“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
