“Very well. Help me undress her.” Harriet pulled the dress over her head and placated Nick’s concerns about leaving her naked on a pile of jewels and metalwork. “I’ll bring you food and drink. There’s a bathroom right outside the vault door. If you think you’ll be ill, use it.”
“Why would I be ill?” Nick asked.
Rowan concentrated and started to shift, her bones stretching, her organs reordering themselves. Her skin changed, becoming thicker, covering with scales. The process was slower than normal, more deliberate what with her weakness and fatigue. But when she was done, she stretched her wings, yawned, and felt the dragon begin to heal.
“Holy fucking shit balls. I will never get used to that,” Nick rattled off, then looked up at her with wide, terrified eyes. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and lowered her head when he reached for her. He stroked along her face and neck. Thank the Mountain, he didn’t run away.
“You’re beautiful,” he said softly near her ear. “Red. I love red.”
The purr she released almost hurt, she was so tired.
“Go on. Get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She turned, careful not to sweep him into the wall with her tail, and dove beneath her treasure. Curled in on herself, she fell into a deep healing sleep, one so far gone she didn’t even dream.
Of all the surprises life had ever thrown his way, this stole the cake. Nick sat cross-legged, back against the wall, staring at a heap of treasure that now contained his girlfriend. His dragon girlfriend. Not just wings. Not just a barbed tail. She was the dragon and the dragon was her, and somehow, someway, he was okay with that.
In fact, he loved her.
Nick had never believed he could love anyone. No, that wasn’t exactly true. He knew he had the capacity to love, just wasn’t sure if anyone would or could ever love him. The loss of a mother was always traumatic to children. Nick understood that. But Nick’s loss had many edges. His abandonment had come at a time he was most vulnerable and had left no one to protect him from Stan.
Now he understood his mother had never meant to leave him. She’d been wrapped up in darkness and she couldn’t get herself out.
Fuck, he hurt. His entire body felt like a fresh bruise, and he was pretty sure the bite mark on his neck was deeper than the last. He lowered himself to the floor and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he slept, but when he opened his eyes again, she was standing there, entirely naked but healthy, as if the horrors of the night before had never happened at all. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same. He couldn’t move.
“You look better,” he said.
“You look like hell.”
“Fair enough.”
She crossed the room out of his field of vision and returned wearing a red robe. She knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. “Thank you for coming for me.”
He winked at her, which hurt more than he expected, and squeezed her hand. “Well, I think we had to wipe out most of the New Amsterdam coven to do it, but it will all be worth it if you throw me your handkerchief. Isn’t that what princesses did for the winner of the joust?” He chuckled but had to stop when it felt like his ribs might crack.
“You can have more than my handkerchief, Nick.”
“Good. Because I want you. All of you.”
“I thought you were afraid of relationships.”
“I’ve recently reassessed that fear. Turns out I’m much more afraid of living without you.”
She leaned down and pressed a kiss against his lips. It was like an angel floating down from heaven to stab him in the face with a red-hot poker. He groaned.
“We need to call Harriet. You need healing.” She began to get up, but he squeezed her hand again.
“Wait, wait a minute.”
“I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“Do you remember what I said to you in the van, about wanting to try this bond thing?”
She placed her hands on either side of his face. “Yes. I want that too. But I’m worried for you. Let me get Harriet.”
“I don’t think we should start a new relationship with any secrets between us.” He narrowed his eyes on her. He remembered when he saw her in the Stevensons’ closet, and there was something bothering him about the memory. “This isn’t your true face, is it?”
She shook her head.
“Show me.” Nick watched in utter amazement as her face subtly changed. Her nose became more pronounced with a gentle hook, her eyes changed from hazel to bright amber, and her skin darkened to a beautiful shade of creamy bronze. Along the temple beside her right eye was a mark like a double crescent. She tapped it.
“All dragons have this.” She pulled up her hair and pointed to a series of V-shaped ridges along her neck. “And this.”
Nick remembered now, her face. He hadn’t noticed the markings but her hair had been down, the swoop of her bangs covering her temple. But he remembered this face. This gorgeous face. “So this is the real you?”
“As real as it gets.”
“Good.” He sighed. “You’re beautiful as you are.”
She smiled and rested her hand on his cheek. “Do you forgive me?”
“I was going to tell you last night when you came to my place that Stevenson was blackmailing NYPD cops right and left. He used my partner, Soren, to threaten to pin the theft on me if I didn’t cover for NAVAK.”
“That bastard.” She bared her teeth.
“Yeah. Now that we’ve dealt with NAVAK and have over a hundred trafficked humans to reincorporate into society, I think I’ll ask your brother’s wife, Sabrina, to help us take down Stevenson too, and Verinetti while we’re at it. Do you think she’ll go for it? Thought we could get your building back if we play our cards right.”
She nodded her head, a smile spreading across her face. “You’re absolutely diabolical. In a good way.”
“Someone’s got to pay for what happened to Allison.”
“Who’s Allison?”
“Allison Sumner, the girl who was murdered. My case.”
“You really care about her. I mean, her personally, not just the case.”
