Chapter Thirty-two

ARCHER

Get in the house, I thought furiously at Mia.

I spun back around to search for Chris, but he was almost on top of me. He was too close to evade, and my blast of flame missed him. I was out of time.

Copper scales glinted in fire, and somehow Ollie was between us.

I would never forget Ollie's cry of pain, drowning out Chris's furious bellow. Ollie dropped down too fast for me to catch him, Chris's fire following him. I had to eliminate the threat. Couldn't check on Ollie, couldn't be sure he was alive.

Forgetting all tactics, I flew straight at Chris, roaring my intention. I was going to tear his heart out.

He turned away, dipped his shoulder to me in submission, and fled.

What the fuck? I chased him, but he landed on the grass, wings open and drooping, signalling his capitulation.

I bellowed to the sky, my rage and frustration ringing around the Court in thundering roars. Everything in me urged vengeance. He'd hurt Ollie. But even the searing fury burning through my veins wasn't enough to allow me to kill an enemy who'd surrendered.

I blasted fire over his head. Get the fuck out.

He shifted and I circled above him as he shuffled his way to the drive, moving so awkwardly that I wondered how seriously he was injured. Terminally, I hoped. He'd hurt Ollie. And I still didn't know how badly. If he'd done more than hurt him—and my heart stopped at the thought—even Chris's surrender wouldn't stop me. I'd pursue him to the ends of the earth and rip out his liver to eat in front of his eyes.

Chris made it to the gates, and a car engine started, headlights sweeping the road as he accelerated away.

Ollie. Oh, God. I flew back to the house and found him collapsed in the gardens, still in dragon form. Mia was by him, talking to him as I plummeted down with a force that shook the ground. "Ollie," I said, almost before I'd finished shifting.

He looked at me with golden eyes that were dark with pain yet alert.

Where's Chris ?

"Gone. Where are you hurt?" I was running my eyes over his copper body, looking for wounds as best I could in the faint moonlight. "Can you shift?" There was no way we could get a dragon to hospital.

I think so. I just don't want to. It's going to hurt .

"We can help you if you do." Mia was still speaking when, with an indrawn breath, Ollie shifted.

In human form, he kept his left arm rigid, holding it away from his body and making little pained sounds with every breath he took.

"Let me see." I was squinting at his arm but couldn't see a damn thing.

"It's burned."

That would explain why he didn't want to touch it or move it.

"Let's get into the house and I can have a look. I know a thing or two about burns." I slid my arm around his waist from his good side and helped him towards the house.

"Mia, could you fetch us some clothes?" I asked over my shoulder. Dragons didn't get hung up over nudity, but the night was cold.

"Why did Chris give up?" Ollie asked.

My heart was unclenching slightly. If Ollie was talking, he couldn't be too gravely hurt. Unless he was in shock.

"I don't know. He conceded."

"Makes no sense," Ollie muttered as I manoeuvred him through the doorway and examined him in the bright electric light. His right shoulder and the top of his arm were shiny red and looked exquisitely painful.

"The good news is, it's only a second-degree burn, which is surprising given how close the two of you were. I wonder if the fact copper has a high melting point has anything to do with it. Your scales aren't actually copper, of course, but perhaps they have some of copper's properties." Realising I was getting distracted, I got back to the point at hand. "The bad news is, it's a second-degree burn. It's going to hurt like hell for a few days."

I took him upstairs. "Why—" he started, as I steered him into the bathroom.

"Best thing for a burn is to keep water on it," I told him. He sat in the bath as I turned the shower head to extremely gentle and guided the resulting water over his burn. He hissed, then buried his face in his knees. "Sorry," I said, knowing from experience how painful it was.

Ollie's scales would have protected his hide, and therefore his skin, from the worst of the flames, but this was still a nasty burn.

"Clothes are by the door," Mia said.

I turned my head to find her hovering. "Can you bring us some painkillers, gauze, and the ointment from the kitchen cabinet? I can't remember the name but it's in a white tube with silver writing."

"That sounds like an accessibility nightmare," Ollie muttered, and my heart twisted with love for him. Even with how badly he was hurting, he had to say something to make the rest of us feel better.

He took the painkillers while I bathed his burn and carefully covered it with gauze.

"Do you want to go to hospital and have it checked out?" I asked.

He licked his lips. "Do I need to go? I hate hospitals."

"No, though if that changes at any time, you will go."

My firmness didn't have its expected result. Instead of agreeing obediently, he smiled at me, such love in his expression that something strange happened to my heart. "You can't help it, can you? You've always got to be in charge."

Well, it was my job, in case he hadn't noticed. I helped him out of the bath and drew him to me, able to breathe fully for the first time since hearing him cry out. "I thought—oh, God, Ollie, don't ever do anything like that again." My voice was shaking suddenly.

"Believe me, I won't," he said, and I choked back an unexpected laugh. "Seriously, it fucking hurts." He snuggled closer, and added softly, "He was going to kill you. Tear out your throat in front of Mia. Was I supposed to let him?"

