Inferno (Talon #5)(67)
She sighed. “Sometimes, I do hate you, Cobalt.”
Stunned at the abrupt change of heart, I blinked at her. “O…kay,” I stammered, utterly confused. “That came out of nowhere. Why?”
“Because I knew who I was before I met you.” She shifted to stare at a point over the distant hills. “I was what Talon required, a Basilisk who didn’t need to know the whys of my missions, I just needed to complete them. No questions, no doubts. Now…” She shook her head. “Now, I have no idea who I am, or what I’m supposed to do when this is all over. You’re making me question everything, and I hate it, because it’s something I can’t seem to control.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Welcome to my world. That’s what happens when you grow a conscience.”
“No.” She took a short breath, regaining a little of her composure. “It’s more than that. It’s…you, Cobalt. For some reason, my distaste of you has grown tremendously.”
My brows arched. “Oh?”
“Yes.” Mist crossed her arms, still not looking at me. “You are constantly on my mind lately,” she said. “I cannot think when you and I are in the same room. Your presence haunts me even when you are out of sight. It is irritating, and I don’t know how to stop it.” She gave a short huff and glanced at me, defiant. “Do you have any suggestions, since you seem to be more adept at these kind of things?”
I swallowed the sudden dryness in my throat. No, I thought furiously. I don’t want this. I’ve already been through enough with Ember. This can’t be happening to me again.
But it was different this time. There was no heat in my veins, no fire consuming me from within. No savage, almost painful yearning from Cobalt toward the echo of the white dragon in the drive. Whatever this was, it was nothing like the Sallith’tahn. Whether through time or the knowledge that Ember had chosen someone else, I barely felt the life-mate bond anymore. If I concentrated on it, it was still there, weak and painful. And though my dragon side still keened the loss of his mate, my human self was…almost relieved. I was free. I could finally make my own choice, without following the instinctive pull of the Sallith’tahn. And, maybe, that was what Ember had wanted all along.
The only question was…did I want this?
I sighed. “I don’t know, Mist,” I told her truthfully. “I think we both know what’s happening, but I honestly couldn’t tell you where to go from here. I have absolutely zero experience with this type of thing, and really, I don’t even know if I want to try. We’ve both seen it happen. We both know how screwed up it can get. I mean, hell, look at Ember and St. George. A dragon and a human?” I shook my head. “If that’s not messed up, I don’t know what is.”
“It shouldn’t be possible,” Mist argued. “We’re dragons. We’re not supposed to feel like they do.”
I almost smiled at how much she sounded like me. And how much I was starting to parrot the exact same things Ember had said. “Maybe it shouldn’t be possible,” I said, shrugging. “But it is. At least, it is for me. I’ve been around Ember long enough to know that it can happen, and that it’s damned hard to ignore. Ember chose the human knowing what it meant, that they’d only have a short time together. She would rather spend a few years with him than a few centuries with another dragon. That’s how powerful it can be.”
“I don’t see how they do it,” Mist remarked. “Or why. It’s completely illogical.”
“Yeah. I guess it is.” We were dancing around the words, as if not saying them out loud would somehow make it less real. The things that dragons did not experience. Emotion. Attraction.
Love.
Mist looked down with a sigh. I watched her, noting how the moonlight shimmered off her hair, seeming to glow in the darkness. “So, what now?” I asked, feeling a strange pull in the pit of my stomach, urging me toward her. “What do we do about it?”
Mist didn’t reply. Her brow furrowed, and she seemed perched on the razor edge of a wire, able to fall either way. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for her answer, hoping that she would… Actually, I didn’t know. What was I hoping for here?
The Basilisk raised her head, letting out a long breath. Before she could say anything, however, my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket, sounding urgent.
“Dammit. What now, Wes?” I pulled it out, seeing a new text flash across the screen.
Did you fall down a rabbit hole? Where the hell are you?
Well, that was a mood killer. I rolled my eyes and hit Reply on the screen. Bitchy much? I texted back. I took a walk, where do you think I am?
Certainly not here, was the almost instant reply. Going over the blueprint the bloody Archivist sent us. Didn’t Mist tell you? I thought that’s why she went out there.
What? I looked up at the Basilisk, narrowing my eyes. “Why would the Archivist know what we’re doing, Mist?”
“Because I sent him the video from earlier,” she explained, as if that was obvious. “I also gave him full details of what was happening, and that we were planning to assault the lab to take out the vessels. He thought we could use all the help we could get.”
“And you didn’t tell me this earlier?”