Warning: this book contains adult language and themes, including graphic descriptions of sexual acts that some may find offensive.  It is intended for mature readers only, of legal age to possess such material in their area.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, events, and locations are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

Luckless

Copyright 2020 by Cari Z

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter One

“Incoming, one thousand feet!”

The gunner manning the corner turret wielded his megaphone like a whip, waving toward the edge of the wall. “Archers, move forward! Pikemen, get your asses ready to back them up!” Evan stepped up to his position, close enough to the edge to shoot over it but far enough back that he wouldn’t be vulnerable to the first thing with claws to crawl up there.

He glanced down and frowned. The crix were still about eight hundred feet away, but there were a lot of them—more than he’d ever seen before during a winter attack on the city. The dragons and their riders were already battling the bigger beasts farther out in the ruins that used to be Denver, but there weren’t enough of them anymore to keep the city completely clear. That was where Evan and the people like him came in.

The man to his left—a boy, really, probably no more than sixteen—shivered as he took his own peek over the wall. His hands were shaking so badly they could barely hold on to his bow, much less nock an arrow when the crix got close enough to shoot. His fear struck a chord in Evan, who still remembered the brutal chaos of his first battle almost twenty years ago. He smiled sympathetically. “First time on the wall?”

The boy gulped and nodded. “Uh-huh.” His posture was so stiff it seemed his back might break. “I thought—I thought there would be fewer of them. That’s why my dad chose now to bring me up here, so I could—I could get used to fighting them before the big waves come in the spring. But this is . . .”

“Unusual,” Evan supplied. “Around double what we’d see during a normal winter attack. That probably means they’re being driven.”

“Driven?” The boy turned wide eyes on Evan. “By what?”

Evan shrugged. “Lack of food, a bad weather front closing in, or more likely in this case? A bigger monster. Crix are tough, but they’re too small to put up much of a fight against a really big monster, and they don’t have the temperament for swarming for long. Too prone to cannibalism.”

“Oh. Right.” His voice sounded so small, already close to defeat without even seeing battle.

Evan moved a little closer to him. “Remember, aim for their heads—if you can crack the carapace, you’ll stun them, and then the other crix will take care of them for us. If you shoot them through the eye socket, you’ll kill them fast. Don’t bother going for the legs, they’ve got too many backups. Just breathe, nock, draw, and loose.”

“Breathe, nock, draw, and loose,” the boy repeated, sounding better already. “Breathe, nock, draw, and loose. Aim for the head.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Right.”

Evan patted the boy on the shoulder, then dropped his hand when the man stationed on the kid’s other side stalked over to them, pointing an accusing finger at Evan.

“You leave my boy alone, Luckless!”

“Dad, calm down.” The kid seemed embarrassed, but whether for his dad’s words or for responding to Evan’s attempt to comfort him, Evan didn’t know. “He was just telling me about how to take down crix.”

“You take down crix like you do any other monster—you shoot it,” his father said stiffly. “That’s what the damn bow is for. You don’t need Luckless to tell you that.” He focused on Evan again. “Ollie doesn’t need advice on killing beasts from a failed rider who couldn’t even keep his own dragon alive. I’ll tell you one last time—leave my boy alone.” He grabbed Ollie by the arm and hauled him a few feet farther to the left, away from Evan.

The kid seemed confused, but Evan just looked away. He’d gone through this same encounter so many times since coming to the massive fortress that was the city of Forge that the accusations had almost stopped stinging. There wasn’t much about what the man had said that wasn’t true, after all. Evan had lost his dragon, as well as everyone else left in Marble after that hellish summer five years ago.

Evan watched as the gunner swung his .50 caliber M2 machine gun toward an incoming flock of harpies—carrion feeders who only banded together when there was bigger prey in the offing. The gunner fired a short burst and half of the monsters fell, losing feathers and blood and shrieking almost intelligibly. This machine gun was one of only four in the city, and one of the very few firearms that they still managed to produce ammunition for. Even so, its store of brass casings would wear out eventually, and then they’d have little more than muskets to fire along with their arrows.

Some of the defenders cheered, but Evan simply tuned them out and glanced over the edge again. The first wave of crix was almost within range, their leg blades singing over the whistle of the icy wind, their armored bellies nearly scraping the chunks of pitted concrete and rebar that were all that remained of southbound I-25. Their front legs were shaped for climbing, short and stubby and tipped with thick, sharp claws, while their hind legs were long and built for propulsion. When they rubbed those blades together, they made a sound almost too beautiful to possibly herald death.

They were no more than a hundred feet away now, the bigger ones starting to jump in anticipation of bounding up the wall. It was an ugly, patchwork thing, made from the bones of skyscrapers and museums, the city it surrounded packed to the brim with the survivors, their herds, and their dragons. In most places, it was too steep to jump straight over, and the crix had to climb, but sometimes a few of them got lucky—especially the bigger ones, closer to mule-sized than dog-sized.

The gunner lifted his megaphone again. “Archers, fire at will!”

Evan had an arrow nocked before the man finished speaking, and loosed it at the largest crix within range. It hit a glancing blow on the creature’s head—not quite enough to crack its shell, but it was still stunned, limbs waving dazedly as it rolled onto its side. Five or six smaller crix immediately diverted to attack it, and Evan smiled grimly. There was no better way to take out a monster than with another monster.

He fired again and again, striking true and winnowing down the oncoming horde as effectively as he could. Unfortunately, most of his fellow archers weren’t having the same success. Ollie in particular seemed to have forgotten Evan’s advice in the heat of the fight, firing almost blindly and with no thought to aiming, which meant most of his arrows skittered into the ground. Evan gritted his teeth over it until his last arrow was gone, then lowered his bow and ran to the boy’s side.

“Slow down!” he shouted.

Ollie turned to him, his expression blank with shock, hands so tight on the bow they were blanched bone white. “Wha-what?”

“You have to slow down if you’re going to have a hope of hitting anything.” Evan kept his voice loud even though they were face-to-face now, trying to break through Ollie’s fear and the rising sounds of the advancing crix. The gunner yelled something again, but Evan couldn’t make it out. “You’re just wasting arrows otherwise. Try to—”

“Luckless!” Ollie’s father marched back over, dodging around advancing pikemen with rage written in the craggy lines of his face. “What the hell did I just tell you? You leave my boy alone or I’ll—” A crix the size of a house cat leapt over the edge of the wall, dodged the pikeman who tried to impale it, and landed on Ollie’s father’s chest.

It was small, but heavy enough to knock him to the ground. He screamed as he fell back, the crix fastening its mandibles into the front of his shoulder and violently shaking its head.

“Dad!” Ollie dropped his bow and ran to his father, trying in vain to pry the crix off of him. The creature’s leg blades keened and the boy jumped back, cradling his lacerated hands to his chest with a dumbfounded expression.

“Son of a bitch,” Evan muttered. He unsheathed his bowie knife as he ran over, reversed his grip on it, and then stuck it straight down, right through the side of the crix’s neck. He put his other hand on the back of the creature’s head and drew the blade in a circle. The wound seeped dark-blue blood, staining his glove, and a second later the crix slumped over onto the parapet, its grip vanishing in death.

He glanced back at Ollie, who blinked at him uncomprehendingly. For fuck’s sake, what were they doing in training these days? “Get your father off the wall,” Evan said. “Take him to the medics.”

Ollie nodded but didn’t move.

“Now!” His volume finally mobilized the kid, who managed to get a grip on his moaning father despite his bloody hands and hoisted him to his feet. Evan plucked the rest of the arrows out of Ollie’s quiver before he could disappear, then shoved the pair of them toward the nearest stairwell. Their injuries didn’t look too bad. They’d probably both live to fight another day.

Although if this was their idea of fighting, everyone would be better off if they stayed at home.

Not nice, Evan thought as he fired a pilfered arrow at the next crix to make it past the pikemen, a larger specimen that hissed menacingly when he cracked its shell. It reeled like a drunk, though, and he was able to jam his knife into its brain with little danger. But there’s no place for nice when you’re fighting for your life. He’d offered to help train the archer corps before, but had been bluntly rebuffed. Might have to insist.

The sound of the machine gun rang in the air, ugly and beautiful all at once. Their gunner was a good shot, really good, but he was too busy taking out fliers to help with the horde coming over the wall, and over it they were. Evan fired his last arrow straight into the eye of a crix not ten feet away, partly on and partly over the wall. He ran to it and shoved the quivering carcass off the edge, diverting half a dozen others toward their next meal, but it wasn’t enough. The crix were still coming, four or five bodies deep as they crawled up the wall, mandibles clacking and leg blades singing a haunting chorus. The pikemen would be overwhelmed soon, and there weren’t enough archers left on this section of the wall to do much good. They needed a strafe.

“Hey!” he shouted at the gunner, hoping against hope that he’d be heard above the noise. “Flare!”

The man didn’t even glance his way, still focused on shooting down harpies. Their feminine faces contorted with agony as the bullets tore into their flesh, the girlish illusion ruined by the cluster of razor-like teeth framing every scream.

“Flare!” He started running toward the turret, dodging the pikemen engaged in direct combat. He could climb up there and—

Shing! Bright white pain shot through Evan’s left calf and emerged as a half-choked shout. He turned to face the raccoon-sized crix that had sliced into his leg even as he drew his right foot back. Too fast for the creature to counter, he kicked it just beneath its jaw. The beast flew onto its back, writhing and squirming, and Evan jammed his knife into its throat and twisted the blade before it could right itself. His glove was soaked with blue now, but he kept his grip—salamander skin didn’t slip. He pulled the knife free and kept running, forcing his gait to stay long and smooth. He didn’t have time to limp—they were going to be overwhelmed, and their idiot of a gunner wouldn’t even notice until a crix pulled him out of his perch.

The easiest way to get up the turret was to take the stairs, but those weren’t accessible from the outside, so Evan found purchase for his hands and began to climb.

It was only twenty feet. It felt like twenty miles, especially when a tiny crix, no bigger than the palm of his hand but no less deadly for it, jumped straight at his face. Evan saw it coming and managed to parry it with the knife, barely maintaining his hold on the wall with his other hand. The crix hit the ground, but it wasn’t hurt, and it gathered itself to jump again. This time Evan met it with his boot, and the steel in the toe impacted the beast’s head hard enough to crack the carapace. The crix fell again, twitching uncontrollably, and Evan turned back to the climb.

He hauled himself over the edge of the turret, then threw up his hands when he found the gun swinging around to point at him. “Whoa, easy, relax!”

“What the fuck are you doing up here?” the gunner demanded. His lank brown hair was held back from his face by a red kerchief, and his eyes blazed with indignation. “Get back down to your post!”

“We need a strafe! Or we’re going to lose this section of the wall and all the defenders on it.”

“I decide when we need a strafe, not you!” He swung the gun around and fired off a few shots at a distant cluster of harpies. “You’ll manage.”

“Look at our complement—it’s down by half with injured.” Injured or dead. “We don’t have the archers or the ammo to slow down the crix enough so the pikemen aren’t overwhelmed.”

“You bein’ up here isn’t helping! I can— Oh, shit.” The gunner pivoted again and continued to fire, winnowing through an incoming cluster of fliers in a spray of blood and feathers. “Yeah! Take that, you bitch-faced pigeon fuckers! Take— Hey!” He grabbed for the flare gun that Evan had just lifted from his belt, but too late—Evan aimed it into the sky and fired. A few moments later, a burst of red exploded above them. The defenders on the wall cheered.

In the distance, Evan could just make out one of Forge’s dragons—Gorot, such a dark green he was almost black—turning away from whatever he was fighting and flying ponderously toward the wall. The dragons and their riders were spread thin these days, only three of them left with the mass and strength to engage with whatever might come at them across the ruin of the old city.

Once Gorot and his rider, Susan, got close enough to flame, the gunner—still glaring at Evan—lifted his megaphone and shouted, “Cover!” Fighters all along the wall pulled back to the far edge, and eager crix followed them.

Hundreds of monsters died instantly as a dense spray of fire roasted them in place against the wall. The heat was brief but intense, the burning warmth clinging to cold concrete in the form of charred gore. The crix already on top of the wall lost their focus, scattering in panic at their confrontation with an immeasurably more powerful beast. Some leapt back down the wall; others were skewered as they scuttled about, either by defenders or their own frantic cousins. Gorot turned to make another pass, but a sudden rumbling roar sent him heading back the way he’d come, and stopped everyone else in their tracks out of pure shock.

“Oh god,” Evan breathed. “Manticore.” He hadn’t seen a manticore in the flesh since leaving Marble, but he’d never forget that roar. The sound echoed across the city, and in its wake came the creature itself. As tall as a dragon but thicker, stronger, this beast with a shockingly human face, a lion’s body, and a killing, quill-covered tail was one of the deadliest and most destructive monsters roaming what used to be the United States.

It wasn’t in and of itself so dangerous to a dragon—they were armored and could fly, after all, and enough fire would drive off even something like this. No, the greatest danger a manticore posed to a dragon was to his rider. The quills in its tail could be fired like darts, and they were poisonous on top of being wickedly sharp. If a dragon got too close, the odds of their rider escaping injury were . . . not good.

Evan and the rest of the defenders watched in anxious silence as the two dragons who were closest engaged the manticore. It leapt at them like a cat jumping for a bird, dodging their fire with the speed of a snake. Two on one should have favored the dragons, but they were already tired from the earlier battle, their flight slower than it should have been. One of them—Lyra, the oldest dragon, grizzled and gray and missing half her teeth—was glanced by a leaping paw as she banked around the beast.

The move destabilized her flight, tilting her dangerously toward the ground. That was when the manticore fired his quills. Evan couldn’t see them fly, but he saw their effects clearly enough. One second, Lyra was attempting to stabilize herself and then—

A dragon’s roar was different from a manticore’s, less of a growl and more like an instrument, a clarion trumpet. Usually clear and smooth, Lyra’s roar now was tortured, a sound of pure, animalistic grief and rage. Evan could just barely make out the silhouette of a tiny figure dangling limply from Lyra’s back. His heart spasmed in his chest, his withered empathy reaching out but still unable to connect to the dragon. He was broken, and with the loss of her rider, Bram, so was Lyra.

Lyra abandoned the skies, diving straight at the manticore and spewing flames from her maw. The manticore ducked low and darted forward, but Lyra caught his hindquarters with her claws as she crashed to the ground, and dragged the beast in tight before smashing hard into an old pile of rebar.

Evan winced as he heard a loud crack reverberate across the valley—she had likely broken a wing, and just as obviously didn’t care. The manticore bit and scratched, but Lyra wouldn’t let go, rending it as she fought to bring her fire to bear again. For a moment it seemed like she would prevail, but the manticore was more agile on the ground. It got beneath her long jaw and dug its fangs into her throat. Her scream was a death knell now, tapering off after several agonizing seconds of pain.

The manticore had no time to celebrate its victory. Gorot and Kisthe converged on it from opposite directions, fire blazing so hot it was nearly white as it poured from their throats. The beast, still tangled with Lyra’s corpse, couldn’t avoid both jets. Half its body caught fire, the long, dangerous tail shriveling and curling like a dead match. It swatted fruitlessly at the sky, enormous paws grasping greedily until the very end. When it died, it did so with an enormous shudder that even Evan could make out.

The dragons screamed with grief. The defenders watched with breathless dread. And the remaining crix reversed direction and scuttled, en masse, toward the carcasses.

Chapter Two

Evan stood beneath one of the goalposts of what had once been Denver’s football stadium, now Forge’s dragons’ den, and shivered, his hands tucked under his armpits. Yesterday’s fight was old news, leaving only the memory of dragonfire for warmth. Snow had come during the night, tiny, frozen flakes dropping bitter and desultory from the sky, an insult of a shroud for Lyra’s and Bram’s bodies. The bodies of dozens of crix were stacked above the far entry to the stadium, collected by the surviving dragons to be eaten later. Even grieving as they were, they had to eat, and the meat of their kills was the simplest option.

The stadium blocked the worst of the wind, but the help it gave Evan was limited. He didn’t have the means right now to bargain for suitable winter clothes. His jeans were still a little damp from washing out yesterday’s blood, and had been patched so often they were almost more stitch than cloth. His sweater was thick and warm, at least, and the leather jacket helped, but his gloves were too thin to be much good against the cold.

He’d tied his hair back and shaved away three days’ worth of brown stubble from his too-sharp jaw and cheekbones, a futile genuflection in the direction of respect. He still felt shabby compared to everyone else—most potential riders went out of their way to dress up for Choosings, like the dragons gave a shit what they wore when they could feel what was in their hearts.

