Page 116 of Dancing With Demons

Reaching up, I curled my fingers around his—

—and twisted.

“Arrgh!”

I wrenched his arm over and down his shoulder, twisting it into a position it was never meant to go.

“Ahhhh!” Ronin bellowed, collapsing on one knee.

“Hmm,” I sounded off over his noise. “What do I want to let you back into my good graces? I want my sister back. Until you make that happen, don’t touch me. Don’t follow me. And don’t waste my fucking time with your cheap love confessions and sleazy seduction routines. Get it through your fucking head, Ronin. I want you”—I punched him in the nose, breaking it under my fist—“to disappear from my life! Just die!”

Tossing him away, I spun around and slammed back into the room—locking it behind me just in time.

The backlash from the sub bond hit hot and fast, searing blistering punishment up my arm, through my neck and across my face.

I was out before I hit the floor.

Four Weeks Later

CHARLOTTE

“And they’re sure about this?”

“They’re sure.” Nik passed me his notebook.

The two of us were on the carpet before the fireplace, studying his notebooks. But that didn’t mean there were only two of us in the room.

Sauda, Raven, and the princesses all posted up in various spots—watching us like hawks.

“I left the academy and went all the way back home for this information,” Nik went on. “I wouldn’t have returned with it unless I was sure.”

I hummed, squinting at his tiny, squeezed-together writing. “So the fire hallow is a dragon?”

“The father of dragons,” Nik corrected. “The legend says that the very first dragon was born from the breath of the fire god, and whoever slays him will receive the same blessing the fire god bestowed on the dragon father.”

“The same blessing? Are we talking about breathing fire and sprouting scales?”

“I don’t know about scales, but the legend says you’ll become impervious to flames.”

I whistled. “So a creature that was born from a god and will grant you a gift from a god if you slay it? That definitely sounds like what we’re looking for.”

“More than that.” Nik tapped a paragraph toward the bottom of the page. “The spell says to light the pyre and burn the sire. Well, another word for sire is—”

“Father,” I finished. “Like a father of dragons.”

Nik bobbed his head, beaming away. Knowledge and research really got this guy going like nothing else. “The only thing my mothers didn’t know is how you’re supposed to burn a creature that can’t be harmed by fire.”

“That is the question.” I wrote down Father Dragon in my own notebook. “What about the sea hallow?”

“My mothers say it’s the siren, and with that being the case, you need to steal a siren’s voice.”

I sat back, considering that. “That does make sense. A siren does freely sing to her victims, which could be seen as giving her voice, so taking it would be stealing what she has given thee.”

I wrote down Siren too.

“And the hallow of the wood?”

“Elves,” Nik said confidently. Santino was right about him being the one to ask. Oh, how I wish he was here for me to thank him. “Elves are in the same family as fae, except they don’t fly. Elves are the guardians of the wood. No one else could be the wood hallow except them, but before you ask, my mothers have no idea what it means to shackle yourself to an elf’s manhood.” He winced. “Except for the literal meaning.”