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All she had answered were questions directed to her.

He’d asked her if she knew about the prophecy, and she said yes and then spoke it.But if her memories had been returned to her before they came to the dungeon...

She admitted to him that Strolguil had always been around as her cat, but she may have only just discovered this.She had never been shy changing or bathing in front of him.In the same way she hadn’t been when she thought he was nothing but a lizard with wings.

Then she’d rejected the offer of his blood.

He could remember her face when they had been in his lair with Strolguil holding her hand. It had been a face of complete and utter confusion, pale and stricken.

She would not look at me.Amalia only looked at him completely in the eye herself when she was on the altar and had that blade raised above him.

Her look of determination had been bone-chilling.

Now he understood she only had the strength to meet his gaze when she finally had the opportunity to save them.

And then Rurik remembered something... A detail he’d barely thought about at the time, something he’d ignored.

There, when she’d been riding him on the altar hidden behind her hair, he had felt two droplets fall against his chest.She cried because she had not wanted to ride me against my will.

But there had been no other way. She had needed the power of his dragoncraft to free him.

That painful ache in his chest suddenly twisted unbearably harder.

Rurik’s eyes crinkled in unyielding sadness at the utter loss he was feeling.I... I do not want her to leave me.

His hands flew from her chest to her throat, and he wrapped them around it.

He wasn’t choking her. They were just placed against her firmly with his thumbs trailing up on either side of her windpipe as the tips rested against the bottom of her jaw.

“What are you doing?!”

He ignored her father’s shout, ignored him even as he tried to pry his hands off her.

He felt warmth radiating from his hands, strange, powerful, and ancient magic pouring from them into her.

His arms were shaking, trembling not with exertion, but with undeniable fear as he stared down at her face. Nothing would stray him from what he was doing.

If she does not breathe, I will incinerate the world.A rumbling, dark growl bubbled from his chest like thunder as his face morphed into rage, and fury, and resentment so deep he knew he’d never felt anything like this before.If the world thinks I am hateful now, just wait until they see me if she is taken from it.

It would rue the day it gave birth to him.

It would regret putting him on this earth, would regret giving him life, strength, a beating heart. It wouldregretgiving him Amalia only to take her from him.

One last time, Rurik leaned over and gave her a deep breath while that ancient magic was being used – something he would never be able to do again if she lived.

Something he didn’t want to do again even if she didn’t.

A sharp gasp came from her, knocking him out of the way when her torso lifted. Her eyes snapped open wide while her body contorted, and her spine arched prominently.

Then she fell limp against the table.

Rurik released his hands and crawled down her body to press his ear against her chest. He stayed there when he could hear her heart beating weakly, listening to it flutter like the gentlest, shyest, smallest little butterfly ever imagined possible.

It fluttered relief through every part of his being, stealing his tension to leave a blossom of ease.

When he moved his head, he pressed his forehead against the centre of her chest while he slipped his hands under her. He held her against him as he nuzzled her sternum with his nose.

“Is she-?”