The Abyss Serum

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The needle went in just under the collarbone, and Kaelen did not flinch.

"You are very gentle," he said.

"Shut up."

"I only mean it is a kindness. The last man to stick me with something did it from fifty feet, with a dart."

Lucian withdrew the needle. The black fluid was gone. For a moment nothing at all happened, and the silence of the cell pressed in around them both, and Lucian began to think the thing was a fraud.

Then Kaelen's pupils blew wide.

It started in the hands. The golden veins beneath the skin lit up like threads of wire, racing up his forearms, across his chest, curling at his throat. His breath hitched. His head snapped back against the wall hard enough to crack the steel, and a sound tore out of him that was not a human sound: a long, shaking growl that made every hair on Lucian's body stand up.

"Kaelen."

"Do not." The voice was torn in half. "Do not come close. I cannot..."

The restraints, the ones Lucian had refastened with his own hands, began to glow cherry red.

Lucian reached for his psychic shield and found it in pieces. The serum had done to the dragon exactly what Thorne had promised, and the dragon's rut had gone off like a bomb, scattering waves of heat and pheromone across the cell. Lucian caught the edge of it and his knees nearly buckled. It smelled like woodsmoke and warm skin and a summer storm. It smelled like the thing he had lost fifteen years ago.

"Dammit," he said. "Dammit, Kaelen, look at me."

The golden eyes found him. They were not entirely sane.

"Soothe me," Kaelen said.

"I won't."

"Soothe me, Lucian."

It was the first time the dragon had spoken his name. It went through him like a nail.

He should have called the guards. He should have stood back and let the chains hold. Instead he heard himself say, "Stand down," in a voice that was not his commander's voice at all, and stepped forward, and laid his gloved palm flat on Kaelen's chest.

The mind spike was gone. What came out of him now was the other thing, the old thing, the blue warmth he had given a bleeding boy in the snow. It poured into the storm. It met the fire. For one dizzy moment the two of them hung together in a place that was neither the cell nor their bodies, and Lucian saw the inside of the dragon's mind laid open like a map.

He saw a mountain city of gold and ash. He saw a throne room full of old men who did not love their prince. He saw a stretch of black river at night, and a border road, and a man in a long coat lying in the dirt with blood in his white hair.

His father.

"No," Lucian whispered. "No, that's not..."

"I came late." The words were slurred, drowning. "I came too late. He was already..."

"Who did it? Kaelen. Who did it?"

"I don't..."

Then the chains came off.

The prince's arms closed around him, and the world went dark and hot. Lucian hit the wall. Strong fingers locked in the front of his uniform, and a mouth was at his ear, ragged, hungry, and tender all at once.

"Get off me," Lucian said, and it was not an order. "You ravening beast, snap out of it."

"I have relived the taste of you every day." Kaelen's breath shook against his neck. "Every single day. Stop fighting me."

"I am not..."

"You are trembling." The voice dropped, rough with wonder. "Part of you wants my mark. Doesn't it?"

Lucian opened his mouth to deny it and found that the word would not come.

The pulse beat in his throat. The golden light of the veins filled the cell like a second sun. He could feel the weight of Kaelen's whole body against him, the heat, the hunger held on a leash by what little was left of the prince's will. He thought, with perfect clarity: *If I do not stop this now, I will not want to.*

His own mind spike hit then, a final reflexive flare of blue, and Kaelen cried out and sagged against him.

Silence. Heavy breathing. A thin line of blood ran from Lucian's nose.

On the wall above them, a speaker crackled.

"Excellent."

Lucian went cold.

It was Thorne's voice, warm and satisfied, spilling into the cell through the intercom. "The murderer has confessed. Every guard on this level heard him. *I came too late. I was there.*" A pause, gentle as a hand on a shoulder. "Execute the dragon prince, and protect the Commander."

"He did not confess," Lucian said hoarsely. "He was in a rut. He was raving."

"My dear boy, you are compromised."

"There is more to Father's death than this. If Kaelen dies, we lose the only lead we have."

"Lucian." The voice sharpened, just slightly. "Step away from the prisoner. That is an order from your Lord Regent."

The cell door groaned. Through the observation glass, shadows were already moving, helmeted, armed. Lucian looked at the dragon in his arms, half-conscious and burning, and thought of a white field, and a bleeding boy, and a promise made in the dark.

He turned his back on the door. He stood between the soldiers and the prince, drew his revolver, and put himself in the way.

"I would like to see you try," he said.

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