Page 118 of Magic Claimed
When no one moved, he looked almost comically confused.
“Are you honestly going to stand there and protect these protesters with your lives? Sacrifice one of your own for the sake of a few thousand humans? Humans who hate and fear you?”
I don’t know what he was expecting. Perhaps he was counting on us to do as he said without question. Or perhaps he thought he understood what we valued, after we’d refused to trade Kes’s life for those of the protesters.
But he understood nothing, and he most certainly did not understand Faris Lansgrave—a man with a heart so enormous that he’d risked everything to protect these humans who wanted him caged.
He would never have agreed to this trade. Never have allowed Blake to win by threatening his life. So as deeply as it hurt me, as harsh and impossible as the words felt when I forced them from my lips, I took two steps forward and said them anyway.
“Go to hell, Blake.”
He must not have seen me before that moment. Or maybe he simply hadn’t recognized me beneath the sweat and dirt and blood of battle.
But when he realized who had spoken, his mouth opened, his jaw went slack, and his eyes widened with the horrifying knowledge of exactly what my presence here might mean.
A million calculations flashed through his eyes. A weighing and then a decision.
The hand not holding the blade rose to his neck, his fingers tracing that dark and twisted burn scar as he reached for the jewel hidden beneath his shirt. And for an instant I thought he intended to run. To abandon his plans and his people.
But no.
His head jerked back, he let out a grunt of pain, and then…
Disappeared into a mountain of black scales that lunged forward before I’d even registered the truth.
That burn scar…
…had been caused by Kira’s dragon fire during the assault on The Portal.
Blake was the black dragon.
And an instant later, he caught me up in his terrifying claws and launched himself into the sky.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I didn’t haveenough magic to fight back. Didn’t even have enough breath to scream. Whatever Blake intended to do with me, I was at his mercy as I choked back a wave of nausea and gasped for air.
Beneath us, I could hear the sounds of battle being rejoined, and knew there would be no rescue coming. Ryker, Deverin, and Angelica had to stay to defend their position against Blake’s airborne allies.
So wherever we were going, I was on my own, but for some reason, instead of panic, I was suddenly enveloped in a deep and all-encompassing sense of peace.
If I was going to die, I would go out defending everyone I loved.
“You lost, Blake,” I called out over the sound of the wind in my ears. “Your facility has been destroyed. Your people are dead. This is over. No matter what you do to me, you’ll never win.”
Unlike Callum, Blake could not hear me telepathically, and he could not speak in dragon form like Kira. All he could do was roar in incoherent rage as he drove higher and higher, above the smoke and into the patchy clouds of a cool January afternoon.
Maybe he was planning to take me back to his base. Maybe he was going to eat me. There were a lot of options, but as long as he was focused on me, he wasn’t attacking my family and friends.
Hold on, Raine.
The words echoed around my head, a memory of Callum’s voice calling out through our bond. I hoped that wherever he was, he would somehow survive this. That losing our bond wouldn’t end up hurting him too badly.
I’m coming. Talk to me.
That didn’t sound like a memory. But Callum could no longer reach me that way, and I knew of no one else who could speak mind-to-mind like that.
Blake suddenly stopped climbing and hovered over the field, his claws tightening around my body as he roared again, spewing jets of flame futilely into the air. The heat was so intense that I shut my eyes and whimpered, wondering whether he intended to simply burn me to a crisp.
