The plane shuddered as it hit a patch of rough air, and the woman beside me muttered but didn’t open her eyes. Leaning my head against the window, I watched the lights scroll past hundreds of feet below. Do dragons ever fly this high? my tired mind wondered.
My thoughts drifted. Another dragon appeared in my head, crimson red instead of black, bright and cheerful instead of murderous. Pain flickered, and I shoved it away, willing myself to forget, to feel nothing. She was no longer part of my life; the girl with the quick smile and brilliant green eyes, who had made me feel things I’d never thought possible... I would never see her again. I didn’t hate her; I wasn’t even that angry. How could I be, when she had saved my life, when she had showed me so much, including how wrong the Order was? I’d spent my life slaughtering her kind, and she had responded by befriending me, saving me from execution and fighting at my side against Talon and St. George.
But she was a dragon, and when I’d finally confessed my feelings and confronted her about her own, she’d balked. Admitted she wasn’t sure if dragons could feel that way, that they weren’t supposed to feel human emotion. And that her pull toward Riley, a fellow dragon who’d set his sights on her, couldn’t be ignored any longer.
I’d realized then, how futile it was. Loving a dragon. It had been easy to overlook her true nature, to just see the girl. I’d never forgotten what she was, especially when she Shifted into her true form and I was reminded of how powerful, savage and dangerous dragons could be. But it was more complicated than that. Hovering in the back of my mind, constantly plaguing me, was the knowledge that, even if Ember could return my feelings, she would outlive me by hundreds of years. We had no future together; we were two different species, and there was a war raging on both sides that would stop at nothing to destroy us. Even if I could love both the girl and the dragon, what kind of life would I—a former soldier of St. George—be able to give her? I didn’t even have a future for myself.
Resolve settled over me. It was better that I’d left; now she could be with her own kind, as it should be. She was with Riley and his rogue dragons. Their lives would be dangerous, constantly running from Talon and St. George, but Ember was stubborn and resourceful, and Riley had been outsmarting both Talon and St. George for a long time. They didn’t need me. Ember Hill, the dragon I’d fallen in love with, would do just fine.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are making our final descent into Heathrow Airport,” the intercom droned again. “Please put away all laptops and large electronic devices and make sure your seat trays are in the upright and locked position. We’ll be landing in about fifteen minutes.”
The lady beside me woke with a snort and gazed blearily around. Taking her neck pillow off her shoulders, she turned to me with a smile.
“We made it,” she announced, as I smiled stiffly back. “It’ll be so nice to get up and walk around, won’t it? I swear, these flights get longer and longer. Where in London are you headed after this, dear?”
“Knightsbridge,” I lied. “I have friends there. I’ll be staying with them for a couple weeks.”
She bobbed her gray head. “Well, make sure they take you to see the sights. London is a wonderful city. Are you planning to visit Buckingham Palace or Westminster Abbey?”
“I’m not sure, ma’am.”
“Oh, well, you have to go to Buckingham! Can’t visit London without seeing the palace.” And she launched into a lecture on all the popular tourist places I should go to, the ones I should avoid, the hidden “treasures” around the city, and she didn’t stop talking until the plane had landed and we had filed out into the bustle of Heathrow Airport.
*
I watched the city of London roll by under the streetlamps as the cab took me to a small hotel in South Kensington, about a mile from Hyde Park. As we passed an old church, a flutter of white overhead caught my eye. The flag of St. George, a red cross on a background of white, flew prominently in the wind, and the uneasiness that had somewhat faded on the plane returned with a vengeance.