Can you hear me? She looked at him as it expecting an answer. As if the fact that her voice was echoing inside his own head was completely normal.
He nodded slowly while his dragon’s heart pounded with rage and the collar whispered that she had to die.
She had to die.
Didn’t she?
Her hand pressed against his chest again. The pain abated, and warmth that had nothing to do with his dragon’s fire filled him again.
Better? she asked.
Yes. He thought the word and watched to see if she understood.
She held his gaze. What have you become?
He dropped his head. He was a predator. Fire, blood, and death. He didn’t have the words for it, but the truth was an image of her destruction blazing across his mind.
That’s not who you are. She slowly sat up to face him, her hand still pressed against his chest. You don’t really want to hurt me.
He didn’t. The clarity of her voice in his head felt like a beacon of safety. Like the only shore he still had left to stand upon.
Where are Jyn and Trugg?
The names felt familiar, but he couldn’t make them fit the fractured bits of memory that slipped past the curtain of smoke in his mind.
They’re your friends. A pretty girl with courage and attitude, and a boy who talks too much but who loves you enough to die for you. They would never have left you alone willingly.
He was alone. Imprisoned in his broken mind. Imprisoned by the collar that would flood him with pain, with whispers. As soon as she removed her hand, he would lose himself to it.
The collar is causing your pain? Causing you to hunt me? the girl asked.
Yes.
She must have bespelled it. She studied the collar without touching it. Our trick failed, and instead of letting your blood oath kill you, she found a way to force you to do her will anyway.
He couldn’t find her name, but the image of a delicate beauty with terrifying power filled his head, and the girl stiffened.
Irina.
Irina. He tried the word and found that it fit. That it matched the empty space inside his chest and the pain that spilled out of the collar.
She punished you. There was pain in her voice. Sorrow. But there was also anger, sharp as a blade and twice as strong. She figured out that we tried to trick her, and she punished you by taking your human heart. My magic can feel the space where your heart used to be. We have to get it back, Kol. It’s the only way to heal you.
There was no healing for him. He was fire, blood, and death.
She shook her head. If that was true, I’d be dead. You’re at war with yourself. I can feel it.
Yes. He met her gaze and willed her to see that no matter what he did after she removed her hand, in this moment, he understood that she wasn’t prey. That she mattered for reasons far greater than a way to stop his inner torment.
We’ll start by getting that thing off you.
His dragon heartbeat kicked hard against his chest, but he nodded.
Please. He watched her bite her lip as she tugged at the collar with the hand sheathed in the undamaged glove. Please.
The collar remained stubbornly in place.
“Lorelai?” A man’s voice cut through the morning air, and her hand slipped from his chest as she turned to face the sound.
Pain was an inferno blazing through his body. Fury was the force that kept him alive. And the terrible stinging power from the collar flooded him, begging for the girl’s beating heart in his hand.
“What is that boy doing back here without his shirt on? And where are his friends?” the man asked.
Kol whipped his head toward the man and roared, his fingers digging into the ground as he crouched beside the girl.
The girl who must die. Who must give her heart to him.
The girl who hadn’t run, but had tried to reach him.
To save him.
“Get away from her!” The man ran toward him, his hand reaching for his sword.
“Wait!” The girl said as she stretched her hand toward Kol’s chest.
The dragon inside him snarled in vicious triumph as her outstretched arms left her heart exposed.
Kol turned and threw himself away from the girl. Away from the knife.
Away from the temptation to destroy the one ray of hope he’d found since the pain began.
“Halt!” the man yelled. The cold rasp of a sword leaving its sheath scraped the air.
“No, wait! He doesn’t want to hurt me.”
But he did. He wanted it more than he had words to describe.
Come back. I can help you. Her voice filled his head, all comfort and beckoning light.
If he returned to her side, he’d kill her, and the pain would stop. But in the warmth that lingered where her touch had been, some part of him knew that the cost he’d pay for ending his agony was more than he could bear.
Kol turned his back and ran.
TWENTY-TWO