His grey pallor warmed…but he still lay motionless, deeply unconscious. Though she could hold his death at bay, she couldn’t heal the fatal wound in his chest.
But she knew someone who could.
She reared up, turning her great horned head in the direction of the glittering lights of Brighton. Her mind quested out, rushing over the city like a tsunami.
*HUGH!* she cried out, with all the power of the sea. *Come, come now! John needs you!*
His soul touched hers, a pure brightness like silver moonlight on fresh-fallen snow. Other minds rose in answer too. Dai, a swirl of smoke and sparks; Chase, swift and unstoppable as a storm; Ash, a veiled power equal to her own, the sun to her sea. They heard her call.
They were firefighters. They knew how to respond to an emergency.
In mere minutes, Chase’s black hooves touched down beside her. Hugh slid off his back, his white hair brighter than the ice. Both the pegasus and the paramedic did a double-take at Neridia’s new form, but quickly turned their attention to John.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Hugh let out a groan as he saw John’s wound. “You bloody overgrown fish, can’t you even get injured like a normal human being?”
Neridia put out a claw to restrain Jane, as the sea dragon instinctively tried to block Hugh from her unconscious brother. *You can heal him, can’t you?*
“I can heal anything short of decapitation.” Hugh scowled irritably, his long-fingered hands already probing John’s chest. “And I swear to God, one of these days someone is going to put even that to the test. Now shut up and let me work.”
A brilliant silver glow spread out from the paramedic’s hands. It ran over John’s still form, covering him like a blanket woven out of pure moonlight.
A clean, clear scent filled the air, like lilacs, and rain, and the first leaves of spring. Despite everything, a sense of peace settled over Neridia. She had a sudden deep, powerful certainty that all would be well.
“Come on, you bastard,” Hugh muttered under his breath. “If you make me shift in front of all these people, I’ll kill you myself…”
Jaw clenching, Hugh bowed his head as if in deepest prayer. For the briefest instant, an even brighter light flared, like a star set into his forehead. Neridia had to close her eyes against the dazzling flash.
When she opened them again, she found herself looking into John’s.
She very nearly squashed poor Hugh flat, forgetting her current size and strength in her haste to reach her mate. He was still flat on his back, the ice red around him, but his wound was completely healed. Only an old, pale scar marked where it had been.
He stretched one hand up to her. She bent her head to meet him, feeling the sweet fire of his touch even through her armored hide. His spread fingers barely spanned a single one of her scales.
Pure joy filled his blue eyes. He smiled up at her.
“My Empress,” he said.
Epilogue
John would never tire of watching Neridia swim.
No one would ever be able to tell that she had not been born to the form that she now wore. She curved through the water more gracefully than the finest Dancer, and more powerfully than the strongest Knight. She moved like the sea itself.
She was the rarest of all sea dragon colors—a true, deep black, the exact same shade as her hair in human form. As she swam, iridescent highlights gleamed from her sinuous flanks; flashes of darkest blues and purples, like distant nebulas hidden in the depths of her midnight scales.
As the Empress’s mate and bodyguard, he had the honor of swimming closest to her. He took secret delight in trying to perfectly echo every graceful movement of her ebony body. When she dove, he rose; when she spiraled one way, he went the other, arcing around her in precise counterpoint.
Now, however, duty required him to break off his private game. They had crossed from the cold Atlantic into the narrow, shallower waters of the English Channel, and were rapidly approaching the shore. Even though an entire honor-guard of knights flanked them, John trusted his mate’s safety to no one other than himself.
Rising closer to the surface, he propelled himself forward with a powerful stroke of his tail…and laughed out loud as, below, Neridia perfectly matched his increased speed. It seemed that his secret game was not as secret as he had thought.
Her sky-blue eyes gleamed mischievously at him through the dim water. “Trying to out-swim me, my Champion?”
“Never, my heart,” he sang back. “But you must allow me to precede you for a little while. It is a matter of security.”
“You do realize that nothing in the sea can harm me, right?” she teased…but the subtle harmonies she wove around the melody told him that she understood his need to protect her, and loved him for it.
That was another thing he would never tire of—the rich, glorious symphony of her voice. Sea dragons usually learned their native tongue while they lay dreaming in the egg, from listening to their parents. Neridia was the only person who’d ever had to master it as an adult, yet she’d become perfectly fluent in a matter of weeks. It was like she’d already known it, somewhere deep in her soul, and had merely had to be reminded.