“Wake up and say yes,” a rough voice advised Andi as she felt strong arms encircle her, pulling her back against someone’s chest.
Her eyelids fluttered, blurrily revealing her own room, and all the events of the prior night came rushing back—her uncle, her brother, and him.
Damian. The man holding her now and murmuring in her ear, nuzzling his face into her hair. She stretched against him, waking up. She felt so well rested—likely because he’d exhausted her last night—but also because she hadn’t dreamed. The entire time she’d been asleep by Damian’s side, she hadn’t had a single nightmare. It felt like it’d been weeks since she’d last slept well.
Damian used the opportunity of her stretching to tighten his arms around her, one underneath her and up across her chest, beneath her breasts, the other possessively around her waist. He was deliciously warm against all the places that his arms touched, and where his chest pressed against her back too, his neck against her shoulder, his chin against her neck—but no place more so than the stiff cock he had nestled between the clefts of her ass.
“Wake up and say yes,” he suggested again, his voice thick with desire as he smoothed her hair away to begin kissing her neck now that he knew she was rousing.
“Hmm, yes to what?” she asked, reaching up to run her fingers through his straight black hair.
He didn’t answer her; he just rocked her with his hips, and she laughed. “Damian, I can’t,” she said, as his kisses started to run higher up her neck and along her jaw.
He paused to mutter, “Why not?” sounding absolutely petulant—like a boy whose favorite toy had just asked to be put away.
Andi laughed. “Because…I’m gross…I have dragon breath.”
He chuckled melodiously near her ear and said, “Like I care,” before resuming course.
Andi grinned in the half-light of her room. Of course, he didn’t. Because he was a dragon. And, right now, he was her dragon.
“Yes,” she said definitively. “Yes and yes and yes,” she went on.
Damian practically purred; she felt the rumble inside of his chest. “Save some yeses for later,” he said and reached for her thigh.
He pulled her top leg up and over his hips, making her feel like she was falling back against him, but she knew he’d catch her. The hand on her chest beneath her breasts reached to cup her nearest one and stroke her nipple with a thumb, as his tongue ran up the shell of her ear.
“Let me kiss you,” he demanded, the need in his voice as raw as his erection.
She twisted her head to meet his, so his lips could find hers and part them, tongue pushing in. Once again, she felt surrounded by him, and soon, both of her hands were in his hair, holding herself to him, feeling his hips thrust against her in time with his fingers stroking and his tongue pushing, and she gasped out a moan next time he let her breathe.
“Yes,” he agreed, his voice low, rocking himself against her again. She felt the warm velvet smoothness of his hard cock slide against her ass—and the aching emptiness of the space between her legs where she wanted it, where it belonged. She squirmed against him in anticipation, and he chuckled darkly. “Does my princess need something?” he asked her slowly, rocking into her.
There was the temptation to pretend and fight and lie, and then there was the temptation to just admit it and give in. Both would wind up feeling good, but only one of them felt easy. And the longer he kept rocking against her in promise, the more firm his attentions on her breasts and nipples became, the heat radiating out from his mouth where he’d gone back to kissing her on her jaw and throat….
“I want…” she said, her own voice just as husky as his. “You. Inside me. Now.”
He easily hitched her leg higher on himself, stretching her wide open, as he sank the hand on her chest down to press her hips back. His position behind her changed so that his own hips were below hers, and now the head of his cock was free to arch up and nudge against her, and he did so. She felt the heat of him push over her folds and rub against her clit, and she whined as he did it again and again instead of pushing in.
“Say you need it, princess,” he told her, teasing her, pushing her open only to then not enter. Each time the thick head of his cock rubbed against her clit, she groaned. “You’re so wet, I can feel it. I know you want me, but I want to hear you say you need it,” he whispered in her ear between kisses.
She bit her tongue to deny him, even as she knew that he was right. Her nipples were hard and her hips were shaking and she was so turned on. It wasn’t that she wanted to fight him so much as it was just what she was used to—being stubborn and doing exactly what she wanted to at all times.
But what she wanted right now was for him to do her, and she did need it, fuck it all, as long as he was fucking her.
“I need it—dragon,” she said, almost spitefully, and Damian growled near her ear.
“Good, princess,” he said, in the exact same tone, and held her hips still with one hand as his finally pushed up.
