Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(33)

Dragos shook his head and turned away.

He had been an autocrat for so very long, and he was utterly used to absolute rule. Then Pia came along. She coaxed his arrogance into laughing and charmed him into easing up, giving in. He had convinced himself he was growing more tolerant in indulging her wishes, but the brutal truth was tolerance and indulgence were simply other forms of the autocrat.

Pia had said, The real point I’m trying to make is that I have no idea how to be your partner.

More brutal truth: he had no idea how to be her partner either, or anybody’s partner, for that matter.

She was always going to be a softer personality than he, immensely younger and less experienced. More peaceful. And yet here she was his best teacher again, for she had already shown him how she could bend to his will when he needed it. That, he realized, involved a profound kind of trust in him.

Now he had to learn how to bend to her will when she needed it.

Not tolerate, allow or indulge. Really bend, despite his mood, the circumstances or his temper. As old, strong willed and entrenched in the habit of power as he was, this was a lesson he might have to relearn over and over again.

But Pia also had to learn, there would only be so far he could bend. He was simply too dominant. They were in uncharted territory, and he did not know how far he could go. Plus he had been on edge for months, ever since the economy had taken such a serious downturn, Tiago and Rune had followed their mates and left him and the other sentinels running at full throttle, and the Oracle had made her uninvited, impromptu prophecy last summer that hung in front of Dragos like a mushroom cloud.

He would never forget the strange, dry voice that had come through the Oracle’s Power, or the quiet way it had spoken and what it had said.

It had spoken of stars dying in agony, and the nature of evil, of Light and Dark as creatures, and Lord Death himself having forgotten he was a fraction of the whole.

“I am not form but Form,” the voice had claimed, “a prime indivisible. All these things were set in motion at the beginning, along with the laws of the universe and of Time itself. The gods formed at the moment of creation, as did the Great Beast, as did Hunger, as did Birth along with Finality, and I am the Bringer of the End of Days. . . .”

Which, when it came right down to it, was insane gibberish. It made no f**king sense, and his atavistic reaction to it was just as nonsensical. But every time he thought of that voice he remembered the Power in it, and the hair at the back of his neck raised and the dragon clawed its way to the surface and looked for war.

But it had not targeted Dragos specifically. It had only mentioned him. In a way the real significance was not what had been said but that the prophecy had come to him, and when he and Pia had consulted with the Oracle a second time, the Oracle had said the events might not surface for months or even years.

They could not live their lives in fear. He would not. When Pia brought up the possibility of visiting with the Elves, he listened, eventually. Just as the Elves had intended, the trade embargo had caused damage, and it was time to explore ways to end it.

Not only that, but Pia and Dragos were natural lightning rods. There was always going to be some kind of shit happening, because some kind of spotlight was always going to be trained on them, and they lived eventful lives. If any shit happened while they were separated, they would deal with it.

And so he tolerated, allowed and indulged.

Gods damn it. The hardest thing to break was a habit, and the attitude crept in when he wasn’t looking. When all was said and done his behavior had been boorish and typical. He . . . owed her an apology.

And how strange it was, to recognize how he had grown to need someone after being autonomous for so very long.

He counted the time until he could go to bed and cast the dream spell. Then he counted the time as he waited, and she didn’t come, and she didn’t come.

Dawn bled a pale, colorless light over the eastern sky, cold and bleak as death. When he rose he did so silently, full of cunning, for the world he inhabited was filled with prophecy and predators. The dragon was not a safe creature at the best of times, and that was true especially now that he was without his mate.

He had questions and he needed answers, and while those answers could be found within the forbidden Elven Wood, there was a quicker and more efficient way he could get them, another place he could go that was much closer to home.

He called Bayne and made some arrangements.

Then he went on the hunt.

He found his prey easily within the hour. She wore a classic black two-piece suit, four-inch heels and another sleek chignon, but Dragos remembered another image of her from an age long past, wearing armor, covered in blood and screaming at the sky as he soared overhead, her face twisted with rage and hate.

The early morning was still dark gray and bitingly cold, and huge mounds of dirty snow were piled everywhere, but like Dragos, the Elven tribunal Councillor did not bother with an overcoat. She stepped out of the front doors of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue followed by two attendants.

If the Elf had seen him coming, she would have tried to find some way to avoid him, so he had not given her the opportunity.

Dragos could cloak himself so completely while he was in dragon form that a mouse could run over his talons and never know it. Usually he did not bother with casting such a strong spell, but he did this time. He cloaked himself while standing on the street curb and added a small, subtle aversion spell so that pedestrians somehow avoided the spot where he stood, until the Elven Councillor reached a spot just a few feet away.