Page 165 of Gemini Kings
The red dragon screams in anguish and dives straight for him. Flame boils up her throat.
My laboring heart erupts in rage and terror.
Racetrack!I bellow through the fragile link Dez has cobbled together between us.
A breath before death, Ronin winks out of view. That’s RT whisking him away. Big Red flames the empty ledge and barely veers off in time to avoid colliding with the cliff.
I soar along the slope, scanning the rugged surface. The enraged dragon knifes after me. I barely catch sight of a rocky spur, Dez seeing what I see through the link, before Ronin blinks into view. I cant wildly to the side and his arms sweep up. He howls in raw fury. A literal storm of psi fire scorches past me.
The red dragon screams.
Even furious, Ronin’s a precision instrument. Unlike me, especially in this form, he’s been honing his gifts for years.
I’m still terrified as fuck for him.
He vanishes from sight an eyeblink before dragonfire engulfs the rocky spur.
We manage to keep this up for a while, this precarious tag-team of flamethrower-teleporter-dragon bait, all daisy-chained together by Dez’s Valyrian gift. Buying time for Vasili to get Max down (I hope, because I can’t see them, and I don’t have time to look) before my dragon king bleeds out.
But I’m tiring, like,reallyfast.
And that monster who’s hunting me seems to be tireless.
Dez picks this up and whispers where she wants me. Where Lucius wants me. I don’t like this plan either—not one bit—but even I have to admit I’m not gonna last much longer up here.
I dig deep to dredge up a final spurt of speed and dash for the summit.
There’s an ancient stone circle up there where the students study astronomy and practice the greater magics for senior seminar. That’s where Vasili has the news cams staged for my big succession announcement. It’s supposed to be this whole sacred vow-slash-ritual. I’m supposed to swear the oath of succession at the ancient altar on live TV.
But there’s no safety to be had in the stone circle (because it’s not, like,Outlander.This isn’t that kind of circle.)
There’s a World War II-era bunker carved into the mountain just beyond. That bunker was a last-stand kinda shelter when witches fought witches during the Arcane War.
That’s where Dez is telling me Lucius wants me to go.
I soar over the madhouse mob of news crews and looky-loos, all glowing in my infrared sight, who’ve come to eyeball my succession announcement. (Looks like me being a dragon is definitely out of the bag now. And it looks like Vasili being one is out in the open too.) Those cameras are definitely rolling and getting a massive eyeful, so I guess that much of what we choreographed is still working out okay.
By this point I’m so exhausted I barely clear the stone circle and avoid the crowd, now scattering in all directions and screaming in mass hysterics, because they see what’s roaring up behind me, blistered and smoking and full-on berserk.
I pretty much crash-land on the summit.
It’s all I can manage to land with my legs under me and keep them under me when my dragon form falls away. I stagger naked on my human legs across the last feet of open ground (good thing I’m not shy, because that footage of my bare booty’s gonna be, like,everywhere). The reinforced steel bunker door’s swinging open, because Vasili was using it as a staging area for the show.
The earth trembles under my bare feet as Big Red comes crashing down behind me.
I wring a last burst of speed from my trembling legs and race into the bunker.
It’s dark in there, someone’s switched off the electric bulb. Or maybe I blew out the substation or knocked a line down again with all that lightning I’ve been hurling. But I know from my preshow visit there’s a big storeroom in front and then a tunnel. I’m tearing across the storeroom when a shadow blots out the moonlight streaming through the door behind me and a distorted, rage-filled, Russian-accented female voice lashes after me like a whip.
“There is nowhere for you to run, usurper queen. Nowhere I cannot find you. Nowhere I will not kill you! Stop scurrying like the pathetic cockroach you are and face your fate.”
“Come and get me, you child-molesting bitch!” I can’t see much at this point, but I’m running on fumes and faith.
“With pleasure.” Her hate-thick voice echoes off the walls as she dives into the bunker after me. “You are too great a coward to come to me in Mongolia, so now I come to you. I will crush you under my boot!”
She’s not wearing a boot, she’s naked like me, but whatever. There’s no emergency exit in this place, so she’s just cut off my one escape. But my bond with my fated mate flared to life the second I set foot in here. The steadying warmth of Neo’s presence pulls me forward into the darkness like a guiding hand.
Even though I really, trulydon’twant this bitch anywhere near him.
