by Cara Bristol
“A different face? How?”
“Surgery to alter my bone structure. Then I was sent to work in the president’s Secret Service detail. The government wanted to keep me close.” He shrugged.
“So…H’ry—Henry—isn’t your birth name? What were you called before?”
“Boris.” He winked. “I’m kidding about Boris. But Henry isn’t my original name.” He raised his hands in surrender and let them fall. “Relations being what they are between Earth and Draco, you being you, and me being here, I feel safe in sharing general information about my past but not my name. When I was compromised, my family”—his voice cracked and a hint of a rain scent wafted off him—“was told I had perished. For their safety, they still need to believe that. I’m 99 percent sure my current identity will keep me safe—but if there’s a 1 percent chance my family could be in danger, that’s a risk I won’t take.”
“You can’t see them?”
“I was informed it wouldn’t be safe.”
They were both alone. Both had lost their names, and both had been cast adrift. I am not adrift. The Eternal Fyre is my focus. It sustains and fills me. If only that were true.
Unworthy.
He pushed his plate away. “I guess that’s why I had nothing to lose by coming here to protect Helena. I had no idea I’d brought the threat with me.” He paused. “You remember Patsy.”
“She tried to kill my daughter.” Prince T’mar had rushed in, executed her, and saved Helena.
“She’d been placed with the president, but she worked for Biggs.”
“Biggs?”
“Jackson Biggs. A long-time presidential aide who’d been secretly running the country. He pushed Earth to colonize Elementa. He’d placed Patsy with the president to spy on him and Helena.” He let out a heavy sigh. “We were former partners. In the field, you depend on your partner to have your back. She’d fooled me—and everyone else. Because we’d worked so close together, the new identities assigned to us made us brother and sister. She was like a sister to me. I trusted her. Helena trusted her.”
“The worst enemies are those who are closest to us,” she said in a low voice.
“The ones we trust but shouldn’t.” He spread his hands. “Now you know about my life. Tell me about yours.”
The ball of heat in her chest burned hotter. “Not much to tell. My life is simple. I am the priestess of the Eternal Fyre. That is all there is.”
“You alone protect the Eternal Fyre?”
She nodded.
“What about the guardians?”
“They protect me.” The corner of her mouth quirked. “So I let them believe.”
“You don’t need protection?”
“When my mere presence sends everyone running in fear?” She gestured at the vacant room.
“Good point. You’ve been priestess 10,000 years?”
She nodded.
His cheeks dimpled. “You’re a bit older than me.”
She found the tiny indentation unexpectedly attractive. He should smile more. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Forty-one.”
At forty-one, she’d still been a dragonling in the parental nest, her future open and undecided. Or maybe it had been decided, and she hadn’t realized it yet.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Aren’t we doing that already?” she teased but gave him the go-ahead with a smile.
“When you were on Earth, you gave birth to a daughter and had to leave her behind?”
“They forced me to! I never would have abandoned her. They—the rest of the team—took her from me. I wasn’t strong enough to fight them, then.”
“I know you wouldn’t have left her voluntarily,” he said. “I have heard of your connection with Helena and Rhianna, and I know how much they care for you—and how highly they regard you.” He leaned on his elbows. “Do you have any idea how many offspring descended from your daughter?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t find out she had survived until Rhianna arrived, I sensed her fyre, and then I had a vision about Helena.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I sense another is near, but his fyre is weaker…”
He? Shit! “It’s me, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not you.”
“You once told me I had fyre.”
“And you do. But you are not my son. You were birthed by another. You are descended from a male dragon and a human woman.”
His face relaxed in relief. “Okay, good. Because that would have been a little weird.” He paused. “Does this mean I have distant relatives on Draco?”
She straightened in her chair and folded her shaking hands on the tabletop, squeezing until her knuckles blanched. He might hate her when he learned the truth.
“No, you do not. When we first met, I recognized the fyre in you. As I have wept for my daughter, I feared another mother or father would be crying for her or his child and hoped she or he might find solace in the knowledge the baby had lived and produced many children. I sought out the fyre corresponding to yours and discovered…” She released a breath. “I had killed the male who fathered your family line.”
“He was one of the ones who forced you to leave your child,” he said softly, covering her hand. The breadth and tenderness of his grip, the slight roughness of his skin, his warmth, and his tantalizing scent imprinted on her, igniting a conflagration of longing and desire.
Once again, two cultures collided with devastating impact.
To be a priestess was to be untouchable. For anyone to lay a hand on her was a desecration of the Eternal Fyre itself. Even her acolytes took utmost care to avoid contact when they passed her a chalice or an oil burner.
Until she had embraced her daughter Rhianna, she hadn’t felt the touch of another being in 10,000 years. She decided then that her mostly human children were exceptions to the rule, and she embraced both daughters as often as she could, but those were rare occurrences still, and the feeling was oh, so different, than the sensation of H’ry’s touch.
“Any man who separates a mother from her child and abandons his own isn’t worth the air he breathes.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
He squeezed lightly and released her.