"Thank you," I said hoarsely, feeling the beat of his heart against mine and knowing I would never again take this for granted.

"Why's Mia here?" he asked after a while. "I thought she was away for the night. Just as well we didn't decide to have sex on the pool table in the hall."

"It's not robust enough," I said, and he grinned. "Good question, though."

We got dressed, and I was glad to see Mia's thoughtfulness in bringing one of my shirts for Ollie, which was easy to put on with his injury. I ducked along the landing and retrieved his silver bangle from my room. He usually removed it to sleep, and I thought he would need its comfort after what had happened.

The brightness of his smile as he took it meant I'd been right. I hovered beside him as he descended the stairs, and arranged cushions for him to sit comfortably on the sofa. Once he was safely sitting down, I turned to Mia.

"What the hell are you doing home?" I demanded. "You're supposed to be at Lacey's."

Ignoring me, she knelt beside Ollie and looked up into his face. "Are you okay?" Her voice was trembling.

I'd got it wrong, yet again. I let him reassure her, and then she turned scared eyes on me. "What on earth was happening out there? Was that Uncle Chris?"

I sank down into the nearest chair and rubbed my hands over my face. "Yes, and I don't know. He decided to challenge me, after—You'd better start, Ollie. Why were you in the library at that time of night?"

Once he'd told us what had happened before I found them, I filled Mia in on the rest.

"But I don't understand why he wanted the bible," Ollie said. "That must be what June was looking for, don't you think? And why did he decide to fight you tonight? He can't have meant to do it all along because otherwise he'd have called you out instead of sneaking into the house. And how did he get in?"

"My fault." My stupid, stupid fault. "It never occurred to me to take their keys away from them when I threw them out." I hadn't dreamed they'd be brazen enough to ignore their banishment. "As for the rest of it, I know as much as you. Less, in fact, because I hadn't thought about the library angle. I suppose he thought that he couldn't get the bible the way he'd planned, and if he beat me, he could find it in his own time."

"But why?"

"If I fetch the bible, it might tell us," Mia said.

"You know where it is?" I asked. That was more than I did.

She rolled her eyes, evidently recovering from the shock of what she'd witnessed. "Stay there. I'll be back."

I sat with Ollie snuggled into my side, everything inside me mixed up—wrath and terror, guilt and love. But we had a mystery to unravel, so I pushed it all down again to concentrate when Mia brought in the family bible, a huge leather-bound book.

She placed it on the coffee table, which she dragged over to us before opening the bible at a random page.

"Huh. Is that Latin?" Ollie asked, after we'd all squinted at it for a moment.

"I think so." I was frowning, trying to remember if Grandma, whose passion the library was, had ever mentioned anything special about the bible. Nothing came to mind.

"Is there a secret letter among the pages? A map leading to buried treasure?" Ollie's eyes were suddenly bright.

The book was too big to be held upside down and shaken, but Mia made a thorough investigation and looked as disappointed as Ollie when it came up empty.

"Anything written in the front or back?" I asked.

She leafed through. "Just blank pages. Though… Isn't that a lot of blank pages?"

I didn't know. It wasn't as if I looked at many old books. Something Evelyn Berstow had said at the moot came back to me. "Maybe something's written in invisible ink."

Both Mia and Ollie looked at me incredulously. Mia's mouth was open and Ollie's eyes were dancing with humour.

"I'm serious," I said. "The Berstows told us that some dragons recorded their history that way, to keep it safe from humans."

"So how do we read it?" Ollie leaned forward eagerly, scrutinising the blank pages.

"I don't suppose you happen to know a red dragon?" I asked him.

"They're extinct, aren't they?" Mia asked.

"No," Ollie said slowly. "Nate Mortimer's brother is one. He told Jack. I think Nate gave Jack his number—he was trying to get all the younger dragons onside. I'll ask him."

"Hold onto that thought until I've decided what to do," I told him. I didn't particularly want to contact Abimelech Mortimer over what might be nothing, and I definitely didn't want to owe Abimelech Mortimer a favour.

"Even if there is something here, how would Chris have found out about it?" Mia asked.

I sighed. More questions than answers. The grandfather clock in the hall struck four o'clock.

"Let's get some sleep, and maybe we can work some of this out tomorrow," I said to them, rising to my feet and offering my hand to Ollie to help him up.

He winced as he moved, and I grabbed the pack of painkillers to take upstairs with us.

"Archer." Mia's voice was very small. "You don't think Uncle Chris will come back, do you?"

"No chance." I meant it, though it didn't banish the anxiety from her face. "But if you want to bring the sofa cushions, you can bunk on my floor for tonight."

She looked from me to Ollie and screwed her nose up. "That's okay, thanks. I mean, it's almost dawn, isn't it? I'll see you both in the morning."

Before she went, she stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek, then gently kissed Ollie's. "I'm so glad you're okay," she said.

"Leaving aside the fact it feels as if my arm's about to fall off," he complained. But I noticed he waited until she had gone upstairs before he did so. "Come on, you can help me to bed. Suddenly those stairs look like a mountain."