by Tamsin Baker
The two men burst back into the room, but the Dragon held up a hand, halting them.
“You saw through a powerful glamour once before on the balcony out there, Hana.”
The name echoed within her. Yes, that had been her name at one time, before…the brand on her hip flared and she winced.
“After all that has happened since then, all that we are—that we could be to each other—can you not see the truth once again?”
Her hand shook as the blade kissed his neck, drawing droplets of ruby that slid down over his chest.
“It is, after all, what you were born to be. A truth-teller. A justice keeper of the Phoenix. The woman who marched into a party in this very building and demanded the safekeeping of her enemy’s younglings, despite her own life being on the line. I knew then, that there was something different about you…something special.”
She winced as that phantom heat flared in her calf again.
He followed her gaze.
“Yes, that’s right. The phoenix marking that Quan gave to you. Can you unlock its truth?”
Inexplicably, tears filled her eyes.
“There’s nothing there,” she whispered, confusion clouding her vision. “So why does it hurt so much?”
“Nothing?” he murmured. “Ah, Hana, Quan gave his life so that you may have those markings. I know you can see them.”
The knife hovered over his neck. One stroke, the Tiger Queen whispered through the black marking on her hip. One stroke and it will all be over. But names whispered through the forgotten part of her, above the clamour and urging of the black mark. Quan. Rex. Hana. Logan.
“Logan?” she breathed.
“Yes, that’s right, Hana.’ He grinned. “The territorial Fae bastard.”
Fae. Phoenix. Yes, she was Phoenix and Fae.
The woman with the white hair, the one who held her through the tattoo, had called her the last Phoenix Queen.
“Queen,” she murmured. “The woman said I would have been a Queen.”
The man, Logan, inhaled sharply, and then his face creased into the most incredible smile. For her, for the woman he loved beyond reason and at great cost to himself, and his son.
His son. Another who needed her help, like the boy she’d left by the door, had treated cruelly in the night.
Her calf pulsed again, and she knew what she had to do. She didn’t need ancient artefacts or the flask shattered in the cemetery, or even the flasks hidden under her bed. The truth was written on her body.
She whipped the knife away from the Dragon’s neck and plunged it into her calf. Logan cried out as he saw what she’d done, as she collapsed on the floor beside him. His men hissed and gasped.
The handle of the dagger glowed scarlet and gold, the black symbol carved on its hilt turning molten metal as it shifted and melted. The metal twisted and swirled, reforming, until a new image became clear.
A scarlet circle with five lines contained, protected, inside it. The colours of the five Clans.
The Phoenix, the heralds of justice and peace.
She gasped as the phoenix painted itself onto her calf again, gold and scarlet feathers glittering and then the markings spread over her entire body, burning away the filth at her hip.
Logan gripped her shoulder, hissing at the sight of the knife protruding from her calf, the knife she still gripped as though her life depended on it.
“Hana?”
“Logan,” she breathed and allowed herself to look into his eyes, bright with concern, but clear of the enchantment that had ensnared her and the boy.
Alessio and Jyll hovered by Logan’s side.
“Take it out,” she ordered.
“Bandages, Jyll,” Logan grit out, but she couldn’t wait, couldn’t have the Tiger relic in her any longer, no matter that it had helped her to seek the truth at last.
She screamed as she withdrew the blade.
Logan cursed.
She could only hold on to snatches of things then. Bright shapes being flung through the air. Cushions? Fussing and low voices, and someone doing something to the fire in her leg.
Then, that face. The turquoise and silver eyes that had momentarily been taken from her.
“Hana. Hana. My Spitfire. So dramatic.” He cupped her face, and she tried to hang on to the sensation of his rough palm on her cheek as an anchor to consciousness.
“Surely there are better ways to seek the truth that to plunge pointy daggers into yourself.”
His voice was hoarse, low, wavering, despite the humour he tried for.
“I bet you’re wishing for the days where your enemies tried and failed spectacularly to ease a little truth from you. Though I’m sure it was no real hardship, what with that enemy being so spectacularly talented and handsome.”
She reached out a fist to punch him. It was pathetic, kitten-like.
“You’ve got tickets on yourself, mate,” she slurred.
He chuckled.
She pointed the wavering hand again.
“Outside. Rex.”
She felt the kiss he pressed against her head, as the fiddling at her leg ceased. Heard more murmuring, a door sliding open in the distance.
“Sleep, Hana,” he murmured, pressing another kiss to her forehead.
Chapter 47
She awoke, groggy, not in one of his lushly carved day beds like she had the night of the New Moon party. This time she was in a four-poster bed lined with smooth, midnight sheets.
His bed.
She inhaled sharply at the scent that surrounded her. Deep river, ancient glens.
A place a dragon might swim.
Logan.
No sooner had she thought it, than he was there.
“How do you feel?” he asked, perched on the side of his bed.
“Like someone stuck me with a sharp, pointy object.”
She examined her leg, bandages swathing the place where the phoenix ought to be.
His eyes blazed.
“It’s a little bit funny, right?”
He growled, taking her in his arms, nuzzling at her neck.
Pure, possessive male.
