“What’s he doing?” she asked. “I thought time was—”
Touching her was out, but somehow his feet stepped him closer to her just the same. To keep her safe, that’s all, he tried to reason. “He’s assuring his allies of what he’s doing before you disappear.”
Could a woman of her tall grace manage to appear any smaller? “Oh,” she murmured.
A few seconds later, Brand and Ladon appeared, moving to their mates’ sides. Several seconds after, Gorgon emerged and walked directly to Meira. “Let’s go.”
She turned to her sisters again. “I have to go.” Meira mouthed the words. “I love you.”
After receiving reluctant nods, she turned to face Gorgon and Samael, though she paused and cast a quick look into the crowd. No doubt at Angelika. Did her eyes darken more?
Samael didn’t give a shit. The buzz of voices was growing louder with each passing second. How was he going to keep his king and queen safe if the room erupted?
Meira suddenly inhaled a sharp breath and seemed to steady. “We’ll never get out of this room easily.” She unconsciously echoed his own concern.
He glanced at the now-passive mirrors. “I have an idea,” he said.
Without waiting to see if they followed, he hurried to the nearest mirror and waved at it, looking to Meira expectantly.
After a small pause, she stepped forward. With a mere thought, flames feathered over her entire body, reminding Samael of coal burning on low. Her flames were still red and gold, normal everyday fire. In theory, if she was like her sisters, as soon as the mating bond snapped into place, those flames would turn black, the color of her new family.
She touched a tentative hand to the mirror and almost seemed relieved when it changed. “Go ahead.”
Both Samael and Gorgon stepped over the gilded frame of the mirror and through the reflective surface. The sensation of being dragged against, a force flattening his face and pressing against him, surrounded him and flowed with him. He’d expected it to be cold, or silent and blinding, the way teleporting when Skylar used her version of that power to send them far distances had been. But this was more immediate. Like stepping through water, or something thicker.
One second, he was in the throne room with the dissonance of voices. The next instant, they stood in the human-size hall just down from Gorgon’s suite. Though they had to climb down from the small table the receiving mirror sat over, the voices from the throne room shut off as Meira followed and doused her flames, leaving them in blessed silence.
“Don’t let anyone near the door until you have new orders,” Gorgon commanded.
Samael pretended not to notice the way Meira had paused and stared at him closely for a heartbeat, tugging against the king’s hold before following Gorgon. Then the king led his mate inside, the lock clunking as he engaged it across the thick wood door.
Samael spun, standing to post, his back to the stone wall. Closing his eyes, he rammed the back of his head against the rock. Once. Twice.
“She’s doing what she must,” he muttered to himself. “Now do your duty, soldier.”
Shoving every emotion as deep as he could, as far away from himself as he could, he straightened, senses tuned to the tunnels rather than anywhere in the suite, and prayed to every god he’d ever heard of—even the minor ones he only sort of remembered from childhood—that he didn’t have to hear the mating.
Before, his new queen stirred his dragon, something no other woman had ever managed to do. But now, knowing what was going on behind that door, his dragon was going berserk—roaring inside his head, beating against Samael’s insides. Teeth gritted, only loyalty and sheer will, developed by being the toughest son of a bitch in his clan, held Samael still.
Until Meira’s scream split the silence.
Chapter Three
No. Gods, don’t let this happen.
Meira tried to get closer to Gorgon, tried to take it back, to pull her fire back into herself. Bile stung her throat, blending with the vomit-inducing stench of burning flesh. The king stared back with shocked, awful, horror-filled eyes as her flames consumed him. He fell to his knees, and she could see him fighting the flames, his own black fire flaring out like sunspots only to be devoured by the red gold of her own fire in an instant.
One kiss was all it had taken.
They hadn’t even gotten to the undressing part, let alone the sex part. She’d turned on her flames and he’d kissed her lightly, so sweet. Except then he jerked back, a silent howl of pain contorting his features.
Already his bronze skin had turned charred before cooling to gray. Other parts continued to burn, glowing bright embers, and parts of him were sifting to ash. Like her mother in that field all alone.
“No, no, no,” Meira cried, hardly aware of the words pouring from her mouth.
She fell to her knees beside him, reaching in past the flames, which didn’t hurt her, to take his hand, already ashy against hers. “I’m so sorry. I’m here. Look at me.”
His eyes, already solid gray, shifted in his face as if searching. Could he see her? “I won’t let you die alone.”
Speaking words she wasn’t even aware of, words that tried to pass what little comfort she could to a kind man who didn’t deserve such an end, Meira gathered him in her arms, her own heat enveloping her even as his legs disappeared from beneath him. The terrible shuddering racking his body rattled the teeth in her head. Gods above, had death by fire been this horrible for her mother?
Gorgon suddenly gripped her hand tighter, though all that remained of his own were frail bones, then his mouth opened and the gaping hole of what she had to assume was pain, except something was going on with his face. As though
