“I’m not hiding. I want to find out who killed my uncle.” She curled her hand into a fist. “I want them to die.”
He tried to stifle his smile and the pride it would reveal. “Then you’ll need to be Awakened.”
“Into a Dragon.” Her bravado wilted. “I’ll become what you did at the library?”
“Yes. The next time you face a demon, you’ll be prepared. You’ll at least know what you’re dealing with.”
“And see it. The only thing scarier than seeing you as a Dragon was not seeing that thing.”
She was getting it. “But know that Awakening will be intense and painful. Training will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” Before he thought better of it, he reached out and brushed his finger against her cheek. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
She stiffened at his touch. “Why does that not comfort me?”
He pulled back, irritated that he’d let himself go soft. “Then here’s something else for you to focus on: when we Catalyze to Dragon…we do it naked.”
The Book of the Hidden
Garnet faced the Dragon Prince on the immense lawn behind the castle, the sun glistening on the dewy grass. Her gaze darted all around, looking for a way to escape despite the guards positioned all around them.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
He drew his hands up, and in unison with his movements, the force of the beast rose within her.
“No!”
The rush of wind in her ears drowned out the word. No, not wind, but a change in her body, her very essence. She fought, her soul scratching and clawing against it. But when the mist cleared and the deafening sound quieted, she stood on four legs, not two. She took herself in, seeing the long snout growing out from her face, the talons on her hands, the red scales shimmering in the sun just as the dew had.
No, no, no! Her soul cried out at the ugly armor, and she closed her eyes and looked upward, pleading for the gods to kill her.
Something cool rubbed against her neck, startling her. A Dragon with scales black and blue like the heart of midnight, eyes holding the flicker of a flame within. The Dragon Prince.
He rubbed his head against her cheek. “You will get used to it.”
“And what of the smell?”
He shrugged, or she thought he did. “You’ll get used to that, too. And the drooling. Yes, we are ugly, horrid beasts, but we are the strongest of all.” He nipped her, though she barely felt it through the scales. “Show me that spirit, love. Fight me with all you have so I know where to start.”
He dared call her ‘love’! She spun around and knocked him to the ground with her tail.
Chapter 8
Ruby sat in the passenger seat of Cyntag’s T-bird, The Book of the Hidden on her lap. “I don’t remember anything in Mon’s stories about them being naked.” She absently scratched at her rash.
“As you know, he took some liberties with the truth. For instance, was I drooling? Did I smell like”—his nose twitched—“dirty socks?”
“No.”
He was gorgeous as a Dragon, if you were into that sort of thing.
She blinked. God, she was. She remembered feeling a powerful draw to him, or at least some part of her did.
Her Dragon.
God.
She ran her hands across the pages, forcing those thoughts away. “There were beautiful illustrations here. Since the fire, they’re gone.”
“Moncrief probably created them with magick. Just like the spell he put over you, the stories disappeared, too.”
No, she didn’t want to think about never seeing the illustrations or his beautiful writing again. She tried to remember the main story line: the Dragon Prince kidnapping Garnet, but saving her as well, imprisoning her, casting the Dragon spell, training her. There were similarities in the story and what had happened so far.
Think. Think about the rest of it.
Something bad was coming. Something they had to fight together.
She turned to Cyntag, trying not to get caught up in his profile, the natural pout of his lower lip, the bump on his nose that spoke of a break in the past. He looked aristocratic, regal. Even as Dragon, actually. His eyelashes were thick but not feminine. Yeah, he was total hotness.
Uh, not getting caught up in his profile, remember? “You said Brom can tell the future?”
“Yes.”
“Could Moncrief?”
“Not that I know of. His skills ran toward creating illusions, like the pictures in the book and his magic tricks.”
So the parallels with the story were a coincidence and not a foretelling of the future.
While Cyntag drove, he kept watching the rearview mirror as well as their surroundings. She knew he wasn’t watching for traffic but for horrid creatures.