Kseniya sat up straighter. She couldn’t hear what her cousin was saying, so she focused on his end of the conversation.
“I don’t know what happened … she took a bullet … lost a lot of blood … she isn’t waking up … what do you mean, a specific smell? … Wait, I did smell charcoal, like gun powder … Wait, what? She was poisoned? … How— … And you’re sure this will work? … Okay, fine. At this point, I’m ready to try anything …”
He cut the call then, calling out to Max, then asked him to bring mustard oil and chopped chili peppers.
What the hell?
But Elena was a doctor and a healer’s apprentice. She would know what to do. Kseniya should trust them.
A few moments passed, then Max walked in with a small bottle of dark oil and a bowl of cut chilies. Djibril mixed the two in the bowl, then with his soaked fingers, started applying the mixture to her chest.
A scream poured out of her as fire consumed her from inside. Her lungs were closing, her trachea melting away under the force of the flames now bursting inside her body from the site of her bullet injury in her side.
"What … happening?” she gasped as she fell to the floor of the fire-enclosed room and writhed there in pain, out of breath.
Vadim was by her side, his hand on her forehead. Strangely, his touch felt cool, so much she was warming up inside.
“Mustard oil and chilies work to warm up the body, my dear. This concoction is actually killing you, preventing your ice nature from keeping the brimstone in check. The poison will burn through you much quicker now. I am sorry.”
Tears started flowing from her eyes, from despair or pain, she didn’t know. The water tracks barely made it across her face, already evaporating as they touched her flaming cheeks.
Why would anyone do that? She had to get Djibril to put a stop to this.
“Oh, my dear child. You haven’t figured it out, have you? The person who gave your mate this information is trying to kill you.”
What? No! Not Elena! She couldn’t—
But Kseniya had heard the conversation with Elena. And her cousin seemed to have expressly told Djibril to use this concoction on her …
As the debilitating pain grabbed her, the heat forcing itself into her head and almost frying up her brain, she gritted her teeth and fought. The delirium was getting to her, though, making her see things … like the fact that only Elena had known she and Gabe had been at the Kensington house that night aside from Adri’s trusted people.
Then the knowledge of how brimstone would effectively poison a Fire Dragon, and also how to activate it in an Ice nature.
The maniacs on the RPG quest had had specific knowledge of their dragon makeup and that they’d be in London at the time …
Come on, Kiki. Fight! You have to live … to save Sera … to save Gabe …
Her body arched itself as another dose of the heating product was applied to her skin. With a mighty roar, she called her dragon forth and used her energy to annul the surge of heat. It demanded a lot from her, but at least for the time being, she could breathe.
“I … have … to … go,” she gasped at Vadim.
He nodded.
“Please … stay. Don’t die …”
“I won’t. Not yet.” He bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “For Séraphine. For you.”
Her dragon left her no time then as it surged into its full form in the closed room of Vadim’s dwindling soul.
With a start, she bolted upright on the chesterfield in the lounge of the Derringstone Museum of Oddities and sent the bowl in Djibril’s hand flying.
“Ice!” she croaked at him.
When he failed to register her demand, she looked over his shoulder at Max in the doorway.
“Ice!” she again called out, louder this time.
The Valthrean seemed to grasp the urgency in her tone, and he rushed away to return seconds later with a bucket of ice that he dumped onto her on the sofa.
Blessed relief filled her as the cold took hold, the cubes melting instantly against her burning skin and evaporating in a hiss of steam before even touching the leather of the furniture.
On wobbly feet, she stood. Djibril tried to get her to sit back down, but her dragon roared and called out to his.
Yes, that would be the test of their true bond—if he heard her outside of their dragon form, that would mean … that they’d mated.
He paused, eyes going wide, and she had all the proof she’d needed.
Not something to deal with here and now, though.
As her chest constricted, she forged ahead until she dropped to her knees by Vadim’s body.
“Wake up,” she mumbled, taking hold of his hand.
At the faint squeeze of her fingers, she turned to Djibril.
“The Power of the Blood. You have to do it now.”
“What?”
“It has to be you. Now! He is dying.”
Human-form Djibril Vasiliev peered at her with narrowed eyes. But he did heed her words, glamoring a dagger into his hand and turning to Vadim.
The limp hand in hers squeezed some more, and she drew closer to his face.
Vadim’s eyes suddenly flew open. “Tell her … what I showed you.”
A thick lump clogged her throat, but she nodded. “I will.”
“Save her,” he murmured.
“Entrust Djibril with your power. He will soon make a gash on your hand and join it with a similar slash on his palm. When both wounds meet, you will exchange blood. You need to will your power into your blood at that moment so it will carry to him.”
He blinked, and she took that as a yes. She then turned to Djibril.
“Do it,” she said.
Without a word, he slashed his left palm and Vadim’s right. Bringing their hands together, he took a deep breath.
“Par le pouvoir du sang, le sang appelle au sang et confère à celui qui le reçoit toute la force du pouvoir de celui qui fait le premier pas dans cet échange,” he spoke the words of the spell.
