She grabbed for the door handle. With or without the Dragon, she was leaving. Flor was more important than his indecision.
His hand closed around hers, and Ari felt his magic slipping over her skin. It wrapped itself around her like sentient, invisible ropes, tightening until she wondered how she was even breathing. She felt the magic build as pressure behind her eyes and a swarming in her ears like a thousand gnats. He remained focused on something beyond the physical world before them, oblivious to the discomfort he was causing her.
“Don’t break contact,” the Dragon whispered.
The world slowed, sand sliding through an hourglass underneath her feet and threatening to pull her down with it. Ari clutched onto his hand as though it were a lifeline thrown to her in a riptide. She fought against the current of time, fought for air, fought to break the bonds that chained her within space and time.
You are the White Wraith, Ari reminded herself. This would not stop her. Time itself would not stop her! Least of all when she was on a mission for Florence’s sake. She was invincible, and she would be damned if something as small as magic and minutes got the better of her.
As though she were freeing her feet from mud, Ari pushed forward. She held onto the Dragon—onto her lifeline—and charged out the door. She threw herself into motion like a boulder down a hill. Time slowing had stunted her momentum, her world, but she had regained it with sheer will. Now she was like a locomotive, speeding weightlessly through the chaotic streets.
Men and women moved slowly, sounds were muffled; the fire from a welder’s torch barely flickered. They were like the gradually turning pages of a flip-book, tiny shifts and changes only visible if one stared too closely. Ari darted through them, pulling the Dragon in tow. She may have been breaking the bones in his hand with how hard she was holding onto it, but she didn’t care. Florence was out there alone, still.
A rumble shuddered through the world, rippling outward from the man at her side. The Dragon was quivering, his focus wavering. Ari pulled them into a side alley, then down a smaller, narrower walk. She got them out of sight before he lost his fragile control of time.
The Dragon collapsed against the wall as every clock crashed back into motion around them. Sound assaulted her senses as though it were the first time she’d heard it. Smells were sharper, light was brighter.
He slumped, coughing. Golden blood splattered the ground. It was going to mark, Ari noted, willing her senses back under her control. The Riders would know where they’d come from. Magic strong enough to send an organ into failure from one use would leave a trail, and the blood would set the Riders in the right direction. There was no going back now. They had to find Florence and get out of Dortam.
“Here!” Ari thrust her hand into his mouth. It raked against his teeth, their razor points cutting into her flesh and drawing blood. The Dragon shook his head in protest. Arrogant beast, he didn’t even want her magic when he was so exhausted that his own was struggling to keep up the healing his body required. “The Riders will come. They will sense this magic. You knew that from the start.” Gold streamed down over her wrist and onto the ground from his mouth. “We have no choice now but to get to Mercury Town so we can get Flor and leave. So imbibe.”
And he did. The lump in the Dragon’s throat bobbed as he finally swallowed the blood that had been filling his mouth—her blood. Ari felt her magic leaving her, flowing into him. She felt it being leeched from her body, fading before it became his.
She’d understood the principle of imbibing before, but she’d never done it. His hand went up to hers, holding it to his mouth ravenously. His tongue was smoother than she expected as it lapped against the side of her thumb. His eyes met hers, seeking out validation for the understanding she was giving him—an understanding of her that was raw and base, impossible to gain from any other method.
Ari wrenched her hand away, covering it with her other palm. Golden blood still trailed down his chin as the Dragon panted softly, staring at her. The wound under Ari’s fingers healed, leaving no remnant of his teeth on her flesh.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. A threat lay under the words that warned if he were to speak about what they’d just done, she would make sure it was the last thing he would ever say.
The Dragon wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing away the blood that evaporated quickly in contact with the air. He stared at her with eyes the same color as that blood. Eyes that now seemed to look through her.
Ari felt exposed, mortal—even in her white coat and harness. It was terrible, and she hated him all the more for it.