“Not funny.” He pulled back to gaze at her. “How are you, really?”
“After some ancient Fae Queen-bitch broke into my mind?”
Concern filled his eyes.
“That is a privilege I will allow only to those closest to me,” she murmured. “She won’t do it again. How did you end up back here? What of your son?”
“This place is locked up tight by your bitch-Queen. Only certain…assassins have been able to enter. None of us can leave.”
“Why hasn’t she come looking for me yet?”
“Judging by the mortality rate of the usual suspects who wear the tattoo that you somehow managed to blast off your hip,” he gestured to the healing, empty place where her singlet rode up, “I would say it is usually a do and die kinda mission. One way.”
“Well,” she murmured, rubbing at the place where that horrible mark had been. “I like to twist a mission to give it my own personal style.”
She looked at the grim set of his jaw. “Logan. Your son?”
He winced. “I haven’t heard from him since he sent that message. A distraction I think, to make sure we were occupied when Silver’s men charged us.”
She hissed.
“We’ll get him back. Sebastien, I mean. Silver can wait.” She stifled the snarl that rippled on her lips at the thought of the two-faced reptile.
“I’m not sure that Seb wants rescuing, but I think I have to try.”
She ran her hands through his hair, nuzzling at his neck, trying to give comfort to the great pain she felt reverberating through the big Dragon.
“Of course, you do. Of course, we will.” They would find a way. “I remember…was Rex here as well?”
Logan nodded. “Your partner in crime was pretty loosely held by that mark. Once you…did what you did, he seemed to escape the compulsion as well, although he’s pretty confused. Pretty
messed up.”
“Where is he?”
“Jyll and Alessio are taking care of him. He seems calmest when he’s in the water, so they’ve been camped out poolside day and night. He nodded to the timber doors that enclosed them in Logan’s spacious suite, and beyond it the huge room that was more like a forest, which led on to the balcony.
She couldn’t wait any longer, had to know.
“Tell me about these,” she said, kneeling up on the bed and baring her neck to him. She realised she was in her underwear and a singlet, didn’t bat an eyelid.
Perhaps a Phoenix could learn to be as arrogant and self-assured as a Dragon.
She ran a fingertip over the two raised bumps at the same time she reached for his neck, to seek out the marks she’d made on him that night in the safe house below Quan’s den. The night she’d totally lost her mind.
“Is it a new marking?”
He looked at the markings for a long time.
“These appeared when you unlocked Quan’s tattoo?”
“No. While I was locked in that dungeon, by that bitch. I didn’t know what they were, didn’t really care, but they gave me pause. Raised a question inside me, where there was only pure obedience, pure focus on my mission.”
The word felt foul on her lips. What she’d nearly done. Hana’s mind reeled. It had been close, too close.
Logan’s eyes heated that simmering silver, like lightning reflected on a lake of sapphire.
“I pledged to do anything to find you, Hana. To search as far or as wide as it would take. I thought about our future together, that I would like to take you as my mate.”
“And these…”
He cupped her face with a rough palm, nipped his way along her jaw, over her shoulder, lighting her blood to a fever pitch. Finally, he licked and sucked at the joining between neck and shoulder, kissed the marks reverently.
“Those are marks of claim, Hana. Our Fae ancestors used them to indicate the unbreakable, immortal bonds of mates.”
“But…you haven’t. I mean, I…”
Her face heated. She had done that. Coveted him. Claimed him. Devoured him.
“Do you want me to?”
Chapter 48
“Please,” Hana said, her breathing becoming shallow and uneven, as she pulled the Dragon back onto the bed.
Despite all that had happened, despite all that was to come, this, now, their pledge to each other, was not negotiable. She would have it, needed it. Wouldn’t risk another moment without him by her side.
She would claim him as her mate, invite him to claim her, and then no power on this continent—no Queen, no matter how powerful—could take that from her, could tear them asunder. She would never forget him again, never forget who she was.
He paused to take off his shirt, baring smooth, tan skin, marked up all over with scratches and blooming bruises of purple and red.
She gasped, tracing her finger over his hurts. “I did that… I’m sorry.”
He smoothed her words with his mouth, kissing and nipping at her lips.
“Like I said, Spitfire, anything and anywhere for you.”
He braced himself over her with an arm, his chest rising and falling erratically.
She traced the contours of his back, and he groaned as her fingers found his dragon markings, the scales of his wings smooth and cool beneath her touch. His hands made their own exploration, in long, lazy strokes down her sides, her legs, carefully, gently navigating her injured calf.
She nearly lost her mind when his fingernails skimmed over her stomach, grazing the underside of her breast. Her fingers, tipped in scarlet, scraped over the scales on his back, and he growled, rearing up over her.
“What about the prophecy?” she murmured. “What if we’re like that ancient Dragon and Phoenix who exploded the world?”
He snarled as he set to work on her breast, lowering his mouth to take slow, tantalising pulls of her sensitive flesh. She thrust her hand through his dark, luscious curls.
“Screw the prophecies,” he breathed. “We make our own choices, our own destinies. A little, crazy spitfire taught me that.”
