I arched a brow.
“Okay, a big snag. But it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.”
“What?”
“Anna and Cara are on it,” he said.
“Are you calling Anna fat?”
“What? No!”
I closed my eyes. Perhaps this was a new kind of Xumi torture. Idiot Dires spouting nonsense.
“They have a plan,” Matt assured me.
“You getting captured was part of a plan?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Sebastian’s in a bit of a spot, too,” he admitted.
I sighed. “Galeran got him?”
“Yeah.” Matt’s handsome face contorted again. “That’s an issue.”
He said it like it was solvable. I hadn’t known the Dire long, but long enough to peg him as a sharding optimist. I zeroed in on the important bits. “But Anna’s okay?”
“Yeah.” He glanced around before whispering to me. “We’ve bonded.”
My heart twisted. “How nice for you,” I said through gritted teeth.
His brows lowered. “No, I mean we’rebonded.”
Bonded. My overloaded brain cells fired. “You mean—”
“Yeah.”
“Well, warn her to stay far, far away from here,” I snarled. “Everything Xumi touches burns to ash. Anna can’t help me, and now, she can’t help you either.”
He stared at me. “You don’t know Anna.”
I swallowed. “If she tries, Xumi will roast her alive. Tell her, Matt. Tell her to forget about us.”
For just a second, his eyes glowed emerald, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. “I have never been able to tell her anything. So if you think you or I can stop her, you are not the Dragon I thought you were.”
I hung in the chains, my gaze sliding away from him. I was not the DragonIthought I was. “You should have forgotten about me,” I stated. “Now, you will all suffer.”
“You haven’t figured it out, have you?” The note in his voice forced me to meet his eyes.
“Figured what out?”
“Fate has done this to us,” he growled. “We are linked—you, and I, and that bleedin’ Bellati. We belong to her, all three of us. She could no more leave us here than cut off one of her arms.”
I knew the truth of it. Had known it from the moment she’d entered my dreams. When she’d reached for my soul and yanked loose whom I’d once been.
For just a moment, I dared hope—but it wasn’t meant to be, and I bared my teeth at the Dire.
