Chapter Twenty
Calidum raised his head, and from the side, she could see his raven hair reflected the strange dark light in the hearth. For the second time in as many moments, Eva was struck with how beautiful he was. Again, she swallowed hard. She needed the answer. She needed to know why Korridum the Great Gray had killed her father.
“How could you kill him?” she asked next.
The Legendaries were so powerful. It would have taken massive amounts of emotion to bring forth the strength necessary to snuff out the life of one. She had always been so terribly, horribly confused. She just didn’t understand.
Slowly, gracefully, Calidum straightened from his position over the fire and turned to face her.
Oh crap.
The grayscale fire was back and blazing in the depths of his striking eyes. He was so tall… he loomed like a shadow in a dark dream, exquisitely overpowering. “You tell me, Eva,” he said softly, his tone cold. “You think you know what you saw.” Despite the fire in his eyes, his words felt like ice on her skin. “So tell me. Why would I kill him? How did I do it?”
There was a moment of tension, thick and hard that passed between them.
And then, despite his beauty, something inside Eva snapped again. It was that familiar sound inside, that cracking of the twig, and suddenly she was screaming at him. “It’s Evangeline, god damn you!” How dare he take that tone with her! “You fucking murdered my father!” She rushed at him, and for the second time that night, her body surprised her with a burst of unfamiliar power. She blurred into motion, moving much faster than she’d intended, and found herself in front of him the blink of an eye. There, she punched the Great Gray in the face with everything she had.
Calidum’s head snapped to the side. But that was where Eva’s attack ended. It shocked her. She stood frozen before him, her hand balled into a painful fist, her body shaking with rage and surprise. Her breathing was ragged, loud in the ensuing silence.
Slowly, deliberately, Calidum turned his head back to her.
Eva’s breath stilled in her lungs. Never before in the history of dragons had one dragon looked at another with so much palpable heat. “Did I?” he asked. She hadn’t even made him bleed. He was utterly composed, and yet she had the impression of a hurricane behind a single, thin pane of glass. “Is that what you saw?” He paused before he added quite intentionally, “Eva?”
Evangeline felt mired in his gaze, trapped in the conflagrations that mirrored his soul.
“Think carefully, Eva,” he said, again placing emphasis on her name as his tone lowered and took on a decidedly intimate note. “You were so very young. How certain are you of what you witnessed?”
The air was growing thick with magic. It almost felt like chains and cuffs, wrapping around her, holding her in place. He was larger than life… and so close. So very close.
Step back, her mind begged her. Distance. She needed distance. He was messing with her head and she couldn’t think any longer.
Eva let out a shaky breath and stepped back. But her heel never touched down; however fast she’d become, the Dragon King was faster. She felt his fingers grasp tightly around her wrists a split second before she slammed into the hardness of his chest. He then released one wrist to slide his arm around her waist and hold her fast against him.
He lowered his lips to within an inch of hers and asked, “Are you certain enough to pass judgment on me, my queen? As you have for thousands of years?”
Oh gods… “Let me go,” she commanded. But it sounded more like a plea.
Of all the things you could ask me to do, Evangeline, you ask the one I cannot.
His voice sounded in her head clear as day, echoing through the halls of her mind with so much presence, it made her dizzy. She closed her eyes against this new invasion, and his grip on her waist tightened. Her legs were going to give out any second now. She could feel it. He was having an effect on her that she had zero control over.
“Now then,” he told her, still whispering his words across her lips. “Why don’t we concentrate on something you actually do know? Such as the fact that the Entity has reunited with his queen, the goddess of hate has been unleashed on the world…” his fingers moved on her wrist, brushing gently over the dual bite marks Arach had left, “and the Traitor is hunting you.”
She moaned softly, unable to stop the sound from escaping her throat. His touch on the wounds was blatantly sexual, sending electric currents of sensation through her.
“You might not have a plan, Eva, but I do,” he told her next, moving slightly so that his lips were beside her ear, causing goosebumps to rise over her flesh. “It’s been my plan from the moment you turned around in that mall, and I knew you were my queen.”
He nipped gently at her ear lobe, his teeth clenching the soft flesh to send rivulets of unwanted pleasure through her before he pulled away again and laughed softly. The sound sank into Eva’s bloodstream, infiltrating her from the inside out. “Would you like me to share it with you?”
“Fuck you,” she whispered helplessly.
His laughter continued to caress her. “You got it in one.”
She was cocooned in an awakening desire that sapped at her strength and resolve. But somewhere deep, deep inside, her bullied willpower reached out a scrawny hand and begged her to take hold. And because she was who she was – she did.
“I am not your queen,” she told him, a slight amount of that rescued will lacing her words to give them strength. But her eyes were still closed, and her legs were still weak. “I would never be queen to my father’s killer.” Because I remember, she thought. I remember his body, his death, the end of my family. And you standing over it all.
Calidum’s body was hard, unyielding, and as still as a monument against her. The fire in the hearth went from dark red to black and white, the color leached from it by magic. The air in the living room almost seemed to buzz with unspent power.
Eva opened her eyes. It was a mistake. He was gazing down at her with cruel and hard resolve. His blazing eyes claimed her, searing her with a hunger that took her breath away.
“I can make you forget.”
Eva’s heart skipped. Her eyes widened.
It was an offer… or a promise.
It was a reminder of who and what he was and the fact that he was more powerful than she could hope to imagine. And that if she wanted him to, he really could make her forget. The images that haunted her memory her entire life – he could make them go away. And the pleasure he would give her when he did would quite probably drive her mad.
She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly swollen with emotion. The truth of it was, she did want to forget. And as much as she desired whole heartedly to deny it, the Dragon King felt good against her.
No, she thought. Good wasn’t the right word. Because her body was hurting, he was burning her up, and he was unyielding and in control and she was helpless in his arms. Good wasn’t what this was.
This was scary and heart hammering and exciting and confusing as hell. This was…
No! Don’t you dare say it! Don’t let him do this to you!
In that moment of firmly forced clarity, Eva realized that the powerful dragon holding her in his arms might be holding her in another way. He might be using his power on her even then. To force her hand, to make her submit – she didn’t know why, exactly. But it was the only explanation that made any sense to her just then. It was the only reason she could think of that Eva would be responding in this way to the man who killed her father.
But he said he didn’t.
Eva wanted to claw her own chest open just then. In human form, she had one heart. Dragons in their true forms had three. One heart fed their body by pumping blood, one fed their spirit by pumping magic, and the third and most important heart pumped knowledge through the ethereal veins of a dragon’s expanded mind. At the moment, that was the one she wanted to kill. Anything to bring an end to the warring thoughts and emotions running rampant through her.
But she’d never taken her true form, not after all this time, and what were the chances that if she ripped out her one heart right now, it would be the right one?
She was thinking nonsense. Her thoughts were ridiculous. It was yet more proof that she was being driven to madness by the Dragon King. Yet more reason to tear her heart out and cut it in two.
“Well,” said Calidum gently, “we can’t have any of that.”
With that, the tall, dark dragon slowly let her go. It was painfully gradual, as if it were the last thing in any world that he wanted to do. But his fingers loosened around her wrist and his arm slid away from her waist, and the man who seemed to command the universe stepped back from Eva.
Cold and space now crowded around her, offering her air, and yet stealing something vital from her at the same time.
She felt bereft. There was no other word for it.
She shook her head at him, hugging herself for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “What have you done to me?” she asked. It had to be some kind of magic, some insidious spell he’d cast on her. She had never felt so weak or confused or utterly out of control in her entire draconic life.