by Julie Kagawa
Anger and despair rose up, and my chest squeezed tight. Half of me wanted to threaten the stubborn human before me with fire and fangs, the other half knew he was right, that he was only protecting himself and the rest of us. But still, Dante was my twin, my only family. I knew Talon didn’t approve of such things; the organization was our “family,” and we weren’t supposed to need attachments to anything, or anyone, else. But growing up, it had always been me and Dante against the world. I wouldn’t abandon him, even if he had turned his back on me in favor of Talon.
“Please,” I said quietly, making the human blink. “Wes, please. He’s my brother. I don’t know what’s happened to him, if he’s okay, if Talon is making him do something awful.” Wes thinned his lips, looking annoyed but hesitant, and I pressed forward earnestly. “I won’t tell him where we are,” I promised. “Or give him any information that can be traced back to us. I just need to know if he’s all right.”
Wes sighed. “Even if I wanted to do this,” he said in a softer voice, “which I don’t, let’s make that very clear—I’m not going to risk it without Riley’s approval. You haven’t really seen the blighter lose his temper yet, and as I am not fireproof, I’m not going to sneak around behind his back. You’ll have to take that request up with him.”
“Fine,” I said, backing toward the door. “Then I’ll find him and ask him myself.”
“Ask me what?”
I whirled. Riley stood in the doorway, watching us, and my dragon perked at his arrival. “Everything all right?” he asked, his amber gaze flicking past me to Wes, then narrowing slightly. “What are you doing in here?”
Wes snorted before I could answer. “Bloody hatchling wanted me to send a message to her brother,” he replied, already back at his computer. I scowled at him over my shoulder, but his eyes were on the screen. “I told her that before she brought the whole of Talon and St. George down on our heads, she’d have to take it up with you.”
“Ember.” Riley’s voice, furious and horrified, made my stomach clench. I quickly moved back as he stepped through the frame and swiftly closed the door, glaring at me. “Tell me you didn’t try to contact Dante,” he growled, backing me into the room. “Do you want the organization to know exactly where we are? Do you want to wake up surrounded by Vipers? What were you thinking?”
“He’s my brother!” I protested.
“He’s part of the organization!” Riley shot back. “He was in direct contact with Lilith herself. Did you not learn your lesson last time? You gave him a choice—Talon or blood—and he chose Talon. He’ll do it again if given the chance.”
“I don’t believe that.” The tightness in my throat was back, and the corners of my eyes stung. I’d already had this argument with Wes, but it was harder with Riley. “I don’t believe Dante would willingly hurt me,” I said, steadying myself under his accusing glare. “I think Talon is using him, and he doesn’t understand who they are, or what they’re capable of. If I could just reach him, make him see—”
“How?” Riley demanded, stepping forward. “What are you going to say? How do you think you’re going to convince him?” He poked his chest, glaring at me. “I’ve been on the inside, I know how the organization works. Every second he’s there, Talon’s influence on him gets stronger. They’ll smile and pat his back and promise that he’s doing the right thing, that this is for the good of us all, and he’ll believe them. He’ll accept everything they say without question, because they believe it, too. And even if you could somehow change his mind, how do you think you’re going to get him out? He’s too deep within the organization to risk contact.” Riley shook his head, giving me an exasperated smirk. “I’m not storming Talon headquarters, Firebrand, even for you.”
I briefly closed my eyes against the angry stinging. “He’s my brother,” I said once more, raising my chin to stare Riley down. “I won’t give up on him. There has to be a way. And if you won’t help me, then I’ll do it myself.”
“Ember,” Riley began, but I brushed past him and stalked from the room. He didn’t understand. He didn’t have a sibling. None of them did. Dante and I were the only pair that had been raised together, the only dragon siblings in existence. Riley couldn’t understand because he didn’t have one, but Dante was family. Talon couldn’t have him.
“Dammit, Firebrand. Hold up.”
