On aching legs and with burning lungs, Emma finally reached Callom’s home. She seized the front railing and gasped for breath, willing herself to settle it before knocking. Unfortunately, someone heard her.
“Miss?” Her eyes drifted upward to where the footman stood in the doorway.
Still gasping, Emma put on the facade of a proper woman. “Is Mr. Smythe in? I’m in need of speaking with him.”
“He is. It’s Miss Clearwater, correct?”
“Yes.” Her smile grew. Either he’d recalled her from a prior visit, or Callom had told him to be expecting her at some point.
“Right this way.”
Emma followed the man back through the cozy corridor and into a formal sitting room. It was just as inviting as the rest of the house and reminded her of Callom’s private dining club with great plumes of greenery growing out of vast pots. They were scattered about the room atop lush rugs, and the warmth only grew with the fire crackling in the nearby fireplace.
Directly across from her, Callom smiled and rose to his feet. The same longing that had overcome her the evening before swelled back to the surface. Was it actually possible that he’d grown even more handsome since their last meeting? It seemed so.
When she stepped forward, she realized another joined him. A woman with a stunningly curvaceous figure and beautiful black curls that dropped in gorgeous contrast to the perfection of her skin stood from a singular chair near the couch.
Emma immediately disliked her.
Who was she? And why did she appear so comfortable in Callom’s home? Emma chided herself for such thoughts, knowing she was being ridiculous. What had happened between her and Callom was a huge mistake. She was engaged, and she was a slayer, he a dragonborne. Destiny had made the nature of their future clear.
They didn’t have one—not together.
Forcing the thoughts off, Emma traipsed closer and nodded in greeting to each.
“Please,” Callom motioned toward the couch as he and the woman resumed their seats, “join us.”
Emma’s gaze flashed to the confident woman whose lips remained sealed shut as she took to the seat beside Callom.
“Have you come just for company?” Callom asked as the turn of his warm gaze. It was the first time she’d been near to him since his lips were on hers.
Stop thinking such things, Emma.
“I’ve something important to discuss with you,” Emma said with another glance to the woman, “in private.”
Callom and the woman looked at one another in silence until he shrugged. “Go on, Logan will entertain you in my stead.”
The woman laughed, and before she waltzed off, her eyes pinched in intrigue at Emma. Stolen by the look, and confused as to the context, Emma watched as she left and waited for the door to be solidly shut before turning back to the dragonborne prince.
“The night of the masquerade,” she began, as a smile brought a dimple to his cheek. “I’m uncertain if you saw it because I hid it, but my necklace . . . it glowed.”
“Your necklace glowed,” Callom repeated rather monotone, as if he disbelieved what she said.
“Yes.” She tugged the necklace out from beneath her neckline. “This was my mother’s and after we . . . ”
“Kissed . . .”
“Yes. That. After that, it lit up.”
“And you hid that from me, why?”
Emma’s shook her head, “I don’t know I just . . .” She drew the book out from where she still clutched it beneath her arm and shoved it into his grasp. “I went to the archives and I—”
Callom jumped as if he’d been touched by lightning. “Where did you get this?”
“Why? What is it?”
He angled the cover so she could easily see it and his finger jutted down over the engravings. “Because this marking right here? The one encased in this circle?”
“Yes.” Emma’s heart hammered in anticipation.
“This marking here is the original marking of my people, of the dragonborne.”
“But that can’t be. It doesn’t make any sense. I found this in the archives of the slayers.”
Callom flipped through a handful of pages and went back to the cover. The pad of his thumb drifted over the deep carving.
“Emma.” The golden hue of his eyes shone bright as he caught her in their hold, “this engraving marks the first year of our birth—and its secrets have been missing for over two hundred years.”
8
The small book within Callom’s grasp felt like both hope and wildfire. As a young boy he’d pestered his father with incessant questions of the dragonbornes’ histories, only to find many of their records had already been lost through war and time. He hadn’t understood then how so much of what they did was left without proper reasoning and why none could truly answer his curiosities.
Now, as he stared, the etched symbol of their beginnings left him with the distinct worry they’d gotten so much wrong. How could they have known what had been out of their reach?
“Follow me,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Though Emma followed, there was hesitation in her voice.
Callom smirked as he thought of where he was taking her. “This way,” he said, “we’ve work to do.”
Excitement drove him forward to the downward spiraling staircase, until a piqued, feminine voice halted his movements. “Taking her downstairs already, are you?” His raven-haired guest asked with a coy smile on her lips.
Just behind him, Emma stirred uncomfortably. “What’s downstairs?”
“Pay no mind to her.” Grabbing the railing he sailed down the steps two at a time. “We’ve no time to waste.”
Though he never stopped racing downward, he heard the hesitation in Emma’s slowed steps before she followed.
They plunged into darker depths. Callom preferred the flickering hue of oil lanterns and candlelight rather than the recent electricity inventions. At the stair’s base, he grabbed an extinguished lantern, and with a gentle flick of his magic, set its light ablaze.
