Bastian shook his big head and just as Saina was drawing in breath to try another song, he blinked and the remaining red in his eyes faded away. He seemed to draw into himself, suddenly much smaller and less glittery, but there was only a brief moment to observe his dragon before he shifted into a man. Then he was Bastian, vaulting down from the retaining wall to kneel at her feet.
“Saina,” he said. “I… don’t understand what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“You should be,” Saina said furiously. “You don’t own me and you never will, but more than that, you are an utter fool.”
He looked up at her in consternation.
“Do you have any idea what is in that suitcase?” she demanded.
He started to reach for it, and she quickly said, “No, don’t touch it!” She crouched next to it and unzipped it, flinging the lid back to reveal a sodden, dissolved gray mass in a slurry of half-empty plastic wrappers. “This is goldshot.”
Bastian, poor sweet, innocent Bastian, looked across the luggage at her with no understanding at all.
“Goldshot is what got that French dragon eliminated from the World Mr. Shifter contest,” Breck supplied, snapping his fingers with the memory.
“It’s a drug,” Saina added. “A terrible, expensive designer drug that only works on dragons. You probably absorbed several doses of it getting that close to the stuff dissolving underwater.”
“I was a real dragon,” he said achingly, standing up and wrapping arms around himself. “For a little while I was a real dragon. A dragon of fire and strength.”
“You are a real dragon,” Saina told him firmly, standing to face him. “And I love you just the way you are, the way you really are, not the trumped up ball of muscle and ego that the goldshot makes you.”
He squinted at her, like he was struggling through the worst hangover of his life. He probably was.
“You love me?” he said plaintively.
Saina sighed. “Yes, dammit.” It hurt to admit, and felt good at the same time, like pulling off an old scab.
Bastian grinned at her lopsidedly through his pain. “You are my mate.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, but weakly. She wasn’t entirely sure of anything anymore. “You shouldn’t trust your feelings for me.”
“This is not a spell,” Bastian insisted. “I know what false confidence feels like now, and that is not what I feel for you.”
“I should have brought popcorn,” Breck told Chef. “This is better than the Spanish soaps!”
“That’s only because you don’t speak Spanish,” Chef hissed back. “And you’re too lazy to read the subtitles.”
“What would convince you?” Bastian asked, ignoring them.
His question was meant seriously, Saina realized, he wasn’t just speaking metaphorically about having her set an
impossible quest for him to complete.
“Time,” she said thoughtfully. “Time away. My magic wears off if I don’t renew it. But…” she swallowed. “I don’t trust myself not to cast again, without meaning to. I have never loved anyone before. I don’t know how to do it without magic.”
Chef and Breck both made suspicious sniffling noises, and Saina glared in their direction.
Chapter 18
Bastian would have preferred to have this conversation without an audience, and without a headache so terrible it seemed to sink into his very bones. But fate seemed determined to cross him.
“I was curious as to why I didn’t have a lifeguard on duty, and I also believe there were promises about this not happening again if you were to stay here, Saina,” a new voice cut in.
Scarlet’s arms were crossed and she was standing by the gate to the kitchen garden, looking as if she’d been there for some time.
“The plot thickens,” Breck said in a stage-whisper to Chef.
Scarlet turned her icy stare to him. “I believe you have somewhere else to be,” she suggested.