Forbidden Embers (39 page)

But he couldn’t help himself. He lowered his head, touched his mouth to hers. And then he was kissing her, his lips moving frantically on hers, his tongue thrusting into her mouth as he tried to get inside her any way that he could.

Her hands came up, tangled in his hair, held on to him as tightly as he was holding on to her. Their tongues met, dueled, stroked frantically over and against each other, and he never wanted to let her go. He wanted to kiss her like this, hold her like this, forever.

She didn’t feel the same way, though, and within seconds she had wrenched herself from his grip. “No!” she said. “I won’t let you do this to me. I can’t.”

“Cecily, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry—”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It would never work. You’re Dragonstar; I’m Wyvernmoon. You have responsibilities in New Mexico; I can’t leave South Dakota. My clan needs me and I have to focus on them. I can’t be with you, not when I can’t trust you.”

“You can trust me—”

“Good-bye, Logan.”

“Damn it, Cecily. You can’t stay here alone. Unprotected. You’re a sitting fucking duck for whatever bastard wants to seize power from you.”

“Have I somehow given you the impression that I’m incapable of taking care of myself?”

“That’s not what I meant. But, Cecily, the
factionnaires
are ruthless, and most of them are still alive. You’re not safe. They will come for you, and they will try to kill you. You need someone to watch your back.”

“Maybe I do. But you’re not that someone. You’ll never be that someone.” She walked into her bedroom, turned and barred the doorway with her body to keep him from following her. “I mean it, Logan. I want you to leave. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

His entire world felt like it was falling down around him, and he wanted to fight for her. Wanted to beg her to give him another chance. But he could tell it was no use, not now, when her eyes were so haunted and resolute. Not now, when she looked like he felt—like nothing was ever going to be okay again.

Turning, he walked slowly down the stairs and out the front door, wondering how he was ever going to find the strength to leave her. Or to live the rest of his life without her.

W
hen the doorbell rang, Cecily looked up from the table where she, Dax and Dashiell were going over the damage estimates from the Shadowdrake attack. Infrastructure-wise, things weren’t as bad as they’d thought they would be, but the casualty rate was much higher than she had feared.

In the week since she had demanded that Logan leave, she and the three
factionnaires
who were still loyal to her had done their best to get things moving again. Businesses were open, the hospital and clinics were working around the clock and evidence of the battle had been completely cleared away.

But her
Conseil
was shattered. Gage had died in the Shadowdrake attack. She later heard that he’d instigated the process to shut down the lab once and for all. She felt a little better knowing that her oldest and dearest friend hadn’t completely betrayed her—that in his own way he’d been looking to end the war between the clans—but it hurt that, like Logan, he hadn’t felt he could talk to her. Hadn’t felt he could trust her to do what was right.

Because she was Silus’s daughter? Or because she’d spent most of her life being weak? It was probably a combination of both, and it killed her to think that so much of this could have been avoided if she’d simply stepped forward sooner after Silus’s death. If she had tried to take the reins when her father’s funeral pyre was still warm, instead of trusting in his
factionnaires
to do what was best for the clan. It was a mistake she’d learned the hard way not to make again.

The very hard way.

But she would find a way to put things back together, even if it killed her. She owed it to her people, and to all of the Fournier rulers who had come before her.

She knew it wasn’t going to be easy—Julian, Acel, and the others were seeing to that. They were trying to get her people to rally around them in an effort to seize control from her. So far, most of her people were sticking by her, but part of her wondered if it was only a matter of time before they turned against her. She wouldn’t blame them. God knew she had made a mess of almost everything she had touched so far.

That was going to change—and it was going to change soon. She knew that if she wanted to solidify her people’s belief in her and her right to be queen, she was going to have to go back to her original plan. She was going to have to pick a husband, would have to give her people a king.

A huge part of her was revolted by the idea. Party because it bothered her that even in the twenty-first century, her clan didn’t believe a woman could be trusted to rule, and partly because after Logan, she could not imagine letting another man close to her. Though they had been together only a few short days, though he had betrayed her in the most terrible way possible, she missed him.

She cried herself to sleep at night, filled with an overwhelming longing for him that she couldn’t deny.

She woke in the dead of night, her hand searching for his warmth on the cold, empty bed.

She woke in the morning, plagued by nightmares of her people dying, of Logan dying, more exhausted than she had been when she went to sleep.

And though she knew she needed to get married—needed to pick Dax, Dashiell or Wyatt for a king—the thought made her physically sick. Not that they wouldn’t make good kings. She believed they would, especially Wyatt, who was an incredible strategist and also one of the most compassionate men she’d ever met. But the idea of being touched by him, by being touched by any of them, left her beyond cold.

But it needed to be done—and soon. She needed to be pregnant, needed to provide her clan with an heir, preferably male, to give everyone a tangible reminder that things were back on the right track. If she had to sacrifice her happiness to do it, if she had to give her body to a man she would never want as much as she wanted Logan, it was a small price to pay for the deaths and mistakes she was responsible for.

With the decision made, she looked up in time to see her new butler and security expert, David, walk into the room. But instead of escorting Wyatt, as she’d anticipated, he was leading Julian, Antoine, Etienne and Luc into the room.

Dashiell leaped across the table, knocking over his chair in his haste to put his body between hers and the four traitorous
factionnaires
. Dax was only a split second behind, but it was just long enough for Julian to pull a knife from his waist and send it spinning across the room.

