Holy shit. Vyr sat up straighter. Witch. Riyah was a witch, and that meant she was like him. Other than his mother, he’d never met anyone like him. He’d been alone his whole life with this kind of power, trying to hide it.
There was this moment. The wall lifted in her mind, and she let him in. They were in a dungeon, marked with the scorches of his tortured fire, but all he could see was that trailer from her memories. Inside there were dried plants everywhere, and jars in rows on a table, all labeled. There were stacks of ancient-looking books. The little girl handed the bouquet of flowers to a smiling blond woman with dark, dark freckles all over her face, like Riyah’s. “Thank you, my little witch,” she murmured, pulling the girl into a hug. It was one of those tight embraces Vyr could feel, even through the memory. He felt hugged. He felt the love between them.
Riyah slammed the door on him again, and as he came back to the room, shocked and touched and hurting and hopeful, two tears streaked down Riyah’s cheeks.
“I want your word. Don’t burn me.”
A witch’s biggest fear, right? Death by fire. And she’d come here and risked burning…for his mother? For him? He wanted to know everything, but they were being watched. He could feel eight people in the observation rooms, feel their undivided attention.
He’d never had control over the dragon though, and The Sickening was only making him worse. The meds made him worse. He couldn’t make her that promise. He would probably be the death of her if she stuck around. All he could do was explain the monster and hope she would forgive him for the things he would have to do in here.
“You watched the footage of me eating that guard.”
She nodded once, and he could smell it—her fear was back. It made him nauseous all over again.
“I can’t make you any promises. I’m sorry.”
She nodded for a long time, and looked sad. He was used to that look. He let everyone down. It was best she accepted he wasn’t some hero right here and now. It was best she see what he really was—Vyr was fire. He was mindless and deadly when the dragon took him. He was flames that burned up everything he touched.
She gathered the camera and chair and made her way to the door. Something awful snaked in his gut as he realized this was the first and last time he would talk to someone who was anything like him. It would be back to the darkness after this.
“Riyah,” he murmured right before she disappeared through the metal exit door.
“Yeah?” she asked in a shaking voice.
“I ate that guard, and I would do it again. I have zero regrets for anyone I’ve ever devoured. You should know that. But you should also ask yourself why I didn’t get any time added to my sentence for eating him.”
Her dark eyebrows drew down in confusion. So pretty. He loved her freckles that were like her mom’s, and those clear, dark eyes. Windows to a beautiful soul, and he knew it was pure because she’d let him in for a glimpse. He liked the way she smelled like dried plants, and she’d shared a happy memory—something beautiful in the fires of hell. This stranger had given him the best gift he’d ever received. She’d let him feel touch, feel an embrace, feel love right when he’d forgotten what all of that was.
He wanted her to come back. It was selfish. Selfish monster. He would hurt her. He hurt everyone he got close to, but he wanted her to come back and give him pretty moments again.
When she walked out that door, the sound of it clicking closed was the ugliest sound he’d ever heard in his thirty years on this earth.
Then the lights turned off, and he was in the dark once again.
Chapter Three
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Settle down, Emmitt’s watching. Vyr is like me?
On a bigger scale though. He was much more powerful than her. She could sense it. He felt like he took up much more space than he actually did because of the power rolling off him in waves. And he’d said he could turn off the volume on the cameras. Had he? Her hands were shaking so bad. Her whole body was. She’d felt him there, in her mind, in that memory when she’d lifted the veil and let him in. When she’d reached out for him. That was a secret memory. One of Mom. One of the happy ones. Before everything went wrong.
Vyr is like me.
She’d been alone all these years, hiding, using her powers quietly in her job. She was a counselor because she could calm beastly men and she could sense when they would explode. She could tell who was salvageable.
And that man out there didn’t feel salvageable at all. Not even a little bit. He was dark and out of control, and his aura was the color of mud. He was sick—body and head. Barely keeping control. Barely keeping insatiable power at bay. Oh, the guards here didn’t have any clue what they were dealing with. If that creature out there…that beautiful, deadly creature…ever got it in his head he wanted to leave, he could blow this prison off the map.
No, he didn’t feel salvageable, but Riyah couldn’t let him fade to nothing. Couldn’t let him fade, couldn’t let him use that fire, or it would make everything worse.
He’d called his crew, and now she had to get this video to them somehow. No matter what, this was the most important thing. Every instinct told her she was a part of something big here. She’d always had these feelings. Like when her life took a turn, she could tell if it was important. She could tell if it was a step to something bigger. And she’d been bouncing on stepping stones all her life to get here, to Vyr, to a man who had powers like her.
She wasn’t alone.
And she was going to make sure he wasn’t alone as he lost his dragon, either. Oh, she knew what “cleansing” did to shifters. She knew the stats. Sixty-four percent of them died from the process. How many had been killed from testing, from IESA, and from the New IESA, and from aaaall the little secret government factions that researched shifters? She couldn’t let Vyr be a number. He wasn’t salvageable, but he wasn’t evil. She knew evil. She could sense it, and that man out there was just trying to keep control of something so, sooooo much bigger than him.
That dragon inside of him…it was a miracle the world was still here at all and not smoke and ashes. Vyr, the human, was hands-down the strongest man she’d ever met. Yet, the media dragged him through the mud.
Out of control.
Put him down.
Careless.
Man-eater.
Unsafe.
They didn’t understand what she now did. Vyr had kept an incredible amount of control over the beast within him. He’d been controlling a monster for three decades, and no one gave him the credit he deserved.
“Emmitt?” she asked casually as she slipped the thumb drive with his interview into her pocket where he couldn’t see.
“Hmmm?” he asked, pouring over footage of her interview with Vyr on his monitor. “Fuck, why isn’t there any sound on this one either?”
Ha. Because Vyr had way more control of what was happening here than anyone realized.
“Maybe your cameras are malfunctioning?” she wondered in a chaste tone. “Um, how much time did Vyr get added to his sentence for eating that guard?”