Page 47 of Dragon's Flame
He looked over at her again. “I love you,” he said simply, before turning his face back to the road.
She gawked at him, feeling a strange combination of mortified and weightless.
“You were thinking it,” he said. “So—I love you. Too. I always have.”
And he reached over and placed a hand on her thigh, giving her a tender squeeze, before returning it to the steering wheel because it was a matter of safety, and she knew to him hers was paramount.
“Just because I know it, though, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hear it back,” he went on, glancing sideways again, catching her staring.
And as crazy as it felt to say it aloud, she couldn’t help herself. “Fine. I love you,” she said, first with playful spite, and then again for real, with a single caveat. “I love you—even though I hate it when you’re right.”
That made him laugh. He looked over at her again, his joy shimmering in his eyes, and she felt like somehow loving him had made her brand new, inside and out, in a good way—then her phone buzzed in her hand.
“Turn left?” she asked—and he pulled their vehicle off road.
40
TARIAN
Tarian parked the car on a desolate road, a mile out from Sarah’s current location. He’d heard all of Kenna’s objections to flying and fire, but he wasn’t sure he shouldn’t trap her in the car and melt the doors shut, just for her own safekeeping.
The look she gave him when he suggested that, however, disabused him of that notion.
They walked in lightly, all three of them being quiet, Tarian leading them in the moonlit dark, listening, smelling, and tasting the air.
He was glad he did—because something had a familiar funk.
Like rot, mixed with ozone. Pungent, foul, and sharp.
He glanced down to Kenna, who was looking at her phone—she’d dimmed the screen, so hopefully no one else could see—and he was surprised, again, that she couldn’t scent it.
It reinforced her simple humanity.
She might be quick and wise, but she was still a magic-less girl.
“You are going back to the car,” he told her, in a low voice. Whatever danger was out here, he would face it alone.
But then a scream tore through the night.
High pitched. Frantic. Female.
Tarian’s muscles tensed, his claws itching to unsheathe. But before he could react, a fresh wave of terror slammed into him—not his own.
Kenna’s.
Through their bond.
Her hand grasped his tight. “I’m not taking a chance on losing the both of you!” she hissed.
“You will never lose me,” he promised.
Her grip on his hand tightened.
But it was too late. She was already hauling him forward, the path leading them straight to the base of a very old quarry—three-quarters sheer walls, with a still pool in the center, reflecting the moonlight.
“Stop it!” a girl’s voice echoed over to them.
Kenna wanted to run forward, but he restrained her, because?—