Light burst from their joined palms to shatter the dimness of the room. The energy morphed and wrapped around Djibril’s arm as he tensed, then it died down back the way it had come.
When the radiance had receded, Vadim took in a deep breath, and on the exhale, fire surged over his whole body to burn him away, leaving flecks of cinders that drifted lethargically in the air where rays of sunlight broke through the darkened interior.
“He’s gone,” she said softly.
“He was very powerful,” Djibril said.
As the adrenaline inside her died down, the constriction in her chest returned. That damn bullet—she needed it out. And she could trust no one else to remove it—it would have to be Alexis.
“Give me my phone,” she croaked.
“Kiki, we need to talk. What happened—”
“Later,” she said, her tone weary. “I have poison inside of me. The bullet.”
Horror flooded his face. “We have to call Ash.”
“No,” she said. “Someone above him. Trust me on … that.”
Her breath had hitched on the last word, and this seemed to have brought down the ire she’d seen creeping into his eyes. He wouldn’t let her off the hook—she knew that. But they had to get their priorities sorted.
“Phone?” she again asked.
He handed her the smartphone silently. She grabbed it and did the whole hoopla to access the Corpus network, then called her boss’ number, the emergency line.
Alexis picked up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
“Bullet in my side. Poisoned,” she said.
“Shit. Where are you?”
“London.”
“Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll text you an address. Get there ASAP.”
Later that day, Kseniya winced as she sat up in the hospital-type bed in the basement level of a period house in Wimbledon.
Alexis had sent her here—Djibril, of course, tagging along as her shadow. They had settled down i
n the bright conservatory to wait for her boss, who had waltzed in a few hours later with Ash in tow.
After quick presentations had been made, the two had whisked her down to this level that housed a state of the art lab where they’d put her under so medical doctor Alexis could get the brimstone-laced bullet out of her.
From what she’d gathered, Alexis had already gone back to Berlin, leaving her after-care in the hands of the paramedic. Ash had fussed over her when she’d awoken, but when her vitals had steadied and grown stronger, he’d reluctantly left her off the hook. She’d convinced him to go crash in one of the eight bedrooms of this property.
And now, she waited. It was only a matter of time before Djibril made himself known in her sterile room, asking her about everything that had gone on.
She sighed as she placed her phone back on the bedside table. She’d just gotten off a video call with Simone and Neo regarding the quest … and the startling discovery she’d made while sharing space in Vadim’s ethereal soul.
Tears threatened her eyes, her throat choked with emotion, while at the same time anger rose from her chest to encase her heart in ice.
It couldn’t be Elena.
But everything pointed to her. Gaia was supposed to give her confirmation now. Few knew that she had installed a special keypad and other IP address trackers in the Local Area Network that connected all the computers in the Sokolov castle. You’d have to know exactly what to look for and where, and more importantly, when, to come across the signature this code would leave on any transaction. The hacker duo now had all the info, and they were looking.
A shadow darkened the doorway, and she turned her head to find Djibril standing there. With a soft nod, she beckoned him to enter.
He strolled in, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and dropped onto the mattress at her feet, propping a knee under him as he faced her.
She gave him a wan smile. “You must not be feeling so much out of your depths here.”
He shrugged. “We’re near Richmond Park. Still about a twenty-minute drive from the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Player accommodations are not this far out, usually.”
“Ah. You won Wimbledon, what, last year, right?”
“And the year before.” He chuckled. “The only one evading me is the French Open title. I’ve never been able to get into the finals on the clay courts of Roland Garros.”
“Maybe this year?”
Another chuckle, mirthless this time. “I doubt it. That tournament is in less than a month. Assuming we’re even done here …”
They didn’t know in what state they’d be in.
He lowered his gaze, then brought a hand up to rub his right palm over the slight stubble on his jaw and head. Then he peered at her.
“So, Alexis Friedrich is your boss.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. The time for revealing the truth had come.
She nodded. “She is, yes.”
“And I suppose we’re not talking about the advertising campaign of her company’s new smartphone.”
“No,” she bit out.
He waited, as if expecting her to keep on talking. Or giving her an out to leave things as they were and not delve deeper.
Could she do that—take the easy way out? Her dragon energy told her he would let her off the hook if she chose that path.
But here was the thing: neither she nor her dragon wanted to let things drop. She took a deep breath. “The organization’s name is Corpus.”
He nodded. “Max said as much.”
Another deep inhale to fuel her resolve. “It’s a clandestine agency. Meaning, no one knows it exists.”
He looked down again, then turned burning emerald eyes onto her. She squirmed under the silent scrutiny.
“And you’re an assassin for them,” he said softly.
She blinked. Wait, what? As she processed the words, a bubble of laughter burst from her. “Not even close.”
He frowned. “But … you killed those people.”
“I’m trained to shoot and fight to save my life and that of others, yes. But I’m not a killer, per se.” Should she keep going? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “But Kali is, though.”
His head jerked up. “That Russian doll chick?”
She laughed again. “Don’t let the good looks fool you. That woman knows of a hundred and one ways to kill a human without leaving a trace.”
