The woman at the closest booth shot him a look. Dani could see her struggle to equate the fact they were staying in a palace with his exotic appearance.
Dani stared out the big front windows. Every fibre of her longed to stay with the big Dragon—which might be a clear sign that she really shouldn’t. She’d survived this long by trusting no one.
Time to remember that. If Sirki was his sister, perhaps it was a decent compromise. “Okay.”
Something within him seemed to relax. The chicken arrived, and they carried it past the intensely curious people. The woman took one last, lingering look and Dani fought to keep from grinning. Her male partner glowered. She had no doubt that when the woman closed her eyes that night, it wouldn’t be her partner dancing through her head.
They walked out the door and around to the back alley. Once on the roof, Tyrez handed her the bucket and shades.
“They’ll keep the moths out of your eyes,” he said as he shifted.
Moths? There were moths?
Moments later, Dani was riding a Dragon over the city with a bucket of fried chicken in her lap and a set of military grade shades perched on her nose.
* * *
A pulse of energy jerked Ash out of his stupor.
His name was Ash. As starting points go, not terrible. It was always good to know who you were.
He was cold, but his memory served that up as a normal thing. Being staked out against a rock, with the ocean roaring at your feet, tended to push the physical boundaries.
Why was he here? That one took a little longer. The memories weren’t memories, so much as images of the past. He had to trace them to findwhenhe was now.
Movement out of the corner of his vision reminded him he wasn’t alone. A tall slim figure stood not two feet from him, eyes closed, hands outstretched. Each held a crystal, and they glowed as the Torshin used them to pull energy from the surrounding life.
Meanwhile, the past continued to reveal itself to Ash. Rindek and Demeti had put him here because the ocean would clean up when his body tried to purge the parasite they’d injected into him. It fed upon anything that contained the crystal dust. In a Dragon, that was nearly everything.
Ash’s head ached, but his talent continued to supply him with information. In its normal state, the parasite was a minor thing. Every creature had something that fed upon it. Most of the time, they lived in a sick kind of balance. A mature, healthy Dragon would develop a resistance, so it would do minimal damage.
But Rindek's plan to infuse the parasite with pure energy had mutated the creature, turning it into a monster that devoured tissue.
The Archmage and his son had repeatedly injected Ash with high levels of crystal dust. His body absorbed it into every cell, just as nature intended. And the parasites they’d planted in him went crazy, feeding upon it.
They had grown larger, spurred on by the crystal dust, consuming whatever they could get their wicked little teeth into. Muscles. Tendons. Organs.
Rindek cataloged the damage by reading Ash’s energy. Writhing in pain, Ash had been desperate to ride the timelines. Could the Archmage use this to bring the Dragons down?
The pain had been nearly impossible to push through. Most of what he glimpsed indicated they wouldn’t succeed, at least, not yet. But one timeline suggested that if they kept trying...
After the parasites had eaten their fill and gone temporarily dormant, Rindek left Ash in Demeti’s tender care. So the young Warlock could practice destroying a Dragon.
Which brought him neatly back to the present, and his tormentor, Demeti. Rindek was an expert at inflicting just enough pain to torture, yet keep the victim awake and aware. Demeti lacked that control. He’d already knocked Ash out twice.
Unfortunately, it just meant he got practice bringing him back to awareness.
The young Torshin’s eyes opened, and they glowed. A lighter red than the crimson of his father’s, but the difference was less by the day. Demeti pocketed the crystals and stepped right into Ash’s space.
Demeti’s hatred of Dragons had already led to many methods of torture. They lacked the inventiveness of his father, but were no less effective for it. Now, he leaned close, reaching between Ash’s legs.
The Dragon shifter was only clad in thin pants. Beneath them, he had his scales, but they were scanty and weak. Demeti grinned, revealing wicked pointed teeth, and squeezed.
The pain ricocheted through Ash, and he couldn’t stop his body from contorting or the gasp that hissed through his own teeth.
Yet compared to some things Demeti had done to him, this was mild. The young Torshin kept his face only inches away as his lust built to a crescendo, the grip tightening until blackness hovered once more at the edges of Ash’s vision. Then Demeti’s eyes closed in a moment of pure bliss.
But it wasn’t over. It had only just begun. Pulling his hand away, Demeti resorted to sending more pulses of raw power into Ash’s collar. It scorched through the Dragon’s brain until Ash once more welcomed the oblivion that came for him.