It was so strange, living in a place where some people were profoundly better off than others. In Marble, everyone had shared what they owned, whether they were a rider, a fighter, or a cook. Here, the riders were the upper echelon of society. They got to live in special apartments near the stadium that housed the dragons, they got extra rations, and they had first pick of everyone’s ammunition. Their lives were dangerous, of course—being a rider was never safe—but Evan didn’t think they were much more dangerous than fighting from the wall.

He shivered, glanced around at the small crowd that waited uneasily with him—all fellow empaths—and thought about monsters.

Evan had never known a world without monsters.

He knew they hadn’t always been here, of course—not the way they were now. Even when he’d lived in Marble, the tiniest little mountain town still standing on this side of the continental divide, there’d been evidence of the way things used to be. Cabins without bars across the windows and doors, buildings that were designed to keep out bears, not beasts. Old Coca-Cola ads on the wall of the general store, once a bright, attractive red, now faded to a pinkish gray. Empty boxes of ammo that had been mass-produced—flawless bullets, lined up in neat row after neat row, with no fear of using them up because, according to what he knew of the internet, you could just go online and buy more. Amazing plenty. Astonishing variety. Delivery. Nothing came by delivery anymore, not between cities—the monsters would kill you in the dead zones that the Plains had become.

Evan didn’t know exactly how the rifts had opened, those massive holes between dimensions that had ushered in a flood of the worst of another world’s offerings. The only way people had survived was by clustering in their most defensible areas—mainly cities that had been vastly reshaped to provide a safe haven inside of thick walls—and by making alliances with the dragons.

Dragons, it turned out, had a peculiar empathic ability that a small percentage of humans shared. It didn’t stop at a simple connection, though—dragons loved the humans they bonded with, and protected that bond with their riders ferociously. If their rider was killed, the dragon almost inevitably left behind the city they’d helped, too brokenhearted to stay. Riders kept dragons close, and more importantly to the governor, controlled.

Evan thought of Lyra and tightened his jaw. Word had gotten around that he had been the one to fire the flare that’d brought help to the wall. Some people—and the son of a bitch gunner, Dale was his name, was definitely one of them—thought Lyra was dead because Gorot hadn’t been there to fight the manticore as well, because he’d been off strafing the wall that didn’t need it, could have held, stupid, idiot, bring him in, KICK HIM OUT! Apparently, to them, Evan had cost the city a dragon. Bad enough he couldn’t keep his own alive, now he’s killing ours as well.

Governor Townsend hadn’t agreed. Not because he liked Evan, really—in fact, Evan was pretty sure the man regretted allowing him to stay five years ago. Towns, even big ones with over ten thousand residents like Forge, were hostile to strangers in this day and age. Evan had been the only survivor of the Marble massacre, and the first newcomer to petition to live in Forge in a decade.

But Townsend had let Evan stay in the hope that he would bond again with a dragon, however unlikely that might be. Evan had failed at every Choosing, and had instead proven his worth to the city as a smith instead of a rider. Still, as an empath, even a broken one, he was required to attend, and today was the fourth since he’d arrived. No one would meet his eyes, and no one came close enough to talk to, much less touch.

Evan told himself it didn’t matter, and stamped his feet in an effort to get more heat into them. The sooner the dragons came out, the sooner he could get back to his workshop. He wasn’t going to get caught short of arrows again.

“There,” a woman murmured, pointing to the far end of the field. Dragons were emerging from the massively-enlarged tunnel that had once welcomed men in uniform who’d made a living playing ball games, of all the ridiculous things. Evan snorted quietly and turned his attention to the fledglings. They were worth looking at, even if none of them were meant for him.

Gorot and Kisthe were a mated pair, and every year they brought a new egg into the world. After a year’s careful incubation, a dragon was born from it. Over the past forty years, thirty-eight of those eggs had hatched. Three of them had grown mature enough to claim riders, but all had died in a truly terrible battle last summer. Too young, too green, their scales not tough enough yet and their riders not skilled enough to effectively defend them . . . their deaths had been tragedies. The entire city had mourned their loss, but none more so than their parents. Frankly, Evan thought it was a miracle that Gorot and Kisthe were letting more of their young emerge at all. With Lyra gone, though, they needed all the help they could get to stay alive to rear the rest of their hatchlings.

That was why the Choosing was today. Whether the fledglings were ready yet or not, the city needed them. If they were lucky, the young dragons would last more than a single season.

There were three of them total, the oldest of Gorot and Kisthe’s surviving offspring. The largest was as big as the courthouse back in Marble—which was to say, not big but not despairingly small. The littlest one was no larger than a one-room cabin. It had bright black scales and coppery eyes, and was so beautiful that Evan had to lower his head to hide his sudden, unwelcome surge of emotion. God, there was no way such a tiny dragon would survive in combat. Don’t pick someone, don’t pick anyone, go back to the nest and live and grow stronger.

They couldn’t feel his urgency. Of course they couldn’t—Evan was broken. Still, it hurt a little bit to watch them advance across the dead field, catch the eyes of every human in the group in turn, and flinch when they encountered the blank spot that was Evan. The biggest veered to the right, heading for a young man dressed like a blacksmith. That was good, at least—a rider needed to be strong if they were going to keep themselves and their dragon safe in the sky.

Evan saw the man’s grin, heard his, “Me? Really? Thank you, oh fuck, thank you!” He threw his arms around the slenderest section of the dragon’s neck and stood there for a long moment, gasping and trying not to cry, until one of the caretakers gently interrupted the moment to lead them both away. They needed time to bond, to get to know each other, before they could begin training together. A year was standard, but there was no way that was going to happen now.

The pair would be lucky if they got a month. Idiot kid. It’s wonderful, it’s exciting, not a romance but a powerful, transformative love nonetheless, nothing you’ve ever known but everything you’ve hoped for—until you lose it.

The second dragon was the color of milk that had gone slightly off, white with a tinge of yellow. Its snout was shorter than the others, and it had a heavier body and shorter legs. It was a tank of a creature, not a fighter jet, and just looking at it made Evan’s heart pang with remembrance. Juree had been built the same way. Built to last, his father had said, and she had lasted, from his grandfather through his father all the way down to him. He was the one who’d broken the streak. There was no dragon to pass on to his child now—which was for the best, really, since Evan knew himself well enough to figure that he’d probably never have one of his own.

This dragon chose a woman, older than most of the other candidates, with faint streaks of gray marking her dark hair. She carried herself like a fighter, and if the tight nod she gave her dragon was any indication, she knew the odds they were up against. There was none of the young man’s exuberance in her, just a calm, almost resigned acceptance. For a moment, Evan wished he knew her name. She seemed like someone who might understand.

Only the small one was left, and it practically frolicked from person to person, wide eyes gleaming with curiosity and excitement. As it came closer to Evan, he knew from the slow, cold curl in his guts that he couldn’t handle coming face-to-face with it. He didn’t want to see it recoil in disgust once it got a better sense of him. He didn’t want to smell the musk of its scales or feel the banked heat of its fire. Touching it would break him all over again.

Evan gritted his teeth and turned his back on the dragon. The people closest to him murmured, and one of them whispered, “Rude bastard,” but he didn’t care. He would stay—as an unbonded empath he was legally bound to stay, it was one of the conditions of being here in Forge—but he wouldn’t look. It would be better for both of them.

Instead he stared straight ahead, down the gray, dingy tunnel that he and the other candidates had been led out of, and tried desperately not to focus on anything at all. Not the barren walls that used to separate players from fans, not the few disjointed chairs that were left in the stands above the tunnel itself, not the man in the black suit and cloak standing to the right of it, his hands resting on the shoulders of a child—

Wait, what?

Evan blinked and refocused. There actually was a man there, tall from the looks of him, but that was about all Evan could make out from here other than the long, pale fall of his hair over his shoulders. The child in front of him had the same pale hair, but cut shorter, and was holding the edges of the man’s cloak in front of his body like a blanket.

What were they doing here? If the man or his child was an empath, they should have been out with the rest of them for the Choosing. It was strange, though—Evan had done this before, he knew the other empaths in Forge by sight if not by name, and he didn’t recognize these two. Newcomers? Where the hell were they from?

Almost nobody traveled these days; it was way too hard to get from one fortified city to another. Hell, the closest city to Forge at this point was Cheyenne up in what used to be Wyoming, and they still told stories about the disaster that had befallen the last group trying to make that trip. Had this man and boy just been kept under wraps so far? Were there special circumstances made for the child for some reason?

Curiosity kept Evan staring at the pair, until a tiny wave from the boy made him realize that he’d been caught out. Shit, he was being rude now, right? If they were allowed to stand back that far, then the people in charge knew about them and had made arrangements and it was none of Evan’s damn business. He should turn around, he should—

The boy waved again. Evan, despite himself, lifted his hand and waved back.

“The choices are made!”

A wave of relief swept over him, and Evan turned around just in time to see a sylph of a girl throw her arms around the black dragon’s neck. God, she couldn’t be more than fifteen. He felt like he was going to puke. He made himself stand with the others long enough for the newly bonded pair to leave and, permission given to retreat, then hurried out of the stadium as fast as his injured leg would let him.

As he passed through the entrance of the tunnel, the boy and his father were nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Three

Evan wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and held up his latest arrowhead for inspection. It was a simple thing, forged from a piece of rebar and socketed onto the end of a treated pinewood shaft, but the metal was heavy-duty and could be made sharp enough to do the job. Rebar was the cheapest metal too. There was plenty of it lying around close to the city, close enough that scavengers didn’t have to endanger themselves too badly to get it. The more trouble a scav had to go to for what you needed, the more expensive it would be. Evan had once had his own arrowheads sold back to him for twice the price during a particularly bad stretch of fighting.

Evan’s custom arrows were some of the best, bought or traded for by other archers, but his margin was still tight. Figuring out how to sell his wares to support himself—that had been a hell of a learning curve when he’d first arrived. For all that everyone in the city relied on their defenders to keep them alive, Evan had quickly found that in no way did their need equate to any sort of charity or assistance.

He could have used the mass-produced arrows the governor provided to the archer corps, but those were made from shitty scraps and never flew the same direction twice. People who wanted to stay alive on the wall either made their own, or came to a specialist like Evan. He rented space in one of the larger smithies, just a corner in the back where he could craft his arrows in peace. People tended not to bother him in the shop, for which he was grateful.

Of course, the day he could have most used the solitude was the day someone sought him out. Naturally. When he saw who it was, though, Evan’s irritation morphed into curiosity—and, well, shock, frankly.

The man in the black suit was even more striking up close than he’d been yesterday. His pale hair, left loose over his shoulders, took on a golden cast in the light of the forges. His eyes were dark brown, but oddly reflective, and with his cloak pulled back, Evan finally got a look at his body. He was tall—well over six feet, he probably had three or four inches on Evan—and slim in a way that indicated a wiry strength hidden under good tailoring, rather than gauntness from hunger or illness.

“Are you Evan Luck?” He held out a gloved hand, and it took Evan a moment to remember he needed to respond.

“Oh!” He took off his forging glove and shook. “Hi, I’m— Yes, I’m Evan Luck. And you are?”

“Lee Caldwell.” Those glittering eyes were quite captivating, actually, but not so much that Evan forgot just how strange this all was. He sold his arrows through middlemen, and nobody—seriously—ever came to meet with him here in person. He was suddenly, intensely conscious of his scarred leather apron over the same wool sweater he’d been wearing yesterday. At least he’d changed his pants, but the baggy canvas pair he had on now screamed laborer, about as far from formal as you could get in Forge.

At least he’d shaved again this morning. Sparks and facial hair were never fun.

“How can I help you, Mr. Caldwell?”

“Please call me Lee. And actually, I’m here on behalf of my son, Jason.”

Ah, so the kid was his. “What can I do for him, then?”

“It’s a bit of a personal matter.” Lee glanced around, and the dozens of eyes that had been fixed on them suddenly looked away. “One I’d prefer to discuss in a more private setting.”

“I— All right, but . . .” Evan shook his head. “What could he possibly want from me?”

“Come with me and I’ll happily tell you. And treat you to lunch,” he added, “if you need a stronger reason to let me pull you away from your work.”

Evan was never one to refuse free food. He’d gotten his work done for the day, and his curiosity was eager to be sated. “All right.” He stood up and pulled off his apron, then glanced down at himself and grimaced. “I’ll need a few minutes to change, or you’re not going to want to be seen with me.”

“We’ll be taking lunch in a private location, not a canteen, but either way I wouldn’t mind being seen with you.”

You’re clearly new here, Evan wanted to say, but he held back. There was no need to antagonize the guy. “If you’re sure.”

“I am. Oh, and please—” he gestured to Evan’s bench “—bring one of your arrows.”

Ah. So he might be looking to buy, and wanted to cut out the middleman. “We can negotiate a price for them here, if you like.” Evan shrugged uncomfortably. “There’s no need to feed me first.”

Lee’s head tilted slightly, and he looked at Evan like he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. “I’m not here just for your arrows, Evan,” he said at last. “I’m here for you. Please, come with me and I’ll explain.” He began to walk away and, more curious than ever, Evan followed him. His face heated from the strength of the open-mouthed stares he was getting, but if his sun-scarred skin was good for anything, it was hiding a blush.

It was cool in the hall outside the smithy, and got even cooler as Lee led the way up a staircase in one of the enormous turrets of Forge’s inner city, going higher and higher until Evan shivered every time they passed an unblocked window. He was used to climbing to get on the wall, of course, but this staircase connected to the living quarters of the elite. Evan had never been up it before—hell, he’d never even gotten past the admin level of the inner city. His own room was ground level, like most people’s.

Five stories up, Lee turned down a hallway and kept walking until they’d reached the very end of it, finally stopping outside a thick wooden door.

“Your rooms?” Evan guessed as Lee turned the handle.

“A conference room, actually.”

Evan was obscurely disappointed by that, but his tiny upset was assuaged as Lee ushered him inside with his hand brushing the small of Evan’s back. Evan felt his blush surge again. God, he was sad. All it took was a hint of a nonviolent touch and he went shy. He mentally shook himself and focused on the room instead, to take his mind off Lee’s steady, gentle pressure.

The room was fairly typical for the fortress, if a little nicer than the ones Evan was used to seeing, with bigger windows to light it and a rug covering the rough concrete of the floor. A heavy wooden table dominated the center of the room, softened somewhat by the off-white tablecloth laid on top of it, and spread with covered dishes. There was even a coal-burning brazier set a few feet back from the food to keep the place a little warmer, which Evan appreciated. He could handle the cold, but after so many years of sleeping next to Juree’s fire-heated belly, he would always prefer a nice, toasty warmth to the perennial coolness of Forge.

“Please.” Lee pulled back the nearest chair. “Sit down.”

Evan sat, leaning the arrow against the side of the table as he settled himself. Lee sat across from him a moment later and began pulling the tops off the dishes. Stew—not the thin, greasy stuff Evan got from his nearest canteen, but thick and rich with actual chunks of meat in it—and bread that had probably been baked this morning, sprinkled with tiny brown seeds. There was a pot of hot tea and a little jar of real honey to sweeten it with too. Evan couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well. “This must have cost you a fortune.”

“The cost was no object.” Well, that was one way of saying that he actually had a fortune. Had Lee been a rider once? “Please, eat.” Lee smiled charmingly, and even though Evan knew the man was buttering him up for something, he couldn’t help smiling back. “Business can wait until after the meal.”

Evan probably took more than half, but he refused to feel guilty about it. Lee ate with the calm, measured pace of someone who wasn’t used to going hungry, so he could handle having a little less.

Still, the silence pressed on Evan like an anvil on his chest. As good as the food was, he was anxious to know the cost of this outing. He might not be paying for it with money, but Lee wanted something from him, and he needed to know what that was.

He finished before Lee and wrapped his hands around the warm earthenware mug of tea to give them something to do. As soon as he caught Lee’s eyes, he took the opening. “So, tell me what this is all about.”

Lee searched his face. “You’re rushing this. You’re . . . You must be uncomfortable with me.” He seemed a little upset at that.

Evan shook his head. “It’s not you.” Lee raised one eyebrow, and Evan actually chuckled. “No, really, it isn’t. I just like to know what’s expected of me. No one feeds a simple soldier like myself a meal like this without expectations, and the food won’t sit well until I know what it is you want.”

“I assure you, the food comes with absolutely no obligation. I can afford it, and I want you to have it for no other reason than the pleasure that comes from sharing a meal.”

He sounded genuine, and Evan felt a little ashamed for rushing through something that seemed to be a ritual for the other man. “I appreciate that.”

Lee nodded. “And I appreciate your candor, so let me oblige you by getting to the point.” He took a sip of his tea, face pensive, before setting the mug down and folding his hands together. “My son, Jason, and I saw you at the Choosing yesterday.”

“Right.” Evan clamped down on his discomfort at the memory. “You were back by the doorway.”

