Page 83 of House of the Iron Reaper

Or, at least, I thought it was. Deyanara broke through. Ronan and Deimos, also. And how? I wondered. How did they do it?

The answer is painfully simple.

They didn’t do it. I did. I cracked open, just a gap, and let them through. Because the only one who can break me is me.

“And the only one who can break you is you,” I tell the doomkin and slam its eye stalk against the seam.

The doomkin screams and frantically tries to shake me off. I straddle its other eye stalk for purchase, squeezing my knees together and forcing the toes of my boots against the ridges of its back. I bash the stalk against the seam again, and again, and again.

At some point, my screams mingle with the doomkin’s.

Slam.

The crystal cracks.

Slam.

The crab crashes into the wall, blinded, and my thigh muscles burn with the effort of holding on.

Slam.

The crystal shell breaks open. I shove my hand in and grip the heart, hot and slick with black blood. I rip it free and the doomkin collapses beneath me. Dead.

I stare at the heart, my own blood pounding in my ears. I do not realise the crowd is cheering until I look up and startle. I forgot they were even there.

The noise comes rushing in at once and my vision swims. I want to curl up and wait for this to end, for everyone to go away.

No. No, I have a plan. One even the Saints blessed. One that needs to happen.

Drawing in a shaky breath, I stumble to my feet, slipping slightly in the blood. The heart is still warm in my fist.

In. Out.

I blink and blink again, until the blur is gone. I search the crowd. I find her.

Traditionally, dragons had a very specific way of proposing marriage. It dates back thousands of years and truthfully, is rarely used anymore. But to me, there was never any other way I would do this. Only one way shows exactly what I mean.

To present a heart, in lieu of cutting out your own.

I lock eyes with Deyanara, I get down on my knees, and I present her the heart.

Chapter 43

Deyanara

Fire pits run in a semi-circle, curling around the edge of a middle tier street, with rough-hewn sandbrick benches. Smoke and meat thickens the air, orange flames dancing in the slight breeze. Couples and friend groups huddle around their pits, laughing and eating and clinking jars of pale wine. Novalie waves me over to her own pit, an emerald shawl shimmering around her shoulders.

“It only took a proposal for us to go on a real date,” she says as I take a seat next to her. My ears burn.

“Well, I… I did not know if…” I rub the back of my neck.

“I jest,” she says with a smile and when she rests her hand on my thigh, lightning jolts beneath my skin.

I think of her proposal and my pulse quickens. My father had once told me of a coveted flower only found in oases across the Dry Sea. It is said to contain all the beauty of a sunrise in its golden petals. But looking at Novalie after her fight, bloodlust in her eyes and a still-warm heart in her hands, all I can think is how that flower would wilt in shame knowing it could never come close to her.

“Dey?” Novalie breaks me out of my thoughts.

“Hm?”