Do Not Make a Sound

======================================================================

Wintergate had changed.

Lucian had been born in this city. He had learned to ride in its parks, to shoot in its cellars, to dance badly in its ballrooms. He knew the cobbles of Mercer Street and the stink of the tannery quarter and the exact echo under the Ironbridge. But the Wintergate that rose out of the morning mist was not the city of his childhood.

Soldiers on every corner. Black armor, mirrored visors, rifles slung at the hip. Hovering drones swept the rooftops with thin red beams. Loudspeakers on the lampposts repeated the same message in a soothing, empty voice: *Lucian Winters is a traitor to humanity. Report any sighting to your nearest garrison.* On the side of the old cathedral, three storeys tall, someone had pasted his own face, with a bounty beneath it.

"You look very handsome," Kaelen said.

"Do not start."

"I am simply observing. The poster artist captured your jaw."

They had stolen the coats from a laundry line: long black leather, high collars, the kind worn by couriers and smugglers and men who wished to be forgotten. Lucian had slicked his hair back with water. Kaelen had tucked his curls under a dockworker's cap and, to Lucian's great irritation, managed to look like a model advertising it. Their horns, their wings, their gold, all of it was folded away. But the mark on Lucian's neck burned beneath the collar like a brand, and Kaelen's scent clung to him, and every time the dragon so much as brushed his sleeve, a ripple of heat ran through his whole body.

"They have upgraded the scanners," Hale had said, on the last call. The captain's voice was tight with fear. "Sonic detectors in the armor, sir. They can read psychic output at a hundred yards. You use so much as a thought, and the whole district lights up. And sir. Thorne has moved the schedule. The launch is no longer seven days. It is at first light tomorrow, at the Founders' Day rally."

"Tomorrow."

"He wants the whole city watching."

They had a night, then. One night.

"Get in here," Lucian hissed, and shoved the dragon through a doorway.

---

The sign above the door said HOTEL in dripping red neon, and below it, in smaller letters, *Rooms by the Hour*. It was exactly the kind of place a fugitive might disappear into, and exactly the kind of place patrols liked to sweep. The clerk, a gaunt man with a cigarette, took one look at their coats, pocketed Lucian's last gold ring without a word, and slid a key across the counter.

The room was small. A bed, a lamp, a window overlooking an alley, a bathroom the size of a closet. Lucian locked the door, slid the chain, and sagged against the wall with his eyes shut.

"Not a sound," he said. "The armor has sonic detectors. If we are heard, we are finished."

"Understood, Commander."

"I mean it."

"Commander." Kaelen's voice had dropped, and it was very close. "You are so tight."

Lucian's eyes flew open.

The dragon was standing in front of him, an arm braced either side of his head, his body a bare inch from touching. The cap was gone. His curls were a wild black mess. In the dim red light from the window, his eyes gleamed like a cat's.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your shoulders." Kaelen's gaze dropped. "Your jaw. Every muscle in you is wound like a spring. Do you want me to mark you again?" His smile was slow and wicked. "Right here, with the patrol outside?"

"Kaelen, you lunatic..."

"Shh. They will hear."

"I will kill you."

"You will have to do it quietly."

Outside, on the street below, a column of boots marched past. The whole room seemed to hold its breath. Lucian could feel his own pulse in his throat, in his wrists, in the place where the mark lay. He should have pushed the dragon away. He should have done a hundred things. Instead he stood there with his back flat against the wall and his hands clenched in fists at his sides, and let Kaelen's mouth drift along the edge of his jaw.

"I do not know the way," Kaelen whispered, mockingly meek.

"Then behave."

"They will find us."

"Then *behave*."

"Yes, my Commander."

He stepped back. Lucian let out a breath he had not known he was holding, and hated, a little, that part of him wished the dragon had not listened.

---

The scanner caught them at noon.

Lucian had been so careful. For two hours he had not reached for his gift, not even to lift a latch, but he had forgotten that the mark itself was a psychic signal; that every time Kaelen's pheromones touched it, it flared, and every flare was a beacon.

"Readings over there," a voice said in the street. "S-class. Locate the source."

"Do not let him escape."