Lee answered his unspoken question. “Jason is an empath, but he’s too young to be a candidate in a Choosing ceremony yet. We went there to see if there was someone among us who would make an adequate trainer for him. If he’s going to be a rider someday, he needs to begin developing his skills now.” Lee frowned. “I’m surprised that this city doesn’t do a better job of training its empaths, honestly. Beginning to learn after you’ve been chosen is very inefficient.”

Well, that was a hell of a confirmation. “You’re not from Forge, then?”

“No. Jason and I came here from Chicago. We’ve only been living here for a month.”

Evan felt his jaw drop, but there was nothing he could do about it. “From Chicago? Really? How the hell did you— Sorry, how the heck did you make it all the way here from Chicago?”

Lee shrugged. “We had assistance getting here.”

“What, like a dragon?” Evan shook his head. “Chicago could spare a dragon to fly you here? They must have a whole stable full.”

“They have five as of now, and yes, a dragon did fly us here. But back to the training.” In other words, stop being a nosy fuck, Evan. “You were the only person at the Choosing ceremony to notice us. You carry a blade at all times, and from the calluses on your fingers, I’d say you don’t just make those arrows. You’re an archer too.”

Evan remembered to nod, surprised at how much Lee had gleaned in the short time they’d seen each other. “I am.”

“And a rider.”

“I . . . well, I used to be.” He shook his head. “Look, if you know anything at all about me, then you know I lost my dragon. I’m no good as a rider, my empathy doesn’t work anymore, so if that’s what you want—”

“I want a tutor for my son,” Lee interjected, cutting through Evan’s self-deprecation with his soft baritone. “I want him to learn from someone who has the skills he needs to know in order to survive. The best riders are archers, and it helps to have a knowledge of smithing, blade work, and hand-to-hand combat.” He extended a hand. “If I could see the arrow, please?”

Evan handed it over, but couldn’t let it go without an explanation. “It’s . . . probably not what you’re used to, back in Chicago, but those materials are the best I can afford.”

“If they work well, then the price makes no difference.” Lee inspected the heavy, ugly arrowhead with something like satisfaction on his face. “There’s no need to be self-deprecating. War isn’t a thing of beauty, and it shouldn’t be treated that way, but it’s clear that despite the humble origins of your equipment, you take pride in your work. That is a sentiment I would like to see instilled in my son. Pride, and a sense of responsibility. A rider must have both. And of course, I’d compensate you for your time.”

It was a tempting beginning to a negotiation, but Evan knew better than to get his hopes up. “Why me?” It had to be asked. “I’m not a very renowned figure in Forge. There are better archers”—not many though—“and more skillful smiths. If you made the right offer to Susan or Jack—they ride the big dragons, in case you don’t know them yet—I bet they’d make some time for you.” He smiled crookedly. “Not to mention, if you want your son to learn about confidence, he’d be better off with someone else.”

“Why? Because you lost your dragon?” There was such a swell of compassion in Lee’s voice, Evan couldn’t look at him. He shut his eyes and nodded tightly.

“The fact that you survived, and stayed sane, tell me more about you than anyone who’s never ridden a dragon would understand. It tells me that you have immense strength of will. It tells me that you’re worthy of respect, not contempt.”

There was something in the knowing tone of his voice that drew Evan out of his self-imposed darkness. “You too?” Evan had never met another rider who’d survived the loss of their dragon.

Suddenly, Lee and his son being here made a lot more sense. How could he stay in Chicago, surrounded by reminders of everything he’d lost? And he’d have friends among the riders there, of course, who would probably have been happy to fly him to a new home, a fresh start. If that was true, though . . . “But you could teach him yourself, couldn’t you?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Lee’s lips pressed together tightly. “Part of the price of our acceptance here by the governor means that he gets to direct most of my time and energy. I have other skills that prove me a valuable asset, and he makes the most of them despite my wishes. My son is left alone for much of the day, and the more time he spends in solitude, the more worried I become for his preparedness.”

Evan could picture it: an energetic, lonely child turning to mischief as boredom got the better of him. Still . . . “I don’t know how good a job I’d do tutoring. The archery, yeah, I can teach that, and some rough fighting skills, but that’s where my education ends. I came from a small town, and we didn’t have much use for— I can’t—” He struggled to get it out. “I don’t read well. History, research, anything that requires the use of the library, I won’t be much help with.” Not that they’d ever let me touch the books, the way my hands look most of the time.

“My son can already read,” Lee said, surprising Evan. “He knows how to use the library. What he needs is a guiding hand, someone to keep his attention on interesting tasks when I can’t. Someone who knows from experience what he needs to do in order to be the best rider he can be. Someone who he wants to work with, and please believe that I wouldn’t have asked for this meeting if my son hadn’t already expressed an interest in working with you.” Lee smiled. “Like I said before, you were the only one to see us at the Choosing. You’re the only person in this entire city to notice him since we arrived.”

“What about friends his age?”

“Jason is . . . shy.” Lee sounded frustrated. “And clinging, especially after our move here. I took him away from everything he grew up with, and while that was the best move for me, it’s been much harder on him. He needs more attention than I can give him, and I need it to be with someone I can rely on.”

“How do you know I’m that person?” Evan bunched his hands against his thighs. “I should have— If I was truly reliable, really reliable, I would have saved Juree. Or gone down with her, like a rider should. Instead I’m here but I’m not, not really, and I feel the emptiness all the damn time. My empathy—it broke when I lost her. That’s what I am now. Broken.”

“You and I both know that a rider would do anything to save his dragon,” Lee said, his eyes strangely bright and intense on Evan’s face. “But the same can be said of a dragon for their rider. If you’re still here, still alive, it’s because your dragon did their best to ensure you would be. They loved you enough to place your safety over all else. That’s all the recommendation I need, really. You’re alive, and you’re skilled, and you were kind to a small boy who needed a gesture of kindness. I couldn’t ask for anyone better to be Jason’s tutor.” He unfolded his hands and sat back. “Will you meet him at least, before you decide one way or the other?”

The smart thing to do would be to say no. To keep his head down. If Lee really was as valuable as he insinuated, then he kept company with powerful people who Evan preferred not notice him, in case they started making demands he just couldn’t meet. But Lee was the first person to voluntarily reach out to him since his background got out, and odds were he’d never find anyone else who understood him so well. Plus, the kid didn’t deserve to suffer just because the governor was taking up all of his father’s time.

“Sure. I’ll meet him.”

Chapter Four

“Can we shoot now?”

“Arm guard,” Evan reminded Jason for the third time that morning. The boy turned and pawed through the duffel bag he’d brought with him, rummaging for and finally emerging with a thick leather guard for his left forearm. Evan tied it on as Jason bounced in place, unable to contain all his excitement.

“Can we shoot now?” he demanded as soon as Evan pulled his hands away. “Please? You said we could start today, finally, so can we please?”

“Yeah, we can,” Evan replied, and Jason whooped and threw both his hands in the air. Evan tried to hide a smile.

It was only the end of their first month working together, but already he felt like he’d known this boy for ages. Going off of what Lee had told him, Evan had expected a child who was withdrawn, who would take effort to coax out of his shell.

Jason had been a little shy at first, but comfort had settled in after the first day together, and now it was all Evan could do to get Jason to slow down long enough to pay attention to the first step before running on to the second one. He was a child in desperate need of friendship, and as weird as it felt being the one to provide it, Evan had to admit that it was kind of nice to be welcomed so freely.

They spent afternoons together five days a week, unless Lee specified otherwise. Mornings were for Jason’s other subjects: reading, writing, numbers, and languages and whatever else his father deemed important for him. At one, Evan picked Jason up at the quarters he shared with his father—rooms Evan had yet to be invited into, but he didn’t mind. From there, they headed down to the workshop or, on this special day, to the archery field.

Their first week together had been spent doing no more than familiarizing the kid with the locations of the things he’d need to use and how to treat them carefully. Lee procured leather gloves, a thick leather apron, and goggles for his young son for use near the forge, but he let Evan take care of providing Jason with a bow. They’d built it together the first week, a simple, short recurve bow that took effort to string and pull, but was a light enough poundage that he wouldn’t exhaust himself too quickly.

Jason was impressed with the entire process, which was gratifying in a way Evan hadn’t expected. He remembered making his first bow with his father, and how good it had felt to finally have something like what he’d seen his dad use. Training with his father and grandfather had been the happiest time in his life—after both of them had died in the same battle when he was fifteen, any semblance of childhood had died with them.

Now, with Jason hanging on his every word, Evan felt the weight of making the boy’s experience more than useful. It needed to be fun too, and fun wasn’t something a lot of the other kids training in Forge got. Ollie from the wall was proof of that. And Jason was still young enough that they could afford to take their time.

He was a funny-looking kid, with his father’s elegant nose sticking awkwardly out of his small face, and wispy hair that constantly stood on end. He was skinny, and on the short side for his age, but Jason’s eyes were the same oddly bright mahogany as his father’s. He was chatty as hell and seemed immune to external perceptions, which was good since the pair of them got more than their share of wondering glances and hard stares whenever they used the public training grounds.

Like today. Time had to be reserved on the archery field for practice, and for the first time since Evan had arrived five years ago, every slot was full. At least half of them were mostly there to be voyeurs, absently firing arrows toward the straw targets as they glanced down at where Evan had staked his and Jason’s claim. Jason ignored them like they weren’t even there as he picked up his little bow and grabbed for an arrow.

“What’s the mantra?” Evan asked, stepping back a bit after he made sure no one was downfield of them.

“Breathe, nock, draw, loose,” Jason repeated, still bouncing back and forth on his feet.

“Right. Settle in.” He put his hands on Jason’s shoulders to help calm him down. “You can take your time on the range, so let’s do at least one breath between each action, okay? With me.” He took a deep inhale and Jason copied him. “Good. Nock and raise the bow like we worked on.” Jason did so, and Evan took a moment to adjust the height of his elbow before moving on. “Deep breath, good, and draw.” Jason’s right arm pulled back, trembling only a little, but Evan didn’t want to push it. “One more breath, keep your eye on the target, and . . . loose!”

Jason let the arrow fly, and it sailed through the air on a slightly wobbly trajectory but landed firmly in the center section of the paper target. “Look!” Jason immediately lost his cool and started jumping up and down. “Evan, look! Look at how close to the middle it is!”

“Good work,” Evan said, and they shared a grin. The things that still made Evan self-conscious with Lee—his scars, his missing tooth, his shabby clothes—didn’t mean a thing to Jason, but the kid would notice a lack of enthusiasm immediately. “That’s a great start. Let’s get through the rest of the quiver, and when the range master calls a break, we can go and collect the arrows, okay?”

“Okay!”

That first shot ended up being one of the best, another few skipping into the ground or hitting the hay but not hard enough to penetrate. Still, Jason was as pleased as could be, and his joy was catching. “This is so fun,” he said to Evan as they waited for the horn that signaled the shooting break. “Can we do it again?”

“Tomorrow, if you’re not too sore.” The horn blasted and all the shooting ceased, and Evan followed Jason down the field to their target. The arrows were easy to pluck out of the straw—the tips were blunted, a requirement for all shooting on the range—but as soon as the last one was out, the paper target they’d helped pin down was ripped free by a sudden gust of wind. Jason shouted with dismay while Evan tried to grab it as it flew by—

Just in time to hear the faint ring of an arrow being shot, and see the blur of it as it headed straight for them. He instinctively turned and threw his body in front of Jason, and a split second later the arrow sailed past his head and over the bale of straw.

“Evan, what? What’s wrong? Let me see!”

It took a few seconds of Jason’s worried pushing to break Evan out of his protective stance, and another moment or two to realize what had just happened. Someone had fired on him—on them, on a child—and a fury that Evan had forgotten he could feel flared inside of him like dragonfire. He wheeled toward the location of the shooter, only to see what looked like a boy in his early teens, his expression somewhere between defiant and afraid, holding his bow in front of him like a shield.

Evan waited just long enough to escort Jason back to the firing line, then stalked over to the boy. “Was that you?” he demanded.

“Maybe.” His voice was sullen, his eyes darting around like he was expecting someone to come to his rescue. And someone probably would, but not before Evan got an answer out of him.

“What the hell were you thinking, firing down range while we were still there?”

“It was an accident,” the boy insisted. “I was only practicing my draw, but my hand slipped. And it doesn’t even matter, because the tips are blunt. It’s not like it would have killed you!”

“No?” The boy flinched as Evan reached a hand toward him, but Evan didn’t touch him. He grabbed one of the kid’s arrows instead. “You don’t think so? You don’t think this—” he held the tip right in front of the kid’s face “—could go straight through your eye socket and into your brain? You don’t think it could hit you in the side of your head and cause a concussion, or bleeding? You don’t think if it hit you in the throat that it could fracture your windpipe? Are you an idiot?”

“Leave him alone!” Here came the cavalry, striding as fast as his legs could carry him along the line, and surprise, surprise—it was the hapless Ollie’s father. Things became a little clearer in Evan’s mind. “Don’t talk to my boy, Luckless!”

“Teach your son how to handle himself on a range and I won’t have to,” Evan shot back. He was used to keeping his head down, and if it had just been about himself he might have, but this—it could have hurt Jason. He couldn’t have that. Couldn’t tolerate it.

“My son does just fine—”

“For fuck’s sake, Cliff, Sheldon’s in the wrong on this one.” Finally, the range master arrived, looking irritated. “You don’t fire while there’s anyone down range, especially not when they’re so close to your position.”

“It was an accident,” the boy—Sheldon, apparently—said again. “I just wanted to practice my draw.”

“I don’t care what the hell you’re practicing, you follow the rules of the range or you’re banned. Which, in fact, you are. For one month.”

“What?” Cliff shouted. Everyone on the whole damn range was watching the drama now. Evan clamped his jaws together and did his best to ignore them. “Sheldon makes one mistake and you ban him for an entire month, while this son of a bitch and his little—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Evan said. He could feel Jason pressed close against his back, shivering like he was cold. “Don’t even think about it.”

Cliff raised his hand and pointed a finger at Evan. “Don’t you tell me what to do, you—”

“I’ll ban you too,” the range master interjected. “For six months, if you don’t calm the fuck down. You hear me, Cliff?”

“My boys need training time!”

“Then make sure they keep it by following the damn rules.” The range master looked down the line of shooters. “Where is Ollie, anyway?”

“In our rooms,” his father muttered. “He hasn’t been here since the last big fight, ever since someone said something to him on the wall that broke his nerve.” His glare let everyone know precisely who he was accusing.

“I was trying to help him,” Evan insisted.

“Well he’s all fucked up now, and that’s your doing, I’m sure of it!”

Despite himself, Evan felt a bit of compassion for the man. His son was suffering in the aftermath of a fight he’d been unprepared for, too young and too poorly trained to handle it, and his father obviously didn’t know how to help him, and certainly didn’t want to blame himself. Lashing out at Evan was almost logical, if looked at that way.

Logical or not, it wasn’t right, though. “What’s happening to your son has nothing to do with me or my apprentice.”

“That’s another damn thing. Who would trust their child with you? Who wants to learn from a rider with no dragon?”

Evan narrowed his eyes. This tune was an old one, and getting worn out as far as he was concerned. “Clearly one person did. And we’re done here for today.” He reached back and patted Jason’s shoulder. “Go and grab your equipment.” The boy ran to fetch it, returning breathless and wide-eyed a minute later.

“Mr. Luck.” The range master held up a hand to stop him. “I’d . . . appreciate it if you could see your way to overlooking today’s little incident. I had my head turned at a bad time, that’s the only reason it happened on my watch. I swear not to let anyone threaten harm again, accident or no, just . . .”

Evan was confused for a moment. What was the man talking about? People didn’t apologize to him for things, they just— Oh. He had recognized Jason, or at least understood that the boy was someone he should recognize.

“I’d rather not cause trouble for anyone, as long as this doesn’t happen again,” Evan said at length, and the range master nodded briskly.

“Excellent, excellent. And it won’t, of course. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Thank you.” Evan reached down and took Jason’s free hand, and they both walked off the cold, open range and into the nearest hall with matching sighs of relief.

“That was scary,” Jason said, his voice uncharacteristically small.

“It was,” Evan agreed. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Evan pressed his lips together as he thought about how to phrase what he needed to say. “No, it wasn’t, but . . . there are some people here who don’t like me.”

“Because of Juree,” Jason agreed solemnly.

“Because of her, and also because, like with that man and his son, they think I did something that I didn’t do. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them I didn’t do it, they won’t believe me. And because they don’t like me, they won’t like you either, and that could cause some trouble for you.” It already had.

Jason shook his head. “I don’t mind.”

