“I don’t feel the cold, Wila, not in the way you do. Now, please. Get some sleep.” He reached out and traced a line down the side of my face with a forefinger. “Sweet dreams.”
My eyelids were suddenly way too heavy to hold up.
The meadow stretched out before me, dappled with tiny white flowers and soaked in the scent of sunshine. A figure stood a few meters away, his back to me. But I knew that frame, that stature, the back of that head.
Azren? I ran toward him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek to his broad back.
“Wila. I knew you’d come again.”
“You shut me out. You put up a wall.”
“Yes, and I felt you hammering on it, so I decided to wait here for the next time you came.”
I released him, and he turned to face me, and there it was, his gloriously vicious face, the face that set my pulse racing with desire. His jade eyes glowed with inner fire as he swept his gaze over my features. I reached up to trace the scar that ran from his eyebrow to his lip, and then I stepped into him, raised up on tiptoe, and pressed a kiss to his lips. It was a soft kiss, filled with every ounce of longing simmering in my heart.
“I miss you. I miss you so damn much.” This felt so real, his arms around me, mine around his neck. It felt perfect, but it was a lie, a meeting of consciences. “Tell me you’re all right? Tell me you’re safe?”
He sighed into the hollow of my neck. “I’m alive.”
“Why can’t you tell me more?”
“There is no more.” He pulled back to look down at me. “This is all I was given. The rest is elsewhere, surviving.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He sent me here for you. To warn you to stay away. To warn you not to try and break through the wall.”
The sky darkened, and the grass vanished as darkness closed in on us.
I grabbed at his biceps. “What’s happening?”
“I’ve delivered my message, and now it’s time for me to go.” He looked over my shoulder, and his eyes dimmed. “Time to go, Wila. Time to wake up.”
He slipped from my grasp, his body turning to smoke, leaving me staring at the wall. A solid monolith built to keep me out.
Midday sun streamed in through the windows, bathing my bedroom in deceitful warmth, because damn was it chilly outside. I’d cracked a window earlier, and my breath had immediately fogged up in front of my face, but the cool air had cleared my head nicely.
My stomach quivered with apprehension as I pulled on my black jeans. The meeting with the Institute was in a couple of hours, and it would be make or break time. They’d either help us get into the Triumph Games by choice or by coercion. I glanced at my phone. I’d called Loraine several times to let her know what we were about to do, but they’d gone to voicemail. It was a courtesy call, though; we didn’t need her permission.
“I’ll be close by,” Seb said from behind me. He was dressed in navy today, and his pale skin, silver hair, and turquoise eyes looked stunning.
“I’ll call you if I need you.” I pinned my hair back into a low ponytail and leaned toward the mirror to apply my eyeliner. “I’m not an idiot, Seb. If they need a show of power, we’ll fucking give them one.”
“Your bed smells of almonds,” he said.
“Yeah, that will be Valance for you.”
“And this shirt …” He picked up one of my T-shirts from the foot of the bed. “This smells of troll.”
I met his gaze in the mirror. “Are you all right?”
His eyes were brighter than usual, set off by his dark outfit, and his lips were turned down. Last night, he’d said the darkness was muted, that having everyone under the same roof was helping, but it was hard to gauge his emotions, and the door between us, the connection, was closed.
He came to stand behind me so we were both reflected in the mirror, his light to my dark. Every muscle in my body tightened in wariness, my pulse spiking in preparation for whatever. And then warmth seeped into my blood, coaxing me to unknot and relax.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you?”
In response, he ducked his head and kissed the column of my neck. The contact was soft, and tentative, and heat bloomed at my nape, travelling down my spine in lethargic spirals, echoing the motion of his tongue as he swirled it over my skin.
“Seb ...” I fell back against him, watching in the mirror as his hands cupped my breasts and began to knead while his thumbs rolled over my nipples until they were aching peaks of need.
“Shit, Seb. What are you ...”
One hand slid down my abdomen, and then slipped into the waistband of my slacks and then into my panties. Oh, fuck. Oh .... Oh ... My hips bucked up against the play of his fingers, rolling with him, jerking as he played me.
“Look at us,” he demanded. “Open your eyes and look.”
The mirror shimmered, taking us with it, drawing us into a dream. “Oh, God.”
He was beautiful, we were beautiful. Naked and wanton, and then we were no longer standing by the mirror, we were lying on a blanket of ether as he parted my thighs and lifted my knees. He kissed my slick wetness and sent my mind into a spiral with the expert play of his rough tongue. We were beautiful beings born of light as he finally hovered over me and entered me, opening me wider. Full—so fucking full—and then he began to move, smooth, hard unforgiving thrusts that pushed me closer and closer to the edge, looking down into blissful oblivion until there was no tether, no holding back with tooth and claw, until there was only the sensory spiral, the blinding light and the wanton cry that tore from my throat.
I came back to reality, my body gripped in spasms from the after-effects of the most powerful orgasm in the fucking history of ... shit. He pressed a final kiss to my neck, and removed his hands from my soaking wet panties.
“You’ll probably want to get changed.” He turned and winked out of existence.
