Then all it took was the slightest push of power, and it was as though his entire being had been sucked into a bottomless void. The darkness did have power. Enough to steal his will to burn. All the dark memories he’d taken from her haunted him, blamed him for the moment of indulgence he’d taken from her body. He’d had no right, yet she’d agreed willingly out of love for him.
“Snap out of it,” the shadow said. “We’ve got work to do. Help me.”
He settled in then, and realized it was more comfortable than it should have been to take over. The shadow remained at the back of his mind, reminding him that they were still at odds.
But when he looked around, the scene before him was wrong. He was greeted by utter silence and stillness; the sounds of the roaring blaze and creaking metal of the destroyed plane had ceased. Both Naaz and Asha stood frozen in place, their worry and grief permanently etched on their faces. His mercenaries were similarly frozen, seemingly in mid-action as they’d been gathering around.
“Did time stop? What is this?” he asked.
“An anomaly. Perhaps just a side-effect in our perception from being rejoined. Don’t waste more time we don’t have.”
He bent and scooped Neela into his arms, and instantly the cacophony of the destruction and the intensity of the scene surged to life once more. Neela’s body was still warm, and he could almost believe there was life left in her. There would be again if he had anything to do with it.
“Touch me if you wish to travel with us,” he said to the others.
“I don’t think you can travel that way inside a body,” his shadow warned, but Zorion ignored the voice. Pain shot through his limbs when the power surged at his command to travel, but it subsided just as quickly. Somehow the idea of causing this body pain pleased him, even if he had to feel it himself.
“You were saying?” he murmured when they landed within the chamber he’d shared with Neela the night before.
The shadow remained silent. Zorion laid her on the bed and the others gathered around. Naaz and Asha had joined them, but the mercenaries who had tagged along politely left the room.
“Give me your knife,” he said, reaching out to Naaz.
The worried man handed it over without argument, then pulled Asha close and pressed his face into her hair. She turned in Naaz’s arms and kissed him on the cheek, whispering words of comfort. If there was one thing Zorion understood, it was that protective streak a brother possesses. If this didn’t work, he had to be prepared for the brother’s wrath and accept whatever punishment Naaz offered, though he doubted anything would compare to losing his mate.
He held the knife by the hilt and expelled a bright column of multicolored fire. The flame licked along the blade, coating it with potent magic until the steel glowed white-hot. He stared at it for a second, contemplating the damage he could do to his shadow if he simply plunged the blade into his own chest. She could have his heart’s blood from the source. It could save her and get rid of the darkness in the process.
“I love her every bit as much as you do. Take that away from her, and your love is all the weaker for it,” his shadow warned. “Let her choose between us, if it matters so much, but let her live to do it.”
“We split again when this is done and she makes her choice. You’ll honor her choice?”
“I will honor her choice.”
Zorion pressed the edge of the glowing blade to the fleshy mound of his thumb, carving a circle into the skin. Bright red blood welled up, shimmering with iridescent fire when it began to spill over his palm.
He bent and pressed the cut to Neela’s mouth, willing her to taste it, to take in the life-giving power and breathe again for him. For the time together that they had been denied, and that they would take ownership of once she was alive and whole.
Her lips remained still and cold for far too long. No one in the room dared breathe, either. Naaz and Asha clung to each other, watching and waiting.
Zorion bent lower, stroking a hand over her smooth scalp. “You came for me, my Blessed lover. I have come for you. Take me in. Taste my power and live. Please, Neela.”
He focused the threads of all his power into the wound, urging more of his fire into the blood that spilled into her mouth. Red fluid seeped out past the corners of her lips, but more made it down her throat. Zorion closed his eyes and focused the power of his fire into that fluid, finding the channels within her body where he could make it flow, first aiming for her heart.
Just as he had with his own incorporeal body, he’d commanded the fire into the remembered human shape he’d once occupied, recreating that shape as closely as possible to mimic what he thought she would expect. He knew the inner workings of his own human shape perfectly, and hers were not much different. His fire pushed through the dormant chambers of her heart, filled it up, and commanded it to beat.
The sound of urgent yelling pulled him back to awareness.
“I’m almost there!” he yelled.
“You’re destroying her!” Naaz yanked on his arm and Zorion shook him off, but then his eyes widened in horror as he focused on the bright, molten shape of the woman beneath him. There was nothing but a living, glowing ember where Neela’s body had been.
He stumbled back off the bed, the shadow inside his mind howling with grief he could barely comprehend. He smacked into the wall behind him and crumpled to the floor, unable to tear his eyes away as flames erupted from the bedding.
Asha cried out in alarm as Naaz rounded on Zorion, his rage nearly as bright in his aura as the flames around his sister’s burning body. Zorion didn’t fight, but stood and took every blow. Nothing could hurt worse than his own failure.
Chapter Fifteen
The sun had never appeared so beautiful as it did today. Neela reached up from where she lay amid the wild, blooming scrub in the field where Zorion had spent the afternoon making love to her over and over. He was asleep beside her, his fiery light dormant.