Damian could feel the exquisite soft heat between Andi’s legs part to take him as she moaned and roiled against him, and at her use of the word “dragon,” his own was instantly present inside. Does she mean that? it asked him.
Does it matter? he snapped back, trying to maintain control of himself. Andi was wet, but still so tight—and likely sore, after last night. He didn’t want her body to ask him for more than she could handle.
His dragon didn’t answer him, and then Andi hissed, “Oh, God, Damian,” and the moment between him and his beast was gone, replaced by his concern for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked, stopping everything to stroke her hair.
“It’s good-bad,” she confessed. “This position—I’m so tight, and you’re freaking huge—”
“Why thank you,” he quipped.
“It’s not a compliment; it’s just a fact,” she said with a pout and an eye roll. “And after last night, I’m so sore—”
Damian kissed her forehead softly. “It’s okay. There’re a million other things we can do,” he said and started to pull out.
“No.” Her top hand rushed to his hips and stopped them. “Don’t. Not yet. Because…it’s still good too. Just…give me time?”
He saw her dark eyes searching his. “So much time. All the time in the world,” he told her and meant it with all of his heart.
“Okay,” she said and nodded, then started to rock her hips against his, moving fractionally up and down his cock, and it was his turn to hiss.
She felt so fucking good, and what was more—as he watched her bite her lips and screw her eyes shut to concentrate on taking him—had anything a woman ever done for him before been so hot? She wanted to be his so badly it was making her shake; she wanted him to make her feel good; she wanted nothing more in the world right now than to be able to fit him—not knowing that as his mate, she already did and that it was his job for the rest of eternity to pleasure her.
Damian wrapped an arm around her loosely enough that she could easily push it back and reached his hand between her legs to stroke. Her hands found his there, and he expected them to make him stop, but instead, they pressed his fingers tighter to her, showing him how she liked it, rubbing the soft nub of her clit beneath its hood just over the spot where his cock stretched her wide. Her hips moved more surely now, and quicker, and he whispered, “Oh, princess,” in her ear. “You’re doing so well…you feel so good…keep going.”
Her pulse fluttered at his compliments, so he continued, his voice low and full of promises as she worked herself against him, as he, in turn, worked his fingers against her clit. “I know you can take me, Andi. You fit me. And I fit you. And in just a little bit, you’re going to have me all the way inside you, and then I am going to fuck you and make you feel even better.” The wetness where they met slicked his fingers, making them slippery, and he used that to rub her faster as she whined his name.
“Damian…Damian,” she said as her voice went high and begged him. He didn’t dare move. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she was going to come for him, just halfway down his cock, because she couldn’t help herself.
“God,” he growled, gritting his teeth, doing his best to remain still as she writhed against him, her stomach muscles clenching beneath the heel of his hand as her hips beat against his harder, all of her tensing, ready to give it up.
“Damian…I…oh!” she shouted and then moaned and thrashed in earnest as the waves hit her. He held her tight to his chest, following her hips with his hand, his fingertips on her clit incessant, demanding. Her orgasm was as much his as it was hers because she was his—she belonged to him. It was all he could do not to bite her neck and hold her down and fuck her madly. When she was wild, it made him wild. Blinding need seared through him, and he wanted to drag her hips down onto his and impale her there, to feel his own cum shoot inside her. The only thing that stopped him from doing just that was a lifetime accustomed to control.
But he was there, with her, beside her, inside her. He felt her pleasure ripple through her body and moaned as she did, grunting as her hot wet heat grabbed at his cock. He wound his hand down in time with the end of her flutters, until she lay panting against him, and he stilled his fingers. She was dripping now; he could both feel it and scent it in the air and knew that the second she was ready, he could slide her down his shaft and shove his way inside. He licked up the line of her jaw in an animalistic manner without thinking.
Andi sagged back with a contented sigh. “Oh…I’m sorry.”
Damian blinked, his vision for their next few minutes momentarily disrupted. He wrapped his arms tight around her anew. “What’ve you got to apologize for?”
“Nothing. Everything.” She twisted to look up at him, her gaze soft with sex. “I think I’m just used to apologizing is all.”
“Well, stop it.”
“Sorry,” she said intentionally, with a laugh. He felt it pulse around him and groaned. “Sorry-not-sorry,” she said, squeezing him again, this time clenching her muscles around him on purpose.