The meeting was in full swing with cookies and cake and tea. Amber had been ensconced in the lounge with a DVD and a bowl of popcorn and Trevor for company, and with little ears out of the way, we’d been discussing our next play and who the players would be. Yeah, real organized. What we really needed was a white board and some colored pens.
We’d brought Valance up to speed on everything, and he’d taken it all in stride, even Seb’s existence. In fact, now that they were sitting side by side, the resemblance in their stature and facial features was eerie.
Seb watched me impassively from his seat at the rectangular table. Seriously though, from the number of meetings we were holding and the whole let’s-save-the-world shtick, we should really invest in a round table.
Seb caught my eye and arched a brow. Had he read my thoughts just now, and on a separate note, had we just had sex? Was that ether sex? Was it real? It sure the heck felt like it, not that Seb had wanted to stick around to chat or hold hands, or spoon or whatever. Talk about rut and run. Shit.
“So, basically, there are no rules saying an outsider cannot challenge the queen,” Gil said. “In fact, there’s nothing to state that it has to be a Draconi who challenges.”
I’d barely heard his rundown, too busy staring at his Draconi form, which, now that I knew how to do it, was easy. He’d been there for me to see all along, whenever I wanted to. For example, right now, he thought he was invisible to us, and that for me to see him, he’d need to manifest, but he was wrong. I saw him. My father. Ivan.
He’d been here for me, always here with advice, a hug, and copious measures of tea. Fuck Liana for everything, but this one thing, giving me a piece of my father, wasn’t something I could be too pissed at her about. She’d gone about it the wrong way, though, forced him to remain on this earthly plane, and now I was in the awful position of having the power to set him free at the risk of losing him forever.
“What about the mating?” Quinn asked, dusting crumbs from his shirt. “Do you know how to do that?”
I looked to
Valance.
He looked back at me blankly.
Oh, shit. My heart sank. “Wait, you don’t know how to do the mating ritual?”
He blinked at me. “Don’t you?”
“What? How would I?”
He leaned forward. “Draconi females are born with the knowledge, it’s an instinctual thing. Males don’t have it, we just ... go along with it when the time comes, and as the ceremonies are private, and I’m unmated, I have no clue.”
Oh, shit. I sat back in my seat. Fucking hurdles. “No. That’s fine. We’ll figure it out. Let’s just get the Institute on board first, okay, and then we’ll crack the mating thing.”
“How do you know the Institute won’t do something shady?” Taylem asked. He was addressing Noir. “What if they decide to simply lock you both up?”
“That’s where I come in,” Seb said. “They don’t have any control over me.”
Tay nodded solemnly. “Good. So we have an exit strategy.”
His hair was pulled back from his face today, highlighting his strong, chiseled-in-stone features, and the crimson in his eyes was in control. Thank goodness.
“Have you been able to reach out to Azren?” Noir asked.
“Only for him to tell me to stay away, and then there was the wall again. He’s blocking me out, which tells me he’s trying to protect me, which means ...”
“He’s in deep shit,” Valance finished for me. “There’s nothing more to say here. Let’s get this meeting out of the way, and Gil and I will see if we can dig up anything about the mating.”
“Quinn and I will head to the supermarket and stock up,” Tay said.
Yeah, food was going real fast with the extra mouths to feed. “Thanks, guys.”
Quinn looked way too excited about another trip out of the house, but hey, the guy had been locked in a glass cage most of his life.
Noir and I pushed back our seats and headed for the door. My phone rang as we clambered down the steps into the drive.
“Hey, Loraine?”
“I’m sorry I missed your call.” She didn’t sound sorry.
“Calls. You missed several. You okay?”
“I’m touched you care.”
I sighed. “Look, I just called to give you a heads up. I’m headed to a meeting with the Institute.”
She was silent. “Why?” Her tone was wary.
Noir looked at his watch and made a wrap-it-up gesture.
I filled her in as quickly as possible. “Look, I have to go, but I wanted to let you know we’d be using your data as leverage. Not that we’ll ever need to produce it, but they will be aware that I was involved in procuring it. It shouldn’t link back to you and Giselle, but you deserve to know.”
“I appreciate that, and good luck. You’re playing with fire.”
“We don’t have a choice. If we don’t take the risk, Elora will win.”
“I understand, Bastion. Just be careful. I’m sorry for what Giselle did, abandoning you in that facility. We did have words about it afterward. You should know that both your friends are fine.”
Both of them? “Eloise?”
“Yes. Fran has been relocated, and Eloise is back at home none the wiser.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they wiped her memory, adjusted it, and dropped her back home.” Her tone was tight. “The Institute has powerful magic at their disposal, and their alliance with Kelter has allowed them to meld it with technology.”
“Another reason they need to know that Kelter is double-crossing them by helping Elora.”
“And you think they’ll take your word for it?”
“Not mine, no. But they will listen to the Draconi prince.”
“Good luck, Bastion. I hope you succeed for all our sakes.”
“Wait ... before you go, what did you find on that data?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Fine, they’re running a chimera project using Sanguinata and other DNA to create super soldiers. It isn’t going great, though.”
“Yes, we have the details.”
“And the Others are being used to power the treaty, which, it turns out, is a bomb that could kill us all.”
