Fire The Blood: Dragon Mage Series Book III (2 page)

The anger roared through
her blood, stopping the shivers immediately.  "You mistake me,
General!"  she said, her voice turning as cold and raw as the frost she
felt coating her heart.  "Lord Graedon tortured and killed my mother.  He
is no family of mine."

"Then it would be
our honor to claim you under the protection of the House of Fire and
Water," Eben said, his eyes piercing.

Asha raised her chin. 
She knew that if she did not leave soon, her anger would give her away. 
"I thank you for the honor, Lord Kinkaid, but I do not think that will be
necessary.  I am a Dragon seer.  I may not have seen my mother in the flesh,
but in many a dream have I walked with her, learning the old ways of my line. 
I will claim no house in the old tradition."

Kinkaid raised a brow at
that.  "That was indeed the way of it long ago, but with so few dragon
females being born, the laws were changed.  To put it bluntly, as a female
dragon with no male protection, you need the backing of a strong house."

Asha looked down, and a
cold smile twisted her lips.  "That was the argument when my mother was
forced to mate with Lord Graedon.  Her protection and the lives of her future
children were at stake."  She looked up into the eyes of antique gold,
aware as she did so that in her rage, her eyes were lit up like the heart of a
fire.  "My mother, as you said, was wholly of the light.  She might have
needed
protecting
.  I do not."

Asha turned, her skirts
billowing around her as she tried to contain her anger.  She could feel the
rage and pain she kept tucked away building inside her and started running as
soon as she was out of sight of the two powerful dragons.  She smelled sulfur
and turned in a rush down the next hall.  She just made it inside the stone
walls of the hot springs
before she burst into flame.

The blast from her rage
went out a good three feet in every direction, heating the stone to red and
melting gold veins until they trickled down the walls like lava.  When she had
spent all her fire, Asha felt the cold begin to creep back, only worse; as she
huddled on the ground, her hair gave off sparks and pooled around her as if lit
from within.  Her eyes were a flickering flame, until they settled to the mage
green that would fade back to her usual blue in a few minutes.  She could keep
her clothes intact when she used her flames consciously, but with an
uncontrolled burn out everything was gone.  She lay draped in her loose,
burnished amber hair and nothing else.  Asha was unsure how long she would have
to huddle on the slowly cooling stone, shivering and crying until she found the
strength to pick herself up and go on, as she had so many times before.

She felt his presence
before she was lifted high into hot arms and pressed against a hard chest.  Asha
blinked up at Braedon with no real surprise.  At that moment, she was deep into
protective numbness after her outburst.  Finding herself curled against all the
heat of a fire mage, she could not find the will to complain.  She did have the
presence of mind to note that he was naked and clearly had been bathing when
she attempted to incinerate him.  It was something of a shock that he did not
immediately yell at her for her carelessness, and with good reason.  Anyone
else might have been seriously injured or killed.  Instead of berating her, as
he should, he stepped down into the hot springs and sat on a ledge with her in
his arms so that she was immediately surrounded by hot water and hotter mage. 
Despite being only a few inches shorter than his six-foot height, she felt
dwarfed by his maleness, cocooned and safe when she should have felt
threatened.

Feeling the heat
penetrate almost deep enough to warm her through, she sighed and relaxed back
into the huntsman’s arms.  Closing her eyes, she drifted, letting this near
stranger keep her afloat while the room around them cooled to its normal sultry
heat.

"Does that happen
often?"  His voice was mellow; his heart beat under her hand, peaceful. 
In the dark beneath the glowing stalagmites, everything felt intimate.  So Asha
did something she would normally not do.

She answered. 
"Rarely.  The last time was when I walked the vision of my mother’s death
the first time."

He stilled beneath her,
and only then did she realize he had been rubbing soothing circles across her
bare back under the water.  Since she could not remember a time when someone
had held her or touched her in any way but to inflict pain, she did not want
him to stop.  He shifted her closer and took hold of her chin to lift her eyes
to meet his gaze.  "You walked your mother’s death?  More than once?"