Lucian's blood froze. He was across the room in two strides, at the window, peering through a crack in the curtains. Down in the alley, a squad of armored men had fanned out, their visors glowing blue. A woman in the lead was sweeping a handheld scanner across the building front.

"They found us," he said.

"Where did they go?" a man's voice demanded. "The scanner reacted just a second ago. Is it malfunctioning?"

"He must have used psychic power to slip into one of those buildings."

"Search every room."

"You drained your power just now," Kaelen said behind him, low and urgent, "and your pheromones are spilling everywhere. You smell unbelievably sweet. Lucian. Come away from the window."

"I cannot..."

"Lucian."

The doors were beginning to bang, down the hall. Boots on the stairs. Someone shouting, "Routine inspection, open up!"

Lucian turned. Kaelen had already crossed to the bed and sat down on its edge. He held out a hand.

"I think I need to leave," Lucian said weakly.

"The hall is crawling with Thorne's dogs. If you step out now, are you looking to get yourself killed?"

"I..."

"They could be inside in a minute. We could die at any moment." The dragon's eyes burned. "So I would very much like to use it."

"I do not have time for your little games."

"Neither do I. This is not a game." Kaelen caught his wrist and pulled, and Lucian, to his everlasting chagrin, came. He landed half across the dragon's lap with a muffled grunt. A hand closed on the back of his neck. "Cover me. Play along."

"Kaelen, that's enough..."

"As you command, my Commander," Kaelen said. A pause. "But you are being too loud. The men outside will hear you."

"I am not..."

"To keep you from giving us away, I will have to cover you completely with my scent."

Lucian's breath caught. "You had better make it quick."

---

What followed was the longest ten minutes of his life.

Kaelen's hands were everywhere, and nowhere, and always exactly where he did not expect. A palm slid up under the hem of his shirt, spread over the small of his back. Lips traced the line of his collarbone. Every inch of skin the dragon touched he left saturated in that warm, unmistakable, thunderstorm scent, until Lucian was drowning in it, until he was sure no hound and no scanner and no soldier in the world could have separated the two of them.

"Quiet," Kaelen breathed against his ear.

He bit his own lip until it bled.

Someone hammered on the door.

"Routine inspection! Whoever's in there, open the door now, or we're breaking it down!"

"Play along," Lucian said, into the dragon's shoulder, hardly a breath.

"I have been."

"Louder."

"As you wish."

The pounding grew louder. A voice shouted for the plasma cutter. Lucian caught a flash of blue-white light through the crack beneath the door, the whine of a high-frequency blade biting into the lock.

"Commander," Kaelen said in his ear, easy, almost amused. "Tell me. Is it because of the guns outside? Or because of my aura?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Answer me."

"I'll answer when I'm not about to be shot."

"Good boy." A low, delighted laugh. "Go on."

The lock fell with a clang. The door shuddered. The chain snapped, and an armored boot came through the gap, and a flashlight beam swept the room, across the bed, across two figures wrapped around each other in the shadows, a man in a black coat and a man in shirt-sleeves, tangled up and flushed and not remotely interested in the intruders.

"Sorry!" the soldier barked. "Sorry, sir, wrong..."

"Stand down." It was another voice, a woman's, clipped and bored. "We've already got no sign of the fugitive. There's suspicious activity in the next district. Move out and provide backup immediately."

"Yes, sir."

The door slammed. Boots receded down the hall.

Lucian did not breathe for a full minute.

Then he pushed away, with great dignity, and sat up. His hair was a disaster. His shirt was half undone. Kaelen lay back on the bed with a look of such smug radiance that Lucian very nearly hit him.

"Not one word."

"I would not dream of it."

"I am going to be sick."

"I can help with that."

"*Kaelen.*"

He was rescued by the radio. The woman officer had left her handset on the table by the door, and it crackled, now, with a stream of chatter. Lucian dived for it. He held the thing to his ear, hand shaking, and heard a clipped, official voice reading from a list.

"Report the latest security layout at the Regent's residence. Thorne is moving the warhead tonight. His bedroom and study are the blind spots. We go in through the ventilation shaft."

Lucian stared at Kaelen.

The dragon stared back.

"Well," Kaelen said softly. "That was convenient."

======================================================================