“I don’t know,” I said, skimming my gaze down his body and keeping my voice dry. “Your ego is pretty damn large.”
He laughed. It was such a warm and carefree sound that it dragged a smile to my lips and made my heart do an odd little dance.
“You could be right about that,” he said. “Maybe I should send you through it instead.”
“Sorry, I know squat about sneaking.”
“Considering you’ve escaped from what I presume is a very secure research center, I find that extremely hard to believe.”
“That was a mix of luck and good planning more than any ability to sneak, believe me.”
The old woman brought in the plates of food. Trae gave her a smile and waited until she’d recovered from the power of it enough to head back into the kitchen before he asked, “Luck how?”
I snagged a piece of bacon from the nearest plate and munched on it meditatively. “Part of the research center was destroyed by fire. That took down the security system, as well as distracted a lot of the guards, which enabled us to get out.”
Of course, there was a whole lot more to it than that. More violence, more pain, more death. Escape hadn’t been easy, just like remaining free hadn’t been.
“Am I right to assume the fires were dragon-lit?” Trae asked.
“Actually, they weren’t. They kept the facility so cold that the air dragons couldn’t use their fires.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That sort of cold can be a killer.”
“So they discovered.” I hesitated, and grinned. “Of course, when it comes to kids and temper tantrums, the cold isn’t really a restriction. Trust me, a few things got singed over the years.”
“But never by Egan?”
I shook my head. “But we were being drugged. The kids weren’t.”
“So when you and Egan escaped, why didn’t you take the kids with you?”
“We couldn’t.” But I’d wanted to. Oh, how I’d wanted to. I’d fought with Egan for days about it—until Jace had stepped in. Jace—the fifteen-year-old who was so much older and wiser than his years would suggest—had calmly told me that it just wasn’t practical, and that he’d look after everyone until we got back with help. “The kids were in a separate section than us, and there were common rooms and research rooms between us. We couldn’t get to them without going through a whole lot of scientists and guards.”
“So how did you and Egan escape?”
“We attacked one of the feeders as he was coming into the cell, then ran for the kitchen area. Egan didn’t have his flame, thanks to the cold, but there were plenty of lighters laying about. We put them to good use to blow up the kitchens.”
“Wasn’t that a little risky?”
Brief memories of flames and heat, combined with the metal ping of bullets against walls, rose like ghosts through my mind.
I closed my eyes against them, but there was no fighting it. The flames meant to free us had almost killed us both. It was Egan who had saved us—saved me. Despite the cold, he’d tamed the flames the same way I could tame the sea. In the end, we’d come out singed but alive.
The same could not be said about sections of the research center. Or the scientists within it.
“Destiny?”
I blinked, then tore off a chunk of toast to dip into the egg yolk. “The kitchen was a fair distance from where the kids were being held. It wasn’t that much of a risk.”
“I meant for you and Egan.”
“Well, yeah, but we had to do something to divert enough attention so that we could escape.”
He considered me for a moment, his blue eyes somber, as if guessing there was more to my glib statement. “How did they find you in San Lucas? How did they track us here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t they kill you when they killed Egan?”