She wondered if he knew he looked almost human when he slept. His skin turned an opaque gray, his inner fire reduced to a soft glow. He’d left her warm and filled with light from the inside, and she felt an odd kinship with the celestial body that stood watch in the sky above. If she stretched just far enough, she believed she could touch the sun, maybe even capture it and keep it.
“You are a part of me already, child,” a warm, maternal voice said. The sun pulsed with a bright orange glow, its heat cascading through her limbs.
“What are you?” Neela asked, not sure she spoke to the sun anymore.
“I am Fire. Your lover called to me to fix you, but your body was too far gone to repair. I have given you a new body. One that honors my true power even more perfectly than the Mother Dragon’s children do. Rise, my child. Burn bright in this new life.”
The bright globe of the sun seemed to descend into Neela’s arms, its power flooding through her, turning her entire body into light, into pure fire even more powerful than the tightly bound fire Zorion had running through his veins.
Every cell exploded with golden heat, her blood became a molten river, and her breath filled with sparks. When she opened her eyes, the sun beckoned her through the chimney above the burning bed where the ashes of her remains lay. She shot through that opening in a column of fire, and when she reached the open sky, found she had wings that stretched wide, carrying her ever higher.
Neela soared, crying out her elation at this new power and her thanks to the being who had granted her a second chance.
The higher she went, the stronger she felt the tug of something on her soul. At first it was merely a niggling feeling, like she’d forgotten something. As she aimed for the sun itself, that feeling grew and grew, until it pulled taut, yanking her back.
“Why can’t I fly to you?”
“The fire that gave you life is not within the sun, my child. It is his fire you must pay homage to
. His love resurrected you.”
His fire?
Neela arced through the blue sky and looked downward. She stared as though seeing the Earth below for the first time, and far beneath her she saw the glowing ember that was Zorion’s fire. Its brightness flickered as though it struggled to remain lit.
He had saved her. He would always save her. But now it was her turn to save him.
She tucked her newfound wings in and aimed down the way she had come, searching out the chimney she had escaped from and targeting it with the precision of an arrow.
The power of her fire grew as she shot back through the atmosphere, wind howling in her ears as though that other eternal element were cheering on her descent. When she passed back through the skylight, she reined in the brilliant power to avoid blinding the people she loved.
Neela landed amid the dark ashes on the bed, and the pillows ignited instantly. Then the mattress followed, until nothing was left at her feet but a bare, stone slab covered in soot.
“I think we’ll need to find another bed, Z.”
* * *
Zorion could barely see through the swollen flesh of his eyelids, but he kept himself upright, enduring the endless onslaught of Naaz’s fists. The other man’s face was streaked with tears, but his rage hadn’t subsided for nearly half an hour. Beyond him, the fire of Neela’s body had burned itself out in a column of light, and Zorion sent a silent prayer along with her soul, wherever it might have wound up. She’d missed the sun so much during her confinement, he hoped perhaps she’d found a place in the heavens along with it.
He’d almost written off the second flash of light as a trick of his failing sight, but when he heard Neela’s voice as clear as day, he acted. His hands shot up to block Naaz’s fists, catching both of them solidly and holding them immobile.
“Something happened.”
Naaz shook his head and blinked. “I’m not fucking done with you yet, asshole.”
“Yes, you are. Look.”
He forced his eyelids open and focused on the figure that stood amid the flames.
There, standing on the ledge where his bed had been, was the most glorious sight he’d ever seen. The figure was part woman, part fire. Her features were Neela’s from head to toe, her skin a rich brown like he remembered, but with an aura of golden fire surrounding her.
No, it wasn’t an aura. It was actual fire. He went to her, heedless of the heat, leaving Naaz behind to gape at the figure of his sister.
“It worked,” he said, though he had no idea how. Inside him, his shadow rejoiced, pushing him to move faster. He reached the ruined bed and opened his arms in time for her to leap into them, her flaming wings stretching out and scorching the stone walls in a pattern that resembled feathers.
He didn’t care what happened to his room, his clothes, or anything else. She was alive, and the burn of her kiss was the most exquisite feeling in the world.
Chapter Sixteen
“A fire creature?” Neela asked, her eyes wide and disbelieving. She lifted her hand, and her skin rippled with the inner fire she’d finally managed to subdue enough to avoid igniting everything she touched. “You’re saying I died and came back to life … like a phoenix?”
She turned to look at the crowd of people in the room. Her brother’s haggard appearance made her want to go to him, but he still bore the bright welts of burns from the first time she’d tried embracing him. Asha’s breath was slowly healing him.
Zorion seemed strangely distant, but he answered her question. “Your soul was gone. I failed to protect you, and you were taken. The enemy needed your body alive, but not your soul. I tried to reach you with my fire, but … you were gone. There was truly nothing there.”
“Well, I’m here now. And this …” She lifted her arms above her head and craned her neck to ogle the bright, fiery plumage that stretched to either side above her. “This is pretty fucking awesome.”
She dropped her gaze to Zorion again, grinning wildly. She felt alive. More alive than she’d ever felt, even after that first taste of dragon blood that had imbued her with more power than she’d ever imagined.
