The slap Shayla delivered to my cheek was fast, hard, and unexpected. She’d never physically hit me before. But I’d never openly defied her before, either.

  “I picked you off the side of the road, you ungrateful little—” She never finished the sentence.

  Benedict’s hand closed around her throat. Jordan lunged and Benedict caught him in the same manner, drawing him up short. He lifted them easily, like holding two grown adults aloft by their throats was nothing, and walked. Out of my bedroom, through the living room.

  “Drift, angel, do me a favor and get the door.”

  I don’t know if opening it was the best decision, but Shayla’s face was turning an alarming shade of red, and though I might not like her much—okay, any—right now, I didn’t want her to die. Benedict tossed them outside like he was throwing a couple of garbage sacks onto the curb, dusted his hands together and slammed the door shut.

  After frowning at the door handle for a second, he flipped the deadbolt and put his hand on the lock. Heat rolled off him, the metal glowing white-hot.

  No key was ever unlocking that bolt again. But all it was going to do was delay them. Shayla would call the police, and they would break the door down. She’d probably tell them Benedict had kidnapped me, and nothing I said in his defense would matter because she would have informed them of my long history of mental instability.

  I buried my face in my hands, flinching when Jordan started pounding on the door. He and Shayla were both yelling, but I didn’t hear what they said. I didn’t want to.

  All I could think was: Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

  17

  Benedict

  I covered Drift’s hands with mine, gently peeling them away from her face. “It’s okay.”

  Her head jerked up and she glared at me. “Nothing is okay.” Then she cast a wide-eyed glance at the door, as if afraid Jordan and that woman would hear her.

  I could fix that. I scooped her up, ignoring her protests, and carried her back into her bedroom. “What is the problem?” I said when I put her down.

  “What is the problem?” she sputtered. “You just threw them out.”

  “They were being rude. And you opened the door for me.”

  “I opened the door because the damage was done, and of course they were being rude. That’s what they are. You know what else they are? The people who own me.”

  Flames licked at the back of my throat. “What do you mean?”

  “You think this place belongs to me?” She held her arms wide, indicating the dwelling. “No. Shayla owns it. She owns the credit cards I pay my bills with. She owns the money that pays for my college.”

  “So leave her.”

  She laughed. “You don’t think I’ve tried that? There’s no getting away from her. I have no money and no resources and the three times I left, she had me tracked down and hauled back to her within hours.

  “I’m crazy, you see? I’m a danger to public health.” She stalked to her closet, pulled out a random sketchbook and threw it down, open to yet another drawing of me, this one with my feet bare, toes curved into long, wicked talons, my wings stretching out from my back. “I draw pictures of things that don’t exist. The police are happy to find me and drag me back to Shayla.

  “I have no one, Benedict. No one who will help me if I leave again. And I have nowhere to go. Nowhere I can get to fast enough that she can’t find me.”

  “You’re wrong.” I walked to her, shedding some of my humanity as I went, because I thought she needed the reminder that she wasn’t crazy. My feet became as they were in the drawing, talons replacing toes, fine scales replacing flesh. My wings tore from my back, casting a shadow over the room.

  She inhaled sharply as I came to tower over her. “You have me. I will help you. And you have Elysium. She cannot follow you there. No one from this realm can. And we can be there in a matter of seconds.”

  Hope and skepticism warred in her eyes. “You said I was banished.”

  “You were. They un-banished you. That’s why I’m here. I was sent to bring you home.”

  She blinked. “You didn’t think to lead with that?”

  “I was a little distracted by you not having any idea who I was. I thought you might want to remember getting kicked out before you decided if you wanted to come back.”

  She dropped onto the bed, her hand going to cover where her Heartstone rested beneath her shirt. “I don’t think I have time to wait for that. Do you think you could give me the short version?” A forceful pounding came from the front door and she winced. “The really short version?”

  How was I supposed to condense the myths and legends of Elysium's history, combined with the events of the last few years, into an easily digestible few sentences? “Bad things were happening,” I said eloquently. “Elysium’s Oracle said we had to banish the heirs of the six territories to fix it. The Elders agreed and got rid of you. Bad things kept happening, so to save his own ass, the Oracle said we had to bring you all back, because the point of the banishing in the first place was that you could only come back and save us all after living twelve years in the mortal realm.”

  I was leaving out a rather important detail, but she had asked for the short version.

  “So you’re telling me I got blamed for everything and now they want me to come back and fix it? Me and these other girls?”

  I nodded.

  “And your—our—people are just buying this?”

  I hesitated and she laughed.

  “No, of course they aren’t. Does anyone actually even want me to come back?”

  “I do.”

  She clasped her hands and gave me a tense smile. “That’s sweet. But you’re one person.”

  I knelt before her, resting my hands on her knees. “I am one person who is soon to rule Dragon.” Before, I’d been waiting to depose my aunt in order to hand the kingdom to my cousin. And when Beryl had chosen to instead remain in Faerie with its prince, I hadn’t been so sure that I had a reason to rule Dragon on my own.