He growled a warning in her ear. “I think you will be sorry if you kill me.”
She pushed a hand up into his hair. “And how could I manage to kill a dragon?”
He felt so safe and open with her there that he was actually tempted to list them—all the ways that she could flay him—one by one. By leaving him, by not taking all that he had to offer, by hurting him intentionally—nothing that would kill the scaled beast inside him, but all things that would wreck his much more human soul.
But he knew that was too much for right now, in her small bedroom in her small apartment on her small penguin-sheeted bed. So instead, he told her the obvious answer: “By not finishing what you started.”
“Dragons get blue balls?” she mused, with a flash of her dark eyes.
“We do. And it’s so much worse. Because our balls are so much bigger.”
She laughed, and he felt each peal of it roll through him and then he was laughing too and his mouth was at her neck again, at the angle where throat met jaw, just below her ear, and as he kissed it, she shivered on him.
“Damian…I,” she began and started to move against him again.
“Oh, princess, yes, fucking take it,” he murmured as she rocked back, and he carefully—oh, so carefully—thrust up until they met, and all of him was wrapped by her at last. He let out a low moan. “You let me know…okay? Say the word, and I’ll stop.”
“No, it’s good, it’s good,” she whispered hoarsely.
Damian allowed himself to finally thrust then with her permission, feeling the tight glove of her pussy squeeze around him. He held her to his chest so tightly, so possessively, arching his hips up and into her, relishing the sensation of her sliding up and down his cock, the way she made every inch of him feel grabbed and held and pulled. And when her hips started urging his faster, he growled.
“Fuck, you turn me on,” he whispered roughly in her ear, and Andi thrilled at hearing it. Now that she was stretched out and could take him, now that every inch of him was wet, his hot breath against her neck made her shudder. His hand on her breast, his fingers playing with her nipples…she needed to hear him say it because what he could do to her so easily seemed entirely unfair. She wanted to have some small power over him, even if that power was making him lose control.
“Everything about you,” he went on, landing deep in her with a satisfied grunt. “Just this…fuck,” he moaned through another stroke. “I want to come in you again, princess. I want you to come for me, and then I want to—”
They both heard it at the same time—a key at the front door, and then that same door opening.
“Shit…it’s Sammy,” Andi whispered, tensing, and then Damian’s hand moved from her breast to latch across her mouth, where she could taste the salt of his palm.
“Shhh,” he whispered in her ear. He took another stroke, and his other hand reached between her legs again to rub her just how she’d showed him.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” she whispered—or tried to—but she couldn’t get any words out. Damian chuckled behind her, stroking her wetness up her belly in a line up to a nipple. He circled it for a lazy moment, then pinched her, hard.
“Mmmm!” she complained, squirming against him. The muffled sound came clearly out, and she could feel him trying not to laugh.
Sammy’s footsteps came down the hall. “Andi, are you up?” She could hear Sammy taking off her heels. “If you are, girl, I’ve got to tell you all about last night,” she said in her lovely Irish lilt.
Damian rocked forward, stroking into her again, and she had to fight not to moan. Then he let go of her mouth, and she took a ragged breath.
“Andi?” Sammy asked with concern, as Damian kept on torturing her. His hand against her clit sped up, and his strokes became more insistent.
“I’m up…it’s just…don’t come in; I have a cold,” she got out in between being rocked by him, biting her lips to stop from making any other noises, no matter how much she wanted to.
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” Sammy said, from safely down the hall.
“Yeah, it’s awful.” Andi feigned a hacking cough.
“My princess is a bad liar,” Damian whispered with amusement in her ear.
“Fuck you,” she whispered back at him. He punished her with another stroke, arching his hips so that it felt like she could feel the crown of him dragging inside her and she rolled her head back, gasping out, “I’m gonna go back to sleep now, Sammy…we’ll catch up tonight?”
“Oh, God, you sound awful. Yes, feel better.” They heard Sammy’s footsteps depart down the hall, then just as quickly return to stand right outside her closed door. “Just know that for once, you’re not the only one who needs sleep!”
Damian pulled himself out quickly and then plunged just as fast back inside, and one of Andi’s hands fisted in her sheets, trying not to scream. “Congratulations!” she gritted out cheerfully.
“Thanks!” Sammy said with a giggle, and Andi could almost hear her hair-flip, as she padded back down the hall.
