“I don’t know,” I murmured. Certainly the Order allying with rogue dragons was a huge step in the right direction, but it almost seemed to come too late. When Talon was poised to destroy everything. “Why?” I asked her. “What got you thinking of this?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Ember reached back and slipped her fingers into my hair. “I was remembering that summer, I guess.” She didn’t have to say what she meant; it was seared into both our memories forever. “I was thinking it would be nice to go back to normal again. Where we’re not running or fighting for our lives. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve even thought about surfing? Or anything that doesn’t involve bullets and guns and crazy suicide missions?”
I chuckled. “I thought that was normal for us.” She swatted my arm, and I grinned, pulling her closer. “Maybe someday,” I murmured, making her sigh. “Someday this will be over, and then you can drag me to parties and dancing and all the normal things people are supposed to do together.” I gave a wry grin, brushing her hair from her shoulder to place a kiss on her neck. “You’ll probably have to teach me, though. I still don’t have a great grasp of what normal is supposed to be.” I’m in love with a dragon. I’m as far removed from normal as anything can get.
“Honestly?” Ember whispered. “I don’t even care about those things anymore. I just… I want us to be alive at the end, all of us. You, Riley, Jade, Mist, the rogues… Dante.” She swallowed hard. “The longer the war goes on, the more likely it is I’m going to lose someone. We’ve gotten lucky so far. I can’t even remember how many close calls we’ve had, but I know it can’t last forever.” Her hands tightened almost painfully on my arms. “That’s all I want,” she whispered. “I’d rather die fighting beside you than spend normal alone.”
I gently turned her to face me and ran a thumb over her cheek. “I can’t promise you that, dragon girl,” I told her softly. “I wish I could. I wish I could protect everyone, but war doesn’t ever give you that luxury.” She nodded sadly, and I drew her closer, lowering my head. “But I can promise you this—as long as I have the breath to keep going, I won’t give up. I’ll keep fighting for that normal life. As long as this war doesn’t kill me, I plan to be right beside you when this is done.” She blinked, and I offered a small smile. “What do you say when this is all over we find a beach and go surfing again? I’ll bet money you fall off your board more than I do.”
Her eyes flashed, and a grin finally crept across her face. “I’ll take that bet, soldier boy,” she said, looping her arms around my neck. “And you’re going to eat those words, along with all that sand and seawater, when you wipe out.”
“Oh?” I tightened my arms around her waist, feeling heat start to flicker through my veins. “And what if I don’t? What do I get if I win?”
“The love and reluctant admiration of a dragon.”
“I thought I had that already.”
“Don’t push your luck, soldier boy,” Ember said, and kissed me. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat spread to all parts of my body, melting away the worry, stress, nervousness and fear, at least for the moment. We could still die. In war, it was all too easy; you’d blink, and someone else would be gone. But as long as I was killed fighting for her, for a future I would probably never see, I would have no regrets.
Of course, that didn’t mean I’d go down without a fight.
“Lieutenant Ward?”
Footsteps sounded outside the door, clipped and hurried, making us pull back. “Lieutenant Ward,” the voice said again as someone swept into the room. “I have those papers you wanted—”
He stopped short, blinking in surprise as he spotted me and Ember in the center of the room. I met his gaze, feeling a ripple of shock and recognition go up my spine, seeing the instant he recognized me, as well.
He hadn’t changed much since the time we’d last seen each other. It had been a couple years ago, and only in passing; I’d made certain to avoid him whenever I could. Since then, he’d gained a few inches, and that scar across his bottom lip was new. But everything else, from his hard blue eyes, to the set of his jaw, to the way his mouth twisted into a sneer when he saw me, was exactly as I remembered.
“Well, well,” Peter Matthews said, his voice that same smug taunt from when we were new recruits trying to scrape by at the Academy. “Look who it is. The lizard-loving traitor himself.”
“What do you want, Matthews?” I asked steadily, ignoring the instant flare of anger that shot through my veins. Not for his words; I’d been called far worse of late, by both friends and enemies. Nothing he said could anger me. I’d heard it all before. It was Matthews himself, the long years of torment and abuse, the competition and mutual hatred we shared for each other.
He doesn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. We were no longer in the Academy, competing for approval, trying to prove our worth. I was no longer eleven years old, trying to defend myself from being pummeled in the bathrooms. We were both soldiers, and he was no longer someone I needed to fear.
But something was building inside, a simmering heat that flickered through my lungs, rising in intensity. Heat and anger and a savage, almost primal urge to protect the girl beside me. I breathed out slowly, and the air in my throat felt scalding hot.
“Lieutenant Ward already left,” I told the other soldier, and jerked my head toward the exit. “You’ll probably catch him if you hurry.”
Matthews didn’t answer. His cruel gaze shifted to Ember standing beside me, and the sneer twisting his face turned even uglier. “And that must be your little dragon whore. I can see why you’re so infatuated—she’s almost cute. For a soul-sucking lizard. Tell me, Sebastian…” He shot me an evil grin, baring his teeth. “I’m curious. Does she take it from the front, or the back?”
The heat in my veins exploded. Fire roared through me, searing and furious, turning my vision red. I felt myself moving forward, muscles tensing, intending to drive my fist all the way through Matthews’s sneering mouth and out the back of his skull.
“Garret, don’t!”
Something caught my arm from behind, jerking me to a stop. “Don’t fight him,” Ember said, eyes narrowed and angry as I glanced back. “That’s what he wants. He’ll take any excuse to draw us out, to make everyone see that we’re violent and can’t be trusted.”
I took a deep breath, controlling the heat and the fiery rage that came with it. She was right. I couldn’t let Matthews draw me into a brawl now. Too much depended on everyone working together. One scuffle could ruin any chance of dragons and soldiers getting along. Ember knew that. I knew that.
Matthews, however, didn’t.
“Don’t give him too much credit,” I told Ember, straightening and casting a hard look back at the other soldier. “He can’t plan that far ahead. There’s no ulterior motive here. He’s just an asshole.”
Ember blinked, perhaps more stunned by my hostility toward the other soldier than the use of the word itself. I couldn’t blame her. I usually let insults roll off my back; life in the Order—where polite obedience was expected even if your superior officer was screaming in your face—taught you to take nothing personally. Words couldn’t hurt you; as long as you didn’t believe them, they meant nothing.
But Peter Matthews could get under my skin like no one else. There were too many memories, too many years of mutual dislike, that simmered into resentment and loathing. Too many incidents where Matthews did his best to threaten, harm or humiliate me. Graduating the Academy had been a relief on many levels; I could start killing dragons as I had trained to do my whole life, but it also meant that I had finally escaped the constant torment of Peter Matthews.
But now, it wasn’t about me. I had something more important to protect. And the whole Order would burn to the ground before I let him lay a finger on the girl at my side.