The only way she could ever see herself knowingly doing that, choosing spite and revenge and hatred over life and practicality, was if Logan was gone. That was a world she didn’t even want to imagine.
> Logan said. >
>
Logan was right. Sebastian would never have passed up the chance to taunt her with the fact that she could technically kill him but also would never dare to. And rubbing salt into their wounds had to be more satisfying than slowly starving them.
Was he just too much of a coward to even risk putting the idea in her head? She didn’t think so. Sebastian had just about every character fault in the book, but he had taken a big risk kidnapping two federal agents. He could have easily snatched shifters less likely to fight back, but he had taken what he wanted regardless of the danger. Shewishedhe was a coward, but he wasn’t.
So what would scare a man like that into intentionally damaging his hoard? What was so bad that he would risk the unthinkable, risk more than even the radioactive dragon had risked?
Not death.Theft.The loss of his hoard.
Sebastian wasn’t worried that they might kill him. He was worried they mightescape.
He knew her fire was burning hotter than usual ... and it had him seriously worried they might escape if he didn’t weaken them and break their spirits. He was intentionally damaging his own hoard, taking away her luster and Logan’s strength, to make sure he could keep it. As sick as it was when you were talking aboutpeople, Iz could follow the logic of that.
But why did he think hotter dragonfire would let them get out of here? Even dragonfire the temperature of thesunwouldn’t melt the bars of her cage; the most it would do was leave them hot to the touch. They were just too resistant to magic.
The walls? Dragons could melt and reshape rock—it was how hoard-caves like the one they were stuck in had always been made—but once dragonfire-shaped rock set and hardened, it was fireproof—
... Or was it?
Shifters couldn’t destroy shiftsilver because the whole reason it existed was to overpower and contain them; it was a necessary magical counter to how powerful they were. Dragons couldn’t re-melt dragonfire-shaped stone because ....
She wasn’t sure. Was it magic or was it science? She wasn’t an expert in either, but since the magical strength of shiftsilver was what made it impervious to her, she was hoping for science. There might be more wiggle room there.
If it was magic, there would be an underlying logic to the spell.
One dragon shouldn’t be able to reshape another dragon’s cave?
No, if that were true, then a dragon could always reshape their own cave, and actually, annoyingly, you couldn’t. Iz had never made a cave herself, but she’d heard people complain about it before:You make one mistake with a tunnel, and it’s there forever.
Maybe it was magic and it was supposed to teach them a lesson about humility.
Well, that would be particularly dumb and pointless magic, then. Dragons didn’t exactly specialize in learning lessons about humility.
So maybe ... maybe it was just science. The rock underwent a chemical change when it melted and hardened again, and then it no longer had the same melting point. As perfectly shaped as these caverns were, Sebastian could easily have figured that out a long time ago and found superpowered welding torches to do his work for him once his breath would no longer do the trick.
And if that were true, then hotter-than-usual dragonfire could shape new tunnels.
It could set them free. She could tunnelaroundthe shiftsilver bars.
> Logan said. He sounded almost stunned. >
>
>
She nodded. >
A wave of visceral disgust rolled off Logan. Iz couldn’t blame him for that. She’d never entirely gotten over the sickening feeling of Sebastian being all around them, like his breath was lingering in the air.
>
Hope cracked through the disgust. >
>