Evan wanted to argue with him, but there really was no arguing with a seven-year-old. He went with changing the subject instead. “I think it’s close enough to quitting time today, don’t you? Let’s go drop you off at your rooms, and I’ll wait for your dad down the hall in the conference—”

“Oh!” Jason’s face lit up. “I forgot! Daddy says you’re invited to dinner in our apartment tonight!”

“Really?” Dinner with the two of them wasn’t exactly a new thing, but Lee had always had it catered to the conference room, never inviting him into the space he shared with his son. Evan understood the need for privacy, and didn’t let it bother him no matter how curious he got sometimes, but now . . . “Are you sure?” This was pretty out of the blue, after all.

“Yeah, because it’s been a whole month and we’re all getting along so well that Daddy says we need to treat you like family, and families eat together in the home.”

Oh. Oh, that was— Almost despite himself, Evan felt a warmth rise up into his cheeks. Family wasn’t something he’d had in a long time, had never thought he’d have again. It wasn’t a word to be thrown around lightly in this dangerous new world either, and to hear it leveled at himself . . . It shocked him, how much he suddenly wanted that experience. “If you’re sure . . .”

“Yes! Come on, Daddy will tell you.” Jason pulled free of his grip and led the way up the stairs. “Hurry up, Evan, I’m hungry!”

So was Evan, but it wasn’t the gnawing, hollow hunger he’d grown accustomed to since moving to Forge. With what Lee paid him for teaching Jason, Evan was able to afford three meals a day—up from two—and had bought a locker to save extra in.

Evan shared his room with five other people, and if you couldn’t lock up your things, they were sure to be stolen. Now that he had a secure place to store things, he had decided to indulge. He had newer clothes, a new hammer for smithing, and even—on a whim—a few sheets of paper and a pencil. He had enjoyed drawing as a child, and sketching Juree helped him remember what he’d loved so much about her—her strength, her resilient heat, and her large, vibrant purple eyes. Someday, perhaps, he’d save up enough money to buy the color purple and fill in those eyes.

He almost jumped as he realized they were already at Jason and Lee’s door. Pay attention to your surroundings, he chided himself as Jason heaved on the thick door to open it. They walked inside, and Lee welcomed them both with a smile. He wasn’t wearing his jacket today, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, baring his strong, pale forearms. Evan had to look away—he didn’t need to get caught staring at his employer, no matter how much he wanted to sometimes.

“Come all the way in,” Lee coaxed with a smile, and Evan realized the other man couldn’t shut the door with him in the way. “I promise not to bite.”

“Right.” Evan forced a smile in return, pushing back against his nerves. God, he was pathetic sometimes. “I’m a little surprised you’re inviting me in, honestly. Not that I had any expectations that you would. I mean—” Fuck, he was screwing this up royally. Lee seemed to get it, though.

“I understand. I’m sorry if you’ve felt like I’ve been deliberately keeping a distance. It’s just . . . I’m very particular about who I let into my home. Not even Governor Townsend himself can enter without my express permission, which he hasn’t gotten, by the way.” The way he said it made Evan chuckle. “I simply needed to become comfortable with you.”

“You really don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Evan said bemusedly as Lee stepped behind him and helped him out of his coat. Long fingers brushed his shoulders, and he shut his eyes for a moment. “Privacy is important, especially with a kid.”

“So is widening our social circle.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

“Very well, now that we’ve admitted you.”

God, the blushes, they just didn’t stop when he was around Lee. Casual dinners with the man hadn’t inured Evan to his charms, and long nights spent picturing Lee—his hands, his mobile, slender mouth, his ridiculously beautiful hair, for fuck’s sake—only made Evan’s ill-advised attachment worse.

He didn’t have to give in to it, though. He was an adult, damn it, and he was being welcomed into their home. He could handle himself.

He did handle himself well enough for the first fifteen minutes or so, with Jason placing blue-glazed earthenware dishes on a red tablecloth in the middle of the front room and Lee filling mugs with pure, unclouded water. Their front room was three times the size of the little nook Evan called home, room enough for a table and four chairs, as well as a small kitchen with its own burner hooked up to Forge’s gas pipeline. That was serious luxury, hard to come by. For the millionth time, Evan wondered what Lee did that was so important to the governor. Plenty of people didn’t have to share a room in Forge—the wall encompassed about a mile square around the stadium, with some land not turned into housing dedicated to agriculture—but few of them had more than a single room at their disposal. Certainly nothing like this.

The novelty, warmth, and a bowl of rich stew lulled him into a false sense of security, and Evan forgot completely about the incident at the range until Jason brought it up, excited about it now that the fear was farther away. “It could have gone right through my eyeball,” he said with relish. “But Evan kept me safe.”

Lee was very still—unnaturally still. Evan put down his spoon and cleared his throat. “I talked the incident over with the range master. The boy who did it is barred for a month, and his father was notified.”

“His father was so mad at Evan,” Jason added. “But Evan didn’t even care!”

Lee turned to his son. “Jason, please go to your room for a while. I need to speak to Evan alone.”

This was it, then. The last straw had gone up in flames, just as Evan had landed his first-ever invite into their home. He sighed internally. He’d always known it was too good to last, but he’d hoped to hold on to this—this sense of community, however small it was—for a little longer.

Jason left with a last apprehensive look at the pair of them, and once the door shut behind him, Lee turned his glittering eyes on Evan.

“I’m sorry, I tried to—”

“Is this the first time this has happened to you two?”

“Yes.” Evan shook his head. “I meant to tell you earlier, but I got a little . . . caught up in dinner, I guess.” It was a pathetic excuse and he knew it. “For what it’s worth, I do have the range master’s word that this won’t happen again, but I can’t guarantee anything. The range might be safe, but . . . you have to understand, some people here, they loathe me. They look at me and see someone who hasn’t earned his place here in the city, but was given one instead because of what I can do. What I could do,” Evan corrected bitterly. “Their mischief won’t stop just because Jason is with me. On the contrary—they look at our arrangement as yet another thing I don’t deserve. I’m sorry, I can— We can stop our lessons. I can recommend someone else to you, someone without my baggage.”

“Do you still have the dreams?”

Evan’s breath caught in his throat. “I—” He coughed and tried again. “Yes. Sometimes. But nothing new, of course, nothing like what I shared with Juree. Just our last day together, like it’s happening all over again.” I wake up crying, he didn’t say, but he could see he didn’t have to.

“Riders and their dragons sharing dreams is what really holds their bond together, you know. It isn’t enough to feel another’s emotions—you have to see through their eyes, experience things from their perspective.” Lee’s voice was soft, compassionate. “Neither species would have survived this new reality if we didn’t relive our lives together. What is your dream like?”

Evan spoke haltingly, almost as desperate not to say anything as he was to finally share his own personal horror. “I can see through her—Juree’s—eyes. It’s our final battle, and I feel the weight of my own body on her neck. I’m heavier than usual, because she’s wounded, but it isn’t slowing her down. She’s keeping her body between me and the manticore, catching its quills as they fly. Anything to keep me safe. I’m her . . .”

Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes, but Evan kept going. “I’m her heart, her family. She loves me, she’s too concerned for me. Too concerned to watch out for herself, and she gets too low. The manticore stings her with its tail, right under her jaw, and she’s dizzy. She can’t coordinate her wings anymore, and she feels me grip her with both arms as she starts to tilt. We’re going to crash. She knows it, and she pulls me from her neck and cradles me in her claws as we fall.

“We hit the ground hard, and I’m knocked out, my arm broken, but okay apart from that. She sees the manticore coming, and she puts me down, cuts my harness line, and runs at it. It’s taller than she is, but she gets it by the throat and digs in deep. It stings her over and over, but she doesn’t let go. She manages to kill it before it can kill her. She tries to come back to me, but she’s . . . The poison is too much. She dies thirty feet from the city wall, alone, staring at me.” Evan wiped a hand over his cheeks. “Fuck. I’ve never told anyone this before. Fuck.”

“I asked,” Lee reminded him. “I wanted to know, and I’m honored by your confidence.” He handed Evan a clean napkin, which Evan took gratefully and covered his face with as he fought for control. “Do you ever get the good ones?”

Evan took a shuddering breath. “No. Not anymore. Just that one. It was the last moment I ever shared from her perspective, and I can’t seem to escape it. I’m not even sure I should, to be honest. It proves to me that at least once upon a time, someone loved me. She loved me maybe too much, but that was her choice, not mine.”

“That’s an important thing to remember. It was her choice. I’m sure you’re worthy of it.”

“Really?” Evan raised his eyebrows. “Even after I put your son in danger?”

“You didn’t do anything of the kind; that idiot child and his father did. You took care of it. Jason is safe with you, and I’m serious when I say that I want him to know the way of the rider from your perspective. My own dreams, they . . .” Lee shrugged apologetically. “It can be hard to share them with my child, when he has his own memories of the people involved. And I’m not saying you need to share this with him. Just giving him access to someone similar is enough.”

“I’d tell him if he asked,” Evan volunteered, surprising himself a little. “Maybe not so much detail, but . . . I would.” Feeling daring, maybe because it was surprisingly nice to share the memory of Juree’s last day, he asked, “Do you still have them?”

Lee nodded. “I do. They come in greater variety, though. I do dream of her death, but not only that. I can’t say I wouldn’t go mad, otherwise.” He sipped his water, his handsome face pensive. “They can be hard, but I wouldn’t give them up for the world. To know I had that connection—that perhaps I might have it again someday—is worth the pain to me.”

Evan sighed. “I wish I felt like I could. That I deserved it.”

Lee reached over and took his hand. Evan was so surprised by the gesture that he didn’t pull away, didn’t even flinch. Lee’s touch was warm, as warm as his home and his food and his company. “You do deserve it,” he said intensely. “You deserve every bit of goodness this world has to offer you, even if they’re hard to come by. Eat dinner with us tomorrow night.”

Evan wasn’t even fazed by the non sequitur. This, at least, he could happily accept. “All right.”

“Eat dinner with us every night.”

Evan smiled. “All right.”

Chapter Five

For the first time in five years, Evan had a different dream that night. It was still one of Juree’s memories, but one so distant that he’d almost forgotten it: his first solo flight. He could feel himself, nervous and clinging without his dad’s steadying arms around him. Juree crooned a gentle song to relax him as she lifted off the ground as carefully as she could. This one had just been an egg not so long ago, and she would have to be cautious with him, have to be—

His cry of joy took her by surprise. It shouldn’t have, not when she could feel his passion bubbling up and overwhelming his anxiety. What was meant to be a training flight turned into an hour-long escapade, soaring high over the mountains and between valleys, snaking along the paths of streams and just barely brushing treetops as they flew, joyously, recklessly, simply for the fun of it. She hadn’t done this with Evan’s father, or his grandfather, but this boy was different. He loved this, exulted in the freedom of it, and she vowed then and there that Evan would be her last rider. For who would possibly compare, after him?

Evan woke up for the first time in months without a throat sore from holding back screams, or eyes fatigued from crying. He was so comfortable that he was almost uncomfortable, a decent night’s sleep and a good morning something he wasn’t used to experiencing anymore. He actually had to force himself out of bed, it was so unaccountably pleasant there, and into his cold morning shower.

The stinging water brought him back to the present, but didn’t completely wipe away his sense of refreshment. He grabbed some granola and a handful of dried currants from his lockbox and headed for his workshop.

He didn’t realize just how much better he really was feeling until the woman working at the forge closest to his turned away from the blade she was hammering and said, “Could you keep the damn whistling down, man?”

“Oh.” Holy shit. “Sure, sorry.”

“It don’t bother me that you’re happy, just . . . you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, buddy.” She half smiled. “I can’t tell if you’re whistling ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.’”

“Neither, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Evan started to turn back to his work, but the woman held up a hand. “I heard ’bout what happened to the kid yesterday. He okay?”

The memory of the incident on the range took care of the rest of Evan’s strange joy. “He’s fine.”

“Good. It ain’t right to be fucking with an adult like that, but getting a kid involved? Sick.” She shook her head. “You ever have to deal with shit people and need some cover for him at some point, you send him to me, okay? I’m Charlie. Charlie Jones.”

“I’m Evan Luck.”

Charlie grinned like he’d said something funny, and wrinkled her crooked nose. “Everybody knows you, Luckless. But lucky or not, no kid deserved to get pulled into that kinda crap. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Good.” She picked up her hammer and got back to work, ending the conversation as abruptly as she’d started it. Evan stared at her a moment longer, then went back to making arrowheads.

When he mentioned the incident to Lee over dinner that night, Lee smiled. “It seems you might have a few friends, then.”

“But she’s never talked to me before. Never even looked my way.”

“Children open a lot of doors previously thought closed.” Lee nodded toward Jason, who was sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, making a tiny bow and arrow out of a twig and some string. “Protecting a child is elemental to almost every species. No one wants to see them hurt.”

Evan shook his head. “I can’t imagine how it must feel to be a parent, with the world the way it is now. Not that it’s ever been perfect, but . . .”

“For me, it’s like having your own heart living outside of your chest. It’s painful, but there’s no way to put it back in. You simply have to learn to live with it, and to take as many precautions as you can without being stifling. You have to put your child’s needs first, even when it’s uncomfortable for both of you.”

“Is that what you did by moving here?”

Lee grimaced, his normally smooth features furrowing. “It’s what I hope for, at least. It remains to be seen whether or not Forge will really be the place for us.”

Evan felt his dinner settle in his stomach like a lump of iron. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I made . . . deals, in order to come here. To be accepted here. I have to be able to uphold my end of those bargains in order for us to keep our place, and so far I haven’t managed it.”

“Is he going to make you leave?” That would be the height of cruelty, to kick a father and his child out of the city they were trying to make a home.

“No. I’ve found other ways to make myself useful to Townsend. He isn’t very happy about it, but he can’t deny that I’m effective. It’s just not everything he wants.”

“What does the governor want you to do?”

“He wants me to use my skills in defense of this city, like I did before.”

Evan nodded slowly. “He wants you to take another dragon.”

“It’s—” Lee sat back in his chair and blew out a breath. “It’s complicated. You can’t force a bond that isn’t there, all riders know that, but the governor would certainly like me to try.”

“He can’t expect too much from you yet, surely. None of the smaller dragons are ready to take a rider, and dragons never have more than one at a time.”

“Try explaining anything to a man who doesn’t want to listen.” Lee waved away Evan’s sound of concern. “It’s fine. I’m making him see sense, if slowly, and making myself as useful as I can be in other ways, but the pressure is . . . intense.”

“I’d tell him off for you if I thought it would do any good,” Evan said.

“And I’d let you.” Lee smiled. “I appreciate the support, more than I can say.”

“You’re my friend.” The word felt right-but-not-right on Evan’s tongue, close but not quite there. He couldn’t think about how to rephrase without opening himself up too wide, though. He could do this, be a friend to this man and his son. It was good. It was enough.

“I’m glad.” Lee glanced toward his son. “I think both of us needed a friend when we arrived here. We’re lucky we found you.” He stood up and cleared the dishes, placing a gentle hand on Evan’s shoulder before taking his plate. The contact sent a zing down his spine, and Evan reminded himself yet again not to read into things. Casual contact was something he’d lost the ability to appreciate—almost every touch since arriving at Forge had been the result of combat. He would learn it again, though.

“Let me help you with those,” Evan offered as Lee began to do the dishes, still not quite used to having anything, even something as mundane as cleaning up after a meal, done for him.

“I’d rather you relax, and tell me if you’ve had any new dreams,” Lee said as he worked soap into a lather in the sink.

“I did, actually.”

“Really?” Lee turned around, broadly smiling now. His teeth were snowy white, whiter than Evan had seen on any other adult. “That’s good news! What was it about?”

“I remembered my first flight.” Evan recounted the dream he’d had from Juree’s perspective, and by the time he was done, Lee was nodding along.

“It’s thrilling, isn’t it? The way the air lifts you, cradles you in the sky. It feels like you could go up forever, sometimes.”

“Well, not me, exactly,” Evan said with a chuckle. “But I think that’s how Juree felt about it, anyway. I actually forgot to fasten my harness for that first flight, I was so excited. I remember my father telling both of us off when we got back and he realized it.”

“Why did your father stop riding Juree? Why pass her on to you? Or did you somehow manage to share her?”

“No, we didn’t share her. He got hurt. Not in a fight, surprisingly. Cutting wood.”

The ax had slipped in his hands, hitting his lower leg and maiming him. He’d been lucky to survive, but unable to continue to ride. Evan still remembered his father’s tears as he’d explained this to Juree, and to him. It was the only time he’d ever seen his father cry. “I can’t have you halfway, and I won’t bring you down with me. Evan was always meant to be a rider. It’s just going to happen a little sooner than we thought.”

