“What?”
“Yeah, can’t you smell that bitter scent? Can’t you feel it coming off her? That’s like…an assload of magic, and she’s freaking sleeping. Imagine what she’d be like when she’s awake. Beast witch.”
“She looks dead.”
“Give her more water. Clara said we need to be flushing that shit out of her.”
“Well she already puked like a dozen times, so there’s that. I feel like I’m in one of those movies, you know? Like the college ones where the girlfriends are holding their hair back while they drunk-puke—”
“Okay, let’s talk about anything else. You’re making me nauseous.”
“That would be the baby making you nauseous, not me. Gotta little gorilla making you green. Eeee! I can’t wait to hold him.”
Another snort. “It’s a her. I’m sure of it. And stop jinxing me. I don’t even think I could handle a little Kong. Her father is already both-hands-full.”
“And he’s in prison.”
“So is Nox!”
“Yeah, I was really proud of him for all the dicks he managed to paint all over town in one night. If there is a record for dick paintings, Nox holds it. I drove around counting them. I found eighty-four. Eighty-four, Candace. And those were just the ones I could track down. I’m oddly proud. God, our lives are weird.”
“Yep!”
“I wish I’d been successful.”
“At being arrested? All you did was drink a bottle of cheap wine and skinny dip in the public pool. That was never going to get you more than a night in the drunk tank.”
“I felt really badass when I did it, though.”
There was a pause, and then twin peals of laughter. One of them said, “Check her pulse again. We’re almost there, but she looks really bad.”
Warm fingertips pressed against Riyah’s neck. “She’s still with us.” As Riyah tried and failed to open her eyes, the stranger murmured in a kind voice, “Poor thing.”
“Nevada, don’t go all negative on me. She’ll be okay.”
“I don’t just mean about the meds, Candace. I mean, she’s the one, right?”
There was a sad sigh. “Yeah. Beaston says she’s the one, so she must be.”
“I think we should be her friends then. I think she’ll need us.”
There was a long pause.
Why couldn’t Riyah open her eyes? Why couldn’t she move? Someone brushed her hair from her face and cradled her head like she was coveted and fragile.
In a hushed murmur, the other stranger said, “I think she’ll need us, too.”
And then Riyah was in the dark once again.
Chapter Eleven
Vyr couldn’t feel her.
“Riyah?” he asked for the fiftieth time, at least.
Silence.
He couldn’t reach her. There was only emptiness where their bond used to be, and now he was truly alone, down here in a cage called The Dungeon. This place had been built with dragons in mind. No one knew about it but Vyr and the guards. This was the prison’s well-kept secret. While life went on far above, as the inmates worked, ate, exercised, had time in the yard, fought, showered, visited the commissary, slept…Vyr had just died. Again.
He’d been lying here for hours after Changing back from the dragon, unable to even sit up. Every three weeks for six months, he’d been dragged down to the lowest level of the prison and forced to Change, and it was always the same afterward. He had to burn off the gallon of meds they’d filled him with. His blood was on fire as he lay curled on his side in the middle of the concrete floor. This place was cavernous, much bigger than his cell, to give the Red Dragon space to move, but it was narrow one way and long the other so he could never have enough room to stretch out comfortably and spread his wings. So there he sat for hours on end, blowing fire and magma, unable to move, feeling trapped, feeling claustrophobic, and missing the sky. And by missing the sky he meant that bone-deep, marrow-deep, soul-deep yearning for something he would never see or touch again. Instead, the Red Dragon sat in a steal and cement cage, burning himself with his own fire until he got sick, or gave up and disappeared into Vyr’s skin. And for longer and longer periods of time, the dragon would leave completely, and it was just the man named Vyr left. The media called him the Son of the Dragon, but Damon’s legacy would end the day the Red Dragon failed to return to Vyr after a Change.
This one was bad. It was the worst one yet. Too many meds, too little time Changed, and the dragon had given up faster than ever. And now, he’d been lying here for three hours at least, and he still couldn’t feel the dragon.
And there was the scrape. He’d landed hard when he Changed back and the side of his forearm was covered in road rash. It seeped still, hours later, and hadn’t healed even a little bit. It was a really bad sign.
Body burning from the inside out, Vyr slammed the side of his head on the cement three times and gritted his teeth, wishing to God the dragon would push a pissed-off rumble up his throat, but there was only silence.
There was scratching noises above him. Rats maybe. The dragon hadn’t eaten any ashes since Chad, but not even the rats were waking up the monster. Emmitt and the New IESA knew exactly what they were doing. They’d stunted the Red Dragon. Beat him into submission. He’d been defeated, and in this moment, he hated the world he’d been born into. He hated that he was Damon’s son. Hated that he’d failed to control the dragon better. Dad always said he didn’t try hard enough, but he was far from right. Vyr had devoted his life to training himself to only Change every three weeks. To stop Changes when he was angry. Dad didn’t understand. He never had. The Red Dragon wasn’t like Damon’s monster. Vyr’s dragon was completely separate.
And now the New IESA was in some mad-scientist lab above him creating another Red Dragon. Goodbye world if that ever got injected into someone. They had the devil in a syringe, and they didn’t even realize it.
“Riyah?”
Silence.
God, he wished she was here with him. Vyr’s body convulsed again, and another wave of fire burned through his veins. What if she was dead? What if those meds she’d taken into herself had killed her? She was human. Fuck. Fuck. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and curled into a tighter ball to ease the pain.
Maybe that’s why he couldn’t feel her.
Maybe she was really gone, and if Riyah, that beautiful beacon of hope, was gone, he didn’t want to fight anymore.
The whole world said it was better off without him, so at what point did he decide to listen to them? Everyone thought he was bad, so maybe it was time to accept that he was bad. Maybe he was evil.
The scratching above was getting louder. Vyr tossed the tall ceiling a tired look and then forced himself up on his hands and knees. At least the rats meant he wasn’t alone when he did what he had to do next.