Page 17 of Guardian's Dilemma

“I’ve got protections around me.”

Damn, why had I told him that? All he needed to do was test where they were and he’d know exactly where to put that knife to do me the most harm.

He gave a hum and said, “I’ve got some around me. My- my clan put them round me. That’s why your spell only grazed me instead of blowing my whole arm off.”

My eyes darted down to his arm. His shirt was torn and there was a dark red stain on it where he’d bled. The skin underneath looked pale and perfect below.

His fingers began to work at the straps of my armour and I shifted round a bit so he could work. I was lulling him into a false sense of security. The more amenable I was now, the more he’d relax and the faster he’d make a mistake.

When he lifted the breastplate off me, I felt naked, despite the fact that I still had a t-shirt on. But my protections had been mostly baked into that armour. The armour that the Council gave me when I completed my training. It was armour that had saved me a dozen times already.

He laid it on the bed and turned it over, studying the back, the part that had always moulded to my chest.

“It’s dragon skin.”

“It’s not,” I insisted. I don’t know why I bothered. Arguing with him wasn’t helping the lull-him-into-a-false-sense-of-security thing, so I should have stopped.

In answer, he raised the knife and bought it slamming down into the armour. The knife sliced through it and I realised belatedly that it was a very, very sharp knife. Most blades didn’t penetrate my armour like that.

He sawed at it, hacking a hole in the breastplate and then withdrew the knife and studied the hole he’d made.

“See. Dragon’s skin.”

I looked.

Inside, it was like nothing I’d expected. There was a grey shimmer to it whereas the outside was black and hard.

He began to scape at the outside, peeling away the coating and I stared in disbelief as he revealed the dragon’s scales underneath.

Dragon’s skin.

I’d been wearing dragon’s skin.

My stomach clenched and I gagged. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the armour and see those scales. They’d been pressed right against me. Once, when I’d been caught unaware, I’d had to grab my armour and shrug into it whilst I was actually fighting. I’d been naked and my first thought had been protection and not modesty; I’d worn it right against my skin.

I gagged again and Glimmer stood back, his head cocked to one side.

“You didn’t know.”

It wasn’t a question. I raised my head and looked him in the eyes. For some reason, I answered him. I wasn’t even planning to because the idea of lulling him into a false sense of security once he knew I’d been wearing dragon hide seemed like the kind of idea that wouldn’t work any more, so I didn’t need to be friendly. My mouth moved anyway.

“No! No, I didn’t.”

He made a little humming noise. “But you know that’s where a lot of your protections come from, don’t you?”

“The Council work spells into the armour when—”

“Skin,” said Glimmer. “Into the skin.”

I tried not to gag again.

Glimmer asked, “The dragon’s scales are hard enough to protect you from a lot of blows and the skin absorbs magic easily. We’re magic, you see. We can hold magic inside us. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Our magic.”

“I want you dead.”

Something flickered over Glimmer’s face, something that I couldn’t identify. He was so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at him and I felt a faint stirring of something inside me that I should not be feeling for a dragon. The wave of self-disgust washed the lust away and I let anger replace that feeling. How dare he use illusion to trick me into finding him attractive. He was messed up.

Glimmer swallowed and my eyes tracked the way his throat moved.

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