Deryk (Dragon Hearts #2)(27)
“Of course not.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you patronizing me again?”
“Izabella—”
“How many times do I have to tell you my name is Izzi!” She stopped walking to glare at him.
Deryk’s heart clenched as he saw from Izabella’s brightly flushed cheeks and the angry glitter in her eyes that her fever was becoming worse by the second. And it was all his fault, damn it.
“Izzi,” he said carefully, disliking intensely this shortening of her beautiful given name. “You need to come back to the palace with me.”
“What I need is never to have met you in the first place!”
He flinched at the vehemence in her voice. It told him their relationship was definitely deteriorating rather than deepening to the connection he had hoped for.
Because Izabella had been given no choice in the mating. Deryk had taken that choice from her, not once but twice. “If I promise not to touch you, will you come back—”
“Not to touch me?” she derided, turning to make sure there was no one close enough to hear before continuing. “Having you touch me is the only thing that eases this burning hunger that’s threatening to consume me.”
It should gladden Deryk’s heart that Izabella needed his touch, but the tears glistening in her eyes and the stress in her voice caused him to feel pain rather than gladness. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m deeply sorry to have caused you this distress. I—I would undo the mating if I could.”
Izzi couldn’t doubt the sincerity of his words or tone. He sounded as stressed out about this as she did.
Because he hadn’t been given any choice about the mating either, she reminded herself.
His dragon had scented her, and now Deryk was as stuck with her as she was with him.
She frowned. “Tell me more about what happens if the mating isn’t completed.”
He drew in a deep breath. “My brother and one of the Romanov brothers both died when their mate refused the mating.”
“Karl.” Izzi nodded slowly. That death had happened almost thirty years before she was born but she knew there had once been eight Romanov brothers rather than seven. But she hadn’t known Karl died because his mate refused him. She wondered if her father, or perhaps both her parents, knew that. “What happened to the two women?”
“They both died too, three weeks before or after their mate.”
“Three weeks?”
He shrugged. “It seems to be the watershed after the two meet and the mating isn’t consummated. One or other of them languishes and dies, and the other one follows three weeks later.”
“Does that mean we have just under three weeks to decide whether or not to go through with this mating or one of us dies and then the other?”
Deryk flinched. “Yes.”
“And if we mate?”
“Then you will live for as long as I do.”
“I’ll really become immortal?” He had told her that before, but it was hard to take in let alone believe. Harder than the whole mating a dragon thing? Well, no. But immortality…
“Immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Deryk dismissed as if reading her thoughts. And maybe he had. “For one thing, your parents, your brothers and their families, your friends, will all die while you continue to live. Also, immortality isn’t definitive. I can be killed.”
“How?”
He gave a mocking smile. “The way you feel about me right now, I’m not sure I should tell you that.”
“If you die, I die,” Izzi reminded him.
He instantly sobered. “My head would need to be severed from my body by my own sword for my death to occur.”
“Yuck.”
His expression was grim. “The person who attacked Vaughn knew that.”
Her eyes widened. “They tried to decapitate him?”
“Yes.”
“He’s going to survive, though?” she prompted worriedly. Vaughn really was her favorite of the Romanov brothers.
“Yes.”
“Does Vaughn even own a sword?” If he did, Izzi had never see it.
“I told you, our clans aren’t the same,” Deryk dismissed. “I believe any form of decapitation will kill the Russian dragons.”
“I… But… How could someone even know that?” Izzi’s family had been servants to the Romanovs for centuries, and she had never heard of anyone being able to kill one of them.
He shrugged. “Someone who has studied dragon lore, probably. Which means we’re probably dealing with dragon hunters.”
“There are such things?”
“My brother Rufus was killed by them.”
It made Izzi feel slightly dizzy to realize dragons were vulnerable after all. “I’m sorry.”
“It happened almost two hundred years ago.”
“Did they use his sword to do it?”
“Yes.”
Nausea followed the dizziness. “I hope you keep your own sword well hidden.”
He grimaced. “All our swords are hanging in the entrance hall of Pendragon Castle.”
Her brows rose. “Then I suggest, after this attack on Vaughn, you take them down and lock them away somewhere no one else can find them!”