Chapter Seventeen
Kase
He paced the length of his cell.
It wasn’t big, but it was wide enough for him to take five or six strides without smacking his nose into the far wall.
“Would you stop that?”
He ignored the guard outside, continuing to drag one quicksilver finger along the wall, across the door and then on to the wall on the far side. Kase wasn’t trying to escape. That would be pointless. There was nowhere for him to go.
With Michelle all but lost to him, Kase hadn’t been able to summon the energy to fight Jerrik any longer. Instead he’d surrendered peacefully and accepted a transfer to a cell in the Enclave. Now he sat and waited, trying to be patient. For a dragon, that should have been easy. Curl up, go to sleep, and wait until judgment was passed on him. Time had a very different meaning to them than it did humans.
The difference was, every minute he spent locked up was a minute he could’ve spent trying to patch things up with Michelle. A minute spent holding her in his arms. Telling her how much he loved her, something he should’ve already done.
It was like everything had snapped into clarity only when he’d lost her. Until then, Kase had operated under the false assumption that Michelle would always be there for him, waiting until he’d sorted his own shit out. The idea that she was her own person who might chose to move on, to live a life without him—that hadn’t really sunk in. Of course he’d known it was a possibility, but he’d never believed in the feasibility of it. She was his mate; they were meant to be together, when the time was right. It had just never been right.
That, he now knew, was also a lie. The time was right when they made it right, by choosing to be together. There would never be a perfect time to come together; it was up to them to make it perfect because they wanted it to be. Fate could never supply that, because it relied on freedom of choice, of the pair making a choice of one another, and doing everything they could to make their communal life perfect.
I’m sorry, Michelle.
He was. Finally, at long last, Kase was starting to see that he’d been wrong. That by pushing her away he’d done more harm not just to himself, but to Michelle. Dragons were slow to come around sometimes, but they got there eventually. Kase was just now getting there. Just now, he was starting to see why everyone had told him that she would be good for him. They were wrong, though. She wasn’t good for him.
She was perfect for him. Exactly what he needed, a calming presence that wasn’t going to take any of his shit.
Except he’d gone and done the one thing he’d sworn never to do to her. He’d lied to her. To her face, nonetheless, which was even worse.
“How is she ever going to trust me again?” he wondered, his finger scraping over the door, leaving another little line behind him.
“What did you say?” the guard asked, stepping up to the small hole in the solid metal door.
“I’m talking to myself. Leave me alone; I need to have this epiphany,” he snapped, interrupting his pacing to spin and slam a fist into the door next to the hole—and the guard’s head.
The guard yelped in surprise and backed away, muttering to himself that now he understood why Kase was there.
Ignoring him, Kase resumed his measured pacing. The slow movement helped him to focus his tumultuous thoughts into something a little more coherent.
He needed to fix this mess he’d created. To patch things up with Michelle. That would, first and foremost, involve telling her the truth. She deserved to know everything, no holds barred. It might drive her away, if he came on that strong, but it was the only way he could be certain she would at least understand that he wasn’t lying to her.
Secondly, he needed to figure out if there really was a person stalking him, or if that was in his head. Ideally, with Michelle on board, the bond between them would help him stay in the present. It had for generations of Quicks before; there seemed to be no reason it wouldn’t work for him.
Of course, all that hinged on Michelle being willing to not only forgive him, but to accept his explanation and be with him. That was a rather large if after what he’d done to wrong her.
If he could fix it, though, then he could head back overseas to the United States. It stunned him to realize just how strong his urge to assist the fight against the Outsiders was. Never before had he felt a calling like this. Doing work for the Magistrates alongside his best friend Stoen had been okay, but it was more for the fun of it than anything. This, though—this was a higher calling, and it felt like he was truly putting the awesome powers he’d been blessed with to good use.
There were so many things that could be done if he figured out how to solve the problem. The lab could be repaired, and Michelle and her team could get back to work. With raises for everyone, and whatever additional equipment she wanted.
First, Michelle. Which meant getting out of this cell.
Outside his door, he heard the shuffling of feet. The guard. The youngest dragons were always put on guard duty. It was a bit of a farce. The prison was in the deepest recesses of the Enclave. It was quite literally miles to the nearest exit to the surface, with dozens of dragons—including some of the oldest and most powerful beings to walk the surface of the earth—between him and freedom. Guards weren’t exactly needed.
Breaking out wasn’t an option; the alarm would be raised and he’d be toast—possibly quite literally—before he knew it. Which meant a peaceful exit. Waiting around for Coltaine to make up his mind wouldn’t work. Even now, Michelle had to be wondering why he wasn’t attempting to fix things. Each minute that passed would have her resenting him even more than she already did. Kase needed to start reversing that process.
“Guard,” he said, approaching the hole in the door. “Are you there?” He tried to sound conversational with a hint of apologetic.