His eyes were topaz, with
the heart of a flame kindling in their depths.  She recognized the signs of
rising anger better than anyone.  The needing to soothe another was new to her,
but with Braedon it felt natural, the need too strong to ignore.  Asha ran her
hands up his chest to his neck and wrapped it around the pulse there.  She
closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his chin, sending him calming vibes
as best she could.  "I wanted to stop it.  I kept going back to look for a
way to change it." She shuddered out a breath at her own helplessness.  If
she had not spent so much of her own power, she knew it would be building
again.  Instead, the cold tried to return.   Even neck deep in a hot springs
and against the heat of a naked fire mage, she shivered from the cold.  Braedon
shifted her again, and she felt his hands on her back start to pulse with
warmth under the water.  In a moment, the heat sank deep enough to stop the
shivers.  She noted absently that the water around them was boiling he had
heated it to such a degree, but it did not feel scalding to her.  It was more a
soothing caress of power when so much of her own had been squandered.

"I do not suppose
you want to tell me how you can be both dragon seer and fire mage?"

At the question, Asha
froze utterly and tried to move away, but he held her close.  "Shh, you so
not have to answer; just relax."  He rubbed one hand up and down her back
again while the other an arm held her around her waist, halting her feeble
struggles.  "Your secrets are safe with me," he whispered directly
into her ear.  "You can trust me."

Asha lifted her head and
met those eyes of fire.  "I don't even know you."  His mouth quirked
at one corner in a slightly naughty grin, and her eyes were drawn to the scar
down the center of it.  Before she realized her intent, she had a finger
against those wicked lips and was touching the scar.  It was a ragged line that
contrasted seductively with the soft skin of his mouth.  She finally looked
away from those lips and back into his eyes.  "I remember the taste of
your blood, from when you saved me."

"What did it taste
like?"  His voice had turned gruff, and the feel of his lips moving
against her finger had her jerking back with a gasp.  She licked her lips. 
"Like heat… and power. It was my first kiss, and the first time in my
whole life that I remember being warm."  She bit her bottom lip then
pressed them together, watching the fire in his eyes blaze out of control even
as she felt an unfamiliar yearning under her own skin.  "Was it the mage
blood?" she whispered, her eyes moving back to his lips as her finger
trailed the raised scar a second time.  "Or the kiss?"

"Let's find
out," he growled, his hot mouth finding hers unerringly.  He sank into
her, and she welcomed the heat of him, her hands going to his face to hold him
closer while the taste of him and the warm slip of his tongue caused explosions
from every nerve ending in her body.  The fire whipped between them just that
fast.  It was so fast that Asha panicked, jerking herself out of his arms and
back into the water that was boiling higher and hotter around them.  He stood
to his full height, his eyes like flame tracking every inch of exposed skin he
could capture.  They were both breathing hard.  She could feel her eyes
rounding in her face as she tried to deal with the sudden shift in her world.

"Well," he
asked, his tone a touch mocking and boiling with heat.  "Warm
enough?"

She felt hunted by those
eyes and overpowered by the differences in their bodies.  He may have been only
a few inches taller, but all of it was hard, hungry male, and she felt
decidedly tiny and fragile standing before him naked but for the water that
swirled and boiled playfully around them.  She swallowed and fought the need to
back up another step.  "Sufficiently, yes."

"Then I suggest you
check my bag and see if any of my clothes survived the fire.  You're going to
need cover if you expect to leave the room."

She raised her chin at
his hard tone.  "That's considerate of you."

"Not really."

Asha scrunched her brow,
trying to figure out what he could possibly mean by that.  She gave up and
headed for the slightly singed bag he alluded to.  She climbed out of the hot
spring feeling the heat of his eyes touch all her intimate places; she
shivered, but this time it was not from the cold.  The magic of the place had
already enveloped her and dried her instantly, though her hair that fell dry and
soft to her hips would need a thorough brushing.  Because she did not have to
stop to dry off, she quickly dressed in the white tunic she found.  It fell
like a dress to her knees, and she had to roll up the sleeves, but it would get
her to her room.  At least his bag had been far enough from the cave entrance
and protected.  She could see what was left of his leathers spread out over
some rocks, and they were still smoking.  She winced at the sight.

"And well you should
feel bad," he said.  His voice had lost none of its heat.  "The least
you could have done was burned them before I took the time to scrub them like
an old washer woman."

Her temper hit a slow
simmer as she raised her chin and pointed it his way.  Her hands went to her
hips, battle ready.  "The honest labor probably did you good."

"Asha."

"What?" she
asked with belligerence, waiting for his next vexing statement.

"If you don't leave
right now, I will have to taste you again."  His softly uttered words had
power that she felt to the core of her very being.  "Will you be able to
stop a second time?"

