Page 27 of Surrendering Her Heart

The Zmaj, all of them look at one another and the range of emotions on their faces runs the gamut from anger to disbelief.

“No,” Zamis whispers. “How…”

Only Rakstan doesn’t seem surprised. He crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head.

“You can’t believe it?” the Eye taunts. “You were blind because you wanted to be. None of you wanted to see even though I’ve been here, in front of you, this entire time.”

“What is he talking about?” Nyanna asks the question that’s on the front of my own mind.

“It cannot be. No. It is impossible, they all died,” Shukach says, then he looks at Rakstan. “Rakstan?”

“It is true,” Rakstan says, speaking so soft I barely hear it.

“What is true?” I ask, voice rising with frustration.

“The Eye is… a female…” Zamis says.

I blink, staring at each of the Zmaj in the room in turn.

“A, ahem, a what? I thought they all died,” I say.

“So did we.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” the Eye says over the speakers. “I’m barren. You think I want cross-breeds? The Devastation may not have killed me, but it might as well have. What purpose do I have if I cannot continue our species? My duty to Tajss is higher than my duty to you or anyone. The humans are a tool. A means to an end. We must protect Tajss.”

She is ranting. Fighting against her restraints. Her. The Eye is a girl. A woman.

It only takes one look to see that she’s insane, but not the kind of raving madness that I would have imagined. This is cold. Calculating. She stops fighting the restraints. Her eyes are clear and cold, knowing. Chills race down my spine. She is evil.

I don’t know what the Eye being a female means. On one hand it’s a distraction from the rest of what she said. On the other, it changes everything for the Zmaj. They believed that only males survived. If the Eye did, are there more?

“You never planned to save Tajss. You only planned to save yourself,” Angota says.

The Eye looks at him and sighs, shaking her head.

“You know nothing, Angota. You want to know how I deceived you? Because you wanted to believe. You were blind, but it doesn’t matter. We’re out of time.”

Her head drops and her shoulders slump. And right then I realize, cold and insane though she may be, she is also truly afraid.

16

AVA

The room hums with tension. Zmaj warriors line the space, their mates at their sides, forming a wall of bodies and disbelief. The light from the old tech casts harsh angles over their scaled faces, the flickering monitor behind me the only sound beyond the weight of their silence.

“She lies,” Drogor says, his arms folded tight across his chest, wings flexing slightly before settling again. His tail lashes once against the floor, a sharp, irritated snap. “This is another trick. Another deception.”

“It isn’t,” I say, forcing my voice to stay even. Gaius Gutier, the Eye, all of it says there is so much more going on than we understand, but if I am certain of anything, it’s her fear. “She has no reason to lie about this. If she wanted to break us, she would’ve played a longer game.”

Zamis stands close, a quiet anchor in the storm of unease. I feel his presence without looking, the steady force that keeps my pulse from spiraling. He hasn’t spoken. None of the Zmaj have, except Drogor, and that was more denial than anything else.

They’re struggling with the fact that the Eye is a female as much as with the coming invasion.

I see it in their stiffened wings and the restless shifting of their feet. The way some of them keep glancing at the monitor, then away, as if looking too long might make it real. They believed that all the female Zmaj died in the Devastation. Yet she is there, in that room. A ghost of a past they never thought they’d see again.

“If this is true,” he says, voice slow, deliberate, “if…she…is right and they are coming…”

“That is also a lie,” Shukach snarls.

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