Zorion looked stricken. “You died to become this, Neela. You should never have been in that much danger. Not while you were with me. If I had only heard you. Heard that you wished for something different … I must remedy my mistake.”
She walked toward him, marveling at this new figure who stood before her—Zorion made whole. The physical form he occupied was solid and strong, with deep, ebony skin that shone in the reflected light of her wings. He was more than just fire now. He had flesh and bone and the fire was contained within, though she still saw glimmers of his power pulsing beneath his skin where his veins were closest to the surface.
The best part was that he didn’t flinch when she reached out to touch him. Her brother’s skin had singed and blistered in an instant, but Zorion was impervious to her fire.
“I forgive you,” she said, but frowned when she saw the warring conflict in his eyes. “Don’t you want me now? Is this too much for you?”
The heat of her power waned, the glow subsiding as her confidence in his love wavered. He couldn’t be harmed by her new power, so why did he hold back?
In her periphery, Naaz and Asha quietly departed, seeming to sense the private nature of this conversation.
“We want you, Neela. But having us might destroy you.”
“Dying didn’t destroy me,” she said in a shaky voice. “What makes you think I can’t survive you? And what’s this ‘we’ shit? You got your body back. That’s good, right?”
The lights beneath Zorion’s skin blazed hot, the same as her skin did without her even trying. His irises flashed and he arched his neck back and let out a yell. Neela’s heart pounded as she watched her lover’s body begin to oscillate in a blur of pure light. She thought her vision had gone wrong for a moment when she saw two of him standing in front of her, but blinking didn’t clear it up.
She shook her head and looked again. There were still two, but one was a solid, dark figure of sculpted black, the other a reflection of him, but crafted of a meshwork of fiery tendrils. That was the Zorion she’d first met, first made love to.
“Who are you?” she asked, addressing the one that lacked the fire.
“I am Zorion’s flesh and shadow,” he said. “He is the fire and the power.”
She turned to look at the other one. “Is this true?”
“Yes. I told you I left all the darkness behind. I rejoined with him to save you, but coexisting within the same shell no longer feels natural. I left the darkness behind for a reason. You don’t need to accept it, either.”
“Which one of you came to me the first time … which one of you took the hurt away?”
The darker one looked at the fiery one. “We were whole then. He acted as the shield for your mind, while I absorbed the damage.”
“When did this … split happen?” She waved her hand in the air between them, still trying to comprehend that the man she’d loved for so long wasn’t just one man anymore.
“We couldn’t protect you from the biggest hurt,” the Zorion made of fire said. “The day your captor came and stole the fire of new life from inside you, we fought. We tried to take that pain, but it wasn’t only your pain to take. He wanted to protect you. I wanted to protect the child. In the end, we could do neither.
“It wasn’t until shortly after when we were moved to the new temple that I separated from him. There were no more temporal wards to keep me bound to him. I couldn’t stray beyond the boundary of the tether, but I didn’t have to be a part of him anymore. I didn’t have to bear witness to the darkness he’d become.”
Raw emotion choked her. “That darkness saved me, Z. Both of you saved me. Why can’t you be okay with that? He’s as much my mate as you are.”
“We can’t be one dragon for you,
Neela,” Zorion said. “We are too different now. I can’t bear to see you … subjugated.”
“What, and he can?” she snapped. She looked at the dark one. “What does he mean?”
The shadow Z dipped his head. He lifted his shoulders, then let them fall. “Your pleasure is all I wish for, Neela.” He raised his gaze and met hers with eyes as black as midnight. “But I want to draw it from you while you are bound and at my mercy.”
“You have to choose,” the fiery Z said, but Neela’s gaze remained fixed on those dark eyes, and he didn’t look away either.
“It’s my nightmare that made you this way, isn’t it?” she asked softly. She stepped close and placed a hand against his cheek. He kept his gaze fixed on her face and nodded. “Show me.”
He turned to look at the fiery Z. “He would rather I didn’t.”
“Fuck what he wants,” she spat. “Did you know he held me down the first time?” She shot a blazing stare at the other Z, whose eyes burned right back at her. “You liked it, and so did I. I want to see what makes your dark half tick, because it can’t be any worse.”
“Neela, don’t,” he said, moving in and grabbing her hand to pull it away from the shadow.
“Show me, or I am leaving you both.”
His heat merged with hers at her back, but he relented, letting his hands rest on her shoulders as though prepared to pull her away from his reflection at a moment’s notice. The shadow Z raised both hands, cupping her cheeks gently.
“It is our darkness, my love,” he said, lowering his face to hers.
When their lips met, memories flooded in of all the countless times she’d lain on her back with limbs bound and feet in stirrups. Aside from the first panicked turul, she hadn’t seen her partners for those encounters. The blindfold made it impossible to know, but she’d felt every single one.
Except inside these memories, she could see and feel everything. And it wasn’t the horror she had braced herself for. In every instance, she gazed up into the face of this dragon who stood before her, his dark eyes taking away her pain, her humiliation, her lack of control, and giving her back what she’d lost. She may have been bound in the memories, but he followed her commands.
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