She sucked in a breath
and without another word fled to safety of her rooms.

After taking a short time
to calm down, she dressed, putting the thought of that kiss out of her mind so
she could make plans.  She would certainly not allow one fire mage to derail
her, no matter what wonders he could perform with his mouth.

It did not occur to her
much until later that the warmth from the encounter did not fade but lasted
deep into the night, where dreams of a fire mage with topaz eyes and hot hands
were replaced by a cold vision of death.

***

The scream woke him up. 
Braedon jumped out of bed and grabbed his sword, not bothering with clothes as
he sprinted for Lady Asha.  The scream still reverberated in his head; he knew
without being told that it was the dragon seer.  He felt it in his blood where
his fire lived.  He made it to her room and threw open the door, giving no
thought to the fact that no one else had heard the scream and come to help.  Instead,
he went sword first into the room and found her tossing on the bed.  Her white
night rail had ridden up and was showing almost as much leg as his tunic had
earlier, when she ran from him.  She turned, and he realized she wore the same
tunic; she had elected to sleep in his shirt.  He found himself relishing the
sight for a moment while he stood there naked with a sword over a lady dragon’s
bed. 

It was not exactly the
best situation to be found in and hardly the one protective dragon males would
appreciate.  Indeed, if he had walked in on anyone else in this position, he
would have skewered them on the spot and asked questions while the blood was
being mopped from the floors.  He pulled a throw from the foot of the bed and
wrapped it around his waist.  He knew he looked slightly less dangerous and a
great deal more ridiculous with the tassels hanging about his hips.  It would
have to do.

It occurred to Braedon as
he stood there and watched her sleep so restlessly that if the scream had
happened anywhere but in his head, the dragons would have beaten him there by
now.  But, what had he heard?  And why did no one else hear it?

He stepped around to the
bed where he could see the lady’s face.  Braedon placed his sword against the
wall when he found no enemy to face.  Something about the way she twisted and
gasped in pain called to him.  Before he knew he was going to do it, he brushed
back all that luscious hair.  "Asha," he called.  She twisted in his
direction as if seeking the voice, but she did not waken.  Was this what a
vision looked like?  If so, he did not care for the experience at all.

***

Deep in her dream vision
Asha walked.  It was a familiar scene.  She had been here before and wondered
if the conversation about them had triggered another walkthrough.  When the
scene slowly opened up, she knew this was all new.

Lord Graedon stood in the
deep dark of the cave, his dragon eyes glowing with an inner light that lit the
way for him.  In front of him, Asha could see a vial of some kind and had to
think the deep red color so vibrant in the dark cave had significance.  She
studied it as her mother had taught her, doing her best to ignore the fact that
Laksee's murderer stood so close cursing and knocking over parts of what looked
like some kind of liquid experiment.  She knew nothing of science, so the tubes
and bottles filled with blobby dark matter were alien to her, but she watched
everything just the same.  Then, when she was sure there was nothing else to
see, she looked around for the rest of the vision.  Beside and behind the table
was a long cart draped with a vibrant blue cover, and behind the racket the
dragon was making, she could hear something dripping slowly.  She followed the
sound around until she could make out a lax hand dripping deep red blood onto
the floor at the dragon’s feet: a lady’s hand judging from the delicate wrist
and long pale fingers.  She zeroed in just where it fell down from beneath the
blue that was the exact shade as her mother’s eyes or her own.  She took a step
back, wishing to be away from the vision before the rest revealed itself, but
like every other time before, she was trapped there until she saw all she was
meant to.

Asha was so tired of
being trapped.

Finally, Graedon pulled
back that vibrant blue cover and revealed what was hidden.  Asha screamed and
fell back, her eyes stuck on the horror before her.  Then she could do nothing
but watch as the man all the world saw as her father dissected what was left of
her mother.  By the time he was finished, she was huddled in the corner, hands
over her ears to block out the sucking sounds of the saws and tubes he used to
harvest her mother.  It was only as he finished and threw a saw across the room
so that it stuck straight out of solid rock that she truly understood the vision.

"Damn you,
Laksee!" he bellowed, knocking over the table so that all that scientific
equipment and collected body parts went flying.  Then he whipped around and
looked right where she huddled in the corner.  She thought for a frozen moment
he had seen her, but he was looking farther afield than the black cave.  A
light seemed to go on behind his eyes, and he finally uttered a word that
chilled her already cold blood even further.