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73 - Scaled
They didn’t have a moment alone, ever. Anzi couldn’t so much as look at Kai without Alain and his fellow damned spies pinning her with the most intent of stares. And it was deliberate. Maybe Tet trusted her more now than before, but he must have told them to make it clear she was every bit the pressed prisoner she’d always been. Kai knew it too, although his restlessness appeared to come from a different direction than mere frustration at being watched.
“They reek,” he snarled on the morning of the festival as she turned him around and wrapped fresh linen bandages around his waist. “How long is he going to keep them around you?”
“They’re watching you, too. And they smell fine. Stop saying they smell like—sex, you don’t just go around saying that in front of people. It’s crass. This isn’t the lower districts, we use our nicer words here.”
That was enough to make him peel his fierce glare away from t
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Called by the Dragon 75 - Procession
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Called by the Dragon 76 - Weakness
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The dragon’s talons threatened to crush her ribs with their perilous strength, but she clutched at them with a determined fire and grit her teeth against the pain. She had just been given a second lease on life, and Oza and Letti, too. If Doufan had run her through, he would have gone after them next without a doubt, and they wouldn’t have stood a chance. It chilled her to think how close they had all been to meeting their end just moments before, but as they rose higher and higher over the Imperial City, exhilaration and relief filled her instead, swallowing up all the fear that had weighed her down like the night clouds blanketing the moon. They were leaving. They were leaving, and she had managed to keep everyone alive. Her heart pounded harder when she thought of Kai and how she had had to leave him, but surely he would have done the smart thing and left the Imperial City as she had told him to do before parting ways. And he would be safe, she told
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