“Here,” she mumbled, smiling. “I’m here.”
She flung her arms around his neck and pulled him close. It was the last thing she could manage with limbs so heavy and limp. But she needed him all around her. There was a moment … a moment before he had spoken … when she’d been certain he would pull away completely. Why? They’d just shared something uniquely beautiful.
The tension left his upper body as he encircled her, arms and legs and his big, strong frame. The sheets were tangled around them. She smiled secretly against his chest. This was the moment. Telling Mal would probably freak him out again, but she thanked the Dragon. There she was, living in the present. Maybe seeing something this earth-shattering in advance would’ve scared her off. She grinned more deeply. Or it would’ve spoiled the fun, taken the surprise out of such an unexpected present.
She thanked the Dragon for that, too. Her present. Mal was her present.
She’d never been given one before.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, voice rough, lips against her crown.
“I do.”
“Enlighten me.”
Ah, there it was. The return of his humor. She needed it. She needed to know he was still with her, not pulling away as she’d feared.
“That wasn’t just something to get over with.”
“No?”
“Amazing,” she breathed on a long sigh.
He laughed and kissed her lips, softly, but with the leftover intensity of what they’d experienced. “Finally.”
“You said you spent four years on a mountaintop mastering your powers. That you held on for me, and made it good for me even before … And then to concentrate and keep me safe even as you came …”
Grinning, he slid his hand down her back to cup her ass. It wasn’t sexual. It was merely comforting. And nearly possessive. He was so strong. Avyi couldn’t have gotten away from him had she wanted to. She didn’t. They were entwined physically just as they were entwined in destiny.
Good. She couldn’t think of a better partner for facing the challenges that lay ahead.
“See? Even you can’t find the words,” he said.
“I could go back to being silent and mysterious. Slinky and devious.” She angled up on one elbow. “Or I can be the woman Malnefoley of Tigony rendered speechless.”
He eyed her with that curious distance again. She shuddered, and even shuddered again when he pulled her back into his embrace. “Thank you, Avyi.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Avyi lay awake, listening to Mal breathing. She had nestled her head in the hollow between his good shoulder and his chest, and had yet to move. The afternoon was long gone. So was early evening. They should’ve been hungry or restless or … anything. At least, that’s how she imagined she would feel. Yet she didn’t move, as if the smallest inhalation or reflexive sigh would break what had become an overwhelmingly seductive spell.
Stay.
Like this.
She shouldn’t want it. Shouldn’t even be thinking it. But Mal’s hand on her hip and his mouth tucked against her temple were achingly beautiful. The more time that passed between their shattering lovemaking, the more time she had to realize the truth. She’d thought this the peak of a mountain, but she had no vision to replace it. She’d been thrilled and bold when they’d dared each other so roughly. The real dare was how long she could lie in his arms and still be able to walk away when the future inevitably caught up with the present—a future she couldn’t see.
Did she need to walk away?
She couldn’t, she realized with a sudden shock. She couldn’t when the emotions were all wrong.
Dragon damn. That was it. The emotions. She’d seen the image, but something was still missing.
No, no, no …
It couldn’t be. Her gift said they wouldn’t just be lovers tangled in sheets, but that they would be in love when that moment arrived.
Her heart quickened. She was halfway in love already—and had been for a long time, thanks to the long buildup provided by her vision—but he would never love her in return. In all honesty, she didn’t think him capable of love.
It couldn’t be true. This was the moment.
Wasn’t it?
Yet no matter how she tried to look through the mists, the same predictions remained, including her and Mal lying tangled together—but not there. How to get from here to there? She didn’t know how to operate with so few clues.
Maybe that was why Mal had come into her life. She needed to trust him. Fate—no wonder he hated the idea so much—said she needed to adore this man. No matter how much she doubted herself at that moment, she knew one more thing with utter certainty.
The Honorable Giva needed to believe—in her, and in the Dragon—or their people were doomed.
No one needed her powers to understand that. They only needed to understand him. He smelled of such a strange, almost endearing combination of scents. Male sweat. Sexual release. Sunshine from the piazza. Shadows from the crypt. She inhaled slowly, taking in as much as she could. The present tended to be an afterthought. The future was her curse and her gift. If she saw a clear, undeniable glimpse of what was to come, she knew how to prepare. Steel one’s heart. Be ready to smile. Brace for a punch. They were mere confirmations that, yes, the Dragon still wanted her to see three steps ahead of every other being on the planet.
The spaces in between … they were the joys. Living for the sake of living, not in fear or anticipation of some moment yet to come.
So she enjoyed Mal, as night claimed them in the room they’d broken into.
“Now what?” he asked, the timbre of his voice startling her with its low rumble. Abrupt. A little too loud. As if he’d been contemplating what to say for quite some time. That was the awkward, endearing result of what they had done.
“I don’t know.”
Mal shifted until he sat halfway up against the headboard.
Lights in the garden terrace down below shone shades of orange and blue across his torso. Every muscle was deeply defined by the sideways illumination, as if he needed to appear any more alluring and powerful. Avyi was left with the feeling the mortal women of old must’ve experienced when the Dragon Kings were finished with them. The distance. The sudden feeling of loss. The knowledge that she’d reached heights that would never be repeated, and that she should be thankful for having had the opportunity.
