he lowered himself, and I steadied myself against the cool bricks as he shifted shape again.
Scales vanished, wings tucked into nothing, and suddenly he was just Gideon—stark-butt naked, breathless, beautiful.
Klaus giggled, "Er is nackend—he's naked. "