Chapter 38
Blaze stopped inside the door, stunned. It was like walking into a fairy tale—Aladdin’s cave or Midas’s hoard.
Enough treasure to ransom a dozen kings spread before her, glittering in the light of magical torches. Mounds of gold bars and coins, sprinkled in with some silver and copper. Goblets and statuettes and jewelry were arranged artfully on shelves and tables and display stands, or piled on the floor. A crown set with diamonds and rubies sat rakishly on the golden head of an Egyptian goddess.
On one side she glimpsed a human-sized living area with a fireplace and polished wood furniture, but the room was dominated by the huge dragon curled up in the center of it, his giant head resting on a smaller mound of treasure set a little ways away from the rest.
His eyes were half-closed as he hummed along with the song, the low notes vibrating through the floor and up through the soles of her feet.
He was so beautiful. Summer-sky blue, the color of his human eyes, the kind of blue that took her back to perfect childhood days lying on her back in the grass, gazing into the fathomless expanse above and seeing wondrous creatures in the shapes of the clouds. His scales shaded to green underneath, like a hint of those green summer fields, of innocent times when everything was possible.
He gave no indication he’d heard her come in—just closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to see her.
She walked carefully over to him. Despite Thorne’s warning, he didn’t seem angry at her intrusion. Just full of an unbearable sense of failure and sadness.
She sat down next to his head, on the pile of gold bars and coins. It should have been hideously uncomfortable, but the gold seemed to shift and soften, cradling her as she sat.
She leaned against Zane, stroking the side of his face. He sighed, a soft, rumbling sound deep in his throat, as if he’d needed that exact thing but hadn’t known it until she came.
“Thorne told me about your family,” she whispered.
He moved his head fractionally away from her. I didn’t want you to know about that.
She shook her head, moving closer again. “I’m so, so sorry. I know what it feels like to lose everyone you care about.”
At least for you, it wasn’t your fault.
“It wasn’t yours either,” she said.
Yes it was.
She smoothed her fingers over the soft scales above his eye ridge. “Tell me. We’re mates.” She felt it even more strongly now that she was with him. She didn’t know everything it meant, or everything it would mean. But it resonated in her bones.
He moved his claw, and she saw a gold chain tangled around it, with a medallion in the shape of a grizzly bear. Gently, she reached over and untangled it, cradling it in her hand. “Is this the token you gave your sister?”
He moved his head again, a giant headshake. That’s its twin. The one I was supposed to be wearing when she called me. But I was busy, digging for gold and learning to mold it, enamored with my new hoard. I didn’t have it with me. And when I finally remembered and went to get it, it was too late.
“Oh, Zane,” she breathed. She couldn’t imagine what that would feel like.
I knew when I touched it that she’d called me the day before. I flew as hard as I could to get there. I almost made it in time. If I’d been even a few hours earlier…
Blaze pressed her forehead against his skin. There was nothing she could do to make this easier, nothing to make it so it hadn’t happened. All she could do was sit with him while he told it.
So many dead, he said. Nearly the whole clan. I found the bodies piled in the forest like garbage, for the animals to find. Everyone in my sister’s family, except one. Before the attack, they’d managed to hide a baby girl cub in a hollow log in the forest, with my amulet wrapped around her. I followed the signal and found her, and I took her to safety.
His eyes opened, and flashed red for a moment before going blue again. Then I went back and buried the bodies. And I flamed all those murderers to ash and devoured their bones.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “After the raid on the panther clan, when I saw what Silas had turned the coven into, I was so bitter and angry. I carried that bitterness and anger in me for years. It kept me going. But it led me to a dark place, too. I found rogue wizards—the worst ones—and paid them to teach me exactly the kind of dark spells I’d hated the coven for doing.