“Yes, we have the information on this too.”
“That’s about it? What did you find?”
“Techno magic experimentation. Highly volatile stuff. Giselle is trying to make sense of it, but it’s really evolved, even for her.”
“Okay, so all stuff that could make them look really bad if the public found out. Goodie.”
She chuckled. “Take care, Miss Bastion.”
I hung up, tucked my phone in my pocket, and held my arms out to Noir. “Take me to your leaders.”
Noir pulled me into his arms, chuckling softly, and then we were fragmenting.
12
Teleporting into a room at the top of the city’s most prestigious skyscrapers was nothing to sniff at, but there were several actual sniffs of derision from the panel of Arcana that greeted us.
Noir held on to me for a moment longer than necessary before releasing me. His fingers grazed mine as we stood side-by-side, facing off against the magic wielders we needed to convince into helping us, and what a bunch of stuck up-looking, sour-faced pusses. They sat behind a long table—five Arcana—the council, the elite. The room was empty except for the table and the chairs they were seated on, and the world lay below us visible from the huge floor-to-ceiling windows to our right. The late afternoon sun lit up the room in orange and gold, skipping over the unforgiving faces glaring back at us.
They looked like they were all either constipated or holding in some serious wind. Seb’s chuckle echoed inside my mind, reminding me that we were not alone, that he was here as backup if things went seriously south. The door connecting us was definitely ajar, ready to be pushed wide open if needed.
“Noir,” the man sitting at the head of the panel said curtly. “What is the meaning of this impromptu summoning?”
“Hardly impromptu, Lannister. You were given notice.” There was no irritation in Noir’s tone, even though he had every right to be annoyed. He was dressed in his power outfit today, crisp cream shirt and neatly pressed trousers. He’d forgone the blazer, but the diamond cuffs at his wrists and the expensive leather shoes reeked of status and money. His golden hair was swept back, accentuating his Roman nose and his high cheekbones. And yeah, I was done admiring him now.
An older woman to Lannister’s right swept her derisive gaze over me. “Who is this neph? And how dare you bring her into our inner sanctum?” She looked to Lannister. “This is unacceptable.”
This time Noir’s tone was less than polite. “I made it clear I would be bringing Miss Bastion with me in my request for an audience. Maybe you’d like to refresh your memory by looking up the request?”
“Don’t be so insolent, Noir,” a gray-haired elderly man to the far left said amiably, as if he were chiding a much-loved nephew. There was a definite twinkle in his eye. Amused rather than stick up the butt. A possible ally? “You know how we love to be right.”
Noir smiled fondly at the man. “I apologize, Malcolm.”
“Well, get on with it. We don’t have all day,” the woman snapped.
“Don’t you?” The words just tripped off my tongue like errant children. Beside me, Noir tensed. But I’d always been taught to finish what I started so ... “Isn’t this what you do? Sit around and look pompous, I mean, what exactly is your contribution to society aside from harping on about how uber powerful you are?”
Lannister glared at me, and if looks could kill, a tombstone would have materialized where I stood.
“Wila ...” Noir’s tone was saturated with warning.
And yeah, I’d planned to do the whole polite, courteous thing, but their faces, their demeanor, their whole attitude sucked, and after everything I’d been through, everything Valance had been through and Azren was going through, I was done playing nice.
I took a s
huddering breath, attempting to rein in my ire. “This is the last place I want to be, and you’re the last people I want to be asking for anything, but shit happens and we have to clean it up. And guess what, someone’s about to do a massive poop on our doorstep. Elora has a spell, one that could wipe out all our memories, and she’s working with Kelter to amplify it and use it on Arcana City. She wants to rule us all.”
“A spell?” Malcolm asked.
“Yes, some kind of key, we’re not sure what yet, but we do know that she plans to use it against us.”
“With Kelter’s assistance?” Malcolm pursed his lips. “Kelter is our biggest ally, child. This is a serious allegation, and we’ll need evidence of this.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and swiped to a video of Valance confirming Kelter’s involvement. We’d made it after our shower together. His hair was still damp, and he looked hot, not that that was relevant, but still ... I held it up. “You all know the Draconi prince, Valance, right? Well here it is, straight from the dragon’s maw.”
The video played and Valance confirmed that he’d overheard his mother conspiring with Kelter. There was a stunned silence after the video finished playing, and then the woman let out a bark of laughter.
“Are we going to take the word of a disgraced prince? One that is bitter toward his mother for stripping him of his ambassador title?”
We’d known it wouldn’t be easy to convince them, but it was as if they didn’t want to know the truth. “I understand why you don’t want to believe Kelter could be involved; I mean, he’s everywhere. He’s in your security systems and in every home, and he’s even in the Institute’s secure government facilities, ones like the OIO quarantine facility. To believe he could be allied with Elora means accepting that your systems are compromised.”
Lannister sat forward. “What do you know about the quarantine facility?”
Okay, so I hadn’t meant to bring that up yet, but… “I know where it is and what you’re actually doing inside.”
“The break-in,” Malcolm said with a smile in his voice. “It was you.” There was a new appreciation in his regard now.
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