Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 127026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“No,” she said slowly. “No, I am more concerned with the immediate threat. The Father can remove magic from magical users.”
Dozan frowned and took a sip from his own drink. “I have no magic. He can do nothing to me.”
“Your allies have magic. I have magic. He wants to cleanse humans and half-Fae of magic. It’s not like a potion that suppresses the magic, but it’s still there. This is like when someone burns themselves out. It destroys them. They don’t recover.”
“How is he capable of this?” Dozan asked as he understood the enormity of what she’d said.
“I have no idea.” She explained to him what she had seen. She had never heard of an ability like that, and neither had he.
“I’ll look into it,” he said evenly.
“And how much is it going to cost me?”
“Ah, Red, we both know that you’re so far in my debt that you could never get out of it.”
She bristled. “That’s exactly how you like people.”
“Indeed it is. There is one thing I want.”
“No,” she said, coming swiftly to her feet. She knew exactly what he was going to ask for.
He took a step forward and brushed a stray strand from her face. “You’re marrying an enemy, and the one you want abandoned you. Can you not see what is right in front of you?”
She sagged at the admission. “Dozan, stop.”
“You could let me kill March,” he said with a cruel twist to his smile. “I could consider us even.”
And it was tempting.
Oh, it was so tempting.
She had dreamed about burying a knife in March’s gut one too many times. She’d known long before she ever fully envisioned it that she couldn’t do it. She could kill on the battlefield, but cold-blooded murder? Never.
Letting Dozan, who already had so much red in his ledger, handle the gruesome task—a task that he would surely enjoy—was beyond temptation. March would no longer be a problem. She could deal with everything else on her plate, pretend to mourn a man she despised, and continue with her life. She would still know that she was responsible. That it might as well have been her knife in his gut.
And she had no guarantee that March didn’t have contingencies in place against her people if anything happened to him. He could die, and they’d still go to war.
She let the thought pass. She couldn’t kill March. There was another way. She just had to find it.
“As enticing as that is,” she said, stepping backward, “no.”
“You ruin all my fun.”
She laughed. “I should go back to the mountain now.”
“The offer still stands.”
“I’ll have to find another way out of your debt.”
Dozan took her hand and pressed a soft kiss to the top of it. “I can think of many, many ways. If I remember correctly, you found all of them enjoyable.”
She flushed and extracted her hand. “Good night, Dozan.”
He let her go. Likely formulating his next path to get back into her good graces. With Fordham out of the picture, he surely thought he was more likely to succeed. And Kerrigan just felt heartbroken.
She tugged on the bond between herself and Tieran. In the haste of running from the Red Masks meeting, she hadn’t even thought about their bond. It was new. When she had won the tournament and been bonded to her dragon, they’d discovered it didn’t work. And after trying to fake the bond for almost a year during dragon training, she found a spiritcasting trainer who showed her how to create a crux bond, which was more like a leash in the other woman’s world, but Kerrigan had tethered it like a two-way bond with Tieran.
Even though she’d had it during the Battle of Lethbridge, it still sometimes surprised her. So, when she stepped outside and found Tieran waiting for her, she felt a little sheepish that she had fallen back into old habits.
Tieran gave her a disgruntled look. Get into trouble again?
“You have no idea,” she said, vaulting onto his back and taking to the skies.
Flying was her favorite pastime. Ever since she had been a little girl in the House of Dragons, flying had been her greatest joy. The fact that she had her own dragon and could fly whenever she wanted was beyond incredible. It still felt hard to believe.
Are you going to accept the nomination for the council?
“I don’t think I have a choice, but … yes. I can do good. Maybe even one day help the dragons too.”
Tieran warmed at that thought. His mate had been killed when her rider perished at the Society. Tieran had tried to refuse to be bonded, but it was that or be killed back at the Holy Mountain, where he had been raised.
Are you ready for tomorrow?
She blinked, racking her brain. “What’s tomorrow?”
Spiritcaster training, he said with a huff.