The woman froze. “I thought you looked familiar,” she snarled.
Twenty gods above, I didn’t learn anything on Loom. Cvareh chastised himself as he watched her muscles tense from her knees to her lower back.
Cvareh lunged to the side, expecting the twisting strike. His claws unsheathed, he pressed forward and up into the armpit of the Rider.
“Xin coward,” she snarled, pushing him away, raking her claws along his arms in the process.
Blood spilled to the floor, a warning call to any Dragons in the proximity. Cvareh cursed aloud. There was no time, no point in subversion now. He was going to fight his way out alone.
The Rider lunged for him and Cvareh side stepped. He countered; she thrust right for his chest. Cvareh twisted out of the way of her wicked sharp claws. The Rider wasn’t half as fast as Arianna, Cvareh realized in delight. He had been training for weeks with a creature far more deadly than some two-bead.
They came together, twisting, snarling, spinning, and splitting apart once more. Cvareh stumbled, falling to his hands, his feet wide in a crouch. He pushed back then lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the woman’s waist. She slammed into the door and it swung open, the lock broken.
They tumbled into a narrow hall lined on one side with doors. Cvareh pinned her to the floor and sunk his teeth into the soft flesh of her neck. Blood and magic exploded into him. But it was a sour taste, fuel for what he needed to do and nothing more. There was only one woman whose blood could make him hunger, could make him lust.
His hand sunk into the Rider’s heart, ripping it from her ribcage with brute force. Cvareh tossed it aside with a dull splat, uninterested in eating it. His mouth was already filled with the unwelcome tang of the foreign woman.
Motion from one of the rooms sounded like rainbows and fireflies and the brightest of magics against his ears, against his body. It sparked life into the dim corridor. Cvareh sprinted for the last door on the left, swinging it open. The smell of his mate assaulted his senses and Arianna looked up at him like some deadly, caged predator.
“Ari…” he breathed in relief.
Her lip curled in disgust at the mere sight of him. “You will let me out of these chains so I can properly kill you.”
“I can explain but—”
“He was your brother!” She lunged. She must have known full well the range of the chains, but she did it anyway. She was jolted to a stop, just short of where he stood inside the door. She chomped and foamed at him in rage, a rabid wolf at the end of its leash. “He was your brother!”
“I know.” That only served to make her angrier. “But I didn’t know then. I didn’t figure it out.”
“You idiot, he was your brother!” The woman he admired for the equal ferocity of her mind and body was reduced to animalistic rage, functioning only on instinct. And those instincts now told her to tear him apart. Lord Xin give him strength, because if what she needed to be made whole was his heart, he would tear the organ from his body himself and serve it to her on the finest silver platter. “You didn’t tell me. He was your brother. You supported him. You—”
“You didn’t tell me!” Cvareh snapped back angrily. “Surely you knew when I brought you the hands, but you said nothing. Did you not think I would help you? Could you not trust me? I offered you everything!”
“He was your brother!”
“And I want to see you kill him.”
Arianna stopped all movement, stunned.
“I want to see him die by your hands, Arianna.”
He placed his hands on either side of her face and crossed the line of safety into her reach. He pressed his mouth against hers. She stilled all movement for a long moment. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek, the heaving of her chest on him. It was life and everything good in the world. Finnyr would be a worthy sacrifice for this woman’s pleasure.
Her head twisted and she tore off his bottom lip with her blunt teeth.
Cvareh reeled backward, holding his bleeding face. Arianna spit his flesh at him. Anger still consumed every inch of her. But she was no longer raging.
Twenty gods above, this woman was the only creature he’d ever met for whom tearing off his flesh was a step in the right direction toward the return of stability and sanity.
“You think now is a good time to be kissing me? Bloody cogs, your incompetence is only rivaled by your idiocies.” Arianna shook her head at him, standing strong on her feet. “Now, free me so I can kill you properly after we escape.”
He should’ve left her there. Had anyone else spoken to him that way, they would’ve been promptly killed and forgotten, especially given her prone state. But Cvareh found himself inspecting the locks at her wrists.
“I don’t have the key.”
“You don’t have the key?” She sighed heavily. “You really are useless for this whole rescuing thing.”
“I didn’t—”
“I know, you didn’t think. Hardly a surprise.” She was a vicious sort at the moment. But he’d take verbal lashings over physical ones. It was its own kind of progress. “I need gold, untempered gold. They took my harness and tools.”
All the ornate trimmings of the Rok Estate came to mind instantly. “A moment.”
Cvareh sprinted out to one of the earlier rooms. For now, it seemed the bloodshed was far enough away from other Dragons that it had yet to attract attention, but he was certain their luck would run out. Lord Agendi only had so much good spirit for him, and he kept cashing in prayers daily.
Using his claws, he ripped out a chunk of the ornate gilding, bringing it back down to her. “Will this do?”
“Well enough,” she admitted, begrudgingly awarding praise. Arianna focused on the gold and her magic filled the air.
Cvareh watched as it lifted itself from the wood, isolating the strip of metal. She took a deep breath, and the sliver turned hot. Arianna didn’t even wince as she burned her fingers to blistering on the molten metal, shaping it into a fine and slightly curved point. Her fingers had healed by the time she tested the pick in the lock, only to be burned as she adjusted the shape a second time, and a third, until there was a soft click, and the shackles fell away one by one.
“Now we need to—”
She lunged for him. They fell to the floor and Arianna had him pinned in a mere breath. One hand was at his throat, claws pressing into his neck, drawing blood. The other hand was drawn back, ready to attack his chest.
Cvareh didn’t struggle. He submitted beneath her, gave her the control she so clearly craved. If she needed to physically see his heart to know it didn’t beat against her, he had already decided to permit it.
“Tell me why I don’t kill you.”
He stared at her, his tortured lover. Her soul had belonged to another. Eva had broken it into pieces with her death. It was not meant for his hands to fix.