Strong fingers grabbed my wrist just outside the door, halting my angry storm-out. Bristling, I tried yanking out of his grasp, but Riley pulled me back into the room with him and slammed the door behind us.
“Just wait a second,” he snapped, but I was full-on pissed now and punched him in the arm. “Ow! Will you stop? Listen to me.” Grabbing my arms, he pinned me against the door, glaring down with angry gold eyes. My instincts flared, rising to the challenge, nearly bursting through my skin as he shoved me back. I barely clamped down on the impulse to Shift right then and pounce on the dragon in front of me.
Riley took a deep breath, as if he, too, was struggling to hold his dragon down. “Look, I’m sorry about Dante,” he said. “But we can’t help him right now. We can barely help ourselves. If you try contacting him now and Talon finds out where we are, we’ll be dead. Even if he doesn’t give our location away, the organization will be monitoring his every move, because he’s connected to you. They’re watching him, Firebrand. They know Dante is their way to you, and if they find you, they find all of us. I do not want to wake up in the middle of the night surrounded by Vipers.” His fingers gripped me tighter, his face intense. “It’s too dangerous to send Dante any kind of message, Ember. Promise me you won’t try to contact him.”
Defiance rose, egged on by the dragon, the surging heat inside. Of course, he was right, but… “I’m getting him out, Riley,” I said, meeting that intense gaze, almost seeing Cobalt peering out at me. “One way or another. I can’t leave him there.”
“I know, Firebrand. I do understand. Trust me, I would take them all away from Talon if I could.” Riley straightened, sliding his hands up my arms. “But slow down for me a little. I know you want to save the world, but there are only three of us. We can’t take on Talon, or St. George, by ourselves. We’d need an army for that, and they’re not just lying around for the taking.” One hand rose to the side of my face, brushing a curl aside with his thumb. “Just trust me a little longer, okay? Let’s figure out where we’re going, what we’re doing next, before we go charging the organization’s front door. Can you do that, without burning the hotel down in the meantime?”
I swallowed, then took a slow breath. It didn’t cool the heat of the wild surging flames within. “I guess so,” I muttered, relinquishing the fight for now. He exhaled in relief, and I gave him a faint smirk. “Though I can’t promise not to set anything on fire, especially if St. George kicks my door down.”
Riley grimaced. “At least there are extinguishers by all the exits,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I can see the headlines now, though. Vegas Casino Mysteriously Ignites on Twelfth Floor. Strange Creatures Seen Flying out Window. That wouldn’t catch Talon’s attention at all.” He shook his head. “You certainly keep my life interesting, Firebrand.”
“You love it. Just think how boring life would be without me.”
A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “My old trainer gave me a bit of advice once,” he said. “Not that I listened to his ramblings most of the time, but this one stuck out. He said, ‘A flame that burns twice as bright lasts half as long.’ Any idea what that means?”
“Um. That you’re a secret philosopher who writes poetry between car heists and jailbreaks?” I guessed.
He snorted. “Normally I don’t break out the metaphorical crap, but I thought I’d make an exception.” One hand rose, knuckles very lightly brushing my cheek, searing and tingly. My heart leaped, and warmth bloomed through my stomach. “You remind me of that flame, Firebrand,” Riley murmured. “You bur
n so hot, and so bright, you set everything around you on fire. And you don’t even realize what you’re doing.”
“I’m a dragon,” I said, trying to catch my breath. He was so close; part of me wanted to pull away, though my back was still against the door and there was nowhere to go except through Riley. The other half wanted to step closer, to press my body against his until our combined heat became an inferno. “I’m supposed to set things on fire. What’s the point in lighting a candle if you’re going to hide it away so it doesn’t help anything?” His brows arched, and I grinned. “Ha, see? I can be philosophical, too.”
