She was tempted to throw caution to the wind and enjoy the seduction the dragon offered. It would have been so much easier than thinking. Melchior's tongue stroked confidently against hers, and she could only imagine how that would feel on more sensitive parts. But she made herself stop kissing him again.
"What will you do with the OPA?" Deirdre asked.
"I can't believe you want me to articulate a platform before I can have sex with you."
"Is there something wrong with a little ideology? The world needs more visionaries."
"You want to know what Rhiannon will do with power?" Melchior lifted his fingers to his mouth and sucked on them, smiling at her taste. "She'll blast America with winter and kill everyone. Then she will expand from America to conquer the angels and demons."
She gaped at him. "But why? What do you get out of that?"
"Ever loves all shifters. Rhiannon hates him, so she hates shifters, too. She'll take what he loves from him and prove once and for all that she's the stronger of the two. Rhiannon and I are united in our loathing of Ever, you see. Our mating has far less to do with the desire to be in charge of the Winter Court and much more to do with vengeance." Melchior shrugged. "Naturally."
Deirdre climbed off of Melchior. Her urge to surrender to him was as effectively doused as if she'd jumped into the frozen ocean. "We're not doing this." Her feet left burned imprints on the ground so distinct that she could make out the shape of her toes.
"You keep telling me 'no' like you think that's an option." His eyes smoldered with internal light. "I want to know what it means to mate with someone whose fire burns like mine. You saw what we did to Original Sin. By mating, we could flatten this forest and scald the earth."
"Mating? We really aren't doing that."
"Think of the life I'm offering you. In my arms, you'll be safe from the wars to come. You would be my favorite concubine. I would take very good care of you."
She snorted. "Concubine?"
"Consorts and kings don't have girlfriends."
"The unseelie are so screwed up," Deirdre said. It wasn't fair that this was the man who had helped her change, bringing Deirdre into the sky for the first time. Damn, but she wished she'd gotten to share that experience with someone she actually liked. "I'm going back to Earth. We're done here."
"You're not returning to Earth, my little heron. I told you that Rhiannon's sent an assassin tailored to slaughter a phoenix like you. If you go back, you'll die permanently. And I don't plan on letting that happen." He advanced on her, forcing her to back into one of the trees.
"Why would I be safer here?" Deirdre asked.
"Because Rhiannon won't let the assassin into the Winter Court. It knows no master. It will kill anyone in its path, and she's much too smart to allow it into her realm. As long as you're here, you're safe." He extended a hand toward Deirdre. "You can stay with me willingly, or you can stay in shackles."
Staying as his concubine would mean she was safe from the assassin, solitary confinement in an OPA detention center, and Stark's murderous moods.
But it would also mean losing the election.
She would never let Rhiannon win.
"Shove it up your cloaca," Deirdre said. "I'm going back to Earth."
He lunged at her.
Deirdre whirled out of the way, leaping behind the nearest tree.
Melchior smashed into the one that she'd left. His fists pulverized the bark and sank inches deep into its core.
Wood sprayed around him. Ice showered from the branches above.
He yanked his hands out of the tree. Smoldering coals remained in its belly.
Melchior rounded on Deirdre, jaw dropping. The inside of his mouth was glowing. No, actually-the glow was coming from deep within his chest, emanating up his throat, illuminating his teeth.
He was going to breathe fire in his human form, this time aimed right at her.
"Gods," Deirdre said.
She leaped off the side of the hill.
Melchior's flames blasted over her head in a column as thick as her body, missing her head by millimeters. She actually felt her hair curl from the proximity of the heat.
Wind battered at Deirdre as she plummeted toward the trees. They grew rapidly underneath her.
"Change!" she screamed at herself. "Change!"
But when she reached within, searching for the anger that Melchior had said would allow her to shapeshift, she didn't feel the power of the transformation.
She was angry all right. Angry and afraid, but mostly angry.
The power just wasn't there.
Deirdre's flaming flesh spluttered and went dark.
Seconds later, she smashed into the trees at the bottom of the valley.
They broke her fall, but she couldn't tell how much of the snapping was the tree branches and how much was bone. She was numbed by the cold. Beyond shock. Unable to tell if her body was shattering.
She hit the ground on her side in a snowdrift. It was cold, so very cold, like daggers of ice stabbing into her side.
Without Melchior's protective warmth, she couldn't seem to keep her own fire flowing. Her body temperature wasn't enough to even melt the snow. Her fingers and toes numbed, ears stinging as she fought to get to her feet.
Deirdre twisted to gaze up at the black sky. Melchior was a glowing point of light at the top of the hill. Wings unfurled from his back, sending plumes of smoke spiraling toward the clouds.
He was shifting again.
"Oh, man, so screwed up," Deirdre said. Her teeth were chattering. She could barely understand herself.
The healing fever swept over her, blissfully hot in comparison to the surrounding snow. It was the only thing that got her moving.
She scaled the nearest tree and swung into the branches. Deirdre's climb was clumsy and slow, fingers immobile from the cold.
The air churned as Melchior swooped over the trees.
He was halfway to his dragon form, winged and huge. He shot fire into the forest.
The trees caught around Deirdre.
"Damn!"