“I’m lucky that Juree chose me. That was always the intent, but you can’t force compatibility between a dragon and their rider.”

“No.” Lee looked like he was trying to say something but couldn’t put it into words. “No, you can’t.”

Evan felt an odd prickle in his face, almost like he needed to sneeze. He rubbed at his nose in an effort to dispel it. “What about you? Any good dreams last night?”

“Several. The city skyline—Chicago managed to keep some of their largest skyscrapers, you know. I watched snow blow across frozen water, and rode the wind for miles and miles, searching for enemies. We didn’t find any.” He smiled. “It was a good day.”

“A day without enemies is always a good day.”

“Yes, it is.”

Jason’s huff of frustration pulled them out of the moment. “Evan, I can’t make the bowstring stay in place!”

Evan held out a hand. “Let me see how you’re tying it.” Lee turned away to finish the dishes, and Evan did his best to ignore a faint pang of disappointment. Jason was the reason he was here at all, and Evan was his teacher. He needed to remember that.

The new sense of closeness between him and Lee didn’t end after that evening, though. Every night, Lee asked Evan about his day and whether or not he’d dreamed. More often than not, lately, Evan was able to report that he had—new dreams, or old ones freshly remembered. Not all of them were pleasant, but they weren’t a constant rehash of Juree’s death, either. Lee shared his own dreams in return, until one night when he asked, Evan had to laugh.

“I think you’ve described Chicago to me so many times I’m starting to dream it myself.”

Lee went oddly still where he sat next to Evan—not across from him, like he had positioned himself originally, but beside him, almost close enough for their legs to touch. “What did you see?”

“A tall building with four . . . well, they look kind of like turrets, I guess, made of pale stone and green glass. One of the turrets looks like it’s on fire, but I’m not panicking in the dream, so maybe it’s nothing.” Evan laughed again. “I mean, of course it’s nothing. I’ve never been to Chicago.” His laughter died off when he took in Lee’s serious expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all.” Lee smiled, but it seemed to waver somehow, like he wasn’t quite sure whether it should broaden or diminish. “That’s definitely a skyscraper in Chicago. They used the turrets for lighting signal fires. The building was a convenient landing pad for riders and dragons sometimes as well.”

“Huh.” That stuff definitely hadn’t been in any description Lee had given him. Evan’s subconscious must have extrapolated it somehow. He had plenty of experience with signal fires, after all, and he’d gone to Forge’s movie night last month to watch The Return of the King. That was it. Everything had blended together.

“What else have you dreamed?”

Evan chuckled uncomfortably. “Nothing unusual. My old cabin. My father teaching me how to fire a bow for the first time.”

Lee’s smile looked more natural now. “That’s not surprising, given your relationship with Jason.”

“I’m not trying to—to replace you in any way.” Evan wanted to make that clear. “Jason is a great kid, but he’s your kid, and I respect that.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m not worried,” Lee assured him. “Like I said, you’ve become a good friend to us both. More than that, in some ways. We’re grateful for you.”

Evan’s mouth went dry. “More?” he managed.

“You’re a role model for Jason, of course. You do things with him that I’m not capable of.”

Ah, right. It was curious, actually, that Lee could be a rider and yet be utterly clueless about archery. Perhaps he’d used a gun back in Chicago.

“And for me you’re not just a friend, you’re a . . . companion. A solace.” Lee blushed a little. “I hope you don’t mind that I think of you that way.”

Did he mind? Did crix hunt in packs? “I don’t mind at all.” The way that Lee was looking at him right now, warm and open, invited Evan to bare himself to the man, to expose thoughts and feelings he’d tried so hard to lock away. It would be so easy to tell him that Evan felt more than friendship, more than solace—that he wanted Lee like he’d never wanted another human being, that sometimes he woke up at night rutting against his pallet and coming in his briefs. That had never happened before, not even when Evan was a teenager. He could tell Lee this, and maybe, just maybe, he’d get away with it. Maybe Fate or God or even the aimless, uncaring universe would let him have this. Let him have Lee. “Actually, I—”

Fate, God, or the universe intervened in the form of a faint, grinding shudder in the floor beneath their feet, followed a second later by the siren calling all fighters to arms. Evan blinked rapidly, coming out of their moment of intimacy with all the sudden shock of a bucket of cold water to the face. “What the hell?” he muttered, already getting to his feet and moving toward the door.

Jason burst out of his bedroom. “The ground is moving! Is it an earthquake?”

“I’m going to go find out.”

“Let me come with you!”

“No,” Evan and Lee said in tandem.

“I’ll tell you all about whatever it is tomorrow,” Evan promised. “But not until then. Go back to bed.” He looked at Lee, regret and a bit of relief seeping through his veins as he remembered what he’d almost confessed. “If I can’t come for some reason, I’ll try to get a messenger to you.”

“Don’t worry about us, just let us know that you’re safe.” Lee’s pale brow was heavily furrowed. “Night fights are especially dangerous. Be careful.”

“I will be.” Evan clenched his hands into fists to keep from reaching out, and left their comfortable apartment at a run for his own.

By the time he got to the wall, it was teeming with people, none of whom seemed to know what was going on. Evan pushed his way to the edge and stared out over the rubble of Denver. It seemed empty, none of the usual suspects in view. He looked around for a familiar face and spotted Charlie. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“Best we can tell, something’s going after the foundations,” she said with a grimace. “Tunnelers of some kind.”

“Well, fuck.” Tunnelers were bad news, especially when your main line of defense was a dragon. They could fight from the ground, but it left them vulnerable. “Has anything ever made it into Forge before?”

“No, but then we’ve never felt the shakes before like we are now.” She stamped her foot on the concrete, which was in fact shaking, just a little.

“They’ll have to send a group out to investigate, won’t they?”

She spat to the side. “Good luck finding volunteers for that! Who wants to go out into the ruins and look for tunnels at night, eh? Damn fools, that’s who. They’ll order people sooner or later, but I’m betting they’ll send Gorot out to dig around. Ah, yeah—look.” She raised her hand toward the stadium, where the dark dragon was in fact rising into the air. “Yep, here he comes.”

Evan’s free hand clenched into a fist. “It’s not safe for a dragon to fight on the ground.”

“It’s probably not safe for any of us down there right now. At least he’s big.”

He was big, but that was part of the problem. Big creatures could be overwhelmed by enough small ones, and when they didn’t even know what was causing the tremors . . . Evan watched Gorot and his rider land, somewhat ponderously, on the ground in front of the wall. The dragon sprayed fire, illuminating the path ahead as he made his way forward. After a few hundred feet, he stopped and lowered his muzzle to the ground, then breathed a gout of flame that went straight down, vanishing into the rubble. The tremors abruptly cut off.

“Found an entrance.” Charlie smirked. “Whatever it is down there, he’ll burn it out now.” A few of the other watchers cheered, but Evan kept his eyes on Gorot. It was easy to get caught up in the might of a dragon, their size and strength, and not remember that they had weaknesses as well. Dragons were creatures of fire and air, but put them on the ground or in water and they floundered.

With the brightness of the flames diminished, Evan’s night vision returned. He stared into the darkness surrounding the dragon, not sure what he was looking for but feeling like this was—well, it was too easy. Monsters were never easy, especially not ones that could make the entire city quiver. Marble, at least, hadn’t had to worry about tunnelers; it had been built on solid granite, whereas here—

Wait—

“Look there.” Evan raised a hand and pointed out into the darkness. “Look, do you see the movement?”

Charlie squinted into the distance. “How can you see any damn thing in this gloom? What’re you looking at?”

“I don’t know, it’s— It looks like a worm. Or a snake, maybe. It’s dark, but there, just ahead of the long piece of rebar—”

“I see it,” Charlie said grimly. Other people were beginning to notice it too. “What the hell is that?”

Whatever it was, it was heading straight for Gorot and his rider, and after another few moments of staring, Evan realized that it wasn’t the only one. “There are more—five, six that I can see.” He whirled toward the nearest turret. “They should signal them to get out of there.”

“Don’t be hasty. What’s a little worm compared to a dragon? He’ll probably just—” Charlie’s insistent confidence blew away as the first of the creatures reached Gorot. It slammed into his side, and a moment later the dragon let out a deafening roar. Not just of anger, but pain. He clawed at the creature, but it stuck fast in his flesh, and seemed to be burrowing deeper. Another reached him, then another, attaching themselves like leeches and digging in. Evan knew Susan had to be firing on them, but the arrows didn’t seem to be having any effect.

“We have to get down there.”

“He can still save himself,” Charlie argued, but when Gorot screamed again, she blanched. “Damn, why doesn’t he just fly back to the stadium?”

“And bring those things into his breeding ground? Not a chance.” Not to mention, Gorot might actually be in too much pain to take off. “We need to get pikemen down there, pry those things off of him.”

“Or at least get the gunners to step up to the plate. Ivan!” She turned and ran toward the turret. “Ivan!”

Evan let her go, his mind working a hundred miles a minute. He already knew what Ivan would say—they couldn’t fire on the worms without risking hitting Gorot and Susan. Forge wasn’t equipped to send out ground troops, especially not at night. The city relied on the wall and air support too heavily—there probably wasn’t even a garrison stationed at the single city gate. But Gorot wouldn’t last long without help, and they couldn’t afford to lose another dragon.

Evan couldn’t watch them lose another dragon.

He snatched a pike out of the nearest man’s hand and levered himself up and over the edge of the wall before the stunned fighter could even shout.

The wall wasn’t perfectly vertical, and there were ways down if you were careful. Evan didn’t have time to be careful, but he’d tracked this path before. There a jutting piece of brick big enough to support his foot, here a chunk of rebar he could grab and use to swing to his next perch. It was almost as good as a ladder, except for how he couldn’t make his way quite as reliably in the dark. His foot slipped when he was still twenty feet off the ground, and he fell half that distance before he managed to stop his descent by digging the head of the pike into a crevice. Unfortunately, that was enough to crack the shaft of the weapon, and he swore as it splintered in his hands.

“Are you fucking crazy?” He could just hear Charlie’s shouts over the dragon’s cries. “Get back up here!”

He couldn’t go back, though. Not without doing something, at least trying to help Gorot and Susan. He dropped the rest of the way to the ground, shook out his stinging, bloody hands, then grabbed his bow from his shoulder and one of his arrows and set off at a run toward the dragon in the distance. Without much light, it was hard to see an opening on the nearest creature, a weak spot in among the round black body, but maybe around the head—

Nothing. The arrow actually bounced off its head, which at this close a range meant it had to be heavily reinforced—bone, maybe? Chitin? Evan drew another arrow, aimed and fired again toward the underbelly. This one didn’t bounce, but it was clear from the way that the monster kept right on feeding that it wasn’t at all bothered. Too shallow, then. Fuck. Those targets were usually the most successful, apart from hitting the throat or the eyes, but this thing didn’t seem to have either of those.

Gorot screamed again, flames roaring as he twisted his neck around to blow fire at his nearest attacker. The flames were close enough to singe it, and the leech-thing curled its tail in protectively, but it didn’t stop digging into the dragon’s side. Gorot didn’t have a good enough angle to burn them off, not if he didn’t want to dump Susan, and Evan knew that the dragon would probably rather die than put his rider in peril. Susan kept firing from above, but her arrows went the same way—bounce, bounce, bounce.

Evan took a deep breath and stared at the creature that had been singed, watching how and what it had instinctively protected. Well, fuck it. It was worth a shot. He turned to the nearest leech, nocked his arrow, exhaled slowly, and fired.

Evan’s arrow went into the very tip of the creature’s tail with an unexpectedly dramatic effect. The beast immediately detached from Gorot, bending over backward and coiling into a tight, spasming ball. It had no visible eyes, only a mouth filled with rows and rows of jagged teeth that gnashed fruitlessly. The wound it had left in Gorot’s side bled freely. Evan grimaced and aimed his next shot straight into the thing’s mouth. This one bit deep, and a moment later the monster’s convulsions died down to nothing.

“Again!” Evan looked up and saw Susan waving frantically at him, her tightly braided hair undone and whipping around her face. “Go around to the next one! We’ve got to get them off!”

Evan almost jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He shook it off and turned to see two archers and a pikeman, who must have followed him down the wall.

“How do we help?” the grabby one asked.

“Hit them at the end of their tails,” he said tersely, then moved on before they could waste time with more questions.

The next one wasn’t as easy to target; it kept thrashing its tail around, but after three arrows, Evan managed it. As soon as it pulled away, he fired into its mouth like he had with the last one. This one made noise, a sound like ripping metal coming from its throat as it died.

Two of the other three leeches were handled the same way, and the last one died when Gorot managed to catch it with his hind leg and crush it where it lay. Its mouth detached with an audible pop as its broken body fell aside. Gorot blasted a jet of fire straight up into the sky, then coiled himself for takeoff. His rise into the air looked painful, slow and ungainly, but he made it and headed back toward the safety of the stadium.

Evan put his hand to his lips and whistled loudly. “Hey!” The people who’d followed him down turned away from their investigation of the nearest leech-thing and looked at him. “We need to get back inside the wall. There could be more of these things on the—” The ground shuddered minutely beneath his feet, and he grimaced. “More of them coming,” he finished.

The pikeman stopped on his way by and clapped Evan’s shoulder with his free hand. “Hell of a thing, man! You just saved our dragon!”

Evan didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all, just headed for the tiny gate. He had the feeling that, no matter what he’d done, it wasn’t going to be enough.

Chapter Six

The ground still shook. The wall still trembled. And Evan was still a pariah, no matter what the man outside had told him before they’d reentered Forge.

He had known he would be. If cowardice was reviled, then insane bravery was just as loathed, especially when it worked. It made people wonder whether or not they could have done what they’d seen, whether they should have done it, and that unsettled them. What did you do when the luckless man pulled off a ridiculous save?

You ignored him, for the most part. Few people met his eyes after he reentered Forge, and even fewer actually spoke to him. That was fine. He didn’t want interest any more than he wanted pity or contempt. Right now, in fact, he just wanted to soak in a hot bath, eat a quick meal, and fall asleep for a week.

The bath part he managed, although the water was lukewarm and cloudy. Evan sat back in the metal tub and closed his eyes, feeling every fresh ache and pain like they had just happened. He had jarred his shoulders when his stolen pike had gotten stuck in the wall, and his hands were covered with tiny scrapes and cuts. His lungs still twinged from the speed of his descent, and the part of his mind that wasn’t completely inured to the horror of a monster he’d never seen before wondered how long one of those leech-things would need to chew through a human body. If they could dig so deeply into a dragon’s armored flesh so fast . . .

A fresh jolt of pain emanated from his lip, where he was biting too hard. Evan took a deep breath and forced himself to relax, pushing his mind onto another subject. Something else, anything else . . . hell, he’d have to cancel working with Jason tomorrow—there was no way he’d be of any use once the stiffness really set in. Jason and Lee . . . he really ought to check in with them, let them know he was all right. Presuming that they cared.

Not fair. You know they care. Don’t make things more difficult for yourself than they have to be.

It was hard sometimes, not letting the bad thoughts become the only thoughts he ever had. Evan knew what depression was—they no longer lived in the age of information, but they weren’t savages. He knew that after Juree died, he’d been almost suicidal, unable to take that final step only because of the memory of her last moments with him, and how hard she’d fought for his life. It wasn’t as bad now—in fact, things had even been, well, good since meeting Lee and Jason. He shouldn’t take their support for granted, though. He couldn’t.

Only . . .

The water was cold now, and he shivered as he got out of the bath and toweled off. The thought of going back to his lonely cot in the corner of a group room where no one spoke to him or met his eyes was almost paralyzing. He couldn’t do it, didn’t trust his mind not to betray him while he slept, and leave him whimpering as he relived how terrifying it had been, saving Gorot.

It hadn’t terrified him at the time—he’d had no energy to spare for that sort of intense fear, but it would come. And he’d be surrounded by strangers when it did.

No. He could go to Lee. It was late, so late it was already almost morning, and Jason would be asleep but Lee—Evan had the feeling that Lee would be waiting up for him. Stupid, foolish—but possible.

He wants you there. They both do.

“All right, all right,” he muttered, pulling on a clean set of clothes and locking his weapons away before he padded silently toward the nearest walkway to their building. He moved slowly, and was grateful that no one was there to see him limp like an old man. Hell, he was in his thirties now; that actually was kind of old considering how he’d lived his life so far.

Evan stopped woolgathering once he reached Lee’s door. He lifted his hand to knock, paused, swallowed hard, then forced himself to rap on the wood. Nothing. He sighed and repeated the action, a little harder this time. Still nothing. Maybe they were both asleep—fuck, of course they were asleep, that was only reasonable given the time, he should go—

The door opened just as Evan started to turn away. He was surprised to see Jason instead of Lee behind it, though. “Evan!” Jason lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Evan’s waist, knocking the breath out of him. He hugged the kid back, gently due to his painful shoulders.