“He wasn’t the only one,” she was compelled to confess. “I killed everyone responsible for the loss of my daughter.” Vengeance had delivered no peace, no end to her grief, but she would do it all over again. And she had. She had snuffed out the fyre of the dragoness called A’riel because she had attacked Helena.
“Any parent would kill for his or her children.”
She studied him through a different lens. “Have you killed anyone?”
“Only those who needed it,” he said nonchalantly but flexed his shoulders, as if uncomfortable with the admission. “In self-defense mostly, but I took out a terrorist once.”
Dragons considered humans weak and cowardly vacillators. H’ry was anything but. Stalwart. Resolute. Courageous.
“We seemed to have gotten off on a serious topic. I usually reserve conversations of this nature for the second date.” The dimple appeared.
She smiled, the gesture coming easier. The pizza, strange as it was, had sated her appetite, but the conversation and companionship had left her hungry for more.
The burning and churning had increased, an indication she needed to meditate and center herself. She also should try to mollify her dragoness whose ire raged. Perhaps she should seek a flex chamber and allow her to shift, blow off some fire.
“It has grown late, and I must leave, but I have enjoyed our conversation. We have two days before we land, and I resume my duty. I’d like to spend the time with you. If I haven’t scared you off, perhaps tomorrow I could give you a tour of the ship?”
“I would like that very much—and I don’t scare easily,” he said.
Chapter Six
Henry had an operative’s sixth sense to recognize when a situation was going to go south. Further contact with
O’ne had disaster written all over it.
Knowing that, he raced toward it with a fool’s eagerness. She’d granted him a couple of days of her company, and he intended to claim every second. He found her beautiful, but that didn’t account for the intensity of the attraction. He’d met a lot of gorgeous women, none of whom stirred him the way she did.
Maybe it’s my fyre seeking hers, he joked to himself as he lathered his face with shaving cream and drew a razor over his jaw. Fortunately, he’d brought his own toiletries because Draco had nothing comparable.
He didn’t feel any different now that O’ne had verified he had dragon in him, other than being crazy-relieved they weren’t related because his thoughts toward her weren’t familial in nature.
To seek her out was playing with fire.
Burn me up.
His infatuation defied logic and lust. He’d done his best to avoid her, had intended to return to Earth, but when she’d showed up in the mess hall, the feelings he’d tried to suppress had burst out of him like a child’s jack-in-the box.
She’d sought him out. Wild hope had ignited—then burned to ash when she revealed she’d known of his visits to the temple but couldn’t be bothered to see him. He’d dredged up the willpower to walk away, and then one little comment from her, about pizza, had him running back to her side.
In two days, they would go their separate ways, never to cross paths again. He had promised her that. He would honor it. He might be a pathetic bastard, but he wasn’t a stalker.
After wiping flecks of shaving cream from his face, he brushed his teeth. He was treating this interlude like a date when it defied labeling.
He verified the shower setting pointed to chemical and not fire and got in, emerging a minute later fully sanitized. Xenophobes on Earth dismissed the Draconians as “filthy lizards,” but nothing could be farther from the truth. In dragon form, they took fire baths to burn away impurities, and in demiforma, they used the disinfecting chem showers.
Draco and Elementa had water, but dragons didn’t use a lot of it.
He donned a long-sleeved, open-neck navy shirt and tucked it into a pair of charcoal cargo pants, accessorizing the attire with two small daggers slipped into the leg pockets. The blades had been forged from a composite material to pass undetected through scanners. It had worked on Earth, and he’d gotten them to Draco on a dragon ship, so carrying them shouldn’t cause any problems. Old habits and training died hard. He didn’t expect trouble, but he felt naked without his weapons.
He dragged a comb through his short dark hair, and, with eagerness in his step, went to meet O’ne.
* * * *
In her last happy moment on Earth, O’ne had been sitting with her fellow Draconians, holding her infant daughter. They’d all been in demiforma. It had been a cold night, and, although a roaring fire threw out heat, she had shifted into human form so her waist-length hair could blanket the baby. The infant, who loved playing with her hair, had grabbed a handful in her tiny talons and cooed. The contentment brimming within confirmed she did not want to become priestess.
The next day, the rescue ship had landed and she’d boarded with her daughter. When she’d been boxed in by a narrow passage and unable to shift, they’d torn the child from her arms and then dragged her away, kicking and screaming, never to see her daughter again.
She vowed then not to cut the hair her baby daughter had loved. At some point in the 10,000 years, it had stopped growing but trailed longer than her train that dragged the length of two strides. Before being exalted, her hair had been flame red, but in becoming priestess, it had turned as white as temple alabaster.
The weight of the hair and the dress had never bothered her, but she’d spent her life in a marble mausoleum with smooth floors and walls. On the ship, her hair and clothing snagged on rough surfaces, caught on sharp corners, and got trapped in walls that closed too soon. The power conferred on the priestess did not protect her from the mundanity of space travel.