In return, all he got was a grunt. Well, at least the dragon was listening. If Kase could just appeal to his sense of heroism, the idea that he was on a grand mission to claim his mate and right all his wrongs, maybe he could get the guard to help out, or at least look the other way.
“Sorry for earlier.”
Grunt.
Kase decided to strike right to the heart of it. “I need your help.”
Silence.
“My mate is out there. I did something bad, and I see now that I shouldn’t have. I understand where I went wrong, and what I have to do to fix things with her, and…” He hesitated. “And with myself.”
This was getting personal, but he had no choice. He had to get to her before it was too late. His only hope was with the guard taking his side.
“You ever do something, and then look back on it and ask yourself what the hell you were thinking? After you make a choice, sometimes it becomes immediately clear to you that you made the wrong one. That’s me, right now. I made the wrong choice. A lot of wrong choices, to be honest, and I can see that now. I pushed her away when I should’ve held her close. I denied when something was wrong, and in doing so only made it worse.”
The guard still didn’t say a word.
“I’m just wasting my breath,” Kase snarled, angry at himself more than anyone else. “It’s all my fault, and I suppose now I must pay my penance for it. Get Coltaine down here; let’s get this over with. I can’t stand the pain of knowing I hurt her any longer.”
Turning away from the door, he stomped to the back of the cell. Quicksilver rapidly covered both his fists, hardening just before his first punch hit the rock. He hit the wall again, and again, chunks of rock falling to the ground and debris clouding the air in front of him, but he didn’t stop. He just hit it harder.
“Not even dragons live long enough to punch their way to the surface. Not from this depth at least.”
Kase spun. “Coltaine.”
The head Magistrate was standing at the door, his face visible through the tiny hole. “In the flesh and blood.”
“That was quick. Did you give the guard your private number or something?”
The elder dragon snorted. Kase could have sworn smoke blew from his nose when he did. “What guard?”
Kase frowned. “The one that was standing out there. I was just talking to him.”
Coltaine stared back, didn’t say anything.
“That was you.” He shook his head. “I heard someone else speak, though.”
“I switched with him,” Coltaine admitted. “Nothing magical there, sorry.”
“I see. Why?”
“Was coming to talk to you. You started talking out loud, so I decided to listen.”
Kase looked away. “You heard everything then.”
“I did.”
“Then you know you need to let me go.”
Coltaine looked to the side, then up. “Why do you think you deserve another chance? You screwed up royally overseas. Then again here.”
Kase snarled silently. “Because that’s only two strikes, not three.”
The head Magistrate rolled his eyes. “Baseball is an American sport. Two yellow cards gets you tossed, and the stunt you pulled at Fort Banner? Automatic red card.” He glared at Kase. “Do better.”
“I need to find her,” he snapped, walking up to the door.
“Not good enough,” Coltaine replied immediately.
Kase’s blood pressure was starting to spike. “You told me to spend time with her!”
“And you shut down her workplace in an attempt to drive her further away from you. You’re not convincing me that you should be outside of this cell. You’re a danger to her, to yourself, and to the public at large.” Coltaine spoke calmly, in a measured tone, but his words slammed home with precision.
“No,” Kase whispered, standing at the door now. “That’s not true.”
“You nearly killed someone because you had a hallucination, Kase. You can’t deny that.”
“I didn’t mean to.” He was breathing faster now, his brain trying to formulate thoughts, to speak his argument. To state his case. “It was an accident. I…”
Coltaine shook his head. “You waited too long, Kase. It’s too late now.”
“NO!” he roared, slamming on the door as the light in the room spiked, blurring the edges of his vision. “It’s not too late. It can’t be too late! Let me out of here!”
Fists of quicksilver slammed into the door as he rained blows down on it, lifting his hands high again and again. The metal quivered and buckled, but it was nearly six inches thick and extended many feet into the walls on either side. It would take him ages to get through it.
“Kase, that’s enough. Snap out of it,” Coltaine urged, sounding worried.
“Let me see her!” he howled, throwing himself against the door with all his might.
“I guess I wasn’t wrong after all,” Coltaine sighed.
Kase barely heard him, and certainly didn’t process the words. He saw Coltaine stick his hand through the window, and went after it. The light came with him. He was leading the charge against the darkness. This was his fight, he would win it, and his mate would forgive him and all would be right in the world. Nothing could stop him now.
He charged wildly, noting that the arm had become black, absorbing all the light.
“THEY’RE HERE!” he bellowed, nearing the door. The Outsiders had come. It was his job to kill them!
Light burst from the arm. Yellow-orange light that quickly condensed into a ball a moment before Kase could take the arm off with the quicksilver axe that had appeared in his hand at some point.
Then the ball exploded. Fire filled the cell, flinging him back against the far wall. He hit it with more force than he’d ever experienced. Bone broke, and then a moment later the fire washed over him. Kase screamed out and tried to shield himself with quicksilver, but the light went out and he fell into darkness.
He was still screaming when it consumed him.