She leaped to the low branches of the nearest tree, and then to another tree, and another. The forest ended in an abrupt line at the edge of a valley. Deirdre hurled herself out of the branches and landed on the snow. She didn't break through-it was solid as concrete, and about a million times slipperier than an ice skating rink.
Deirdre slid down the hill into the valley, ice scraping along her hip, her ribs, her shoulder.
It was so cold.
Melchior strafed her. He opened his giant dragon jaws, serpentine tongue thrashing in his mouth, and fire billowed within his body again.
Could dragonfire stun a phoenix?
Deirdre did not want to find out. If she fell unconscious, she would surely wake up in chains.
She threw herself down the icy slope, skidding faster to the nadir of the valley. Melchior burned a path where she had been seated only moments earlier, melting all the ice away, exposing dead grass underneath.
The portal that he'd opened to drag her into the Middle Worlds hung open over the next hill. The swirling patch of darkness was hard to see in the gloom of the night. It must have only been a quarter of a mile distant, but it felt like it was so much further than that, completely unreachable.
She needed to get through before Melchior caught her.
A fireball smashed into a tree to her left. It exploded, showering bark everywhere. She shielded her head with her arms and kept running.
Melchior roared so loudly that they must have been able to hear him at the castle. The trees shook with the fury of it. Ice pelted her numb skin.
Deirdre reached the top of the hill. The portal was even higher than she remembered. At least fifteen feet off the ground. Maybe out of her reach, since she was so numb and weak.
Melchior dropped toward her again. His claws flashed through the black night, aiming for her throat.
She leaped for the portal. She lifted her arms high. Spread her fingers out.
Deirdre stretched.
It was too high over her head. She was never going to reach it. She couldn't fly-she wasn't a phoenix, she didn't have wings, she was going to be devoured by Melchior- And then everything was black.
She smashed into carpet a millisecond later. Her momentum sent her rolling, arms and legs flopping, hair in her face.
Deirdre shoved up onto her knees, prepared to run from Melchior again. The floor was slippery with melted ice. Snow drifted from Deirdre's hair and dissolved on contact with her skin.
She wasn't in the Winter Court anymore. She was back in the cabin on the airship.
The door banged open. Trevin entered, attack spells crackling in his fists, ready for a fight, eyes aglow with the force of his seelie magic.
Then he saw Deirdre naked and dripping wet on the floor and burst into laughter.
An undignified end to an undignified night.
-X-.
"What in the world is wrong with you?"
Deirdre shivered and pulled a blanket tighter around herself. "I'm cold, that's what's wrong with me. Is there a coffee pot anywhere on this stupid airship?"
Rylie gaped at her in disbelief. They were sitting at a table on the deck of the dirigible as the sun rose, waiting for Marion to arrive. Trevin was carrying those silver chains and eyeballing Deirdre again. "You just ran off with a competing Alpha when we've got a standing arrest warrant with your name on it, and you're asking for coffee?"
"Well, I doubt there's going to be coffee in solitary confinement," she said.
"You are unreal."
"Melchior admitted that Kristian belongs to Rhiannon, though," Deirdre said. "It wasn't a totally useless trip." It especially hadn't been useless since she had gotten to shapeshift-finally-but she wasn't going to share that with the Godslayer. Rylie didn't deserve to know about that part of Deirdre any more than Melchior did.
"I already knew Melchior was lying. I didn't need you to verify it." Rylie massaged her temples. It seemed another headache was coming on.
"If you'd been really smart, you wouldn't have come back," Trevin said.
"You shouldn't have come back," Rylie said softly.
Deirdre shrugged. "And miss the election? I wouldn't dream of it."
The sidhe's eyes focused past her on the clouds beyond the deck. "Looks like our visitor has arrived."
A small, light airplane that sparkled with enchantments soared through the sky, drifting close enough to tether its nose to the dirigible's deck. Once it was stable, Marion climbed out of the pilot's seat and jumped aboard the airship.
The mage girl hadn't dressed up for the visit to the Summer Court. Her jeans were stained with something that looked like barbecue sauce. She wore a fluffy ponytail holder as a bracelet.
"Beautiful morning," she said breathlessly, pulling the scarf off of her brunette curls. "Don't you think?"
Rylie stood to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. She was all smiles at the sight of the girl, her ire toward Deirdre forgotten. "Does your mom know that you flew here alone?"
"She knows I'm going to the Summer Court to cast a binding oath on the king of the seelie sidhe," Marion said. "I hardly think she'd be surprised to hear that Abel let me on the ultralight alone."
"So it was Abel who let you fly yourself."
She grinned bashfully and didn't respond to the question. Marion spotted Deirdre. "Hey! It's my favorite terrorist!"
"Marion," Rylie admonished.
"What? I said she's my favorite." Marion pulled out her cell phone, thumbs flashing over the screen as she started sending texts. The teenager was practically glued to her phone. It must have killed her to go without it for a few hours while piloting a ship. "Are we going through the portal or what?"
The Alpha sighed. "Yeah. We're almost to the juncture."
Deirdre had no idea how Rylie could tell. They had been over unremarkable ocean for hours, and the place that they were hovering looked identical to everywhere else they had passed.
She let Rylie and Marion enter the cabin first, casting a last look over the steely ocean.
It was a quiet day. Clouds drifted slowly past, borne on a wind that couldn't penetrate the wards on the airship.