“You are the worst,” Andi whispered hoarsely, the second they heard Sammy’s bedroom door close.
“The worst what?” he asked her back as she twisted to look up at him. His grin feigned complete innocence like it was entirely separate from the rest of his still-fucking-her-slowly body.
“The worst everything,” she said with a head shake.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Does this feel like the worst to you?” he asked her, then thrust into her deeply again, catching her mouth with his hand again to muffle her moaning. “I like to think I’m quite good at some things, princess,” he said and started taking her more quickly.
Her hips started working against his of their own accord, letting him land deep, and she brought up both hands to keep his hand over her mouth because otherwise there was no way she could stay quiet, and Sammy would instantly know, as would their neighbors and Eumie’s customers below, just what was happening in her bedroom. He purred at that, keeping his own sounds soft, but Andi could hear his rough breathing in her ear. One of his hands pressed between her legs again, half to keep her hips back, and half to touch her, rubbing her so perfectly, and she could feel her heart speed up and taste the salt of his palm and her nipples were twin points of ache, so she gave up on holding his hand in place to grab her breasts and pull them only to feel him tense up as he watched her.
“Give it to me Andi,” he demanded quietly, his commands hot in her ear. “Give. It. To. Me.”
He punctuated every word with a thrust and the combination of everything—his breath, his hands, his cock—undid her. She moaned her way through a long release. She couldn’t help it; not even a saint could’ve managed it quietly, thrashing against him, and heard his own accompanying hissing as he valiantly tried to stay quiet and also failed as he lost himself inside her, pulsing hard, thrusting up, making her ride him to completion. His hand slid down her face, and as the edge of his fingers pressed between her lips, she bit them to keep them there as she gasped.
“Fuck,” she whispered when she next had breath to do so. “How…?” She went on, shaking her head, unsure what she should say next. How did he do this to her every time? How come everything with him always felt so right? How could it feel this good?
How on earth would she survive if this ever stopped?
“I don’t know, princess,” he said, kissing her as he slowly, regretfully pulled out of her. “All I do know is that a moment when I’m not with you is a moment wasted.”
Andi felt herself flush. He wasn’t supposed to say things like that—it was unfair. It was not what normal people did.
But he wasn’t normal, was he?
He situated himself around her so that she was flat on the bed, and he was leaning beside her protectively, one of his thighs across hers, one of his arms underneath his own head, with the other hand roaming her body. “What would you like now?” he asked her. “More sleep, breakfast, or round two?”
Andi looked up at him and found his golden eyes staring kindly down. The coolly imperious man she’d been in turns excited by and frightened of had softened, though she knew that man was still inside Damian, same as his dragon was. “All of the above, I think.”
He smiled and laughed. “Pick an order.” Just then, her stomach rumbled, choosing for her. “Breakfast it is, then,” Damian grinned, and began pulling away.
“But then rounds two through twelve?” she said, sounding just as petulant as Damian had earlier.
“There’d better be more than twelve,” he said, reaching for his jeans on her floor, and she watched him bend over, every single muscle on his abdomen rippling, as he pulled on his boxer briefs and jeans—which was why it was taking a while for the less sexed parts of her brain to come online.
She sat up. “Wait…where are you going?”
“Through the mirror in your bathroom,” he said, gesturing with his chin as he swept his shirt up.
“To cook me breakfast?” she questioned.
“No. Sorry, cooking’s not a skill I possess; I hope that’s not a huge disappointment,” he said as he tugged his shirt on. “When I’m out in the world, I use money for food, and when I’m at home, I use my magic cat.”
Andi clapped her hands to her face and tried not to giggle.
“What? You’ve seen him!” Damian quietly protested, looking amused.
“I know!” She’d met Grimalkin a week ago at Damian’s when she’d been saving his friend’s life, and she’d seen him change himself from a normal-sized seal-point Siamese into a tiger in under a second. “It’s just, you look super manly, and then you go and say the words ‘magic cat’ like that’s not absurd—”
“I’ll show you some absurd things,” he whisper-threatened, lunging meaningfully toward her bed with his hand on his belt buckle.
Andi squealed softly and skittered backward, almost off the bed, and he grabbed her ankles to yank her back toward him, before falling over her himself and catching himself with his elbows. She was hyperaware of just how naked she was beneath him and all the things that they could do and keep on doing, and he leaned down to kiss her gently, before pushing himself to stand straight again.
