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Bram flew faster.

Halina’s skin began to smoke.

And then it caught fire.

Chapter Twenty-Three

HALINA

Aleksander had backed me right up to the line of sunlight when the dragon’s roar shook the castle.

My eardrums burst.

Aleksander stopped and winced.

Fire licked up my arm, followed by searing agony. Choking on panic, I jolted forward and slapped my skin with my other hand, snuffing out the blaze. My ears popped.

Got my eardrums back. Thanks, dragon blood.

Bram and Fergus approached, but I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. Because Aleksander had recovered, too, and now he snarled, his eyes fully red.

“Your lovers can’t save you, Halina.” He slashed the dagger through the air, narrowly missing my stomach.

But he didn’t step any closer. He stayed put, his body safely in the shadows with me balanced on the edge of the sunlight.

He bared his fangs. “Back up!”

“Fuck you!” Smoke curled around me. The scent of burning flesh—mine—assaulted my nostrils. “You don’t have to kill me, Aleks. I’m no threat to you!”

Grigory growled from his place beside the throne. “Finish it! Kill her and the dragons will follow.”

Aleksander slashed the dagger again. Still, he didn’t move.

Why was he just standing there? He had room to maneuver.

A breeze stirred, tossing my hair. Dragons’ wings. My mates. They’d come to save me. But if I died, nothing could save them.

Aleks lifted his gaze, taking his eyes off me for a moment. The ruby ring glinted in the sun, its facets reflecting light in all directions.

Fire licked over my shoulder, the flames dancing in my peripheral vision. There was no going backwards.

Only forwards.

My brother was distracted.

I blinked and I was behind him, my head spinning. Had I channeled? No time to think. I grabbed Aleks’s dagger and thrust it into his back hard before yanking it out.

He hissed and spun around, the ruby swinging. Behind him, two dragons swept to the balcony and shifted to smoke. Twin black columns streamed into the audience chamber and then reformed into Fergus and Bram.

They were magnificent and terrifying, their eyes burning with fire. No one would have mistaken them for human.

Aleksander went to one knee, his face a mask of shock.

Grigory hissed at Bram and Fergus. “You have no right to enter our territory. You break the treaty.”

Fergus looked at him, all traces of the jovial, charming male I knew gone. Something deadly and forbidding stared out from his eyes, which swirled with the promise of death. “You abducted our bonded mate. All bets are off, leech.”

For the first time in my life, I saw fear in Grigory’s gaze. He moved at last, drawing a knife from somewhere as he lurched toward me.