and the glimmer coming off the ocean. Farther down the sand, a group of teenagers clustered by the water’s edge, laughing and occasionally splashing each other. Between the sunlight and the blinding glare, I couldn’t see their features, just moving silhouettes against the water, sand and sky.
“I don’t see a dragon,” I murmured, walking forward a few steps.
“Really?” Tristan followed, his footsteps shushing quietly through the sand. “It’s standing right there, plain as day. Maybe if you weren’t so blinded by love, you’d see it for what it really is. And then, I wouldn’t have to kill you.”
I turned. Tristan stood behind me, a gun held level with my chest. His eyes were hard as they met mine and he pulled the trigger.
There was no sound. The flash of the gun filled my vision, and I felt myself falling.
* * *
I opened my eyes.
The sky overhead was gray and dim. There were no clouds, no glimmers of blue or sunlight through the haze. Just a flat gray sky that seemed much closer than it should be. I blinked a few times, and it resolved itself into a concrete ceiling with cracks running across the surface. I lay on my back in a small, empty room, a sheet pulled up to my chest and my hands draped over my stomach. My body felt numb and heavy, and my head felt like it was full of cotton, which made it very hard to think. Where was I? How did I get here? The last thing I remembered...
My mind stirred sluggishly, trying to sift through what was real and what was nightmare. What had happened to me? Memories rose up, familiar faces and voices, but it was difficult to separate reality from hallucination. Had I been injured? Or had I been chasing something?
Slowly, I turned my head, trying to take in my surroundings, and my pulse stuttered.
A girl slumped next to my bed, seated in a metal chair pulled close to the mattress. Her arms were folded against the sheets with her head cradled atop them, bright red hair mussed and sticking out at odd angles. Her eyes were closed, and her slim bare shoulders rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing.
Ember. I drew in a breath, feeling the strangeness of the dreamworld dissolve as reality took its place. Suddenly, all those things—where I was, what had happened to me, how much time had passed—didn’t seem important anymore. Just that she was here.
I stretched out my hand, not trusting my voice, and touched the back of her arm.
She jerked away and looked up, green eyes wide and startled. For half a heartbeat, she stared at me in confusion as her mind caught up to the present. I saw my reflection in her gaze and wanted to say something, but my voice hadn’t returned quite yet.
“Garret,” she breathed, her voice barely above a whisper. And then she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around my neck in an almost painful embrace. I slid my arms around her, feeling her heartbeat against mine, her warm cheek pressed against my throat and jaw. I closed my eyes and held her, trembling, in my arms.
“Hey you,” I whispered. My voice came out raspy and weak, and I swallowed some of the scratchy dryness in my throat. I became aware that I was very hot, my skin burning with fever. I could practically feel the heat radiating off me, and was thankful that only a thin sheet covered my body. “What happened?” I husked out as Ember pulled back, regarding me with shining green eyes. “Where are we?”
She gave me a solemn look. “We’re in one of Riley’s safe houses, an old bomb shelter he renovated from the Cold War era. We are literally underground right now. Hang on.” She turned, sliding off the mattress, and reached toward a small end table beside the bed. A bowl and a wet cloth sat on one corner, a glass and a pitcher on the other. She poured the last of the pitcher’s contents into the cup and turned back, cocking her head. “Can you sit up?”
Carefully, I struggled to a sitting position, feeling weak and unstable as I leaned forward, and Ember adjusted the pillows at my back. When we were done, she handed me the cup, and I forced myself to drink slowly, though the burning in my throat and deep in my chest made me want to down it in two gulps.
Putting the empty glass on the bedside table, I looked at Ember again. She ran her fingers over my forehead, brushing back my hair. Her fingers were cool and soft and left a soothing trail over my heated skin. “What do you remember?”
“I... I don’t know.” Everything was still fuzzy, and now the heat in my veins had become even more pronounced. I pressed a palm to my face, trying to clear my thoughts and to ease the pressure behind my eyes. “I was...fighting the Patriarch, I think,” I said. “He challenged me to a duel, and I agreed to fight him. That’s all I can remember.”
Ember nodded. “You won,” she said quietly. “You beat the Patriarch, but when the fight was over, he shot you. In the back.” A feral gleam entered her eyes, and I wondered if the Patriarch was still alive. If he had survived the vengeance of an enraged red dragon. “You nearly died,” Ember went on, the murderous look fading to one of anguish. “You were bleeding out, and the only way to save your life was to perform a blood transfusion right there. There was no time to take you to a hospital. And no one else had the right blood type. So... Riley became the donor.” She paused. “Riley saved your life, Garret.”
For a few seconds, I didn’t understand the significance, why she looked so distraught. Was she afraid that I would resent the fact that a former enemy had saved my life? Given our past, I was shocked that the rogue dragon had offered his own blood to save a soldier of St. George. Did Riley himself wish that he’d let me die? I didn’t think he was that vindictive, but I was a rival. No longer an enemy, but a challenger in the worst way—competition for the girl beside me. If I was out of the picture, Riley would have Ember all to himself.
Then it hit me. The heat in my veins, the feeling of molten fire crawling beneath my skin. I let out a long breath.
“I have...dragon blood in me.”
Ember winced. “It’s been causing some complications,” she said in a near whisper. “Some of it has been good—your wounds have been healing at a much faster rate than normal. But you’ve been delirious for the past week and a half. Until today, we didn’t know if you would pull out of it.” At my incredulous look, she dropped her gaze. “Wes thinks it’s your body trying to compensate for the infusion of new blood, and that it should eventually adjust, but he’s not certain. This has never been done before. We don’t know...what the effects will be. Long term or otherwise.”
Dazed, I sank back against the pillow. Riley had saved my life, and he’d done it by injecting me with dragon blood. Was that why my heart was pumping like I’d run a marathon, even lying here on my back? My mind, already wandering and confused, began spinning in strange directions. What would this infusion do to me, inside and out? Was I in danger of dying, as the dragon blood cooked my organs from the inside? Or could it do even more outlandish things? Dragons were magical creatures; a tiny bit of ancient, supernatural power flowed through their veins. Even the Order of St. George acknowledged this. What would that do to the human body? Would I come out of this completely normal?
For a moment, I had bizarre, delirious thoughts of waking up covered in scales, or getting out of bed to find a tail coiling behind me, before I shoved them aside. That wasn’t possible, I told myself, struggling to hold on to logic as it twisted and squirmed away from me. Blood couldn’t do that to a person; I was in no danger of morphing into some sort of strange half dragon. The most it could do was kill me, if my body rejected the new blood and shut down organs, one by one.
Ember, I realized, was watching