“Stop thinking so loudly…it’s distracting,” he said teasingly.
“What? You can’t read my mind,” she said, rolling over on her bedsheets, suddenly concerned. “Can you?”
“No, but I don’t need to when you’re looking at me like that.” He gestured at all of her, sprawled out atop her bed.
She coyly stripped a sheet over her with one hand, hiding half a leg and a breast. “What am I thinking now, then?” she asked and pouted at him.
He grinned at her lasciviously. “I’ll tell you after breakfast. And, if I’m wrong, I’ll keep guessing until I’m right.”
Andi pouted. “I feel like there should be penalties.”
“I could definitely come up with some.”
“For you, not me; I’m not the one bragging I can read people’s thoughts.” She shrugged as cutely as she could and then slow-rolled herself over, winding the sheet around her body.
“Fuck me,” he muttered as he watched her, before stepping away from the bed with purpose. “Stop that. Just let me feed you. I’ll be right back.”
He turned on his heel and walked toward her bathroom, and after a second, she jumped out of bed and followed him, curious how the whole thing worked, wrapping herself with the sheet along the way. She caught up with him as he put a knee up on her counter, though at seeing her, he paused and tsked her name. “Andi.”
“What? I just want to watch is all.”
He groaned. “So many other circumstances in which I want to hear that, but,” he said and took her in, “what’s the sheet for?”
“Well, now that I know that anyone can be looking through the other side….” She hitched the penguin-patterned sheet higher under her arms, looked at herself in reflection, and fought not to laugh. It was a good thing he was so enamored with her because she had some serious, serious sex hair.
“Most people can’t. It’s an upper-level power.” He rocked off the counter and turned around to sit on it instead. “And it’s even harder without a connection to the person on the other side.” He reached out to her with his arms and she walked into them, letting him loosely wrap them around her hips.
“Will you be able to see me?” she asked with a serious squint.
“I could, yes.”
Her squint doubled. “Did you look? Before?”
“Not really?” She heard the strain in his voice and remembered that she’d made him promise to never lie to her the prior night.
“Damian!” she hissed. “You did! Didn’t you!”
He looked up at the ceiling for forgiveness and then returned his gaze to her. “Only twice. Once, when you were waiting at the bus stop for that man,” he said, and Andi heard the snarl in his voice at David’s memory. “And then again—not in here, I swear—but in your bedroom. The other night I saw you smiling at your phone as you messaged someone, and it nearly killed me.” Pain flickered across his face at the memory.
“You mean my roommate? I’d say it serves you right, but I suspect you already know that.”
“I do, believe me.” He let go of her to lean back against her mirror and run his fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t have even been looking if my dragon hadn’t wanted to see you so badly.”
“Oh, so that’s what you call it?” she said, gesturing between his legs, and he laughed then reached for the sheet around her, using it to tug her close to him again.
“I won’t look anymore. I promise. I know you need your privacy.”
“Good because I do. Especially in here. Except for maybe when I don’t, but I will tell you when that is, mister.” She reached for the sheet he held and shimmied it loose from his hands, before dropping it to kick it aside. “Like now, for instance. Because I am going to take myself and my ornate hairstyle into the shower.”
She stepped into her tub and leaned over to turn on the water. Andi heard him mutter, “Trying to kill me,” again before the sound of the water drowned him out—but when she looked over, he was gone.
Damian pulled himself through Andi’s mirror with clear intent before he could talk himself out of it again. After breaching the surface of the glass, he was in the howling void of the between-places for a second—a cold space filled with what felt like grasping hands—and then he was pushing through the glass of his own travelling mirror on the far side, stepping out from the dead chill into the warmth of his own bedroom.
All the other mirrors on his wall were closed and fogged except for the one he’d just walked through. He took a moment to look back and saw Andi’s form barely hidden by the glass door of her shower. It made her blurry, but he could still see the outline of her curves and the wave of her now wet hair cascading over her shoulder. He hadn’t showered with her yet, had he? They’d been in his dragon’s bathing pond together, but he’d been trying not to look at her the whole time—it hardly counted. One more thing to look forward to: being in a shower with her—maybe even his shower—where he could pick her up, and….
What kind of dragon doesn’t provide food for his mate? his dragon chided him. Feed her soon…or I will.