Riley’s smile turned grim. “Just be careful that the people around you don’t get singed,” he said in a low voice. “Or that you don’t burn too hot, too quickly. The brightest flames are usually the ones that are extinguished first.” His eyes went dark for a moment. “I know what I’m talking about, Ember. I’ve seen it before. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“It won’t,” I promised.
He paused, as if he wanted to say something more but thought better of it. For a moment, we stared at each other, both our dragons very close to the surface. Riley’s fingers still gripped my arms; I could feel the heat of his body as he stood there, gazing down at me.
Wes cleared his throat, very loudly, from the corner.
Riley blinked, as if just realizing where he was, what he was doing, and let me go. Disappointment rose up, but what surprised me was the fact that I didn’t know whose it was, mine or the dragon’s.
“It’s been a long day. Get some rest.” Riley didn’t look at me again as he turned and walked toward Wes. For a second, I had the crazy urge to grab him and pull him back, but he stepped out of my reach and the moment was lost. “Go watch TV, or download a movie or something. Order room service if you want. We’re not going to be doing anything tonight.”
I wrinkled my nose at his back. “How long are we going to be staying here?”
“Until I figure out what’s going on with the Order.” Riley reached the back of Wes’s seat and peered at the screen over his shoulder. “And when I decide that it’s safe to move out,” he added. “Until then, we sit tight. Stay in your room. Don’t go down to the casino floor. There are cameras everywhere and according to my contact, St. George is on the warpath and Talon is pretty pissed, too. It’s a good idea to lie as low as we can right now. Think you can do that, Firebrand?”
“I’ll try not to set the room on fire,” I promised, and walked out of the room. But as the door clicked behind me, I paused. Going back to my silent, empty room with only the television for company sounded depressing. I could stay in Wes’s room, but the human didn’t want me there, and besides, I wasn’t sure I could face Riley again. My dragon was still writhing and coiling beneath my skin, frustrated at being contained. If I went back in there, I might really break my promise about not setting things on fire.
Spinning around, I crossed the carpet to the door right beside Wes’s. Garret’s room. Putting my ear to the wood, I listened for movement, voices from the television, anything to tell me he was awake, but there was only silence. I hesitated a moment, then tapped softly on the wood.
“Garret? Are you in there?”
Nothing happened. No footsteps shuffled toward me, no movement, sound, or voice came from the other side. The door stayed firmly closed. I hovered in the frame a moment, debating whether or not I should try again, louder this time. But if he was asleep, or worse, ignoring me on purpose, I really didn’t want to disturb him.
Finally, I turned around and padded back to my door, feeling restless, lonely and slightly depressed. My room was quiet, and though the city twinkled and bustled outside the window, never still, the silence on this side of the glass made me feel very alone. I showered, turned up the television for noise and spent a good ten minutes figuring out how to order room service from the kitchen downstairs. When the food came I scarfed down the slightly overcooked burger in less than a minute, not having realized how ravenous I was until the first bite.
I guess gun battles and car chases work up quite the appetite. Not to mention nearly being shot to death.
My stomach turned, and my appetite vanished as quickly as it had come. Shivering, I left the fries to harden on the tray and crawled beneath the covers of the huge bed, pulling the quilt over my face. Curling into myself, I listened to the babble of the television filling the suffocating quiet, wishing I could just turn off my brain for a few hours. Garret, Dante and Riley all crowded my mind, each pulling at different emotions until I was a tangled knot of feeling inside. I finally drifted off, but kept jerking awake throughout the night as their faces, and the face of the man I’d killed, continued to chase me through my dreams.
Riley
“You’ve gone mad for the girl, haven’t you?” Wes remarked.
I glared at him from across the room. He sat on the bed with his computer in his lap, finishing off his bottle of soda. Lowering his arm, he raised a shaggy eyebrow at my expression.
“Don’t try to deny it, mate.” He gestured at me with the bottle, sending a spatter of Mountain Dew across the white bedcover. “I saw the two of you in the doorway, and you were a half second away from a full-on snog fest.”
“Dragons don’t ‘snog,’ idiot.”