But Avyi would not turn away from Mal’s mouthwatering body. She had suffered too much to deny herself anything so perfect.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Avyi lay on her stomach, propped on her elbows with her forearms crossed. She tried for lightness. “I say we go for a repeat performance.”
Mal’s pale brows drew together. He always appeared so somber when he frowned. She’d since learned to take the expression as one of frustration, not stately prowess. Anyone who was intimidated by his scowl was a fool. She was no fool, except when it came to him and desires she couldn’t control. Maybe she didn’t even want to control them anymore. When had she ever wanted anything so completely, so selfishly, just for her own safety and pleasure? When she’d been held by Aster and owned by that long-ago Garnis family, she hadn’t known what it was to want. The concept had been completely foreign … until she’d met Cadmin, and all the children to follow.
Now she knew. Wanting to belong simply wasn’t enough anymore.
She wanted love.
“Repeat performance? Is that what you predic— You know what? Right now, I don’t think I care.”
“Good,” she said, smiling. “Then we try it again and again until we get it right.”
“Get it right?”
“You and me. Tangled together. White sheets. Even the sunlight from earlier. It was all as I’d envisioned. Only … This wasn’t it.”
“What?”
She shook her head, then turned on her side so as to push her frustratingly unmanageable hair out of her eyes. “I get th
ese feelings. That’s the best I can explain. Feelings. The moment when a prediction of the future meets the present. The children I’ve seen, for example. One twisted the chains of a swing, twisted and twisted, then let it go. He spun in circles, laughing as the chains unwound. Then he threw up. Too dizzy. I was in one of the doctor’s operating theaters when that moment happened. Somewhere out in the world, that boy would’ve been seven years old, and he’d just finished vomiting after spinning too quickly on a swing.” She exhaled and took another breath, unused to putting her nebulous sensations and impulses into words. “A chill came over me. I closed my eyes. And I knew.”
“But not now.” He said it flatly. His expression was made of stone.
“Whatever stands between us in the future, this wasn’t what we thought it would be.”
“We?”
She ducked her head, blushing. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
He grinned, looking smug, cheeky, and tired—beyond the fatigue of their lovemaking. “So much for getting it over with.”
She sat up to join him against the headboard. “You have decisions to make now. I can’t be any more of a guide than you are.”
“You’ve already seen the Grievance, the rebels being killed, Cadmin shooting toward the faceless person behind my assassination attempt, Dr. Aster, and …” Mal scrubbed his palms down his face. “And a lonayíp dragon?”
“Yes.”
“A bunch of futures and no idea how to get there.”
She took what felt like a tremendous risk by touching his arm. She stroked the fine, hot skin down to where hair like gold dust textured his forearms. “Maybe now you can see how it never feels like I’ve been robbed of much along the way. There are too many—”
“Variables. Yeah, I got that one now.”
“I had no idea how to get here. Had I run from the first day, the Dragon still would’ve brought us together.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She looked away, until he caught her chin. “I wanted you to chase me.”
“Did the trick.”
“So here we are. And we haven’t even reached the moment I foresaw when we first met at the doctor’s labs. You were on a snowmobile.”
“And you were wearing black latex.”
She shivered. “I prefer my own clothes. One of the perks of being free.”
Mal pulled her back into his arms. She sighed deeply. “So, no guideposts,” he said. “Just when I was getting used to having some sort of map.”
“Only choices, Giva.”
“Giva.” He practically spit the word.
“That’s what you are. The Dragon wouldn’t have chosen you if you weren’t the man to bring us out of the darkness. Where we go is up to you. Who we tell is up to you. Which problem we tackle first, be it Cadmin or the rebels or confirming the location of the Grievance—”
“Up to me.” He shook his head as if weighted with terrible purpose. “I almost preferred it when you were smug.”
“You were ready to give up your duties so quickly.”
“Yes. A thousand times yes. But that isn’t my fate.”
“No. But we keep getting good news every time we make love. This won’t be the last time. I just didn’t feel it.”
“Didn’t feel it? Woman, you felt quite a bit.”
She hooked her leg across his and sat up, straddling him. “Then we should definitely try again.”
*
Mal awoke in the middle of the night with a feeling up his spine as if someone watched them from the dark recesses of the room. He moved only his eyes, trying to peer through the shadows. Perhaps a dream. Perhaps his imagination. But the ache in his shoulder was still a nuisance. The attempt on his life could’ve been the end of him, and as he was beginning to truly accept, it could’ve been the end of their people. He couldn’t afford to take chances when that buzzing feeling grew stronger.
Avyi mumbled something in her sleep. Mal was tempted to place his hand over her mouth—not enough to wake her, but enough to keep her quiet. That would require movement he couldn’t afford.
He decided the only way to get back to sleep was to take the offensive. Either he’d breathe a slightly embarrassed sigh of relief at being so jumpy, or he’d take an attacker by surprise.