“Hey there, buddy. Where’s your dad?”

“I don’t know.” Jason’s voice was muffled by the press of his mouth into Evan’s stomach. “Someone came to the door and told him they needed to talk, and I went to go and see but he told me to stay here so I did and I’m still waiting for him, and it’s been hours.” There was a frantic edge to the way he spoke—Jason wasn’t used to his father being gone without explanation. “But now you’re here so it’s better.”

Well, damn. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Let’s get inside, okay?” Jason nodded, and Evan guided him back into the den, shutting the door and keeping a soft hand on the nape of Jason’s neck. “It’s late. It’s so late it’s early.”

Jason rubbed at his eyes. “I know, but I can’t go to sleep if Dad isn’t here.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s when people die.”

Evan frowned and pulled Jason over to the couch with him. It was his first time sitting on it, and he was a little surprised by how soft the cushions were. “What do you mean?”

Jason sighed and slumped against him. “That’s how Mom died, back in Chicago. She kissed me good night and I went to sleep, and then when I woke up, Dad told me she was dead.”

Evan knew that Jason’s mother was a raw spot for both him and Lee, and this was more detail than he’d ever heard about her before. He didn’t even know her name. “I’m sorry that happened.”

Jason hummed and burrowed in closer. He already couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open. “She was a rider,” he said muzzily. “I wanna be a rider like her.”

Evan’s breath caught in his throat. He wanted to ask more, to push further, but after another few seconds, Jason really was asleep, leaving Evan with a lot more questions than he’d had before. Lee had been married to another rider? No wonder he wanted to get Jason trained up—the kid’s empathic abilities were probably off the charts. He’d almost certainly bond to a dragon someday.

Why a rider like her, though? Why not emulate both his parents? Was it just because he was missing his mother, or was there something else about this that Evan wasn’t seeing? Why hadn’t Lee mentioned that his wife had been a rider?

And where was Lee, anyway?

Evan picked Jason up and carried him back to his room, a small, cozy space with a bookshelf beside the child-sized bed and an electric lantern set into the wall. Jason tucked him in under a hand-knitted quilt, then left, carefully closing the door behind him. He felt a bit uneasy, being essentially alone in the rooms without Lee there. Like he was intruding on a sacred space. Jason had been happy to have him, though, and after the bombshell the kid just dropped about his mom, Evan couldn’t just leave.

The couch was probably the safest place for him. He’d stay until Lee got back, then . . . see where things went. Maybe he’d get some answers out of the guy today. Maybe it was finally time to push a little.

Not yet, though. The couch really was obscenely comfortable. Lying on his back, it was just long enough to fit him once he stretched out. Evan shut his eyes, consciously relaxed his shoulders, and waited for sleep to come.

It came so fast he didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep until he woke up to the sound of the door opening and two men arguing—loudly. Evan shook his head, trying to clear the dream he’d been having. It had been a strange one, the first time he’d dreamed of being here in these rooms, sitting at the table and tapping his fingers against its wooden top while anxiety seethed beneath his skin. Jason had caught on to his worry, and that wasn’t good—he needed to try harder for his son’s sake, but how could he rest at a time like this?

“—told you, it’s impossible!” That was Lee’s voice, and Evan wiped his eyes as he sat up, needing to see why his friend was so upset.

“How can you still be so obstinate in the face of everything that happened out there tonight?” This voice was intimately familiar to Jason, although not one he’d heard recently. Paul Townsend, the Governor of Forge, was very tall, almost six and a half feet, and he loomed over Lee so aggressively that Jason actually stood up and reached for his knife before remembering he’d left it locked up downstairs. His movement caught both the men’s eyes, and while Lee looked gratifyingly pleased to see him, the governor appeared horrified.

“No,” he said. “Oh, hell no. Absolutely not, I won’t allow it.”

For all that the man had three inches on him, Lee had a way of filling the room with his presence that made the governor take a step back. “You have no authority to allow or disallow anything to do with my situation.”

The governor tried to regroup. “I could make you leave.”

“Then you’d have completely wasted your time and mine with nothing to show for it, and from what you keep telling me, you need something to show for it now more than ever.”

“What good will you be to any of us if you make a rash decision that leaves you just like you were in Chicago? What good will that do your son?”

If he was trying to make Lee flinch, he’d failed. Lee’s voice went cold, and deeper somehow. “Get out of my rooms.”

“Consider things from my perspective!” The governor was backing out, but he seemed desperate. “Forge could be on the brink of destruction! I would do anything to keep that from happening. Wouldn’t you?”

“Not when it means betraying everything I am.” Lee shut the door in the man’s face, then turned around and faced Evan. He looked concerned. “Are you all right? I heard there was trouble beyond the wall, one of the dragons was wounded.”

All Evan could do was stare for a long moment before he found his voice again. “What was that all about?”

Lee waved a hand as he took a step closer. “The same complaint it always is, I’m afraid. That I’m not earning my keep.”

“How exactly does the governor expect you to be earning your keep?”

“By performing miracles, apparently.” Lee sighed. For the first time, Evan noticed he sounded about as tired as Evan himself felt. “He doesn’t understand that some things simply can’t be forced, not if you want them to work.”

“What is he trying to force you to do?”

“Evan . . .” Lee sighed again. “Please don’t ask. Not yet. I’ll tell you soon, I promise, but not right now.”

It hurt, a surprising amount, to be denied by him. Unease lingered in Evan’s chest like a dull arrowhead. “Why didn’t you tell me your wife was a rider?” he asked instead, and watched Lee go a little paler. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to bring it up like that, completely out of the blue, but he felt too raw to be in control of himself.

“What did Jason tell you about Valorie?”

Evan shook his head. “Nothing other than that, but I don’t understand why it was such a secret. You wouldn’t be the first couple to be riders together.”

“I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, exactly. Just.” Lee seemed frustrated. “I don’t talk about her now. I can’t, not after what happened. It isn’t that I wanted to mislead you.” He came close enough to reach out and take Evan’s hands in his own. It wasn’t the first time he’d touched Evan like this, but the intensity of his tone and the strange, vulnerable shine of his eyes made it all seem much more fraught. “Please don’t ask me about her. Not yet.”

Evan wanted to give in, wanted to let it be all right, but something inside of him just couldn’t. What else didn’t he know about Lee and Jason? What was so important about him that the governor himself would argue with him? “What was the name of her dragon?”

Lee’s lips pressed thin, but he answered. “Ladon.”

“And what was the name of your dragon? Or did you even have one?”

“Evan—”

“Are you a psychic instead, is that it? Is that what Townsend wants out of you?”

“Evan, stop. Please.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” God, he was so tired, and all he wanted in the world was this man and his son and yet he didn’t know anything about them, not really. And Lee refused to give him anything to hang his hope on. “What do you think I’ll do if I know? No one here cares! No one but me! I want—” Evan reined in his strange, suffocating sense of anger as best he could. It wouldn’t help him here, and just thinking about trying to stay angry at Lee exhausted him further.

“What do you want?” Lee was so close now, their bodies only a centimeter apart. Evan stared into his eyes and felt like he might never be able to look away. They were so dark, but so bright. He’d never seen eyes so bright. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do everything I can to give it to you.”

“Except tell me about your life before you came here.”

“That too, once I know—once I’m sure that—” It was strange to hear Lee’s elegant tongue trip over his words. “Evan, I promise, I—”

“Daddy?”

Lee’s head snapped around toward his son, and Evan took a deep breath and stepped back. It felt like a rubber band breaking, the way the tension between the two of them suddenly snapped. He was already halfway to the door before Lee spoke again. “Evan, wait!”

“I can’t.” God, he wanted to, but . . . “Not right now.” He kept going, and to his relief—and also his dismay—Lee didn’t try to stop him.

He needed time. He knew that. He needed the space to understand why he felt so strongly about Lee hiding things from him, why he needed to know. Why now? Why at all? The man didn’t owe him anything; it was closer to the other way around: he was the one giving Evan work, letting him spend time with his son. Letting him into his life, when he seemed to let so few people get close enough to even see the edges of the truth. And that was fantastic, and Evan didn’t want to let it go, but somehow it just wasn’t enough anymore.

He wasn’t sure what would be.

The few hours of sleep he’d caught on Lee’s couch weren’t enough to do more than get him back down to his room, where he fell onto his cot and passed out hard enough that, for once, he didn’t even dream.

He woke up just after ten, when his thirst finally became intolerable. Two glasses of water and a handful of jerky later, he felt more normal, if sorer than he was used to.

Adrenaline hangover. It had been a while since he’d felt one of those. Usually, battles on the wall were only slightly more exciting than hammering arrowheads—he’d spent too many years with Juree to get easily worked up. But last night had been rough.

The ground quivered minutely. Apparently things were still rough.

Evan scrubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw. He could take a few minutes to shave, but all of a sudden he was tired of being alone. Being with Lee and Jason had spoiled him—he felt a tug in the center of his chest at the thought of them, but it was still too soon to go back. He needed . . . not company, necessarily, but a presence, any presence.

The workshop. He needed to get to work. There would be other people around him—craftspeople, contemporaries, maybe even Charlie. He could use a friendly face right now.

Evan pulled on his working clothes, heavy-duty fabric and leather, tied his hair back, and headed for his station. If he was lucky, no one would mention last night to him. He didn’t want to be called out again as a hero, or worse, as a lucky fool. He was too concerned that the second description was the correct one.

The scent of heat and burning coal welcomed him like a handshake, and Evan smiled reflexively when he saw Charlie’s wild white hair escaping from the edges of her kerchief as she hammered away on a billet. They made eye contact, and her gaze widened. She grimaced and mouthed something at him, but Evan couldn’t interpret it. He veered her way to ask, then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw who was waiting for him at his own anvil.

“Mr. Greystone.”

“Mr. Luck.” The governor’s colorless bodyguard—his name really was apt—stood up from Evan’s bench. “You have a meeting.”

Goose bumps rose on the back of Evan’s arms. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s the first you’ve needed to. Be grateful that Governor Townsend let you sleep in.” He extended a hand back toward the door Evan had just entered through. “Let’s go.”

Evan glanced at Charlie, whose brow was furrowed with obvious concern. This time he caught what she mimed: Why? Evan shrugged. He could make a scene and refuse, or he could go and see what the governor wanted with him. It might not even be about him. It might be about Lee.

There was no way Evan wasn’t going to take a chance to find out more about Lee.

It was déjà vu all over again, being led to the governor’s personal quarters. Greystone knocked before opening the door, and Evan walked inside alone. Townsend was there, sitting in his expansive leather chair, just like last time. He had a bottle of what looked like whiskey out on the table, and was staring at it pensively as Evan came over to him.

“Look at that.”

Evan looked at the bottle. At first he couldn’t see anything strange there, but after a moment he noticed the ripple effect in the liquid. “I see it.”

Townsend nodded glumly. “Of course you do. Sit.” He pointed at the chair across from him, and Evan sat silently while Townsend poured them both drinks. “This beast, whatever it is that’s attacking Forge right now . . . it’s going to get in. Eventually.” He sipped from his glass and made a face. “Rotgut. I ran out of real whiskey three years ago.”

Evan took his own sip. The liquid burned so hot on his tongue he nearly spit it out again. Fortunately, his participation as anything other than a listener didn’t seem to be required right now.

“Anything can be worn away with enough time and effort, and these creatures, they’re tunnelers. We autopsied one of the ones you killed—their heads are armored, reinforced. They don’t even have detectable organs other than a digestive tract and a hindbrain in the back of their tail. All they seem to know is digging and eating, and if the ones that got to Gorot were just babies? If there’s a big one down there, which our geologists think is likely?” His shoulders slumped. “We’ve got less than a week, and no dragon to send down after it, not after what happened last night. I suppose I should thank you for saving Gorot’s life, but,” his lips twisted like he was about to spit, “extenuating circumstances won’t quite let me do that.”

Evan found his voice again. “What extenuating circumstances?”

“How did you get to know Lee Caldwell and his child?”

Evan frowned. “Why does that matter?”

“Answer the question.”

It wouldn’t do any good to stonewall. “I saw them at the last Choosing.”

“And did you approach them there?” Townsend pressed. “Did you say anything to either of them?”

“No, nothing. He came to find me the next day on his own. Look, what the hell is this about?” Because it was clear that something was going on, something the governor found dire from the look on his face.

“You don’t know?”

Evan was about ready to throw his glass on the ground. “No, I don’t fucking know! I don’t know anything, apparently, and I’m sick of it! What should I know?”

Townsend’s eyes narrowed. “Lee Caldwell, if handled correctly, could be a godsend to our city. He’s got something no one else does, skills that would be absolutely invaluable put into play. He left Chicago because his wife died, though—he’s too caught up in emotions to be logical. Until his feelings are resolved, he won’t work for us. Can’t, he claims, which personally I think is bullshit but I can’t make him do anything, not unless I want to involve his child.”

“Don’t you touch Jason.” This, now, was the cold, crystalline focus that Evan was used to feeling when he fought. His aches and pains faded in light of the potential necessity of killing the man across from him. No one was allowed to hurt Jason.

“Me?” Townsend laughed. “You’re the bigger threat to that child, and to this entire city! Of all the people for him to set his damn cap for, why did it have to be you? A broken empath, a useless rider, and a reckless fighter who’s going to get himself killed someday soon. That isn’t a threat,” he added. “It’s an observation. You fight too hard, and you have no sense of self-preservation.” He snorted derisively and shook his head. “I appreciate what you did for Gorot, but honestly, what kind of man runs down the damn wall to face monsters he’s never fought before with a weapon that’s having no effect on them? Susan emptied her quiver into those things and couldn’t make a single kill. But you, oh, you come out of nowhere and save the day. Just like you couldn’t do with your last dragon, eh? Have you been chasing redemption this whole time?”

Evan was torn between wanting to hit Townsend so hard his chair flew backward and wondering, in the silence of his own mind, if the man was right. In the end, he gritted his teeth and sat, waiting for Townsend to come around to making whatever the hell his point was.

Townsend put down his glass and leaned forward. “Some of the people here call you Luckless, but I think you’ve been lucky too long, Evan. It’s going to run out, soon, and if you’re the one Lee is fixated on when you die, he’ll leave us. He’ll take his son and his sorrow and move on to the next city, flee another heartbreak, and Forge will be entirely lost. But it isn’t too late. I know, because if it was too late, you’d understand what I’m talking about.”

“I think I understand enough.” Evan’s tongue felt thick in his mouth.

“I don’t think you do, but never mind. We’ll all be dead in a week anyway if this monster isn’t stopped. Evan. I need you to do something hard. Something for Forge, something for Lee and Jason. Something for all of us.” Townsend nodded his head toward the door. “We’ve got a bomb down in the armory, prepped and ready. It’s taken years to put this kind of firepower together, and we only have one shot at this. We need to get that bomb down into the tunnel and detonate it so it kills the monsters attacking us. At the very least we need it to collapse the tunnel, which would give Gorot a chance to heal and maybe, maybe try to take out the monster again. We can’t risk Kisthe; her flames don’t have the same reach.”

Evan forced himself to speak. “You want me to make a suicide run.”

“A rescue mission,” Townsend corrected, but Evan knew the truth. “To save all of us, ten thousand people—elders, children. Lee and Jason too.”

Evan felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. Tired of everything, of fighting, of arguing, of hurting. “And when I’m gone, Lee will be free to . . . what, move on? Find someone more appropriate?”

“Maybe. Hopefully. Or perhaps he’ll have time to mourn you, if you kill the creature. Or, look on the bright side—you might survive and return to him!” Townsend refilled his glass. “What do you say, Evan Luck? Save us all now, or die with us later?”

Well, fuck. There was really only one response he could give.

Chapter Seven

It was remarkable how quickly things could get done with the weight of the governor’s blessing behind them. After his agreement, Evan was quietly escorted to the armory by Greystone, where he was given a primer on how to use the bomb in question. It was about half the size of his quiver, packed in a hard-sided box, with a tiny hole drilled into the top of it. Next to the hole, two wooden straws of different lengths were taped down.

Greystone tapped the long one first. “Five-minute fuse if you’ve got the time for it, one-minute fuse if the crix are coming. Those beasts will eat anything.” He handed over a lighter in a steel case. “Place the bomb, stick the fuse in the hole, light it, and get out. Keep the extra in case the first one doesn’t go off and you have to go back in.”

“I never took you for an optimist.”

“I’m not.”

Evan swallowed and nodded. “What am I carrying it in?”

“This.” Greystone handed over a stiff canvas backpack. “Along with some food and water. You can take one of our bows—”

“I want my own,” Evan cut in. “And my own arrows, my own knives. Clothes too. There must be someone you can send to get them.”

