Was it because of this firestorm? Was it really so powerful that it could change her nature?
She’d been treacherously close to agreeing to his wager. Why? Rania had no desire for children and there was no point in bringing another shifter into the world when Maeve was going to clear the planet of such abominations. The boy would have a short life, so short he might as well not be born at all.
But she’d been tempted to please Hadrian.
That was dangerous.
Funny how satisfying the firestorm didn’t seem like such a foolish idea when Hadrian suggested it. Funny how he didn’t seem like an abomination to her, even though she remembered Maeve’s words about shifters. Far from it. Rania thought Hadrian was magnificent, in either form.
How could she be forgetting everything she knew to be true?
What was wrong with her?
Her eyes widened as she felt something moving beneath her skin. It started in her chest, then wriggled down her left arm. It was deep inside and felt both sharp and cold. Rania felt her arm, feeling the muscle flex as whatever it was edged down to her elbow.
She watched in horror as she felt its prickle in her lower arm, then was sure she could see a lump moving beneath the skin on the inside of her wrist. Rania moved toward the light as she felt something in her hand. She could see the ripple beneath the skin as it made steady progress toward the surface. She was both horrified and fascinated.
When one sharp point pricked through the skin, she was reminded of a sliver. A sliver could push its way to the surface over time, but this sliver moved too quickly. She wondered whether it had a mind of its own, then it popped onto her palm and stilled.
It was less than a half an inch long. It glowed red, like it was magick. It shimmered then, like starlight, and she bent closer to examine it.
A shard of glass? Where had that come from? Before her eyes, her skin healed so there was no longer a hole where the splinter had emerged. The sliver flashed silver, melted into a tiny puddle that evaporated. She turned her hand beneath the light but there was no sign that it had ever been.
It had happened so quickly that she doubted her own eyes. Had there been a sliver of ice, or had she imagined it? Her skin was perfectly smooth and there was no indication that anything had popped through it.
She felt lighter, too. More inclined to smile. More likely to care.
Rania wasn’t going to think about Maeve’s command of magick. She was definitely losing her edge if she was starting to hallucinate.
No, this was all Hadrian’s fault. This was his so-called firestorm, bending her thoughts so that she didn’t fulfill her obligation to Maeve.
Let him have the ring for now. Rania didn’t really need it. She just preferred to keep it, since she’d had it all her life. She could retrieve it once he was dead.
How dare he suggest that Maeve wouldn’t keep her word? They had a bargain and Maeve would do as she’d promised. Rania trusted the Dark Queen completely.
Hadrian was just trying to undermine her resolve, for obvious reasons.
It shouldn’t have worked so well.
No doubt about it, this dragon shifter had a dangerous charm.
Rania went down into the secret room hidden beneath the main house, opening the panel to display her knife collection. The bichuwa had been the ideal choice, but she was ready to compromise.
She surveyed her collection and chose.
Sebastian was late.
Sylvia couldn’t decide whether to continue waiting for him or not. She knew he had mixed feelings about the alliance between the Others, and that he was shaken—although he wouldn’t admit it—by the death of other vampires in the coven of mercy. Had he left the city? Was he just sulking in his library? She had a feeling that he was annoyed with her, too. He hadn’t liked her suggestion that she tempt the magick to play.
One thing she knew about Sebastian was that he hated magick.
Of course, they could have had a massive argument about her choice but Sylvia didn’t remember because he’d removed her memory. They could have had a torrid affair that she didn’t remember for the same reason. He could have confessed every single detail about his life and his motivation, then taken her recollection away. He really was infuriating in his insistence on remaining an enigma.