Page 48 of Red Dragon’s Heart

She took a long, shuddering breath.

“I’ve relied on science almost all my life,” she said softly. “After my parents died, it was all I had to hold onto.”

Oh, hell. Based on their shared dream, he was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he asked anyway: “How did they die?”

“Car accident.”

The dream scenario was all too clear in his mind. A little girl in the back seat of a car, her parents covered in blood and staring sightlessly.

Fuck. It was real. “You were there, weren’t you? In the car?”

She nodded. “I was nine. Troy was three. We survived.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They didn’t.”

Feeling totally helpless in the face of her pain, he scooted his chair as close as possible and put his arm around her. She leaned into him. It felt good, giving her some small semblance of comfort.

She went on talking, her voice dreamy. “For a long time, I felt like it was my fault. They were there because of me, you know. I was a competitive figure skater—”

“No way.” He’d never understood ice skating—no fire dragon would want to spend all that time in what was basically a refrigerator. The only decent place for ice was in a drink.

“Oh, yeah. I loved to skate, but even more, I loved to compete—the thrill, the challenge, the spangly dresses. Trying to do all my jumps and spins better than anyone else. I was very competitive,” she informed him. “I liked to win.”

“I would never have guessed.” But he let her see his smile.

She smiled back, briefly, but then her gaze grew sober. “My parents spent so much time, traveling around with me, and dragging Troy along. I didn’t appreciate it. And then this time… we ran into fog, and someone coming the other way was over the center line. My dad swerved to miss him, and we went through the guard rail and down an embankment. My parents died on impact, and Troy had internal injuries. One of his kidneys was destroyed, and the other damaged. And I was perfectly fine. Just cuts and bruises.”

He stroked her arm, let his fingers trail over the perfect curve of her collarbone. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. I mean, that’s what everyone says, but it’s always felt like my fault. If it hadn’t been for me and my skating, they’d still be here, and Troy would have had such a different life. A better life.”

“You don’t know that.”

She shook her head, moving slightly away from him. Dammit. He’d said the wrong thing—or at least, he hadn’t said the right thing. He could feel her enormous grief, like a hole inside her. What could ever fill that up or heal that wound?

Maddie went on, “My aunt and uncle took us in. They had lots of money, but they traveled all over the world for my uncle’s business, so after Troy recovered, he and I were mostly left with a nanny and a housekeeper. I stopped skating, and I got obsessed with science. I guess I figured if I could learn enough about the universe and how it worked, I could keep bad things from happening.”

Zakerek knew from experience that nothing could keep bad things from happening. Not even magic. But he understood the desperate need to feel like you had some kind of control over your world.

“Science was the only thing that made sense. There were rules, you know? And if you knew the rules, you knew what to expect.”

He rubbed her shoulder gently. “Okay, I get that. But why can’t there be magic, too?”

She said helplessly, “Because if there’s magic—if shifters are magic—then nothing in the entire universe is how I thought it was. It’s like I built a house on a cliff, and now it’s crumbling away and sliding into the ocean, and I can’t stop it.”

His heart actually hurt for her. He didn’t know hearts could do that, and he didn’t like it. He hugged her close again, trying to make it stop.

She added, “And it means I’ll probably never be able to save my brother.”

Now he was completely lost. “Save him?”

“Yeah. Like I said, he lost one kidney in the accident, and the other one was damaged. It was never fully functional—there was always a danger of it failing, and now it is. He’s on the transplant list, but he has a rare blood type and I’m not a match. They can keep him alive on dialysis for a while, but if we don’t do something for him in the next few years, he’ll die. When I found out about shifters, how they’re resistant to disease and have accelerated healing, I was hoping…”

Understanding crashed over him. This was what she’d been trying to do with her research.

“You were hoping that if you figured out the secrets of shifter healing, you could heal your brother.”

She nodded wearily. “And instead, I put myself in a position where I had to abandon him, or I’d be putting him in danger. I hate not being with him, and I worry about him all the time. What if he gets worse, and I’m not there?”

The grief and despair in her voice cut him to the heart. She’d spent most of her life feeling guilty, and instead of letting it eat her alive, she’d turned it into determination to do the impossible—and then set about doing it.