Emma said nothing, but he felt her burning curiosity. He smiled again as he led the way behind the nearest heavy oak door.
The space that greeted them was just as warm in decor as the rest of his home, albeit more cluttered. On the far side stood a grand bed from which four hefty posts were draped in dark shades of crimson and gold. It almost made the space look royal, were it not for the clutter in another corner of stacked books, scrolls, and quills. They all sat atop a small, round table surrounded by towering shelves which housed more of the same. The vast room still had enough space left for a small sitting area grouped around a great, stone fireplace.
The air was chilled and the fire cold until Callom walked over, and with a cocky glance to be sure Emma was watching, set the freshly added logs alight with a flick of his wrist.
Emma stood in the open doorway, cradling one of her arms as she scanned the space under the flickering light of the fireplace.
“What are we doing in here?” she asked, her voice higher than she intended, her discomfort obvious. Specifically when she glanced toward the bed—his bed.
Callom stifled the urge to laugh as he brought both the book and lantern to the crowded table flanked by two chairs.
“Is something wrong?” he asked with the lowest grumble that left her arms crossing firmly.
“No,” she said staunchly. “It’s quite all right.”
Callom laughed. “I’ve no intention of disgracing your honor . . .” he grinned devilishly, “. . . today.”
The bright lilt of her laugh eased her tension as she walked into the room. He had to admit, seeing Emma Clearwater, slayer and by all definitions his mortal enemy, in his most private of places, brought a heat to his belly. He’d never taken a woman who hadn’t asked him, too, and though Emma’s body desired him, her mind held her back.
“What are we actually doing in here?” she asked again with more sass.
“I’ve a translation somewhere.” Callom turned to the
shelves packed with thick tomes and crumpled scrolls. “If you ever manage to meet my father,” Callom mindlessly said as his fingers drifted over their spines, “avoid speaking of how disorganized this is.”
“Wouldn’t be impressed, would he?”
“Not in the least.”
He felt the heat of Emma’s presence at his side as she looked over the shelf's contents. Books on geography, science and Latin sat on the rack before her. “Why do you need a translation? Isn’t it written in the dragon’s tongue?”
“It is, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything of the sort. A great many of us aren’t able to read it without considerable aid.”
Puzzled, Emma said nothing else as she plucked a single book free and flipped through its dusty pages. The book’s scent and wafting smoke from the snapping fire weren’t enough to drown out Callom’s distraction with Emma. She smelled of fresh peonies, like the ones from her engagement party, and each time she reached out to exchange the book in her hand for another, her skirts brushed Callom’s leg. He remembered the soft slip of her skin and sweet taste of her lips.
The moment he found the book he’d needed, his throat cleared with a loud cough, jolting her.
“Did you find it?” she asked.
He waved the book overhead for the prize it was before clearing a space on one side of the table. With both chairs dragged into place, he sat down at Emma’s side and flipped the book open.
“Not everything translates directly, so this may take some time,” he said as he passed her the unreadable book in question. He wanted to learn what was written inside, but new patience would be key if they didn’t wish to get it all wrong.
He’d just begun looking for the translation to the first elegantly looped letters when Emma let it flip momentarily shut. She rummaged through the stacks of used paper before finding one with ample blank space, and with a pencil in hand, looked ready to go.
Callom smiled at her eagerness. “Can you . . . keep the book open?”
“Oh.” Embarrassment tinged Emma’s cheeks as she grabbed a paperweight from the far side of the table. Opening the book to the page depicting her pendant, she propped the book open with the weight near to the bottom with great care. “There. You translate and I’ll write it down.”
There was something refreshing about her willingness to take charge, and Callom obliged without complaint. Translating the text was a slow process, sometimes taking several minutes to be certain a single sound was right. Where they could read a single letter in the English language, the language of the dragons would often depict an entire sound with more than a single syllable.
More than once, Callom had taken a good guess at a word before he’d finished with the final symbols, only to realize the smallest change altered the meaning entirely.
Callom sighed. “Scratch off the last two letters.”
Though Emma obliged, she looked confused.
“There’s no direct translation,” he said as he pointed from one book to the other. “With most languages, you can translate entire words and some specific letters, but it doesn’t work that way with this. Groups of letters have different meanings, and the subtraction or addition of specific ones can change the meaning drastically. It could mean the difference between saying say, war, or . . .” he flashed her a cocky grin, “corset.”
“Neither of which should have any bearing on my pendant.” Emma said.
Callom shrugged and found himself unable to shake his persistent slight smirk. He buried himself into the translation as Emma took careful note of every piece he completed. Even with large swathes of the notes being crossed out and redone, the completion looked marvelous with her perfected handwriting.
The actual meaning on the paper however, had stunned them both into silence.
“That can’t be right,” she said, shattering the terse quiet.
“It’s not wrong, though,” Callom assured her. “I can feel it, can’t you?”
He reached for the chain around her neck. A subtle shiver left her glancing away as he lifted the pendant atop the cut of her gown. Sure enough the same missing stone depicted in the book’s illustration was present, and the odd, almost crescent shape was one he’d seen before.