“I’ve never used them the spells—I told myself they were just to defend against the coven, to prepare myself to fight them. It took me a long time to realize that just learning them made me into a different person—one I didn’t want to be. So I stopped studying them. I magically severed my ties with my old coven and all my teachers, and reinvented myself as a new person. Blaze McKenna. I cleansed myself inside and out, but… I’ll never be the same as I was.”
This time Zane moved his head closer to her, and the golden mound of treasure shifted again so she was cuddled closer to his head. He moved his claw, encircling her in a cocoon of warmth and comfort.
Grief can send you down a dark road, Zane said. Thorne found me. He brought me back.
“He did?” Trust Thorne to leave that part out.
Zane gave a faint nod, gold coins clinking underneath his chin. He taught me the ways of the Draken, how to develop my powers, how to read the Draken language, where to look for gold. He said he was doing it out of duty, but he always says that when he’s being kind. He’s been a brother to me.
So that was another reason why he’d agreed to help Thorne with his quest, besides keeping the remaining branch of his family safe from Vyrkos. Loyalty to the dragon who’d pulled him out of despair.
She stroked his cheek again. “You’re a good man, Zane.”
Dragons aren’t good. We’re selfish and greedy.
“But you try to be good.”
He shook his head, trying to pull away, but she put her hand on his eye ridge to stop him. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “If we’re going to be mates, we have to let each other in.”
He hesitated, then moved his head back next to her, resting it on the gold again. I’m sorry I tried to hurt you, he said. I didn’t mean to. If anything ever happened to you…
His sorrow and regret seemed to rise up out of the gold and envelop her, pulling long-held-back tears out of her eyes. For the first time in ten years, she willingly let them fall.
“I know,” she whispered. She continued to stroke his soft scales, trying to heal him with her touch. “It wasn’t your fault. We were both under the influence of the idol.”
That’s not an excuse. I’m supposed to take care of you and protect you. Even if you don’t want me to. He paused, and the silence was filled with song. You’re my greatest treasure.
It was a tiny mental whisper, almost too soft to hear.
She looked around the room, filled with more material wealth than could be spent in a dragon’s lifetime. Every piece known and cherished and loved, every piece with its own song.
To Zane, she was more valuable than all this. More beautiful, more worthy of love and care and attention.
If she’d been standing, it would have brought her to her knees.
She turned her head, resting her forehead against him. It didn’t matter if they’d only known each other a short time. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make sense. They’d loved each other in his dreams for a hundred years, and they’d loved each other in her gallery, and in his room among his favorite treasures. They’d fought side by side, been wounded in their souls, and survived.
He was the ally and companion she’d longed for, for ten long lonely years.
You’re my treasure, too, she said, not even realizing she hadn’t said it out loud.
Because he heard.
There was a breathless silence, as every piece of gold in the cavern stopped singing. With a shimmer and a giant inhale, Zane was human again, sitting cross-legged in front of her, his forehead pressed to hers.
For a moment she resisted, and then she let some of the walls inside her crumble, and added her own sadness and loneliness to his.
The pain of losing her father to darkness; the pain of watching her mother die. The years of solitude, terrified of being found by the coven before she was prepared, terrified of forming new bonds, of getting hurt, of endangering others, of giving herself away.
The bitter anger at those who’d betrayed her and themselves—anger that they weren’t stronger, that they hadn’t found a way to fight back. She knew it wasn’t fair—she knew the idol was stronger than all of them. She and Zane were the latest proof of that.
And yet… she was still angry. Anger was better than despair—it gave her power and direction, and she’d held onto it for ten years.
Now she let it flow out of her, and let the sadness go with it.
Zane raised his eyes to hers, and it was like she could see into his soul. Warmth. Caring. Passion. Love. Longing.
Hope.
Softly, the hoard’s song began again, the harmonics changing. Blaze leaned in, her lips parted, opening under Zane’ touch like a flower.
I love you, he said in her mind.
I love you, too.
Their lips met with a surge of heat lightning that stole Blaze’s breath. They strained toward each other with all the pent-up passion of years of loneliness, devouring each other in their desperate need.