The relief that had filled him drained away, as she placed the drop of blood on her tongue. Lorelai had said nothing about a mardushka’s ability to read blood with her tongue. Maybe Lorelai didn’t know. Or maybe she’d hoped the queen would take a drop of the blood that covered the outside of the heart.
Irina rolled the blood across her tongue and looked at him, her smile sharp around the edges. “Do you know how I’ve stayed in power all these years in a kingdom full of people who’d love to see me lose my throne?”
He stared at her in silence, his knees shaking while he clenched his jaw and struggled to look composed.
“I’ve stayed in power because I always expect people to betray me.” She moved closer to him. “And because I expect betrayal, I’m always ready.”
Her smile became a shard of ice. “You are going to pay for your betrayal, huntsman.”
She slammed her hand into his chest, and his blood sizzled and churned with white-hot intensity. Before he could pull away, she threw back her head and yelled, “Kaz`ja. Take what is human, and give me control over what remains.”
The magic in his blood rushed for his hearts as Trugg and Jyn leaped into the room and ran toward him.
He tried to wrench away from Irina, but then the pain hit—an unbearable burning that blistered his chest as if he’d swallowed fire itself. He clutched at his hearts as they beat louder, louder, louder until their frantic rhythm drowned out everything else.
Irina threw out her hand, and the stone floor beneath them shook. Pillars as wide as Trugg’s waist shot out of the floor, blocking Kol’s friends and creating a cage around Irina and Kol.
Pain was a fire-coated blade that kept stabbing Kol with every heartbeat. It stole his breath and turned his knees to water.
He fell to the floor, clawing at his chest, ripping at his shirt and his skin as if he could somehow let the magic out and stop the agony.
Trugg and Jyn threw themselves at the cage, but the pillars didn’t budge.
Irina sank to her knees beside him, one hand on the collar of bone and thistle she’d given him.
Kol doubled over and screamed as the fire inside him coalesced into a single, excruciating bolt of pain that felt like it was ripping him in two.
The queen leaned close to the collar and whispered something to it.
Kol shuddered. His hearts pounded.
And then her hand was against his chest, and her voice was rising above his as she repeated her incantor over and over again.
His friends threw themselves at the stone cage. Kol writhed on the floor as the collar shrank against his skin until it fit him like he’d been born with it. Irina kept chanting, her palm pressed to his chest.
Then his human heart seemed to leap toward her hand, tearing free of its moorings with a sickening lurch that left Kol gasping for air.
Irina smiled, cold and vicious, as Kol’s human heart appeared in her hand, shimmered like a mirage for an instant, and then became solid.
The pain stopped, and in its place was an insatiable need to hurt, punish, hunt, and destroy.
Kol lay on the floor, shaking with the desperate need to shift. His muscles ached to stretch, his bones to re-form, but it was as if his human skin had become an iron cage that refused to allow his dragon out.
Irina reached beneath the table and pulled out a small gold box with a black stone set in the center of its lid. She placed his heart inside the box, sliced her palm with one long, polished nail, squeezed three drops of her own blood onto it, and then turned to him.
“What have . . . you . . . done to me?” His voice was raw from screaming. His tongue felt clumsy, his words foreign things he struggled to speak. Rage was the strength that got him to his feet.
She lifted the box, and he could hear his heart—his human heart—beating within its golden walls.
“I’ve made you the perfect predator.” Irina ran her fingers lightly over the stone on top of the box. “Now nothing stands between you and your dragon’s instinct. Just don’t try to shift. The collar won’t let you do anything more than use your talons. I can’t be worried that my huntsman will become a dragon behind my back and try to destroy me. You’ll be able to track Lorelai and kill her easily enough in your human form. If she uses a harmful spell against you in self-defense, the magic in your collar will end her.”
He seethed, the dragon’s fire in his chest burning like an inferno, begging for release he couldn’t give.
She leaned close. “I command you now. Your dragon heart obeys mine. Hold up your end of the bargain, and I will be bound by our blood oath to hold up mine.” She placed the heart box on the table and for the first time seemed to notice the other Eldrians who had shifted and were trying to destroy the pillars with fire and the spikes on their tails.
Irina slammed her hand onto the tabletop and branches shot out of the wood, wrapped themselves around the Eldrians, and forced them away from the cage.
“He’s beyond your reach now. His collar is warded against all who have dual hearts. If you touch him, he’ll die. If you come too close to him, you’ll die. He is mine now.”