Greystone’s pale eyes narrowed. “Do you understand the concept of subtlety at all, Luck? The fewer people who know what’s going on, the less chance of a dip in morale.” If you fail, screamed his subtext loud and clear.

“I understand subtlety, but I also understand not wanting to die before I get to the tunnel due to shitty weapons breaking on me.” He crossed his arms. “My own bow, or I’m not doing this.”

Greystone sighed. “Fine. I’ll retrieve them, but I want you ready to leave when I return.”

“I don’t even know where to go yet.”

He pointed to a map laid out open on a nearby table. “The scavs marked the opening to the tunnel. It’s a little over a mile down along the highway. Memorize the route quickly.” He left, locking the door behind him, clearly not trusting Evan not to go running to Jason and Lee the moment he was alone.

Greystone shouldn’t have worried on that account. There was no way Evan would be seeing Lee before he left. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he did. And if he did, he might fold and tell Lee everything, and get Lee into more trouble with the governor. No, the thing to do now was to get out there and get this done. Maybe, just maybe, he’d get back too.

He turned to inspect the map. It was actually amazingly detailed, hand drawn, but done meticulously and to scale. Here was the edge of the wall, here was I-25 stretching out like a worm cut to pieces in front of it, chunks blown away or disintegrated in places. There were three notable breaks in the road, and Evan focused on those. The first one had a little lake drawn in front of it—sinkhole, then. Dangerous, even if there wasn’t a monster in it. The third one was surrounded by stick-drawings of a very familiar beast—a nest of crix. No going there, then. The second one was circled in red, with a dark hole scribbled in beside it. All right, then, here was his destination.

Evan surveyed the rest of the map for anything else that the scavs—the only people bold, desperate, or crazy enough to leave the city in search of raw materials to sell—had indicated as hazards. Looked like there were harpies in the old art museum, and the creek running through the center of the city was a clear no-go zone, with warnings for everything from ogres to kelpies sketched in next to it. Apart from that, he should be in the clear. As long as everything went according to plan.

Ha. Right.

“Luckless!”

Evan turned toward the voice so fast he almost fell over. “Charlie?” He could only see half her face through the barred top of the armory door—she wasn’t a tall person—but there was no mistaking that flyaway hair. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get to you, of course!” She huffed angrily. “I followed after that sonuvabitch took you off, but I couldn’t get anywhere close to Townsend’s apartment. Had to wait until they let you go, and instead they moved you here. What the hell is going on?”

“I’m . . .” How could he say it in a way that didn’t make him sound like a madman? He decided there really wasn’t a good option. “I’m taking a bomb to the far side of the tunnel the monster is in. I’m going to try and blow it up.”

Charlie’s eyes went wide. “Sorry, did I just hear you say you’re gonna run off and get your dumb ass killed?”

“Someone’s got to try.”

“Yeah, someone with backup! Like a dragon!”

“That didn’t work so well last time,” Evan pointed out. “Until Gorot is back up to full strength or one of the younger ones is trained, Kisthe is all Forge has. We can’t risk her getting attacked.”

“Then they should use more people, for fuck’s sake! Why just you? Let me come with you.”

“Charlie.” Evan reached out and set his hand on top of hers through the bars. “It’s all right. I volunteered for this.”

“Did you?” she asked, heavily sarcastic. “You just woke up this morning after being a damn hero last night and thought, ‘I’m gonna go throw my life away and leave my man and our boy sad.’”

Evan shut his eyes for a moment. “They’re not mine.”

“They might as well be,” she countered. “Luckless, don’t do this.”

“I have to. I’ll manage.” Evan was sure he could get himself into position to set the bomb, but doing so while worrying about other people? He couldn’t risk it. There was no backing out now. The ground was still shuddering, and it was only getting worse. Evan would be surprised if the wall lasted as long as Townsend hoped.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Fine. Then take this.” She handed him a long knife in a leather sheath through the window. “Freshly tempered, double-edged, and it’s sharp enough to cut your soul. Balanced for throwing too, in case you like that kind of showy bullshit. It’s a loan, mind you, not a gift. I’ll be needing it back when you return, so no leaving it stuck in a body somewhere out there in the wasteland.”

Evan smiled. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, you absolute idiot.” She glanced to the side and swore. “I have to move, someone’s coming. Don’t you run off just to die, Luckless, y’hear me? There are folks here counting on having you back alive.” She vanished before Evan could reply. He returned to the table and tucked the knife into the backpack so it wouldn’t stand out, and a moment later Greystone walked back inside, his arms full of weapons and a heavy leather jacket. He dropped them all unceremoniously on top of the map.

“Get on with it.”

Evan didn’t bother to acknowledge him, just began strapping his knives to his body. The bowie went to his hip, the neck knife on a ball chain he left over his sweater, and the machete in a sheath across his back. Then the jacket, thick leather reinforced with steel plates here and there, then his quiver of almost thirty arrows. His bow he strung and kept close to hand—it was short enough that he could walk with it at the ready as long as he was careful. Finally, he repacked the bomb, tied the pack shut, and pulled it on over the machete. He took a deep breath, then looked at Greystone. “I’m ready.”

It was a short trip from the armory to the gate, and the way was absolutely abandoned. Townsend really didn’t want word of Evan’s attempt getting out. Quite the vote of confidence, jackass. But really, it was better not to have to deal with stares and whispers as he walked out the gate. Steel doors slammed shut behind him, and then Evan was on his own.

Stepping outside the city felt like entering a graveyard. The air was hushed, the usually persistent winter wind still for once. Evan shrugged his shoulders a few times to make sure everything was settled and that he could reach into his quiver without problems, then set off for the highway.

It had been years since his arrival, and the ground outside of Forge had suffered in the interim. Evan picked his way around big chunks of concrete as he headed down the makeshift path, testing carefully in places where things looked poorly reinforced. Scavs went this way, the map had indicated as much, but scavs also went out in groups. Evan was on his own, and if he fell down a fucking hole and broke his ankle, he would end up just as dead as if he got caught in the blast wave of the bomb.

He made it to the rise of the highway, the last place tall enough for him to get a good look back at Forge, and after a moment’s agonizing indecision, he glanced behind him. No one was watching him. The wall appeared abandoned.

Good. That was good, that was for the best. If some tired part of his heart had hoped to get a final glimpse of Lee’s golden hair, well, that part was a romantic fool. Evan turned away and devoted his attention to the path ahead. One mile—less, now. He could do that.

The wind wasn’t blowing, but that didn’t mean it was silent. Evan crept along the edge of a displaced section of road, head down, every sense at the ready as he moved. He was getting close to the first break, where the sinkhole was, and oh, smell that—the scent of rot and brine. Brine had no place in an isolated pool in Colorado, so it was definitely inhabited by something. Evan kept well away from the edge of the hole, but he was close enough to see the remnants of crix and maybe even a leech or two. Was it a serpent? A taniwha? He didn’t care to find out.

The second break in the road was another half a kilometer ahead. The nest of crix wasn’t until the third break, so if he got lucky he might avoid them all together. He moved as quickly as he dared, glancing a little too often at the sun as it crept toward the mountain range just west of the ruins. He had less than four hours to make it there, set the bomb—hopefully close enough to the monster to kill it but far away enough that he wouldn’t take the whole city down in the process—and try to get back. He couldn’t afford any distractions.

Shing-shing.

Evan swore in the silence of his own mind. Fuck, he was so close. If it was only a few of them, he could handle it. Hell, he could see the darkness of the second break from here, the unnatural depth of it, and feel the vibration of the monster at the other end of the tunnel driving itself into the wall. He would get there, he just had to take care of this crix first.

Shing-shing-shing.

Make that two crix.

Evan hoisted himself onto the broken overpass ten feet back. It wasn’t easy, carrying an extra thirty pounds the way he was, but once he was up there he immediately pulled an arrow and sighted for his prey. There—one, two, both smallish, no higher than his calf. He could handle them fast. He inhaled slowly as he set the arrow on the string, drew it back, exhaled, and released.

The arrow took one of the crix straight through the head, just as he’d intended. What he hadn’t intended was to fire the damn arrow so hard that it went all the way through the monster’s carapace and exited the other side with a clatter. The crix immediately fell on his dead companion, but the noise had already alerted more to the prey at hand. A bigger one, big as a mountain lion, showed up and butted the smaller one out of the way as it took over the carcass. Then another came. Then another.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Evan scowled as he considered his options. He could try to kill them all, but if the nest was already on the move, that wouldn’t help for long. He could try to slip away now, which might be his best option, but that little crix wasn’t going to keep the bigger ones satisfied for long. They didn’t resort to cannibalism unless there was nothing else around to eat, so they might start looking for him in that case.

Evan went with a mix of the two plans, drawing and firing two more arrows into the oncoming crix. One of them died instantly, the second was only wounded, but they pulled the rest of the group’s attention. He slipped back down off the overpass, crept to the edge of the tunnel, lowered himself down so that he was almost ready to drop—

And immediately pulled himself up again, his heart pounding staccato in his chest as a leech monster exited the tunnel jaws first, moving with surprising speed toward the cluster of ravenous crix. Two of them saw it coming and jumped at it, leg blades singing, but they could barely dent the creature’s thick hide. It had no problem destroying them, however, rolling on top of the closest one and sucking its head into its maw. The crix’s legs kicked fruitlessly for a moment, then quivered and went limp as the leech pulled more of it into its mouth.

The second crix kept attacking, almost unnoticed by the leech—at least, until two more crix joined it. Three on one was enough to at least be distracting, and the leech disengaged from the corpse it was chewing and swung around in the direction of the biggest of its attackers, snapping at its legs. More crix joined in, and when a second leech monster came sliding out of the tunnel, Evan knew he’d never get a better distraction than this. He glanced down over the edge of the tunnel again and saw nothing but occasional, broken shafts of light dotting the way where the mother monster had cracked the surface. He shut his eyes for a moment, then dropped down and began making his way into the shaft.

The tunnel itself was large enough to fit five or six of those leech monsters stacked on top of each other. That meant the big one was . . . really big. Evan counted his steps in his mind, doing his best to keep track of the distance even though really, anything short of being able to see the big one was going to be too far away. The air was stale in here, and the bottom of the tunnel was disconcertingly slick, like trying to balance on a frozen pond. After his third near-fall, Evan slung his bow across his back and continued with one hand on the wall, the other one holding onto the knife Charlie had given him. It was less secure, but he moved faster, and fast was more important than safe right now.

At least, it was until he saw one of the leeches trundling toward him through the gloom, slow but turning its head from side to side, as though scenting the air. Its mouth was still closed, taking away Evan’s best target. He couldn’t reverse—he’d never make it back to the entrance without giving himself away, and there were no fissures in the tunnel big enough for him to wriggle through. He needed to keep going forward and hope something came along soon. If this one was alone, he still had a chance.

It came closer, the size of a mule-drawn plow, its head swaying back and forth like a snake. Evan gauged the distance between them, the height he had overhead and the chances of falling flat on his face, and figured it was now or never.

Gathering himself, he took three long, running steps and leapt straight over the creature’s head. Its mouth opened as he passed above it, teeth gnashing as it twisted to try to catch him. Evan landed with one foot on its back and one on its tail, sending him crashing into a painful roll. He reached one hand out and grabbed the writhing end of the leech’s tail before it could get away, and fast as he could, plunged the double-edged knife into where he’d nailed his first kill with an arrow.

The leech erupted in a piercing growl. Its mouth was less than a foot from Evan’s head, but it raked its teeth over its wound instead of pursuing him. Of course, his damn hand was down there, and Evan barely pulled away in time to save his fingers. As it was, it felt like someone had dragged a fistful of razors through his skin.

The leech chomped at its own tail for a moment, trying to dislodge the knife, then rolled its head back toward Evan, mouth gaping balefully.

Evan fired an arrow straight down its throat, and this time there was no flailing—it died instantly, slumping over onto its side with a sound like air releasing from a balloon. He slumped down across from it, his draw hand still leaking blood.

Evan flexed his fist and grimaced. Painful, but it didn’t feel like he’d lost any tendons. He wanted to rest for a moment, catch his breath and bind his hand, but the monster’s cry had probably alerted others. There was just no time.

He pushed to his feet, jerked his knife out of the leech’s tail, wiped the thick saliva off as best he could, then sheathed it and continued down the tunnel. Screw worrying about falling, he was keeping his damn bow in hand from here on out.

Ten feet. Fifty feet. A hundred feet—he could feel the ground shake more underfoot with every step. He had to be getting close. How much farther should he push it? Wait until he could see the monster, or draw back a little and better his own chances of survival?

Something moved in the distance ahead. It was indistinct, but it seemed to fill the entire tunnel. The end of the monster? Was he already that close? Another ten steps and Evan got a better handle on what he was dealing with, and it chilled his blood.

The tunnel was filled with sacs stacked on top of each other. Most of them had already burst open, but some held pale, indistinct shapes that wriggled like giant maggots. It was a monster cradle, and there was no way Evan was going to creep his way through it. He’d have to get out and go around. There was a break in the tunnel about twenty feet back, probably big enough that he could squeeze through it if he took the pack holding the bomb off. He turned around and—

Lunged to the side to avoid the leech coming up behind him. How hadn’t he heard it? He fired at it, but its mouth was barely open, and the arrow didn’t penetrate. Evan jumped against the side of the tunnel and pushed off hard with his planted leg, getting over this one with a bit more grace than the first, but it immediately turned to follow him. Fighting wasn’t the best option; he needed to get out of here. The break was right ahead, and if he leapt, he could get his hands on the edge and pull himself up—

Shing. Evan released his grip with his right hand almost as soon as he’d made it, just barely missing the crix’s leg blade as it slashed down. He didn’t move fast enough, and screamed as the crix’s mandible sank into the meat of his thumb. Blood spattered his face, stinging his eyes. The leech gathered itself on its rear bulk and arched up, mouth seeking hungrily.

Fuck, this is it. But maybe Evan could still use the bomb, if he could just swing the pack around and shove the lighter down the hole. He groped for it, both hands burning, feeling the strength leave his left as the crix settled in to start eating him alive—

CRASH! The vibrations in the tunnel were nothing compared to the sudden shudder that rocked the entire structure. Evan lost his grip and fell, dislodging the crix and expecting to go from bad to worse, but no—the leech had moved off, attacking the enormous silver-clawed foot that had penetrated the tunnel.

Silver . . . foot? A dragon’s foot? But there were no silver dragons in Forge. What the hell?

Evan watched blearily as the leech was grabbed and crushed by those shining claws. Two more struck at it and were disposed the same way before the foot retracted. A moment later, a man dropped down beside Evan, but this was no rider. This person wore armor like Evan had never seen before, thick and scaly and glittering in the dying light like mica in a streambed. He wielded two long blades, each wickedly curved. His face was covered by a horned mask, except for his eyes, which glowed with a strange copper light.

He didn’t look at Evan, simply dispatched the next leech to arrive with a single perfect slice that cut straight through the monster’s thick hide and bisected its massive jaw from top to bottom. A crix jumped down, heading toward Evan, and the man cut it in half without even looking. Three more died similar deaths, and then the man—

Picked up the dead leech by the jaw with one hand and threw it, all six feet and five hundred pounds of it, from the rubble of the tunnel outside. The incoming crix went for the easier prey, and Evan barely had time to think That’s not possible before the man turned his way. For a second he was more frightening than any of the monsters he’d killed, his ridged, horned mask dark with blood and eyes glowing like righteous retribution.

Then the helmet simply . . . melted away, and so did the swords. A moment later, Lee was staring down at Evan with a worried expression on his long, familiar face. The only thing that stayed terrifying were his eyes, still copper but fading from molten to the glow of a penny polished with river sand. He dropped down onto his knees and stretched out a hand.

“Evan? Are you all right? Can you move?”

“Lee?” Were the leeches venomous? Was he hallucinating? “How . . . What . . . You’re . . .” Evan shook his head. “What are you?”

Lee reached over and picked Evan up as easy as a baby. “I’ll tell you everything, I swear. The time for hiding is over.” He leapt out of the tunnel, and crix scattered like a handful of thrown pebbles.

But he still had his mission. “The bomb. We have to—”

“I’ll take care of it.” Lee set Evan gently on his feet and pulled the pack from his back. “Can you stand without help?”

“Yes.” Although he wasn’t sure for how long—he was woozy from blood loss and pain, biting deeper as the adrenaline wore off.

“Good.” A sword appeared—just appeared—in Lee’s free hand, glowing like a coal. He stuck the tip of it in the ground and made a brisk circuit around Evan, leaving him inside a circle of fire that spread outward, crisping the ground with a layer of ash. The heat had to be intense, but Evan barely felt it where he was. Lee didn’t even seem to notice.