“Everyone deserves justice. The punishment we doled out to Malvern doesn’t make up for what Stevenson did and won’t stop him from doing it again for the next highest bidder. And Verinetti is a menace. He has to go down.”
A dark cloud passed behind her eyes. “I agree.”
“You want to take out Verinetti yourself?”
She nodded. “I owe him one. Besides, the human justice system has a hard time containing supernaturals.”
Nick winked at her. “All right. I take care of my kind and you take care of yours. I promise you, I won’t cry for Verinetti, whatever you do with him.”
Their eyes met and held, and Nick’s heart flipped in his chest. His body ached and his head was spinning, but he’d never felt better. Never more at peace.
“Are you okay, Nick? I better get Harriet. You’re sweating, and by the Mountain, you’re so pale. Nick?” Her cool hand patted his cheek.
God, he was tired. Darkness pressed in at the edges of his vision. He needed to rest, to sleep, maybe for a couple of days.
“Nick?”
“I love you, Rowan,” he said. Why not? He felt it. And what did he have to lose anymore that he’d keep something like that a secret? He blinked up at her beautiful face and waited to see if his prayers were answered.
“I love you too.” She smiled at him, her cool hands soothing his hot skin. It was odd. She was close but somehow seemed like she was at the end of a long tunnel, as if a circle of darkness was constricting around him.
“I knew it. Who could resist this?”
Then he closed his eyes and gave in to the darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Tobias, what the hell is going on? What’s wrong with him?” Rowan crowded around the examination table with Harriet and Gabriel as Tobias examined the love of her life.
Nick had pa
ssed out, and Harriet’s usual concoction of herbs and magic couldn’t rouse him. In fact, her ministrations hardly helped at all. She’d remembered Tobias was a human physician, but they didn’t dare take Nick to a hospital. There’d be too many questions. Instead, they’d used Sabrina to commandeer a nearby veterinary clinic so Tobias could examine him.
“He’s hypovolemic,” Tobias said. “He’s bleeding internally. It’s a slow bleed, but it’s lethal.”
“What are you waiting for?” Rowan said. “Stop it!”
Tobias frowned and placed his hands on her shoulders in a way that she recognized was meant to comfort her, but in fact had the opposite effect. Her heart raced in her chest. Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.
“It’s too late for human medicine.” The words fell between them like glass vases that shattered at her feet.
“No.” Rowan’s chest constricted from a combination of fear and panic. “I can’t… I can’t lose him, Tobias. I’ll become like Alexander. I won’t survive it. I don’t want to survive it!”
Gabriel spun her around, pulled her into his chest, and held her tight. “There is another way, sister,” he whispered in her ear. “And you’ve already done it once.”
She met his gaze, and his eyes shifted to Harriet, who was staring at her intensely. For over a century, it had just been the two of them, locked in the bond that had formed when she’d saved her friend from tuberculosis with the gift of her tooth. Now the old woman had tears in her eyes, and although her suit was a happy shade of green offset with a gorgeous Hermès scarf in a spring floral pattern, her disposition was nothing if not blue.
“My dragon, my friend,” she said. “It will not be easy sharing you. We’ve endured too much, managed too many escapades, cried too many tears, laughed the laughter of old friends. But I must encourage you to do this thing. My heart, although immortal, is not strong enough to watch you lose him. Don’t you dare worry about me. There’s enough room in our lives for a man like the detective.”
Rowan placed her hand over her heart. “I want him. I want him so much.”
“Then take him,” Gabriel said.
“Not without his permission. It was a leap for him to accept me as his girlfriend. What if he can’t accept me as his forever mate? It’s too fast.”
Tobias wiped a thumb under her eyes. “Life throws us curveballs, little sister. All we can do is take our best swing. But if you’re going to try to hit this one out of the park, you better do it soon. Nick doesn’t have much time.”
She took a deep, cleansing breath and blew it out slowly. “I’d like the room.”
Tobias and Gabriel gave her one last hug each and then exited.
Harriet stayed behind. “If he says no…”
“I won’t force him,” Rowan said.
Harriet squeezed her arm. “But I will force you.”
Rowan raised her eyebrows in question.
“I will force you to go on. I will force you to survive. I will force you to heal. You will not become like Alexander. I won’t let you.”
Rowan hugged her friend as her tears flowed freely. “I love you, Harriet. Your friendship is a light in the darkness.”
The old woman pulled back. “I try. Besides, without you, I couldn’t afford to keep myself in Hermès and Chanel. I have quite the habit, you know.”
She kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, I know.”
Harriet squeezed her arm one last time and left the room, closing the door behind her. It was just Rowan and Nick, his body as still as if he were already dead. She hated it. The tick of the clock on the wall measured out the seconds. Rowan raised her ruby ring and called on the magic that resided in her dragon heart, magic that was her dragon birthright. It was said that in the beginning of time, dragons were slaughtered by other beings searching for the piece of them that embodied immortality. All they achieved was killing those dragons of old and killing their magic with them. For the magic was not in their scales or their blood or even their organs, it was in their souls, their minds, and their ability to love beyond limits.
