Page 22 of Firedrake Betrayal
“You are no better than the collector, abducting me, locking me up and refusing to?—”
Dominik’s eyes flash red-orange. “I amnotlike the collector,” he roars.
I drop to the floor and shield as much of myself as I can.
It won’t help.
A firedrake’s flame can melt skin off bone.
6
DOMINIK
Istand at the floor-length windows with my hands stuffed in my pants pocket, absorbing the sight in front of me.
Twenty years wasted playing a feral beast in a crazed man’s cell.Decadesof my life stolen. Now I’m back here.
Home.
It doesn’t feel like home at all. Not the New York skyline, not my clothes. Even the scent of this apartment. Polish, cedarwood, and leather are unfamiliar.
I bet no one even noticed I was gone.
As long as my cleaners got paid, and the trust I set up to manage my expenses dealt with my regular bills, no one would have noticed, and no one would have cared what happened to me.
It’s why I set up the trust in the first place. So no one would bother me with boring household tasks.
They had their orders: clean my apartment, replace the contents of the refrigerator on a weekly basis, deal with my laundry, and stay out of my locked office.
After I had landed on my roof terrace, carried Jade inside, and put her to bed, I delivered a short list of requests to theconcierge. I hadn’t recognized his voice. Given twenty years had passed, the older concierge must have retired or died and this one replaced him.
But he knew about me. Knew I was an owner who preferred to be left alone, was often away for weeks or months at a time, and that sometimes I had my helicopter land on the roof.
Then I had gone to my ‘office.’
Not an office, but my hoard.
I took the key I kept in a vase in the hallway, unlocked the door and absorbed the sight of the only thing that had mattered to me.
A room I filled with my gold, jewels, priceless art, and statues.
But I had felt nothing.
I closed the door on my hoard and returned to the bedroom where I’d left Jade until a soft knock pulled me away. The concierge had delivered what I had requested. A nightdress for Jade, a brand new cell phone, and a shaver to return me to the man I had been before.
For years—decades—I believed there was no more of my kind left alive, but I was wrong. There was. Jade. I bound us together, and now she hates me for it.
A faint scuff behind me returns me to the present.
I lift my chin slightly though I don’t turn. “I won’t hurt you.”
Jade is quiet, but her footsteps are not nearly silent enough.
“I locked the elevator, and I have the only key. The only way you’re leaving my apartment is by learning to fly.”
But Jade is emerging, and if I don’t turn her hate to the love I crave, she will fly away from me.
She mutters something that might be a curse.
