Page 15 of To Spark a Dragon's Love
Shame cloaked itself around me. I’d been reduced to this. A spectator hiding and watching a world I couldn’t have—couldn’t save—pass me by while my own beast roasted me from the inside out.
But my cousin knew none of my inner turmoil.
He looked at me, waiting.
I cleared my throat. “I’d hoped to find my scribe in his office. We have invitations to send. Unless you’re too busy doing…”
My gaze dropped to the basket of baked goods hanging off his arm. I kept my Little Red Riding Hood joke to myself.
Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have hesitated to mock him. But we no longer had the relationship we once did.
“Invitations?” Kieran’s nostrils flared as his tongue wet his lips. His eyes widened. “And does she bear your mark?”
I held back the roar of my beast at the insult of Kieran smelling Willow on me. Of tasting her scent as if she wasn’t his fucking queen he should bow to. Yet I hadn’t treated her as such either. The knowledge was a stark reminder of how much I could fail everyone.
Of how you already failed them.
Rigid, I stared past Kieran, not letting anything show on my face. “She does. Though I fail to see how this is the answer. Human women with a dusting of magic they have no clue how to use. If they can even use it at all.”
I thought of the way I’d succumbed to Willow’s intoxicating scent and scratched my chin.
Maybe she could use her magic.
“They can’t.” Kieran set down the basket. “Even if they could, the witches seem to think that isn’t Earth’s plan. Or it might be that they’re jealous Earth didn’t request someone from their coven.”
“I take it you went to the witches.” I sighed. Kieran acted as liaison between the various species, going so far as to contact them for help when the prophecy spelled our doom.
“You would know if you’d been here.” His jaw clenched.
“Forgive me for not jumping at another of your foolish plans.” I leaned back against the wall, folding my arms over my chest and refusing to let him work me up. “And this plan means nothing if they can’t even—”
“They don’t have to do anything.” Anger shone in his eyes as he cut me off. “This was the plan all along. It had to be. To find our fated mates and have a chance at a future. Don’t you see it? Earth has given us hope.”
“Hope,” I tsked. He was a fool if he believed that was enough. “That’s your grand plan this time. And what now? Do we spend the next few years breeding our mates over and over, hoping one of our seeds take to continue the great O’Sullivan bloodline?”
His fire didn’t douse. It raged hotter. “And would that be so bad if it meant we could actually save the world?”
Where his anger was a flaming red, mine was a cold ice that gathered the shadows of the room.
Damn them all.“You would put your own hatchling in my position?”
Scorn dripped from my tongue like venom. I dared him to say that he would.
“If it meant…” His voice trailed off as he took a breath, remembering himself. Kieran’s eyes found mine again. “Do you recall what it was like to be young?”
“What of it?” I spit.
Better to forget.
Childhood memories washed over me, drawing out a deep and painful whine from my dragon. Fighting with sticks. Tumbling through the sky. The day Lucan was born. I stared at Kieran, my oldest friend, and hated myself even more.
“It wasn’t always so bad,” Kieran was saying. “Sure, your father had a cruel hand, but once he passed, we had some good times for a century or so before the beginning of the end.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My tone was cold and sharp, cutting open the chasm between us further. “My father understood the necessity of my training. Without it, I never would’ve survived this long.”
You’re barely surviving now. Weak. Pathetic.
“Okay.” Kieran held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t want to fight with you about this anymore.”