“Oh, sod off. You know what I mean.” Wes shook his head, half closing his laptop to stare at me over the lid. “You’re losing it, Riley,” he said. “Ever since that bloody hatchling crashed into our affairs, your priorities have been screwed to hell and back. For Christ’s sake, we have a bloody soldier of St. George following us around! I still don’t know why you haven’t told the blighter to shove off.”
“He’s useful,” I argued. “Since he’s here, I figured we might as well take advantage of having the enemy with us. If we can get him to give up secrets about the Order—”
“Bull. Crap.” Wes glared at me. “That’s not the reason and you bloody well know it’s not. Don’t lie to me, Riley. I’ve known you too long for that.” He narrowed his eyes, his scruffy jaw tightening in anger. “It’s because of her. Everything we’ve done, everything that’s happened to us since Crescent Beach, is because of her. And now we’re holed up here, with Talon and St. George on our tail, and you’re making promises you have no way of keeping. Dangerous promises. Promises that will get us all killed. If anyone else suggested we contact someone in the organization, you would’ve either laughed in their face and told them to sod off, or punched their bloody lights out.”
“I have no intention of sending Ember’s traitor brother any kind of message,” I said, rolling my eyes. “So you can relax. I didn’t promise her anything, and I’m sure as hell not giving that Talon clone another chance to turn us in. Once was enough.”
“You’re missing the point, mate.” Wes rubbed the bridge of his nose, sounding tired. “Listen to what you just said. Once was enough?” He shook his head. “It should never have come to that. You knew that brother of hers was bad news. You knew he would sell us out to Talon, and you still let her go back for him. And what happened? Fucking Lilith, the organization’s best Viper assassin, tracked you down and nearly killed you both. Because that hatchling has you so twisted around her little claw, you don’t know which way is up anymore.”
I took a breath to cool the sudden rise of heat in my lungs. “How about I worry about running this circus, and you worry about keeping enemy forces from sneaking in the back door?” I suggested in a flat voice. “What I do with Ember is none of your business.”
“It’s my sodding business if it gets us all killed!”
“I’ve protected this underground for years!” I snapped in return. “Before Ember even knew what a human was, I’ve been fighting to get my kind out of Talon. I’ve worked for it, bled for it, nearly died for it more times than I can count. I’m not going to throw that away, and I’m certainly not going to lose it
now. You should know me better than that.”
Wes slumped against the pillow. “I know,” he murmured. “I know you’d do anything to keep those kids safe, just like I’d do anything to screw with Talon and throw a wrench into their plans for world domination, or whatever it is they’re planning. But I’ve never seen you like this, mate. We’ve worked too hard to build this underground, to get dragons out of the organization, to weaken Talon however we can. I just want to be certain your priorities are still the same.”
“No,” I said, making him frown. “Weakening Talon, screwing with their plans, plotting to overthrow the evil empire, that’s always been your objective. One more hatchling that I get out of Talon is one less dragon they can use in the future. I go after hatchlings because I want my kind to be free. You go after them because you have this crazy notion that someday Talon will fall because of us. Because of what we’re doing right now.”
“Everyone has their dreams, mate.” Wes’s voice was low, his eyes hard. “I know you don’t believe it will happen, that Talon is too big, but I’ve seen giants crumble and empires brought down. It has to start somewhere. And if you don’t think that what we’re doing now will matter, even if it’s beyond our lifetimes, then what is the bloody point of all this?”
An ominous beep from his laptop interrupted us. Wes jumped and pushed the lid back, bending low. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he hunched forward, his nose only a few inches from the screen, brow furrowed in concentration. I moved up beside him, feeling tense and slightly sick, hoping that alarm didn’t mean what I feared it would.
“What happened?”
Wes’s fingers froze. His face blanched, and he slumped back against the headboard with a hollow thump. His face was blank with resignation as he looked up, and I knew what he would say before he opened his mouth.