“Nothing will get at you while you’re in here,” he said. “I won’t be a minute.” He turned and vanished back inside the tunnel. Evan’s feet twitched, his whole body yearning to follow even though he knew he shouldn’t. He was in no condition to help anyone, and besides, what could he do for Lee, who was a . . . a . . . Evan still wasn’t quite sure, but the sudden longing he felt for the man was as painful as a missing limb.

How much time had passed? One minute? Two? The sunlight was almost gone now, and Evan was all alone—not even the crix were bold enough to bother him. He strained his eyes toward the darkness of the tunnel, waiting, wishing, and trying to keep himself from hyperventilating. Lee would come back. He had to come back. He had to—

A massive gout of flame shot out of the ground half a kilometer closer to Forge, rattling the tunnel and lighting it up with intense fire and heat. The bomb had gone off. But where was Lee? Where was he, where was he? The ground outside the circle was still hot but Evan was this close to disregarding the danger and going to look for him. He couldn’t be . . . There was no way he’d . . .

A figure walked out of the flames, and Evan forgot to breathe. It was Lee, lit up in his silver armor turned orange in the burning light. Evan barely even noticed that the ground has stopped shaking, or that the tunnel itself was slowly collapsing. Everything else faded to nothing in the face of Lee’s magnificence.

Lee reached for him and cradled Evan’s face in his hands. “Forge’s work is done, now it’s time for ours. You’re mine, Evan Luck. Let me take you home.”

There was still so much Evan didn’t understand, so much he wanted to know, but in that instant all he could do was lean into Lee’s gentle grip and sigh with utter relief. “Please,” he said, and Lee smiled before letting go and stepping back a pace.

One moment he was a man, and the next his slender body was replaced by the soaring majesty of a dragon, half again larger than Gorot and shining like a star. Great coppery eyes stared down at Evan like he was treasure, and Evan shuddered with the sudden surge of emotion that washed through him. This was Lee, and Lee loved him. As much as he needed to know, for now, that was enough.

Lee extended one clawed forefoot, and Evan stepped into the cradle of his palm without hesitation. Rather than lifting Evan onto his neck, Lee tucked him close to his chest as he beat his wings. He rose into the air, did a wide, triumphant loop of the ruins beneath them, and then turned in the direction of the stadium.

Evan, more content than he’d thought possible, finally let himself relax into unconsciousness.

Chapter Eight

Evan woke up deliciously warm, like he’d fallen asleep in front of his forge instead of on his threadbare cot in a chilly, concrete room. It wasn’t just heat, though, it was pressure—a closeness that spanned his whole back, with one snug band around the middle. A person. Someone was holding him—Lee was holding him.

It should have been alarming, being in another man’s arms. Evan hadn’t been held in years—hell, even with his last lover, they’d never touched like this. It should have felt confining, but instead he was more comfortable than he could ever remember being. Not even Juree’s company had felt so wonderful.

Warm lips moved against the back of his neck. “How do you feel?”

“Fantastic,” Evan said, kind of surprised by that. “Like I slept for days.” Actually . . . “Did I sleep for days?”

Lee chuckled. “Only five hours. You could probably use more rest.”

“Nah, I’m good.” Evan looked around without pulling away from Lee. They were in an unfamiliar room, larger than his but smaller than the ones Lee and Jason shared, with only a fireplace, two chairs, and the bed they were lying on for furnishings. “Where are we?”

“In rider quarters in the stadium.”

“Where’s Jason?” Because as nice as this was, Evan had to know.

“Back in our apartment. He’s fine, don’t worry. He’s with Charlie.”

Ah. “Did she tell you what was going on?”

Evan felt Lee shake his head. “She didn’t have to. I already knew.”

It was true, then. Evan had thought it before, had felt it, but he wasn’t quite sure he could believe it. “Then . . . you really are a dragon.”

“I am. Among other things.”

“And I’m your rider?”

“You are, and much more than that.”

Evan rolled over, and Lee let him, giving him the space to turn but not losing contact with his embrace. They ended up lying next to each other, their faces six inches apart. Lee looked like he’d always looked, like a man—a slightly ruffled, sleepy man with tangled blond hair and sloe eyes filled with emotion. “Ask,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything.”

Evan barely knew where to start. “How can you be both a dragon and a man? I’ve never heard of something like this before.”

“Few people have. It’s a rare skill among my kind, as rare as a psychic being born to humans. I’ve always been able to change my shape to suit the form of my beloved, and take a form between the two as well. You saw it when I rescued you from the tunnel.” Evan remembered Lee’s armor and helmet, his immense strength and coppery eyes. “Valorie wasn’t just my rider, wasn’t just my life partner, she was my wife. My mate. Jason was the welcome but unexpected result of our union.”

It was a good thing that Evan was lying down, because his head was spinning. He stared at Lee for a long moment, trying to wrap his mind around a dragon who didn’t just love their rider, but desired them. It seemed impossible, but then what he’d seen Lee do when he’d saved Evan’s life should have been impossible as well. “Is Jason a dragon too?”

“Jason is unprecedented. He might be able to shift, once he gets older. He might not. Either way, he is of both our worlds.”

Evan remembered something else. “You told me Valorie’s dragon’s name was Ladon.”

Lee nodded. “It is. This body is Lee, that one is Ladon, but both are me.”

Evan nodded and gave himself another minute or so to get over feeling stunned, then continued. “How did you find me?”

“I felt you.”

“Felt me . . .”

“Like any dragon would feel for their rider. I knew where you were, I sensed your peril. You almost died.” He sounded pained. “I wanted to ease you into this better, but I couldn’t wait any longer. You needed me.”

There was no denying that. Evan knew he was only alive because of Lee’s timely arrival. In fact . . . He looked at his bandaged hands, flexed them a little. They felt surprisingly whole, if very stiff. “You fixed me?”

“Only time will manage that, but I took the pain away.”

“How?”

Lee smiled. “Pain is something you feel, an emotion as much as a physical sensation. I’m just keeping the emotional side of things out of reach. You still shouldn’t use them for a while, even though they don’t feel bad.”

Evan wanted to believe all this, wanted to believe everything, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to. “But my empathy doesn’t work. I didn’t feel you back.”

“But you had the dreams.” Lee’s smile got wider. “You dreamed about Chicago, something I’d never told you. I’d hoped, up to that point, but that was when I knew for sure.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?”

Lee stroked a hand down Evan’s arm. “Because you were scared. You were traumatized by what happened to Juree, and you’d closed yourself off from connecting to another dragon. You bonded with me in my human form, not my dragon form, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap without making you uneasy.” His smile faded away entirely. “Instead I made it worse, because you thought I was lying to you. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t take the risk you’d close yourself off completely to me. I knew from the moment I saw you that you were the only person in all of Forge I could ever bond with, and without you, Jason and I would have to leave. I couldn’t reveal myself to the whole city if I couldn’t stay and fight for them. It’s why I had to leave Chicago after Valorie died—mature dragons can’t function for long without a partner, and no one else there suited me. No one even came close before you.”

Evan almost couldn’t believe it. It didn’t feel real. How could Lee’s words possibly be for him? He didn’t think he deserved that kind of devotion, but from the look on Lee’s face, that didn’t matter. He had it regardless.

“I had to do something to keep Townsend satisfied while I waited for you to accept me, though. It’s been hard enough finding the opportunity to sneak away from the city and update your maps, or to haul larger metal scraps in close enough for the scavs to find them.”

A memory spun through Evan’s mind. “That’s what you and Townsend were fighting about. He didn’t want you to pick me.”

Lee bared his teeth. “He doesn’t get a choice, and that was overly hard for that man to accept. But I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of explaining the situation to you. The last thing in the world I want is to abuse your faith in me.”

Evan managed to produce a wobbly smile. “You’ve done a pretty good job making it up to me.”

“Let me do more.”

“I don’t think it gets much bigger than saving my life and Forge all at once.”

Lee shook his head. “No, not like that. Let me do more in little ways. Let me bring you into my home to stay, let me welcome you into every corner of my life. Let me make you my family, mine and Jason’s. He loves you, and so do I.”

Evan wasn’t quite sure how to take what he was hearing. Part of him, most of him, wanted to jump up and say “Yes!” before Lee could think better of it, but he had to be honest. “You don’t— You should know. That I love you, but it isn’t—” he choked out the next part “—it isn’t just a family kind of love. I want you.”

There, he’d said it, confessed, and now Lee would let him down gently, tell him they just couldn’t share that sort of intimacy, that Valorie had been the exception and dragons and riders were loving partners for life, but not like that. It was fine; what he was talking about would be enough.

“Evan.” Before he knew it, he was tipped over onto his back, Lee framing Evan’s body with his long arms and looking down at him like he was starving for the sight of him, like he was a rising wind that could carry them both away. “You’re everything to me. Lover and beloved, family and friend. You’re my rider, and my mate. I’ll never leave you, not unless death comes for one of us, and I would have you in my bed every night if you want that too.”

He lowered himself onto Evan more fully, settling between his legs. God, he was so warm, almost hot, and it felt so good Evan moaned.

“I want to be inside of you,” Lee murmured, tracing his lips along Evan’s jaw, up to his ear and down his neck. “I want to claim you as my mate in every way possible. But these rooms don’t have what we need, and you’re still exhausted.”

Evan clenched his jaw against the urge to yell with frustration. Lee was right, but that didn’t take away his desire. “What, then?”

“Like this,” Lee said, and he pressed his groin tight to Evan’s, rocking their erections together through the thin cloth of their shorts. Evan gasped and arched up, and the pressure felt so good that his eyes rolled back in his head. It wasn’t the kind of fucking Evan craved, but it was evidence of Lee’s arousal, his desire, and his acceptance of Evan’s.

Lee thrust against him in a hard rhythm, one hand on Evan’s shoulder and the other holding his hip, holding him where Lee wanted him so they could both get off. It was good, so good, and he felt his pleasure build like he was feeding a fire, slow and steady before it caught all at once and sent him up in flames.

Lee was more than just movement, though, more than a physical presence. He was inside Evan’s heart, and Evan was in his and could feel Lee’s own desire, his desperation and tenderness and love. He felt it all so clearly, more than with Juree, more than with anyone else.

Lee had promised Evan forever, and Evan didn’t just have to take him at his word. He felt it deep down in his bones, and it was like being set free. No more fears, no more worries, just him and Lee together.

Evan came, his orgasm rolling in on the heels of so much happiness he thought he could die right now with no regrets.

Lee took his head in both hands and devoured Evan’s mouth in a kiss, grinding against him until he was spent as well. The tension left him as slow as honey dripping down a spoon, and soon he was slack on top of Evan, boneless and content. Evan wanted to stroke his hair, but he settled for kissing him again instead.

“You’re mine,” he said, and he knew he still sounded a little incredulous, but Lee just chuckled.

“Yes.”

“And you want to stay here in Forge.”

“As long as you do. Jason likes it, and I think they could use our skills.”

Evan nodded. “Yours, certainly.”

“Yours too, once I make the governor see reason. Forge’s defenses will be so much better if they let you take over training their archers.” Lee lifted his head and looked Evan in the eye. “You’ve been making do for too long, scraping by without affection or respect. All of that will change now. You’re not a broken man, you’re not a dragonless rider. You’re mine, and you will be treated like the treasure you are.”

Lee’s eyes had gone coppery again, intense and otherworldly and beautiful. Evan smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

“You already do. And they’ll see that as well.”

Chapter Nine

One Year Later

Thwap. The last arrow in the quiver struck home in the center of the target fifty feet away. Jason threw both his hands up in the air in triumph, almost dropping his bow in the process. “Yes! All ten in the inner ring! I told you I was ready to move the target back.” He looked eagerly up at Evan. “Can we go move the target back?”

“After everyone else is done shooting,” Evan said, and Jason grinned. “Check your equipment over, I’ll be back in a moment.” After getting Jason’s nod, Evan moved down the line to where most of the rest of his students were still firing with varying degrees of success. At the very end of the line, a young man swore as his arrow just missed the side of the hay bale.

“Don’t let a miss distract you,” Evan said as he moved in beside Ollie, who grimaced at him. He had come a long way since his first time on the wall last winter, but he still tended to shoot too fast when he got nervous. “Almost anything is recoverable.”

“Unless it’s my last arrow and the crix are coming too fast to dodge.”

Evan lifted an eyebrow. “That’s why you carry a knife. One weapon is good, two weapons is better, three is just smart.”

“For us, maybe,” Ollie agreed. “But you’re a rider. Doesn’t it make more sense for you to carry a ton of arrows and your bow and nothing else? I mean, you’ve got a dragon to handle the hand-to-hand stuff.”

“Dragons can be injured.” Although there hadn’t been any more fatalities since Lyra’s death. “If they go down, it’s better not to risk being caught unprepared. Besides.” He shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.”

The range master blew his whistle, and a moment later Evan’s students headed down to retrieve their arrows. Jason had one of the best clusters, and considering he was the youngest person in class, that was saying something. Evan would have to start teaching him to make his own arrows soon—that class was small but growing, and—

Forge’s siren cut through the cold blue sky. Monsters were coming, which meant battle was imminent. He caught Ollie by the forearm. “Get everything cleared down here and make sure the younger ones get back to their families.”

Ollie nodded. “I will.”

Evan turned away and jogged toward the end of the range, pausing next to Jason, who looked serious but not too worried. “Go home, okay? We’ll meet you there once this fight is done.”

Jason seemed like he wanted to argue, but he was too well-trained at this point to give into the urge. “Okay. Tell Dad to be safe. Tell him to watch out for you.”

“I will.” One quick hug later, Evan headed for the top of the nearest section of wall. Other riders had to meet their dragons in the stadium, but Evan wasn’t just any rider, and Lee sure as hell wasn’t any other dragon. Lee had known where he was and what he was doing—he would meet him there.

Sure enough, Evan walked out of the staircase into the open air and found Lee on the wall, staring out into the distance. It had snowed just yesterday, and the wind blew the icy particles around like miniature tornadoes, obscuring the view. Evan stopped next to him, and without looking Lee reached out and took his hand. Evan suppressed a smile. “What do you see?”

“A behemoth of a beast,” Lee replied. “It’s still a mile out, so the details aren’t clear yet. But see the sky above it.” He pointed at the distant sky. “Wyverns. Small carrion feeders. They’re pacing it. Clearly they expect to get a meal out of whatever remains it leaves behind.”

“Any crix?”

“Not enough to be of note.” Lee had lost his temper and flamed their nest until the concrete practically turned to glass a few months ago after Evan had sustained a minor injury from one. Their population hadn’t recovered. As far as Evan was concerned, if it never did, it would still be too soon.

“And harpies?”

“They might defend what they see as their airspace from the wyverns, actually, but we shouldn’t rely on that.” Lee glanced at Evan and squeezed his hand. “We’ll need to play a role in this one.”

“I know.” That was fine. Lee had already brought along Evan’s equipment. It was leaning against the wall at their feet.

“It isn’t exactly how I meant for us to spend our anniversary.”

Evan laughed. “You mean the anniversary of the date where I almost died trying to blow up a monster and you had to save my ass? I think this is kind of the perfect way to celebrate it.”

“Nevertheless.” Lee turned to face him, his hands coming up to cup Evan’s cheeks. Evan was used to the casual displays of affection by now, and didn’t blush as other people along the wall started to stare and murmur. “When this is done, we’ll get back to doing what I hoped we’d be doing once you finished archery class.”

“Mmm.” Evan leaned in and brushed Lee’s mouth in a kiss. “I hope it involves the two of us in bed and Jason spending the evening with Charlie.”

“Another fitting commemoration of our anniversary,” Lee agreed, returning Evan’s kiss before he turned away. His eyes slowly brightened, becoming a familiar copper. Evan slung his quiver across his back and strung his bow as he watched his lover transform. One second Lee was a man—the next, Ladon had flown from the wall before his weight could damage it, all strength and grace as he banked in a circle.

Evan grinned and stepped up onto the wall. A second later, he jumped out into thin air.

He was caught, of course. He would always be caught, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cari Z was a bookworm as a child and remains one to this day. In an effort to combat her antisocial reading behavior, she did all sorts of crazy things, from competitive gymnastics to alligator wresting (who even knew that was legal!) to finally joining the Peace Corps, which promptly sent her and her husband to the wilds of West Africa, stuck them in a house, and said, “See ya!” She also started writing then, because it was a good way to entertain herself with no electricity. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal people sometimes.

You can contact Cari at carizabeth@hotmail.com. In fact, please do.

She’d love to hear from you.

Website: cari-z.net

Blog: carizfiction.blogspot.com

Twitter: @author_cariz