Page 160 of Fate and Flame
“Not now, little healer. I am tired,” he said with a terrifying yawn.
“You told me a story. You told me of an old king who used tactics to defeat the beasts. Tactics are weapons and so are you. We need you.”
“Where is the little liar?” he asked, stretching.
“Autus has her.” Nadra crossed her arms and lowered her chin. “If she’s your friend at all, we need your help to save her.”
“I’ll admit she does intrigue me, but I don’t believe we are friends.”
“If you and your hoard would join our fight, this battle would be over quickly and many, many lives would be spared.”
“Many of your own lives, but not the others. You forget that I, too, am a beast.”
“I have horns. I am not a high fae. There is a beast somewhere within me.” I gestured to the top of my head.
“Indeed,” he answered, breathing me in like the first breath after emerging from water before he turned to Nadra. “And you have odd power. Familiar and not.”
“We could stay and debate this all day long, but there’s no time. Either you take us back and help us fight, or we start walking. We made a great sacrifice by coming here. If you say no, Temir can’t save anyone. We will make it back only to find our friends dead on a battlefield.”
“You should never rely on a dragon without a deal.”
I looked to Nadra, and she took a deep breath, nodding. We knew it might come to this. She stepped forward.
“I will offer you my power when this is over. You may take it from me in three days’ time.”
The dragon laughed. A great, deep laugh.“You cannot harness magic in that way.”
“What, then?” she argued. “What can we bargain with?”
“I cannot force my brethren to fight in a faerie battle. It is not done. But I will agree to join you. I will take you back and fight your enemies for one simple thing. Your future child.”
She scoffed. “You might as well kill me.”
“It’s not a deal,” I said firmly and grabbed Nadra’s hand, pulling her away. “It was a risk, we both knew that.”
A beat of wings behind us and then a crash as he landed in front of us.“I will not take your child.” He breathed me in again. “Your daughter. I ask only that when she comes of age, you allow me to court her, if she would agree.”
“How can a fae court a dragon?” Nadra asked.
“Our ways are our own. Do we have a deal or not?”
“No deal.” I shook my head. “If someday we are blessed with a child, she will have the right to choose, just as we have.”
“Temir,” Nadra said quietly beside me. “He said she would have to agree. We would only have to provide a blessing. A parent’s blessing to try to change the tide of the battle.”
“You would agree?” I asked, nearly tripping over my words.
“We’re running out of time, Temir. If Autus wins, none of this matters anyway.”
“One dragon isn’t going to make a huge difference. A dent maybe.”
“A dent that could save lives. We need to agree to this.”
I let out a deep breath. “You have our consent to court our future daughter if she agrees and if we both live through this.”
A ripple of power coursed through me and over the dragon’s scales as the deal was struck. I’d snuck in our own safety as a contingency plan. If we didn’t both live, there would never be a future child.
He dipped low to the ground and we quickly scaled his back. He leapt into the air and we held on for dear life as we soared across the Marsh Court kingdom at record speed, our hands held tight onto the yellow scales of the beast as we huddled together and prayed for more time. The wait to get there was agonizing. I had no idea what we would see when we arrived, but the vision was devastating. Our block of soldiers was completely dispersed. Cetani still flew through the air, but with only half the number we had started with. Which meant we had lost the draconians with them. I couldn’t spot Kai or Fen in the mayhem, but I saw the beasts being assaulted by invisible weapons and knew Gaea and Greeve were brutally fighting.