The clock stopped. Nick opened his eyes.
“What happened, baby? It looks like you’ve been crying.” He reached for her and wiped her tears away with his thumb.
She caught his hand between her own. “We don’t have much time. There’s something I have to ask you.”
“I’m so tired. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re dying,” she blurted, and the tears came again.
“I am? I’m not in any pain.”
“Internal bleeding. It’s insidious. We can’t fix it. Not a human doctor or Harriet.”
“Oh.” His face softened.
“I’ve used dragon magic to stop time and wake you, but I can’t do this forever.”
“So, this is goodbye?” He rubbed his thumb softly against her cheek. “Don’t cry for me, baby. Everyone dies. Well, not you, but humans.” His words vibrated at the corners, and she could tell he was trying to comfort her and hide his own fears.
“I can save you,” she said, “but it entails bonding you to me, the same way I bonded Harriet. I would have to feed you my tooth. The magic would heal you, but it would also connect you to me for the length of my life.”
He inhaled sharply. “Yeah, I heard about the tooth thing from your brothers. Didn’t know what it meant though.”
“It’s forever, Nick. If we do this, there’s no going back.”
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes wide. “It sounds like you’re proposing.”
“Marriage is until death do us part. What I am proposing is a commitment far longer and greater still. I’ll be able to draw you to me and feel where you are at all times. You will live forever and will have to change your identity as I do. The intimacy this requires is unlike any you’ve experienced before. At times I will be inside your head. My magic will burn inside you.”
She watched his throat bob on a swallow. “You’re not doing a great job of selling this thing, Rowan. Jesus.”
She ran both hands through her hair, feeling like a feather caked with mud, what beauty and lightness that had existed in her now suffocated under the choice before them. She refused to tell him the rest of it, that she would likely go mad if he said no. She refused to load the weight of her suffering on his shoulders. If he chose this, it must be his choice only, and for no other reason than his deep desire to be with her.
“Rowan… Rowan…,” he said softly. “I need to tell you something, and I can’t do it with you crying like that. It’s tearing my heart out.”
She bolstered herself and wiped away her tears.
“Good. Uh, you know, I never really bonded with anyone as an adult. After my mom died and I was left with Stan and he was like Mr. Evil, I just closed off to other people, you know?”
She nodded. She did understand, but it crushed her to hear it.
“I used to think there was something broken in me. Permanently broken, because as a child I’d just never learned to be human like everyone else and there was a hole where my heart should be. A goddamned gaping chasm.”
“Oh, Nick…”
“No, wait, I’m trying to tell you something. So I’m walking around all my life with this hole, this weird emptiness that I can’t fill with anything or anyone. Drugs don’t work, drinking don’t work. I can’t fill it with anything. And then you come along, and I realize… I realized that the reason I could never fill it with something from this world was because the shape of that hole wasn’t of anything worldly. It was the shape of you. Dragon big and as bright as your smile. Being with you, it’s the first time I’ve felt wanted and the first time I’ve really wanted someone else. It was like a taste of what it was like for other people. Warmth and caring. Feeling… connected.”
“Oh, Nick.” Her heart warmed at his words.
“I want to do all the things that couples do. Dinner. A show. Fighting over the remote. All of it. I want all of it.”
She inhaled a shaky breath
. “Then you agree to be mine? To take the tooth?”
“I want to give this a try.”
She shook her head. “You’re not listening. There is no try. This is forever. There is no room for failure.”
He squeezed her arm. “I want the tooth. I want you, Rowan.”
Her heart leaped and she would not delay any further. Opening her mouth, she reached into the back and gripped one of her molars. There was pain and a little blood, but with a serious tug she extracted the razor-sharp tooth.
Nick stared at the six-inch molar in absolute horror.
“I can make it smaller.” She closed and opened her hand again, and there was a small white pill in her palm. She brought it to his mouth.
He took it from her and tossed it to the back of his throat, then swallowed it down without the benefit of water. “See you on the other side.”
His eyes closed and his body went still. The clock began to tick again. Her magic drained from the room as if she’d pulled the plug in an overfilled bathtub. She curled her fingers and ran the back of her nails gently along his cheek.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
For Nick, waking up after swallowing Rowan’s tooth resembled coming back to the surface after a long, deep dive in murky water. The air pressed thick and heavy against his skin, and he held his breath against it, against the darkness. He’d been swallowed by the dark, taken into the belly of a creature of the night and now regurgitated toward a light he could not see yet but whose gravity drew him like the North Star.
He broke the surface with a gasp, his eyes fluttering open to red velvet and candlelight. And her scent like a silk scarf drawn across the inside of his skull, the underside of his skin. He could taste her on his tongue, feel her, or a piece of her anyway, in the deepest corner of himself.
Her face came into view, breathless and waiting. “Nick?”
Filled with a new energy and possessing a body he realized was completely healed, he took her face in his hands and kissed her, kissed her like he could wash away everything dark that had ever happened to her with his own breath. His hands circled her waist, found red silk that slid softly between them.
Manhattan Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon Book 3) Page 23