“Wait here,” he said as he jumped to his feet. Atop the mantel over his fireplace sat a small wooden chest which he hurriedly dropped onto the table. From deep within, he pulled out a ring his father had given him when he had still been just a small child. “Look at the shape of it.” Held up beside her necklace the vibrant stone itself looked a perfect fit to her missing piece, if only it could be freed from its setting.
“No.” Emma’s head shook vehemently as she shoved the paperweight aside and slammed the book shut. “This is ridiculous. Either the translation is incorrect or the book is false.”
“Why? Because your people once didn’t slaughter mine?”
The truth of his words silenced her.
Callom tapped the golden stone in his ring. “It shouldn’t be so hard to believe things had been different once. That you would have once been our protector rather than our demise.”
Settling the ring into his palm, he wrapped his hand around it and focused on the heat of his magic. Fire had always been one of his innate abilities, and he wondered whether he could soften the metal enough to remove the stone.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked when the scent of melting heat reached their noses.
“Heating the ring so I can pull out the stone.”
“That’s ridiculous, don’t . . . don’t ruin your ring for this.”
“You saw it for yourself, Emma, it’s going to fit. Flip the book open again and look.”
With a huff she reached for the book, just as the crushing squeeze of his fist budged against the solid piece. Immune to the scorching heat of the metal, he grasped the large stone and plucked it free with a satisfying click.
Emma flipped through the pages in hunt of where they’d been when he reached toward her amulet, only for his stone to snap into place as swift as a heavy magnet.
Her rifling of the pages stopped. The heat he’d exuded from his hands lifted into the air around them, encapsulating them in a swirling, invisible flame. Energy in its purest form crawled up Callom’s skin, leaving him shivering in its wake.
Something of the connection caused a massive lift of magic, and a wordless exchange had Emma flipping more furiously in the book.
“What happened? What does it mean?” she asked desperately as she slammed the book open to the correct page and nearly tossed it into Callom’s lap.
“I don’t know, it just—” His eyes widened at the page. “Oops.”
“Oops?” Emma’s voice rose in worry. “What do you mean, oops?”
“There’s more at the bottom of the page here, it must have been under the paperweight.”
Callom dragged the book of translations over and set to work. There weren’t quite so many lines to go through, and though Emma sat in wait with her pencil, he stored it all within his mind.
Emma panicked. “What is it? Is it that terrible?”
“It . . . um . . . there’s more to it than we thought. It’s true slayers were protectors once upon a time, but by placing my stone in your amulet we’re now bonded as . . . allies.”
Callom kept the truth to himself. In reality, the script didn’t say allies, He was not going to tell Emma Clearwater the joining of stones had bonded them as dragon and protector. And he absolutely couldn’t reveal to her the glow of her stone to his touch marked them as “twin flames” otherwise known as unbreakable mates. Slayers, once known as protectors, and their dragons sealed their fealty through a joining of stones. That much he had understood and accepted, but what had happened between him and Emma had been something rare. They were a one in a million match and when their two stones united, nothing could untangle them.
Discomfort and a strange sense of both possessiveness and loss bubbled up in his throat. He snapped the book shut. His instinctua
l tug to Emma made sense now. He wished to protect her and claim her as his own, but he couldn’t change the course of the future.
A knock at the door startled him.
“Come in,” Callom called out. Logan entered the room with a questioning look at Emma, as she squirmed under the scrutiny of her location.
“What is it?” Callom asked.
“It’s Graves. He’s been spotted on the move. He’s on his way now beneath the city into the underground network.”
“That must be where he’s doing his work,” Emma said.
“Where he’s making these creatures of war,” Callom added.
Emma jumped to her feet with a scrape of her chair. “Well let’s go, we’re going after him, aren’t we?”
Reluctantly, Callom nodded as he followed suit. The last thing he wanted was for her to plunge herself willingly into danger, but telling her no sounded like a deadly choice. “We’re going to need help. Is there anyone you trust that might aid us?”
Emma nodded as she rushed for the door. “I’ll gather them and meet you back here.” Before he could get another word in, she was gone, brushing past Logan.
“What’s going on?” Logan asked.
“Nothing, we were just working on some translations.”
“Do you always bring women into your bedroom for translations?”
Though Callom snorted, he shook his head. “Remind me why I keep you around?”
“Ah, come now, things always could be worse.”
“Yes,” a feminine voice rang from the doorway as a crop of raven hair stepped into view. “They could be.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Like say, falling for your mortal enemy.”
Callom sighed at the sight of his half-sister, Farah. He’d noticed the way Emma had regarded her earlier in his parlor with both curiosity and perhaps a tinge of jealousy. He could’ve easily explained Farah was not a threat, but his ego enjoyed seeing Emma envious. “I’ve done no such thing.”
“Really?” She cackled. “Then what would you call your little tryst with the betrothed slayer?”
“It’s not a tryst.”
“Then what is it?”
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