  But that reason was sitting before me, now. I wasn’t certain I wanted the crown of Dragon. But I would take it, for Drift. To ensure that she was safe. Wanted. Loved. “Come back with me, and you will always have a home. You will always have a place to belong.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve spent my life here living on someone else’s sufferance. Trying to be what they want me to be, trying to make them happy, because they took away my means to having stability any other way.

  “I can’t live like that again. I’m not…I’m not likable, Benedict. What happens when you figure that out? What happens when you tire of me?”

  Never. I would never tire of her. But I didn’t think that answer would persuade her. “You will always have a place with me, Drift. Be as unlikable as you wish. Darkness knows you’ve always known how to drive me to the limits of my patience. But despite that, we have always been friends. Whether we become something more, we will never be less than that.”

  You’re my Hoard. There is nothing I would not do to keep you safe, to keep you happy. But the words, as little as she remembered of Elysium, of me, would mean nothing to her. So I kept them to myself.

  18

  Drift

  Whether we become something more…

  Was an I idiot to feel the sting, if I’d thought we already were something more? Probably. He’d brought me to orgasm on his tongue, not told me he loved me.

  And, to be honest, if he had told me he loved me, I probably would have freaked out. I just desperately wanted something to cling to, because nothing had ever been safe to cling to before, and Benedict felt safe.

  Maybe that was just my body knowing what my brain couldn’t remember—that we were friends. And if I couldn’t trust my mind, maybe I should trust my body. A body that hadn’t wanted anything to do with Jordan, to the extent I’d wanted to crawl out of my own skin every time he’d touched me.

  It had known long before me a truth I had constantly reasoned myself out of: that Jordan didn’t see me as a person. He saw me as something to own. A tool needed to get his trust fund. Something to fuck when there was nothing else better around.

  My body practically sang for Benedict. That had to be worth something, didn’t it? The way I felt around him?

  And if I didn’t want to stay in Dragon, or if I couldn’t, I had my own territory, didn’t I? I was probably no longer legally its heir, but surely I would still have a place there.

  I could work. No one in Elysium had been convinced by Shayla that I was mentally fragile and incapable of handling the stress of a job. And I’d already gotten one memory back, so surely the rest would follow as my Heartstone once more became part of me.

  It was sound enough logic. But it wasn’t the reason I agreed. I did that for two reasons. One, because if there was any chance I might get my wings back, that chance was in Elysium. And two, because I couldn’t lose Benedict. The thought of him returning to Elysium without me, the idea of never seeing him again, was one I couldn’t bear.

  I wanted to be wherever he was, in whatever capacity he would allow me to be there. And yes, I did want him to love me. Because as one of the Heartstone vines rooted deeper into my chest, I realized that I had always loved him. That I always would love him.

  A new, more insistent pounding came from the front door. “Atlanta police, open up!”

  “Okay,” I told Benedict. “Take me home.”

  He held out his hand, and as I took it, a portal opened behind him. I only hesitated a moment, wanting to grab something—anything—to take with me. But all the things here were trappings of a life I had never really been meant to live.

  Even my sketchbooks were only dreams. Dreams of something I’d wanted desperately and thought never to have.

  I had them now. I had Benedict. And he was better than any picture or dream. And if I wanted to fill a thousand sketchbooks after this with his face and his wings and his body, then I would.

  I threaded my fingers through his and stepped into Elysium just as I heard my front door splinter open.

  19

  Drift

  My feet had barely touched Elysian soil before Benedict turned into me, his arms sliding around my waist and tugging me close. He looked down, a wicked grin on his face, and said, “Hold on.”

  Wings tore from his back. I slid my arms around his neck just as those wings gave a powerful beat and we shot into the sky. The wind whipped my hair with each powerful flap of Benedict’s wings as he took us higher and higher, in a straight upward path.

  I should have been terrified. We were hundreds of feet in the air and climbing. If Benedict dropped me, I wouldn’t survive.

  But it wasn’t fear swimming through my veins, setting my nerve endings on fire—it was elation. This, this, was where I was meant to be. This was the part of me that had been missing, the lack of which had left a void in me that nothing had been able to fill.

  I felt an ache between my shoulder blades, beneath my scars, muscles instinctively moving, attempting to stretch wings I no longer had. Pain and longing pierced me, and I let them wash over me in a wave, accepting them and letting them pass.

  The sorrow for what I had lost would take far longer to fade than this one moment, but for this moment, I refused to be sad. I was in the sky and Benedict would never let me fall. This was freedom—this was glory—and nothing would take my joy from me.

  Our upward trajectory slowed, then halted, the slow, steady beating of Benedict’s wings letting us hover above everything. I shifted, unhooking one arm from his neck so I could look below.

  The island seemed so small from here. A near perfect circle. Three of the six territories he’d spoken of were easy to see. The first, a wide expanse of black mountains, inside which I instinctively knew ran a labyrinth of caves in which the Dragons made their homes. On the other side of that territory the mountains shifted color, red sandstone forming the cliffs in which the Icarii—in which my people—dwelled. The last remaining territory was open beach, the white sand giving way to coastal plains further inland.

