Hands of Flame

“Would you come with us?” The air turned heavier with warmth as Janx transferred all his attention to Margrit, making her remember his true form.

She looked away. “I don’t know. My whole life is here.”

“As are all of ours, and yet you have no compunction against advising us to move on.”

“No.” Margrit’s gaze sharpened as she returned it to the dragonlord. “This epoch in your life is here, not your whole life. I don’t have any idea how old you are, but no matter what you do, there’s only a limited window you can stay in any one human population if you’re in any kind of visible position. You have to change your skin every once in a while. Your whole life isn’t here. Just this go-around.”

“So you would have us retreat.”

“I would have you live, dragonlord. Grow stronger. Fight another day.” Margrit closed her eyes, muttering, “I really am starting to sound like you,” before refocusing on Janx. “Whatever it takes. You must’ve done it before. Why object now?”

“You’re assuming I went gently into that good night in previous years, my dear. Does anything about me suggest that I might have done so?”

Margrit opened her mouth and shut it over an escaping bubble of laughter. “No.” Then, seriousness overtaking her, she added, “But when was the last time, Janx? This century?” She flicked her fingers, trusting Janx to understand what she meant even if her words weren’t literally accurate. “The world’s population has doubled in the last hundred years, and I don’t even have words to describe the difference in media from even fifty years ago to today. If you let this play out, you’re no better than Aus—” Chagrin bit the word off too late.

Interest lit Janx’s eyes. “Ausra?”

Margrit sighed. “She was so determined that Alban should pay for Hajnal’s death that she couldn’t see what her actions were doing. She was willing to expose all of you to the modern world in her quest for vengeance. Your survival as a whole is much more important than any individual grievance. You’ve got to be able to see that.”

“And you will fight passionately to make certain we do, without quite being able to commit yourself completely to our world. Margrit, I do not mean this for a threat, but this is not a line upon which you will forever be permitted to balance. There are no half measures, something Alban has come to be reminded of, of late. In the end, you will choose your own world or ours. Don’t,” he added to her indrawn breath. “You’re about to tell me you have, but you haven’t. You believe you’ve chosen us because you’ve lied and sacrificed and put our needs above your own, but there’s a martyr in that, and it is not a choice. You’re still bedazzled, though not as badly as you were before you watched three of us fight and one of us die. There will be a moment, Margrit Knight, when you will make your choice, and that moment will be unmistakable. Don’t cheapen it by thinking you’ve already made it.”

Margrit’s hands had curled into fists as he spoke, nails cutting into her palms. Color burned her cheeks until her eyes were hot with tears and her breath felt harsh and cold in her throat. “You think the last three months have been a game for me? Russell, my boss, my boss for the last three years at Legal Aid, is dead, Janx. My boyfriend dumped me. I’ve been nearly killed more than once and today I went to try to stop your people from getting into a war instead of doing my own job. You think I’m kidding around?”

“No,” Janx said, unexpectedly sympathetic. “I think you underestimate the point at which you can walk away. You still can, and until that threshold is crossed, you should remember that you have a way out. I didn’t mean to anger you or belittle what you’ve done for us. Or to us,” he added more wryly. “But the truth is that if you had chosen our world, you would without hesitation join us if we left this city. Not without regrets, perhaps, but without hesitation. It’s the cost of our friendships. It always has been.”

Insult still heated her face, but curiosity leapt to throttle it. Margrit bit down on asking about a woman she shouldn’t know anything of. Sarah Hopkins, who had been pregnant with Janx’s child, or Daisani’s, and had turned to Alban to escape the seventeenth-century fire that had burned London. She wondered if Sarah had been unwilling to pay the cost, and had been able to walk away far, far later than Margrit imagined possible.

“Is that what happened to Chelsea Huo?” The words came hard, tight voice putting Chelsea in Sarah Hopkins’s place. “Did she choose the Old Races? She’s this nice, ordinary woman, but she was able to stand there today and give me legitimacy. Because she chose you?”

Laughter glittered in Janx’s eyes, and he unwound himself from the couch, leggy and comfortable in his own skin. “A nice woman,” he echoed, clearly delighted by the sentiment. “How charming. I shall have to tell her. Would you call me a nice man, Margrit?”

“You’re a bad man, Janx.” Margrit deliberately unknotted her hands, shoulders slumping as she recognized that he had no intention of answering her question. That, more than anything, seemed to be the legacy of dealing with the Old Races. She could only learn enough to realize how little she knew, and how unlikely it was she would be told more. “You’re a bad man, and you know it.”

Janx spread his hands, an expansive cheerful gesture. “I know. Evil shouldn’t look this good.”

A jarring memory seared Margrit’s vision, showing her the sneering, angry face of a man she’d once defended. He’d raped three women, murdering one of them, and had watched Margrit with open, domineering scorn. Watched her as if she were a victim, waiting for him; watched her much as Malik al-Massrī had watched her. Angry, threatened and threatening, proprietary, making her an object not of desire, but of subjugation. Janx had treated her that way once, and faced with her ire, had treaded a line of caution with comic exaggeration since. Margrit spoke slowly, words more weighted than she intended: “Evil doesn’t.”

Something unexpected happened in Janx’s green eyes, disconcertment fading into surprised pleasure. He held his pose a moment longer, studying Margrit without guile, then brought his hands together and shifted his weight so he could offer a flourished bow from the waist. “What peculiar honors you do me, Margrit Knight. For your kindness, I’ll give you what you haven’t asked for—advice.”

“Are you going to tell me to walk away?”

“No.” Janx gave her a toothy smile, letting it linger so her gaze was drawn to too-long canines. Daisani should have those teeth, she thought for the dozenth time. The vampire should have a mouthful of weaponry, not the dragon. “No, my dear. You’re a lawyer. I’m going to tell you how to handle Alban’s forthcoming trial.”

CHAPTER 11

Margrit’s cell phone trumpeted the William Tell Overture, startling her into a flinch and earning a shift of surprise from Janx. Habit drove her to her feet as she searched her purse for the phone, and sent her walking a few feet away, as though doing so would render Janx incapable of hearing her.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. If you’re getting reception, you’ll probably want to stay exactly where you were.” Janx nodded to the chair she’d abandoned and Margrit came back to it, thumbing the phone on.

Her mother’s voice, distorted with static, came through. Margrit put a finger against her opposite ear, trying to hear better, then muttered a curse as the co

“I can,” Janx admitted languidly. “Whether I will…”

“Well, your other option is keeping me locked up like Bluebeard’s wife.”

“Like Beauty, I should think.” Janx collected Malik’s cane and pushed to his feet, still more stiffly than she was accustomed to. “Are you certain you have to go now? We were doing so well.”