I know, I know, he said, waving a hand and closing their connection. At the thought of his dragon taking charge and getting food for Andi Game of Thrones-style, he snorted, and then his own reflection caught his eye.
He hardly looked like himself. Everything on the outside was still the same—he was tall, well-muscled, had black hair, and women seemed to like his appearance. But a tenseness that’d been riding his shoulders for far too long was gone. And even though it felt foolish, he was smiling—not at himself, but just smiling—because he couldn’t help himself…because of her.
He had an urge to tumble back through the mirror to her side and tell her—to show her—that this new him was all her fault, in a good way. But it would only take a few seconds longer to do it with breakfast in tow, as he’d promised.
“Grimalkin?” he said aloud, and the cat appeared into existence beside him.
“Present,” Grim meowed and sat back on his haunches to primly eye Damian. “You smell like the nurse. Did you have fun?”
Damian got the distinct impression that his ‘magic cat’ was judging him. “I did. Why do you ask?”
“Because Austin got up in the middle of the night last night,” Grimalkin reported.
“And?” Damian asked, fighting down old habits. His life in the Realms had been one of waiting for the next blow to land, and fears of backstabbing and betrayal came rushing back—none of which Austin deserved, he knew. Damian forced himself to rein in his fears the same way he reined in his dragon and wondered if he’d ever stop being haunted by his childhood.
“And he went to the kitchen, and he ate all my cheese.” Grimalkin said every other word with a hiss. “He didn’t even try to hide it, Damian! He did it right in front of me! Bite after bite!” The little cat visibly shuddered. “He put my twenty-year-old Wisconsin cheddar on saltines!”
Damian sighed in relief. “Grim…you’re…a hugely powerful magical entity. Why didn’t you just teleport it away?”
“I couldn’t!” Grim said with a pained yowl. “I was just watching him, and I couldn’t believe he’d do that—I mean, he’s a dog, how could he know how good cheese tastes?—and by then, it was too late.” Grimalkin flopped to the ground dramatically, as if someone had just stolen all his bones.
Damian almost groaned. All he wanted was to go back to Andi’s side with a palatial breakfast, but that required Grim’s help. At least he was getting a ‘magic cat’ story out of it to tell her—he could already hear her laugh about this in his mind. “I’ll buy you more, Grim,” he promised.
“It’s not that.” Grim lifted his head like it cost him all his strength. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Damian knelt down to gently pet the cat’s side. “Do you want me to say something?”
“No,” Grim said, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I can’t let him know how important cheese is to me.” He sounded incredibly forlorn.
Damian pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand to maintain equilibrium. “And why not?” He did his best to ask kindly.
“Because. It’s my weakness.” Grim’s voice went quiet as if dying. “I can’t let anyone know.” The cat thumped his head on the floor dramatically.
“Oh my God, Grim,” Damian began, to tell his cat to snap out of it, but then, both of them heard a tap against glass. Grim was up on all fours in an instant, head swiveling in the direction of the sound.
One of Damian’s other mirrors was active—a thin, genteel oval mirror with an ornate frame. The fog inside it had cleared, and there was a familiar large red bird on the other side, delicate as an egret, pecking frantically on the glass.
“Lyka!” Grim said, excitedly naming the guardian on the other side.
“Ryana?” Damian whispered to himself, naming his half-sister, its owner, as he quickly moved to stand. The bird flared its wings out, flapping heavily against the mirror’s boundary, throwing itself wildly against the glass.
“Can we let her through?” Grim asked with concern, running over to stare between him and the fluttering bird.
Damian reached for the mirror’s glass without thinking, then hesitated. When he’d abdicated the throne twenty years ago, coming to earth to postpone the inevitable fate of turning into his dragon, he’d sworn to Ryana’s mother, his stepmother, that he would never return nor interfere with the politics of the Realms in any way. Would letting Lyka through break that truce?
Why would Lyka have ever left Ryana behind?
“Little bird, where is your owner?” Damian wondered as Lyka threw herself against the mirror again, leaving a smear of blood behind on her side of the glass.
Damian’s eyes widened, and he clapped his hands together. “I need to see,” he commanded, sending out a wave of magical energy to all the mirrors on his wall. One by one, mirrors sought mirrors, and images from the Realms came into focus—a view from a parapet of distant smoke over rubble, a mirror over the ballroom showed courtiers and servants running wildly below, a mirror in the library showed books—his father’s books, and the only treasure Damian ached over leaving behind—on fire, edges curling. Each mirror glass showed a new portion of destruction, some piece of his former home falling apart.