Lying there, he concentrated his senses on the room itself. He looked for any place he could find static. Any hint of energy. He reached out to the shift of water in the pipes threading through the ceiling, and from the opened window he gathered the movement of the curtains and the hiss of streetlights.
The open window? His heart leapt to triple speed. Someone was definitely in the room.
Focusing, he found the air current that indicated respiration. The steady lift and fall of a chest rubbing against clothing. It was another touch of static, as well as an indication as to where the invader crouched in wait.
The corner by the bathroom. A trick of the light cast that small area completely in black. The perfect hiding place.
Mal closed his eyes and used his gift to gather the bits and pieces of electricity he’d grabbed from the air, even the friction from his opponent’s own body. He pictured that corner, while trying to contain the glow of power that filled his veins and supercharged his muscles. With a last breath, he jerked to a sitting position and leveled a blast of blue-white light.
The light reflected off a surface with such intensity that Mal was momentarily blinded. Avyi was awake instantly. She jumped off the bed, out of sight. A scraping sound meant she’d grabbed her knife and her brass knuckles. She’d donned her T-shirt and panties after having taken a shower, as he had, but he couldn’t see a hint of her body. The flash of white blindness completely obscured his vision.
The scrape of metal against metal was no surprise. Feminine grunts and hisses were. Mal fumbled for the nightstand lamp and flipped the switch. He blinked.
The Cage warrior named Silence had pinned Avyi’s torso against the far wall, using a shield ringed with serrated edges—the mirrorlike surface that had turned Mal’s power against him. But Avyi wasn’t completely helpless. She grabbed Silence’s free hand. The razor-sharp switchblade was poised to slice Silence’s wrist.
“In the name of the Dragon, drop your weapons,” Mal shouted. “Both of you!”
Neither moved. They didn’t look away from one another, their expressions fierce in the midst of combat. They were motionless but still fighting. A standoff.
Mal flung the blanket aside and whipped it over Silence’s face. She whirled. The blanket was shredded with one slice.
The distraction was enough for Avyi to change the balance of power. She tripped Silence’s feet out from under her, sending the warrior to her knees. Avyi stood over her with the switchblade against Silence’s carotid artery.
“You’ll bleed out. You know it. And you won’t die unless we decide to kill you.”
“You have no sword.”
“We do. In luggage at the train station. You’d be in agony, because we’d take our time in retrieving it.”
Mal saw the flex of Silence’s shoulder. She was adjusting her grip on the shield’s handle. “Don’t, Silence. Stand down. Last time I ask.”
“You didn’t ask, Giva,” she replied.
“I’d heard rumor you can talk.”
“When I need to.”
Avyi’s eyes blazed with the heat of battle. “Enough,” he said quietly, deadly serious.
Avyi lifted the switchblade and stepped back in one fluid motion, her hands lifted as if in surrender—but with so much more attitude. Her body language said she’d stab Silence in the eye if the woman so much as sniffed.
Mal nodded to Silence’s shield. “And that. On the ground. We know what powers you can muster if you feel threatened.”
“I’d use your Dragon-damned electricity against you. Don’t think because you’re the Giva that I’d hold back.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
Silence was a Cage warrior from Clan Sath who’d f
ought for the Asters. The Sath were known as Thieves because their gift from the Dragon was the ability to temporarily steal the powers of another Dragon King. That made them helpless on their own—thus most were well trained in physical combat—but unpredictably powerful when in the company of another of the Five Clans. The best were able to acclimate to the sudden influx of another’s gift, assess its vitality, control it, and use it as a weapon. All in a matter of seconds.
“Introductions,” he said simply. “Silence, you remember the Pet.”
“I helped her find a very special relic.” Avyi smiled sweetly, but with steel behind it. “And her husband.”
“Not the time to trip down memory lane,” he said. “And we’re beyond those monikers now. Neither of you are in the Asters’ custody anymore. And I’m a man as much as I am the Giva. So … I’m Mal. This is Avyi. And you are?”
Silence scowled. She had peach-pale skin like Avyi, but with hair so bright blond as to be silvery white. She was tall and slender, fit for the rigors of combat after having spent five years as a Cage warrior. “Only Hark knows that,” she said simply.
Her husband.
Mal sat on the corner of the bed. His heart still thudded in his throat. If Silence had wanted them dead, they would be. That meant she was there for reasons other than violence. She wasn’t another potential assassin.
He had to believe that, or else he’d be jumping at shadows for the rest of his life.
“Fine,” Mal said with a wave of his hand. “Where is he, anyway? I got the impression you two were a matched pair.”
He nodded to where Silence’s bare forearm was marked with a small but permanent needle that curved just under the skin. The Sath called it the Ritual of the Thorns, their mating commitment. She and Hark were bonded for life.
“He’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped … By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
She finally set the shield on the ground, as Mal knew she would. She was a vicious fighter, but she was a good woman. From what Mal had gathered, she’d voluntarily stayed with the Asters as a Cage warrior long after she’d needed to. Following the raid where Mal had helped free his cousin from the Cages, Silence and Hark had thrown in with the group of rebels Avyi predicted would die.
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