A dragon. Truly.
Then Dorian’s body blocked all sight. He wrapped himself around me as he ducked us both down.
A great, terrible wash of heat hit me from all sides, and I waited for it to take us. Waited, waited?—
My eyes opened. The heat was terrible, but no pain came. No fire, no burn.
I raised my head. A wall of flames burned taller than me between us and the dragon. Beyond it loomed Caustrix, head raised high.
“At my feet lies my tooth.” The great black tail swept over thecavern floor, passing over a small, glowing object. “Now you can see it with your weak eyes.”
I rose, and Dorian with me. Our gazes met, and an unspoken thing passed between us. Invisible, nameless, but palpable.
He had been ready to die with me. No, he’d been ready toprotectme—for the second or two his body might take to crisp—from dragonfire.
Dorian, protector. Dorian, truth-teller.
This time I was the one gripping his hand as we turned toward the creature.
Caustrix watched us, eyes narrowing. The angular head tilted as though considering the two fools who had chosen to stray into the tomb of a dragon.
“What would you give, child of dirt,” Caustrix said from beyond the dancing flames, “to have this bit of bone?”
What would I give…
I had already given up my whole life. Who I was had died in the rubble that night of the attack. Eurydice Waters was just a name now, a thing I carried with me but didn’t own. My life had shrunk in the fortnights since to a smaller and smaller sphere. Life, death, survival.
I no longer wanted simply to survive. I wanted tolive.
The truth came quick, easy. It always did when it aligned with what you wanted.
“I’d give all but one thing.” My fingers tightened around Dorian’s. “All but him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Eurydice
Caustrix regardedme from his imperious height. “Spoken like a true daughter of scorn.” The black scales on his back rose, shifting in the blue firelight. “I will give you a choice, Eurydice Waters. In exchange for the tooth, you may give me either one moment inside your mind. Only a breath, little queen. One heartbeat in your mind, one thought to taste. Or…”
I held my breath.
“A piece of your soul.”
Beside me, Dorian tensed. I knew from the tightness of his grip what was in his mind.
The choices were totally unbalanced. Ridiculously so. And if I had learned nothing else from a childhood spent in the Dip, an offer like this was never whatit seemed.
Bargain. Dig in.
“Is there nothing else you’ll accept?” I asked.
“Nothing.” The answer was quick, practically a hiss. “Give, take. I will give you the tooth only for an equal offer.”
Dorian stepped in front of me, his back to the dragon, and his hands cupped my face. “Neither. Take neither.”
Caustrix could hear him. No doubt Dorian knew it, too.
“We leave,” Dorian said. “We leave, and we find another way.”