Grim made a strangled sound as Damian’s hand slammed over onto the mirror, where Lyka struggled, opening the glass between them. The bird flew through, disappearing from sight only to reappear in the room with them, then soar up, making strange sounds along the way, scanning the mirrors that Damian had open, searching, and Damian knew for whom.
His sister.
He put both his hands to the glass in front of him. Though apart now for twenty years, he and Ryana had once been close—and he called on the link between them. Their childhood had pitted them against one another until they realized they were more alike than not, and well before Damian left, he considered Ryana his only true family—not his mother who’d forgotten him, not the stepmother who loathed him and saw him as an obstacle to her throne, not his father who had been overtaken by his dragon at long last.
Ryana was the only one who understood what it was like to grow up as a pawn, forced to play a game you didn’t know all the rules to, one you didn’t even want to win—but one you had to play, because if you lost you’d die.
He gathered his energies, all his thoughts of her and the history between them, and summoned a view of her.
The mirror in front of him erupted into a multifaceted gaze like he was seeing through a kaleidoscope of eyes, and overlapping pieces of her came into view. He was catching her reflections from fallen candlesticks, polished marble columns, the metal legs of chairs, anything nearby her that was even remotely reflective. She was face down on the ground, her face covered by her hair, her wings bent and torn behind her, with no mirrors big enough for transport nearby, and smoke making it harder to see her by the minute.
Grimalkin howled in worry while at the same time his dragon lunged up. Who hurt her? it bellowed inside him
“Ryana! Where the fuck are you!” Damian opened up the connections he could to shout at her, even though he couldn’t fit through them. “Wake up!”
If he couldn’t figure out where she was, he’d never find a nearby mirror big enough in time. The palace was so big it could take days to search. Lyka hovered in midair beside him—bleeding freely—then soared up to dive into a mirror high on the wall, before returning carrying a leather bladder. The bird then wedged itself into one of the facets Damian was shown, pulling itself through to appear in the scene on the other side, to beat about Ryana’s face with its wings.
What’s she doing? his dragon asked, pushing forward again.
I don’t know, Damian admitted, feeling pained.
Lyka soared up and out of view with the bladder, then returned, hovering low enough that Damian could tell Ryana’s guardian had changed, up to the size of a much larger bird now, perhaps an eagle, and he saw it tear the side of the bladder open. A metallic substance spilled to the ground, pouring out in a broad puddle not far from Ryana’s quiet form, and he saw even more massive claws grab hold of Ryana’s body and pull her forward to it. Just as he began to be able to see through the new reflective substance on her side with his magic-sight, he reached through the spreading reflection, feeling the cold and the hands of the void grab at him, as he made contact with Ryana on the far side. He heard Lyka shriek and Grim growl, and he pulled back as hard as he could, yanking Ryana through the between-space to fall through the mirror into his bedroom, into his arms. Lyka passed through the mirror just a second behind her, instantly transitioning from a bird the size of a vulture down to a tiny blood-red starling, to collapse atop Ryana’s chest.
Damian carefully spun away from the glass and took her to his bed, laying her down as carefully as he could, considering the condition of her wings. The bag she clung to thumped down beside her. He stroked a lock of burned hair away from her neck to feel for a pulse. It thrummed beneath his fingers—slow and thready—and he looked over to Grim. “Get everybody here. Now.” Grim disappeared to obey, and Damian took in the destruction of his sister’s form.
The pine-needle green wings his sister had were the only trait of their shared father Ryana had, much to her stepmother’s chagrin. She’d always wanted to fly, even as a little girl, but they were just for show, not muscular enough to pull her aloft without using egregious amounts of magic.
As contenders for the same throne, they should’ve been enemies, but the shared trauma of being raised royal in the Realms bonded them instead. When Damian left for earth, it seemed like the best of both possible worlds: he got to escape his past, and it cleared the path for Ryana to ascend safely. But what had happened?
“Ryana, wake up,” he said, cupping her face in his hand. Her eyes were swelling now, bruises mottling her pale skin, all of her smelling of smoke. One of her legs had swung freely when he carried her in a way Damian knew was bad, one of her wings was shredded, and the other bent at a cruel angle.