It nailed Dax in the throat, and Cecily watched in horror as he went to his knees. His hands came up automatically, yanked out the knife. Blood gushed from the open wound.

She started to get up, to run to him, but Dashiell shoved her toward the patio door. “Run!” he said in a fierce undertone, even as he shot a huge fireball straight at Julian.

The other dragon deflected it easily, sent one of his own hurtling back. Dashiell jumped out of the way and it crashed into the china cabinet, where her favorite antique Limoges china resided. The cabinet shattered and glass flew everywhere.

Desperate to end the fight so she could get to Dax, she reached for the electricity that always pulsed right below her skin. Grabbing on to it, she shaped it superfast, then sent it soaring across the room at Julian. He was so busy defending himself from an attack by Dashiell that he didn’t see it coming, and it struck him straight in the chest. He went down, hard.

She turned to the other three, realizing for the first time that Luc had a small syringe pressed to David’s neck—which explained everything she needed to know about why he’d let the four defectors into the house.

She had an instant to wonder what was in the syringe—something awful, judging from the uncharacteristic look of terror on David’s face—and then Dashiell went down, felled by a powerful energy blast from Etienne. A quick glance told her he was stunned, not hurt, and she let loose with another flash of lightning, aiming it at Etienne instead of Luc, as she was afraid she might jostle him and he would stab David. But Antoine was waiting for her and he deflected her blast, sending all of her power spinning back toward her.

She jumped out of the way, shifting in midair and landing less than a foot from Antoine. Bending forward, she did something she had never in a billion years imagined she would ever do: she wrapped her mouth around his head and picked him up, then shook him back and forth until she heard his neck crack. Then she dumped him on her dining room floor and ripped open his stomach with her long talons.

Whirling away from him, she saw Dashiell and Etienne rolling across the floor. She leaped at them, ripped Etienne off Dashiell with her mouth, then watched as Dashiell—whose gift was the ability to flow through matter—plunged his hand straight into Etienne’s chest cavity and ripped out his heart.

She dropped Etienne, then went after Luc, who had knocked David to the floor. But Dash beat her to him, sending a powerful fireball his way. It missed, and he fled. After a cursory look at the room to make sure the other three dragons really were finished, Dashiell took off after him.

Cecily shifted back to human form, and, unmindful of her naked form, ran to Dax and David. But they were both beyond help. Horrified at how easily their lives had been snuffed out, she sank onto the carpet between them. She couldn’t stop trembling, and for several long seconds, was convinced she was going to throw up.

Taking a few deep breaths, she somehow managed to keep her stomach from revolting, but it was close. She sat there, shocked and shaky, trying to focus on what she needed to do. Everything around her seemed fuzzy, and whatever it was that she should be doing had escaped her.

But there was a little voice inside her screaming that she needed to get up, needed to check on Dashiell, needed to make sure he and Wyatt were safe. She stumbled to her feet, headed for the patio door.

She never got there. She had almost made it to the patio when Julian’s hand wrapped around her ankle and jerked. She hit the ground hard, kicked out with her free foot and caught him straight in the face. But she was barefoot and at an awkward angle, and the blow didn’t have nearly as much impact as she had hoped it would.

And then he was on her, scrambling up her body to wrap his hands around her throat, cutting off her air. “You could have made this easy, Cecily. You could have come to me and this never would have happened,” he growled, his fingers tightening even more.

He was sitting on her chest now, and she felt something pop deep inside her as she bucked underneath him, clawed at his hands, pounded on his chest, all to no avail. Tried to conjure up an energy blast, but had nothing to feed it with. Her own energy was fading fast, the world around her turning gray, and she knew if she didn’t do something right then, he was going to be right. She was going to die, and he was going to be left in charge of her clan.

The thought gave her the extra burst of magic she’d been searching for, and as she felt her hands light up with electricity, she threw every ounce of strength she had left behind them. Then grabbed on to Julian for all she was worth, closing her eyes and praying as his body jerked and spasmed above her.

His hands loosened from around her throat, and she drew a huge gulp of air into her lungs, making sure to keep both of her hands in contact with him as she did. He was gasping now, his skin turning blue as she shot volt after volt of electricity into him. They were still pressed together, and she could feel his heart stutter against her chest, but it didn’t stop. She was almost out of power, her last-ditch effort to save herself not enough.

Even worse, she could see Julian rallying. See him pushing off the effects of the electricity even as she gave him the last few weak volts that she had left. His fist came up, plowed into her face, and she felt the sickening crunch of bone as it connected with her nose.

“Now you die, bitch.” His hands tangled in her hair and he lifted her head up, then hit it against the wood floor. Lifted it up, hit it again. She could feel the world fading around her, knew she was blacking out. She fought it, knew that if she gave in, she would never wake up again. As he lifted her head a third time, a picture of Logan’s face rose in her mind. Scarred, tired, and so beautiful she was nearly overwhelmed.
I’m sorry,
she told him telepathically, sending the thought out into the universe and trusting that it would somehow find him.
I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to understand. Sorry I wasn’t strong enough to forgive you.

Then she closed her eyes, knowing there was nothing else she needed to do. She felt bad for her clan, prayed that somehow Dashiell and Wyatt would be strong enough to stand against Julian. But she couldn’t do anything else and she knew it. She’d given it her best shot, but she was fading fast . . .