Dawn of Cobalt Shadows (Burning Empire Book 2) by Emma Hamm (free novels to read TXT) 📗

dragon anymore, she realized. Or perhaps he couldn’t. The chains were broken, the beast unleashed. And she didn’t know how to control that beast at all.

“Nadir—” she whispered the word but didn’t have anything else to say.

He shivered at her voice, then turned away from her and stripped the ruined shirt from his body. “I find I no longer wish to be a man, Sultana.”

Such a thing would be a shame, she thought. The rippling muscles on his back shifted as he moved. His body was bronze poured over a stone statue of strength and humility. Not a scar laced over his back, not a single muscle out of place. He flexed, his biceps bunching as he pushed the fabric of his pants down, taking the wrappings of his boots with them.

Naked, he strode into the pool with perhaps a little too much confidence. But then again, he’d always been a confident man. A boy who’d been raised with multiple concubines and a wife from a very young age had good reason for such confidence.

Sigrid was not like that. She didn’t even like having her face bared, let alone her entire body.

Steeling herself for the conversation ahead, she reached for one of the towels and strode toward him. “There are many reasons to be a man.”

“Name one of them.” He leaned against the edge of the pool, stretching his arms along the sides.

“Being able to talk with others and have them understand you.”

“Twist my words, you mean. The only people who I’ve ever spoken to have used whatever words comes out of my mouth to their own advantage. I trust no one, other than you.” He leaned his head back when she crouched behind him, eyes searching for hers. “And I don’t need words to speak with you, Sultana.”

He overlaid the spoken sounds with an echo in her head. The dragon inside him was far more dangerous than she imagined because it knew how to tempt the beast within.

She shook her head. “You are a sultan. You cannot disappear inside the beast forever.”

“A sultan of a land who fears him. Of friends and family who betray him and the kingdom.” He shook his head. “Your argument is failing, wife.”

Sigrid reached out and dipped the towel into the water by his shoulder. She had hoped she might be able to calm him herself. Now, she questioned whether or not that was possible. The water trickled through her fingers, dripping into the pool like a song.

“Could I ask you to stay human for me?” she inquired, watching the water reflect the sunlight. It was like diamonds dancing across the waves he’d created.

“You could.”

“Then I ask it for myself, husband. I’ve had such little time to know you. To understand your thoughts and dreams as a man, not as a dragon.”

She touched the towel to his wounded shoulder. Each dab made her wince inside. She recognized this kind of slash as only a sword could make. Someone had drawn a weapon on him. She couldn’t blame them. A dragon had been attacking them with the clear intent to kill. Likely it had been Abdul.

That man had always wanted to kill Nadir. She’d seen it in his eyes more times than she could count. He wanted what Nadir had, and was well aware he’d never get it without the boy. But that only filled him with more fury.

What must it have been like to have the man who raised Nadir lift a blade to the man he called son? She almost wished she had been there to destroy him herself.

Nadir reached up and placed a hand on hers, stilling the movement and pressing the white towel against the wound. Blood soaked through her fingers, leaving a blossom of color against the fabric and her skin.

“What are you doing to me?” he asked.

“I’m cleaning your wound.”

“You’re doing so much more than that.” His voice turned gruff and deepened with the rough edge of a dragon. “You walked in here and everything changed.”

“I didn’t mean to change everything. I had as much choice as you did in our marriage.”

“It can’t change,” he replied. Nadir remained staring away from her, looking at the wall or perhaps through it to the kingdom beyond. “But it already has.”

“What are you saying?”

“I love you.” He said the words as though they were a curse, but they blasted through her like a prayer. “I’ve loved you for a long time, and I wondered if you knew.”

Words stuck to her tongue. A flame bloomed in her head, and a golden plume of hope took flight within her. Incandescent, it billowed and grew like a storm on the horizon. “I didn’t,” she whispered.

“Well, I do. I knew it from the first moment I saw you fighting and realized you were divine absolution come to purge the darkness from my soul. From the first moment I kissed you and you tasted like blood. When I saw your hands were stained red, just like mine. I might have dragon within me, but you are my wings.”

She let out a tiny sound on a sigh. A small, wicked part of her desiring to devour him in that moment. To breath in the poetry of his words and the love no one else had dared give her.

He loved her.

He loved her.

She didn’t know what to say. How did one respond to that when she was so bad with words? Sigrid struggled to think of anything to say, anything that was more than just I love you too because he deserved so much more than that.

“Come here,” he said gruffly, pulling her into the water with him.

She went gladly. It didn’t matter that the leather clothing she wore would be ruined forever. Sigrid sank into the water, legs on either side of him and arms around his neck. She tucked her face into the hollow of his throat and blew out a long breath.

Nadir held onto her hips. His thumbs stroked her hip bones, delicately tracing circles. “You