  The other half of the island was blocked, but as I looked down, my mind supplied the spaces where the territories would divide, what I would see if they weren’t cloaked in white mist. In the first, dense forest—werewolves, my brain supplied, the White Woods. The next, wide plains, my Heartstone burrowing deeper into my chest as I thought: Hunter territory. Next to it another dense forest, this one vibrant and green, belonging to the Fae.

  Their climates were so different, resulting in diverse terrains that never should have coexisted so closely together, but did. And in the middle of all the territories lay a space that was no territory at all. A deep valley in which a castle dominated the otherwise plain landscape, and there, in the very center of the island, a white stone hexagram stretched, each star point reaching toward one of the six territories.

  Both the castle and the hexagram filled me with a sense of dread. I looked up at Benedict. “What are they?”

  “Things to worry about later. For now, the only question you need to ask yourself is, are you ready?”

  I forgot the castle, the hexagram, the dread. Excitement lit through my veins like liquid fire, almost as hot as the man burning against me. A slow, happy grin spread across my face. Because Benedict had asked me that so many times. Every time we both flew, as high as we could, and waited, daring the other one to move first. “More ready than you are.”

  He smiled, tucked his wings and dove.

  I gave a shout of pure joy as the wind tore by us, tipping my head back to see the blurs of color that were the world. Benedict spiraled as we shot down, over and over, until I should have been dizzy but I wasn’t. Because this was what my body knew. This was what I had spent so much of my childhood doing, zipping through the skies, playing aerial games until my head spun and I could barely tell up from down and every muscle in my body sang.

  I hooked my legs around his waist and let go of his neck, my head and torso falling down, trusting myself to the hold of my legs and the strength of Benedict’s arms around my waist. I shouted into the wind, reveling in the absolute beauty of it all, laughing until tears streamed down my cheeks and became lost to the skies.

  Our flight slowed as we descended, passing over the black mountain range of the Dragons, arrowing toward an opening cut into the apex of the second-highest peak. I tightened my stomach muscles and swung up, gripping Benedict’s neck again. We soared through the opening and his wings flared, pulling us upright.

  I was kissing him before his feet touched the floor. Quick, desperate kisses, sucking his lower lip into my mouth.

  I needed him. I needed him more than I had ever needed anything in my life.

  My legs were still hitched around his hips as my hands coasted over his shoulders, down the broad, bare expanse of his muscled chest. I lowered my head and licked at the hollow of his throat.

  A growl started deep in his throat, hands tightening on my waist as he drove us back, until my spine fetched up against the stone wall of the room. He burned hot beneath my touch, a rumble in his chest as he held that fire within him back.

  I cupped his face in my hand. “Burn as hot as you want to,” I whispered. “I can take it.”

  He was so hot my skin should have been blistering, but though I felt the heat, I didn’t feel pain. Because my body didn’t burn.

  “I know.” His thumb came up, clawed tip brushing the small white scar at the corner of my left eye, the one I’d never known how I’d gotten. His touch—the gentle tap of that claw, brought it back to me.

  The only way for a non-Dragon to gain immunity to Dragon fire was to survive the cut of a Dragon’s claws. Given that those claws were sometimes poisonous to non-Dragons, Benedict had refused my childhood request to make me immune.

  So I’d snuck into his room while he slept, brought the tip of one claw to my face, and pricked it gently. It was such a small cut, and I’d only been sick for a day, but he’d been furious with me.

  “You were so angry about it.”

  His eyes darkened. “I still am.”

  I huffed out a laugh. “But aren’t you just the tiniest bit glad, now? That you can take me any way you want and not hurt me?”

  His irises, black rimmed in red, gave way entirely to crimson. The heat roiling off him doubled. I arched my hips, rubbing my center against the thickness of the erection straining through his pants.

  “Have I remembered enough for you to fuck me yet?”

  Flames danced across his skin, so hot that both of our clothing caught fire, burning to ash in seconds. We were naked, his body pinning mine to the wall, his straining length so dangerously close to where I wanted it.

  He leaned in, burying his face at the juncture of my neck and shoulder, breathing me in. “You try my patience, little Drift.”

  “You’re trying mine,” I answered, arching against him again. He felt so good, my pussy rubbing against the hard length of him. I squeezed my thighs tighter on his hips, getting the traction I needed to rise up, positioning his crown at my entrance.

  The quick tightening of his hands on my hips was the only thing that kept me from sinking onto him. I gave a frustrated moan, my chest heaving as I squirmed against his hold.

  “Angel.” His voice was tight warning, every muscle in him fighting to keep me from sinking onto him. To keep himself from thrusting into me.

  “You’re the one who burned our clothes off.” I swiveled my hips, feeling all the places we touched. “Don’t you want me?”

  “Of course I want you. I want to bury my cock in your sweet pussy and fill you so good you never want another man again.”

  ”So do it.” My fingers slid into his hair, gripping tight.

  He bit my neck, his tongue flicking out a second later to soothe the small sting. “You barely remember me.”

 

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