Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 24

"Fucking shit," Dane swears, kneeling to examine the ash. "How the fuck did we miss this? Fuck."

He sifts through the pile of fine gray and white dust and picks out a larger fragment of bone.

"Is it him?" I ask, chewing a nail.

"Yeah, it's him," Dane answers. "Who the fuck else would it be?"

He runs his hands over his hair, leaving disturbing streaks of ash in his locs.

I stare down at the little pile with a sick feeling at the back of my throat. It hardly seems big enough to be the remains of a whole man.

"Doesn't it take a pretty hot fire to burn a body like this?" Julian asks, giving voice to my own thoughts. He's standing back from the rest of us, one hand over his mouth and one pressed to the base of his ribs, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one feeling ill. "Like...a lot hotter than a little fireplace could handle?"

"Yeah, it does," Dane confirms. "Not to mention burning flesh at any lower temperature stinks like hell. The whole house would'a reeked with it. To cremate a body like this, you'd need..."

"Dragonfire," Ambrose says.

"What?" Dane turns and squints up at him from where he still kneels by the little hearth.

"Dragonfire would be hot enough," Ambrose goes on, "though I don't know that there are many dragons on the loose—other than myself, that is."

"You can breathe fire?" Julian asks, his jewel-bright eyes widening with interest.

Ambrose's lips quirk in a lopsided smile. "No, my fair fae, I don't breathe fire. I burn with it. Shall I demonstrate?"

He looks around the room. This one has a Greco-Roman theme, with a low bed, hanging silks, marble statuary, and a number of rather risque paintings of nymphs and satyrs on the walls.

On a pedestal beside the bed is a bowl of grapes, untouched since the night of the party and shriveled with rot by now. Ambrose goes to it and picks out a few, holding them in his palm for us to see.

"Not every dragon has fire," he explains. "Some have venom, some turn things to stone. Some are creatures of air, others of water. Ainach, though, was—or rather, is—a fire-drake. As his...offspring...I carry something of that in myself."

Undoing the button on his cuff with his other hand, Ambrose rolls up his sleeve, exposing the pale skin of his forearm. I watch as the lines of his veins and arteries begin to incandesce, glowing like hot wires within his flesh. The palm of his hand flares white, and then the grapes ignite with a colorless flame. An instant later, all that remains of them is a light dusting of fine ash.

Ambrose blows it from his palm with a puff of breath and then brushes off his hands.

I stare at him, mouth slightly agape and a weird pain pinching my chest.

Every time I think I'm getting to know him, Ambrose throws me off balance. It's irrational, but it feels unfair and personal, like I'm a kid with a mean older brother who's nice one moment and then trips me in the mud for a laugh the next.

Confused by how hurt I feel, I find it difficult to focus on what the others are saying, and Dane's voice sounds muffled and distant in my ears.

"Jesus fuck, Thorne," he swears. "You didn't think we ought to know you could do that until now?"

Ambrose sniffs and shrugs. "Honestly, no. Is it your habit, Detective, to reveal every skill and ability of your own every time you make a new acquaintance? I'd wager not. Besides, this was a case of thefts—of missing objects and of an unusually clever thief—not of murder and of bodies burned to ash. Now that it is, I've made a point to show and tell. What more do you want?"