She slipped out of her habit and into her other garment—the simple floor-skimming gown she’d worn as a novice. She could have used assistance with her hair, but as no one was allowed to touch her, she had to take care of it herself. After brushing it out—a process that took nearly an hour—she managed to braid it and then coil it in loops. Her arms ached by the time she finished. If she looked less like a priestess and more like an ordinary woman, well, that couldn’t be helped. Satisfied her simpler attire would make it easier to tour the ship, she exited her private chamber into the communal antechamber of the suite she shared with the acolytes.
Their tails coiled, frills flaring, L’yla and R’nay meditated on the floor, but they leaped to their feet as she entered.
“Priestess!” R’nay gawked until L’yla nudged her with a hard jab, and she snapped her mouth shut and respectfully averted her gaze.
Both bent their heads. “May we serve you, Priestess?” L’yla asked in a deferential tone, but a disapproving sour tinge wafted off her. She had the audacity to judge her? A flame traveled the length of O’ne’s arm to her fingertips. She clenched a fist to prevent herself from releasing it.
From R’nay, she merely smelled confusion.
Representing opposite ends of the spectrum, neither one had progressed much in ten millennia. L’yla remained unduly calculating and no better at masking it, and softhearted R’nay was as naïve and innocent as the day she’d entered the temple.
“I will be indisposed for the remainder of the journey.” Aware of the scrutiny, she forced herself to take measured, slow steps toward the exit.
Twelve guardians in demiforma stood at attention outside. At the temple, they always appeared as full dragons, but the confines of the ship forced them to adopt the more compact form.
As she headed down the corridor, six of them peeled away to follow her.
“No. Remain here.” When she’d gone to the dining hall, they’d accompanied her and waited in the corridor. She couldn’t have them tagging along on the tour, invading her private time with H’ry.
“Priestess, we must go with you.” The guardian’s voice sounded guttural as he didn’t use it much. Spending most of their lives in dragon form, guardians had little opportunity to speak.
His nervousness scented the air with the sweetness of fear, and she almost laughed at the irony. If the guardian tasked with protecting her was scared what she might do, what practical protection could he offer?
“Today you stay here.” She pivoted and marched down the passage, her braided loops slapping her back and buttocks. Oh, how liberating it felt to be free of the heavy gown, the entourage, the responsibility. If not for the burning pressure in her chest, she might just as well be an ordinary dragon again. The lightness of her mood and step increased her awareness of her heavy hair. With a determined hand, she lifted the braids to rest on her shoulder to relieve the weight on her neck. She had two days. It would be enough. It would have to be.
* * * *
The priestess looked different today, her hair looped and coiled around her head, her dress simpler as she strolled beside him, pointing out the spacecraft’s amenities. The operative in him allowed him to retain the information—you never knew what would be useful later—but the man paid more attention to her than the vessel. He listened to the ebb and flow of her melodic voice, watched the play of her expressions, and drank in her appearance with shameless boldness.
“Do you get to choose what you look like?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“My understanding is that you control the shift. You can be full dragon, demiforma, man/woman, or any stage in between.”
“That’s correct.”
“So can you alter your womanly appearance? Decide, I’ll be a redhead today or a blonde, blue eyes or brown, pale skin or dark?”
“No, we are what we are.” She touched her braids. “I used to have the red hair you mentioned, but after I was exalted, it turned white.”
He’d only seen suc
h white-white hair on elderly people, but even braided and coiled, O’ne’s hair sparkled, its glow reminding him of very fine fiber optics. She was knockout gorgeous with flawless, pale skin bordering on translucent, symmetrical features, and large golden eyes. It was as if there was a light within her that glowed. A dragon disguised as a woman disguised as an angel. “Does that happen with every new priestess? That hair changes color?”
“There is no record of it, but previous priestesses never adopted woman form. They remained dragon, either full or demiforma.”
“So you are not omniscient.” He made light with a little chuckle.
“I receive signs in the form of visions and dreams enabling me to see what others cannot, but often the insight I seek remains hidden. I am not omnipotent, either.” She paused and then her mouth quirked with humor. “Although it’s helpful to allow others to believe I am.”
He laughed. After he sobered, he asked in a low voice, “Why do you adopt woman form?”
For a long moment there was silence, and he wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds. On Earth, among humans, to venture into such personal territory on such short acquaintanceship would be considered rude. On the other hand, when the ship landed, he would never have another chance to get to know her.
“To honor my daughter,” she supplied finally. “It brings me closer to her.”
“I see the resemblance between you and Helena and Rhianna,” he offered truthfully. It was amazing a likeness still existed. “If your hair had stayed red, it would be even more pronounced.”
She tipped her head back and closed her eyes for a second. “Thank you. That is the most meaningful compliment anyone has paid to me.”
The corridor wall rippled, a door appeared, and then a demiforma dragon spilled into the passage. He spotted the priestess, bowed his head, and fled in the opposite direction. While her more casual dress and relaxed manner had made her more approachable to him, it hadn’t changed her effect on others. Everywhere they’d gone, she’d gotten the same reaction. The haste to get away from her would have been comical, if it hadn’t been so hurtful. The most revered dragon in the galaxy was a pariah.