She laughed, the sound quickly turning to a sharp inhale and long sigh as the way his mouth moved on her drove her to the very edge of sanity. When he liberated her from her panties and his finger dipped into the warm heat at the apex between her thighs, she thought she might really combust. But the Dragon before her who tended to her so exquisitely was her anchor, the cool scales of his markings keeping her on this plane.
Her mate. The markings that had appeared on her neck in her darkest of hours, when she’d truly forgotten who and what she was. The markings that pulled her back home to him, they reminded her that he could be her mate, if that was what they chose. And she did. She’d choose him every time, in every life, no matter what their Clans had been to each other, no matter what history warned.
His finger slipped inside her, and exquisite heat pulsed in its wake. Keeping that hand in place, he kissed his way down her stomach, settling between her legs as he lowered his mouth to that most sensitive part of her.
He circled finger and tongue slowly, teasing, driving her further and further towards that edge and she panted, gritted her teeth, hands frantically sliding against the smooth sheets, over the teal and sapphire adorning his powerful shoulders.
“Logan,” she panted, steel in her tone. “Please. Claim me.”
“You have to earn it,” he gasped, desire heavy under the fringe of dark lashes, a wicked grin on that wicked mouth.
“Earn it?” she snarled, urging him up her body with scarlet-tipped fingers that drew blood that slid over his teal and sapphire scales.
Once he was up, she pushed him back on the bed, slicing off his shorts with a flick of her Fae nails.
“Well, they’re very handy, aren’t they,” she purred, and saw, to her satisfaction, every line of his body go taut with need, with restraint.
Especially a very interesting, male part of him.
“Hana,” he growled.
“What?” she asked, inspecting her nails for a few long moments. “Just considering what I could do with these to…earn it.”
She ran the edge of a razor-sharp nail very carefully along the ridge of his ear, the delicate arch, the lovely shell.
His body went rigid.
Those very pretty arches were clearly incredibly sensitive. She tucked that piece of information away for future use. And then smiled, feral, fierce, and every bit as wicked as her mate, before she lowered her head to take in her mouth that interesting, male part of him.
He groaned, fisting his hand in her hair.
When she thought he’d had as much as he could stand, she climbed up his body, smiling again at the sight of his blazing, wild eyes, and lowered herself, oh, so slowly over him.
She saw in his eyes that he was quickly losing that leash of restraint he’d held so tightly, and he thrust up into her with a long, loud roar. She rode him until they were both moaning and panting. Until those eyes heated to luminescent silver, backlit with the deep blue of an ancestor’s sky and he smiled at her.
The most beautiful sight in the world.
Urgency lit his features, and he rose up, rocking her onto her back, then flipping her onto her stomach. Gentle hands reached under her to raise her hips, pull her back towards his searing, taut, satiny-smooth flesh.
Hands clasping the bed post in front of her, white-knuckled, she waited with delicious anticipation zipping along her body like lightning waves of electricity. She could barely breathe as he nudged at her opening once again, her body crying out for him.
He thrust into her from behind, deep, sharp, explosive, burying himself in her up to the hilt. He lingered there, drawing out the exquisite ache that arched between them as she panted and gasped. So, so close to the edge—her Dragon too, if his jagged breathing and firm grip on her hips was anything to go by.
Again, and again and again, he thrust into her and her crescendo built and built
, a raging firestorm of need.
Hana felt as though she were flying, soaring as only a Phoenix could. Release barrelled into her, and she took her Dragon with her, his deep, earth-shifting growl cut short as his canines speared into her neck, and her strong, beautiful, loyal Dragon marked her body and her soul, washing away the last of their shackles to the dark queen, at once soothing and igniting.
Chapter 49
Hana allowed the peaks of pleasure to lap over her for a long while. The Dragon growled as he petted her, his hands not seeming to want to leave her flesh. That was okay by her. But they had things to do, Clans to save. As she cracked open a lazy eyelid, she saw he was petting that spot on her hip, stroking and stroking at it and—
She gasped, sitting up.
“Looks like you have some new markings, Fae princess.”
Sure enough, on her hip where the Tiger Queen’s mark had been was a dragon. Teal and sapphire scales glinted out at her, surrounding a particularly wicked pair of silver eyes.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
“I had a feeling he would look nice there.”
“You—?”
“No, I can’t claim credit for that one, my Queen—well, only for the inspiration for his very well-shaped form.”
She gaped at him. “Arrogant Fae male,” she hissed through gritted teeth, but it came out more like a huff of laughter.
“And your chest,” he murmured, tracing his fingers over her heart.
She felt the upraised skin and rose from the bed to look in the mirrored screen.
The scarlet circle with five lines inside. White, for the Tigers, yellow for the Snakes, teal for Dragons, green for the Turtles and gold for the Phoenix.
“The fact that you can hold those marks on your body, Hana…”
“I know,” she murmured. “I know.”
She would help not only the Phoenix, but all the Clans rise. Starting with her mate’s youngling.
“While you were…” he growled, self-satisfied, rising to pull on some shorts, “sleeping off the powerful effects of our time together,” she rolled her eyes, “I checked in with the others. That barrier is still up.”
