27
Keir
“Zemira!” I snatch for her wrist, but she’s gone, evaporating into black smoke. My fingers plunge through it, and then even that is gone.
Damn it. Damn it.
She’s out there.
All alone.
“She can do this,” Soraya rasps as she sinks to her knees in the heather at my feet.
I cut her a look. None of this makes any sense. Soraya tried to kill me and allowed Zemira to take the fall for her actions. Every time I’ve seen them, one of them has been trying to murder the other, and yet there’s a connection between them I can’t deny.
Keep her safe for me….
Goddess’ breath, the things I do for this woman.
I cut my wrist with a swift jerk of my knife and then bring her lips to my skin. “Drink.”
Soraya jerks her mouth away. “Thanks, but—”
I shove her face against my wrist. “I wasn’t asking. Drink. I need you on your feet so I can go after your sister.”
Soraya gasps as my blood hits her system. Warmth and color spreads through her skin as if my magic heals her inch by inch. Tugging my hand free, I swiftly seal the cut with a hint of magic.
“You stupid fool.” She laughs under her breath as her head sinks back on the heather. A single tear glints in her eye before she blinks it away. “You love her, don’t you? You still love her, even after everything….”
I haul her to her feet, where she trembles against me.
She’s healed, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be putting a knife through anyone anytime soon. Even my blood has its limits.
“You can’t have her,” she whispers.
The dragon within me bares its teeth. “Watch me.”
I swing her up into my arms. She’s pathetically weak, but she grabs a fistful of my shirt and if she had a knife, it would be at my throat. It stills the rage. There’s a wariness in her actions that reminds me of Mira.
Tough armored shells.
Careless attitudes.
A yearning neither of them can quite hide.
In that they could be twins.
“No.” Soraya bites her lip. “Father will kill her the second he realizes you want her. He’ll snuff her light, her soul, all so that he can deny you. He’ll do it to hurt you. He won’t even spare her a thought. You can’t love her. You can’t have her. Because you will cost her everything. I know what you are, but you can’t have her.”
Stillness radiates through me. I know Zemira is bound to her father’s will. It’s my one eternal frustration: that she can never simply cast off the yoke of his demands.
But….
“What do you mean, he will snuff her soul?”
Soraya’s shoulders sink. “He cuts our souls from us the second we’re born and wears them in a soul-trap around his neck. He has hundreds of them. Thousands. If he thinks she’s betrayed him, then he’ll crush her soul-trap and kill her instantly.” Those hard black eyes meet mine. “He promised her that if she brought him the Dragon’s Heart, then he would return her soul. She’d be free of him, free from our court.”
The words expand within me, leaving me breathless. When Soraya stole the amulet, I thought little of it—just another fae king or prince making a power play.
But Zemira knew the truth.
She knew it was never the amulet.
And all she had to do to save herself was betray my secret.
But she clearly kept it instead.
It changes everything. It all finally makes sense. And even though there’s a heavy weight inside my chest, I can’t help feeling a little breathless.
Zemira never wanted to betray me. She’s warned me a hundred times. Don’t fall in love with me. I will betray you. I will always betray you.
I always wondered what sort of hold he had on her.
And now I know.
Now I know what the transaction will be.
“I didn’t think you would care,” I tell Soraya quietly. “She told me about the final test. She said you betrayed her. You left her behind to die.”
Soraya looks away. “You don’t know my sister. I was the one holding her back. I knew she’d stay with me physically. I knew I was slowing her down. And when she slipped and was hanging off that cliff…. She can punch into shadows. All she had to do was let me go and she would make it to the finish line. But she had to let me go first. She had to let me go.”
“So you let her believe you left her to die?”
Soraya’s lashes lift, revealing eyes as bleak and hard as obsidian. “Love is a weakness. Love will get you killed. I finally understood that.”
And now I understand it too. “We would do anything for love. Despite the cost.”
I slowly set her down. Soraya grabs my arm. “What are you planning to do?”
“What makes you think I’m planning anything?”
“You have that look in your eye,” she retorts. “Don’t do it. Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it. You’ll kill her.”
“You’ve got it wrong.” Maybe it’s reckless, but I can’t help smiling at her. “I’m a dragon. We don’t let go once we’ve found something we want. Now I just have to find something he wants.”
I set a finger to her nose, drawing on the enormous well of power that binds me to these lands.
Soraya opens her mouth to argue, leaves swirling around her and lacing in her dark hair—
Freeze. I breathe power into the world.
Everything comes to a standpoint.
The leaves hover in the air.
The wind stops.
Soraya stands mute, frozen in motion.
Time is a held breath, pressure building and building, like a set of lungs forced to endure. I have minutes at best before the structure of the world starts to strain at its bindings. Once I walked through time with the ease of a master, but now, all I have left is this…. Stolen minutes.
I sense half a dozen others turning toward me from wherever they stand, curious to know who has wrought such a