Austin was the first to burst in. “Damian!” he shouted, surely scenting smoke, running for the bed as Damian looked back at him.
“Help her,” he commanded his friend in a strangled voice.
Austin paused a second to take both of them in, his eyes widening as he surveyed the broken-winged woman before him, then said, “Of course.”
It didn’t take long for two more of his crew to crowd into his bedroom. Mills ran for the bed first, her floor-length hair streaming behind her, while Max intuited what was going on in all his open mirrors the quickest and stood still before them as if struck by lightning.
“What the fuck is happening over there, Damian?” he growled, transfixed by the images reflected in the goggles that covered his eyes.
“I don’t know yet,” Damian admitted, as the bear-shifter shook himself free to rush up and peer out the nearest mirror. It showed the library, all of it on fire, clouds of ash twisting in whatever wind blew them—thousands of years of knowledge gone in the blink of an eye.
Grimalkin ran from mirror to mirror, like if he just kept looking, eventually, everything would go back the way it was, and Damian understood the inclination. As much as once upon a time he’d wanted to destroy everything of his former life—all the more so after meeting Andi—actually seeing it happen was like a knife twisting in his gut. He knew he should close all of them and not leave any trace of a magical connection between Earth and the Realms, but he felt like closing them would be turning his back on his home, a home he’d never get to see again—not like it was—and he found he couldn’t look away.
“Is she okay?” He dragged his attention from the mirror back to the bed where Ryana lay, breathing shallowly.
“Hard to say,” Austin said. The shaggy, brown-haired werewolf scooped up Lyka and handed her to Mills. “We need to move her to someplace with no mirrors for safekeeping and plenty of room for supplies. Can you have Grim change the library downstairs back to the way it was when Zach was hurt?”
Damian grunted. “Grim,” he commanded.
“I heard!” The little cat stopped its pacing, yowled, and disappeared.
“It’ll be done. What else?” Damian asked. Over in the Realms, a tower of rubble fell, shattering the mirror on the far side of one of his, so now it showed them only nothingness, like a jack-o’-lantern’s empty eye. Max started making a keening sound.
“I know,” Damian said. It was affecting him too. Mills came to his side.
“Damian, is this what I think it is?” she asked, proffering the bird she held up.
Mills was the most powerful witch he’d ever met. Of course, she knew. He nodded. “Her name’s Lyka. And, yes, she’s a guardian like Grimalkin.”
“Then,” Mills began, twisting back to the bed.
“That’s Princess Ryana. Damian’s sister,” Max said, naming the comatose woman at last. He looked back at her. “What happened to her wings, Damian? Who could—how…” he began, and the goggles that hid the magically replaced eyes Mills had given him from the rest of the world weren’t tight enough to hold back the tears Damian could see streaking down his face. His questions faded into an incoherent shout, and he swung back toward the mirrored wall to punch it to dust between two frames.
“I know,” Damian repeated, putting a restraining hand on the bear-shifter’s shoulder, watching another tower fall and another glass go black.
Inside of himself, his dragon seethed uncomfortably, full of the need to act but with nothing to actually do. Everything in him wanted to vow vengeance—but on whom, and for what? And…why? This was what he’d always wanted. To never be constrained by the machination of the Realms again—or any promises he’d made to his stepmother. To be free to fully be with Andi.
So, this—the echoing images of destruction in each of his mirrors—looked like freedom.
Was it?
“I’m sorry, Damian, but you need to close them,” Mills said from beside him. “It’s not good to have so many mirrors open at once. The energies in here are unsettling.”
Grimalkin rematerialized at his feet and said, “Finished!” as Damian looked to Mills.
“If I close them, I may not be able to open them again,” he said, voicing his deepest fear.
Mills gave him a sad smile. “That is true,” she agreed. “And yet, it must be done.”
Damian knew his witch wouldn’t lie to him, both because she cared for him as a friend, and because she couldn’t—she was cursed to always tell the truth. He took several steps back, so that he could see all the mirrors at once, and tried to memorize what was happening in each of them, taking one long, last look at the world that had stolen his mother and his father from him, where he’d been tormented and tortured, where he had killed others as they had tried to kill him.
His home.
Then he slammed his hands together in a clap and said, “All eyes closed,” and one by one, each image of the Realms in his mirror frames winked out, replaced by darkness.