Page 29 of Dragon's Flame
Was she . . . teasing . . . him? Or mocking him?
Before he could figure things out, she stood up, started pacing and went on. “Okay, so, I’ve been thinking,” she began, and Tarian braced.
He could not take her back. Surely she knew that, and would not ask again.
“Two things, mostly,” she said, turning toward him, holding two fingers out. “The first is—why now?”
As it was clear he was not in trouble, he came closer to the fire, kneeling down to clean the fish for them, while speaking. “How do you mean?”
“Cliff—the guy in the hotel room with me,” she began, and Tarian felt his hackles rise, remembering. “He played me onlinefor months. Why would he bother doing that, if he didn’t have to? If grabbing me was the endgame, why now? There were plenty of easier times to take me.”
He rocked back on his heels, watching her walk. This Kenna, like his Seris, was smart. “I do not know—but you are wise.”
“Is dinner coming up?” Rocky said, leaning in to butt his hand. “I can eat fish guts, if I’ve got to,” the dog went on.
“Is something coming up in your life? Something portentous?” he asked aloud.
Kenna paused in thought. “Yeah. It’s my birthday on Sunday.”
Tarian grabbed a nearby stone, let the flames bake it clean, then flipped it over and placed the fish on top. “How old will you be?” he asked her, looking up, and was surprised to find her gawking down.
“Didn’t that...hurt?” she asked—and he realized his hand had been in the flames.
He shook his head quickly. “No. Of course not—or I wouldn’t have done it.”
“You’re . . . fireproof?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms. “That’s unfair.”
He regretted reminding her of her past—a past he felt accountable for. “And how old will you be?”
“Twenty-three.”
So young.He hadn’t met his Seris until she was forty, which was another reason why he wanted to keep her with him so urgently—he couldn’t bear the thought of how little time she had left.
“And you’re,” she went on, drawing out the words, before announcing, “eight hundred.”
“Indeed.” He reached into the fire, and turned the pieces of the fish he’d put there over.
“That’s, like, really freakin’ old.”
“I didn’t get to live all of it peacefully. Or, much of it all, for that matter.”
The vast majority of his life had been spent behind the Gate, in a hellish landscape that was nothing like his home, continually hunted by Sirens, the lying, many-winged, many-beaked, many-clawed monstrosities that had been trapped there originally.
That he’d been driven to meet in a mad—yes, mad, his brother and all the others had been right about him—attempt to findher.
Because for the Sirens to weave such perfect lies, they first had to know the truth. He hoped he could make one of them tell him what had happened to her, where she had gone, with her piece of his soul.
And he would’ve spent another eight hundred years behind the Gate with them, if it’d meant that he could save her.
“Tarian?” Kenna asked, and he realized she must’ve said his name more than once.
“I am here,” he murmured, pulling the fish out on his makeshift stone plate to offer it to her. She sat down on the ground beside him, and delicately picked up a piece to eat, while Rocky waited his turn, wagging his tail so strongly it rocked his entire hindquarters. “What is your second point?”
She finished her bite, licking her fingers as she thought. “How did they find me?”