Surprise registered on his face, then horror, before he grimaced.
“And Ash is married to her?” he asked.
“I know, right?”
He shook his head. “So … what is it that you do, then?”
Her elation sobered, and she straightened her spine. “I’m what’s called an agent provocateur. Not only do I gather sensitive intel for the agency, I’m also tasked sometimes to drop in information like rumors to get things moving, other times actually manipulating circumstances, usually undercover, to make desired outcomes happen.”
“Desired by who?”
“By Alexis, and her father before her. Corpus is like the stealthy left hand of governments, sent to work when avenues of diplomacy and the like have failed.”
“But it’s still a dangerous job.”
“It is.”
Silence descended on them, with him refusing to meet her gaze.
Her chest grew tight, and it wasn’t from the after-effects of the sulfur-dioxide the brimstone had left in her system—the bronchodilator drugs were working wonders already on that front.
No. She hurt because something had irretrievably been broken between them just then. She’d come out with her secrets, and while he seemed to have accepted them, they were now unbreachable barriers between them.
It was over … before it had even started.
“I’m sorry,” she simply said.
He nodded, then stood. “I … I need some time to think.”
On those words, he left the room, taking his heat with him. While she’d relished the cold in the past, the drop in temperature made her strangely empty this time.
She wouldn’t cry.
On the bedside table, her phone rang. More like vibrated softly, as the Corpus network didn’t use ringtones that could compromise its agents out in the field.
She swiped the screen with a heavy heart, and the silent nod from Simone over in Amsterdam told her everything she had to know.
They had found her codes in the RPG quest. The sick game had originated from her own home on Fire Island, and her cousin had been behind that.
“Alexis would like a word,” Neo said as he peered at her over his sister’s shoulder.
“Fine,” she mumbled, and seconds later, the screen had tumbled onto Alexis in her Potsdamer Platz office.
“What do you want to do?” the woman asked her.
She took a deep breath. “Can you take them down?”
“Sure can. No one will know a thing. You don’t mess with one of my agents and not pay for it.”
“I … I’ll still need proof,” she uttered. Of Elena’s treason … to bring it to the king.
“You’ll have it.”
Kseniya closed her eyes for a brief second and pulled in a long breath. “I’ve been burned, haven’t I?”
“Sadly, yes. Your shoe got compromised on this mission, I’m afraid.”
Which meant her cover identity was blown. She could never go back to work as an agent for the agency.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“You can still be an asset,” Alexis said softy.
She gave a small nod. “I … I’ll have to think about it.”
“I’m sorry, kotyonok.”
She smiled at being called kitten in Russian. Alexis had been like an older sister to her all this time.
“I’ll take care of those sick fucks on this RPG deal, Kiki. Don’t worry about it. I believe you have a more important task to attend to?”
Saving Sera, and then condemning her cousin to a millennium, at least, of imprisonment.
>
“Thank you, Alexis. For everything.”
“It was my pleasure. The honor was all mine to have worked with you.”
She cut the call with a soft nod, unable to form words.
Her life as she knew it was over.
And the dragon she had mated with had clearly shown he wanted nothing else to do with her outside of their mission’s capacity.
A sob lodged in her throat, choking her. What did she have to live for now?
9
As the new heat from the Phoenix swirled inside him, a final bequest from Vadim Damian, Djibril dug deep to his own essence. The fiery warmth was unlike any flames he’d felt before in his system—Damian had really been something else, though they’d both been made of fire.
His dragon stirred, restless against this unfamiliar energy, slightly weakened in this compromise. For a moment, he was glad Kseniya’s cool energy failed to reach him with the potency it had before she’d been shot. It wasn’t as bad as when it had just happened, when that chill had all but eluded him and he’d thought he’d lost her, but she needed some time to recover, still.
When had he become so immune to the cold and, more than that, craved it? Not that he relished any such sensation, though—only if it came from Kseniya. He recognized the difference now. What had started as a feeling of discomfort mere days ago had fast become a part of him.
After listening in on enough of her conversation with Alexis, he walked away from the opened door, unashamed at having eavesdropped, his keen sense of hearing picking up both sides of the conversation fairly easily. Elena Sokolova, her own cousin, had betrayed her. Kiki’s boss had said she’d deal with her, but he wouldn’t take any chances. He had to make sure the bitch wouldn’t get away.
Standing in a darkened nook, he checked to see nobody was about, then closed his eyes, readying his senses to connect to his father’s. When a line of communication had been opened, he pushed aside the strain to keep the connection steady and mentally plugged in the message in spurts, telegraph style: Elena Sokolova. Plotted to kill Kseniya. Everyone safe. Watch her. Keep her on Fire Island.
No one came after his own with nefarious intent and got out unscathed. Kseniya was bound to him now.
Kseniya, the woman who held secrets. The one who’d put her entire career on the line because of this mission. She’d just lost her job as a spy. He knew now that the airhead bimbo model act had been just that—an act. It had been the perfect cover to use to work for the greater good in the ranks of the Corpus. This task had forced her to give up more than he ever would.
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