Soul of Fire by Sarah A. Hoyt

were. And yet he’d gone out of his way to rescue her, which doubtless would attract attention to himself and his condition. The penalty of death had always been justified by saying that weres ate people. Sofie had never doubted it till this moment. And in this slice of irreality in which she was living, she blurted, “Do you eat people?”
    He didn’t even look surprised, just said, “Rarely,” with that hint of carelessness that might mean he was joking or else might mean her question had injured his feelings. But before she could apologize, he said, “What are we to do with you now, though? Did you have any other plans than dashing your brains out falling from that balcony?”
    “Yes. I intended to go to Meerut.”
    “Meerut?” he repeated. “In the Punjab? Good God. That’s a long way away. How were you meaning to get there? Do you have friends here who’ll lend you transport?”
    “No,” she said. Her plan—forged in the heat of panic—had seemed perfectly reasonable, but now appeared as if it was not so much a plan as a fever dream. “You see . . . all my friends are in England. I lived there since I was very young. In . . . in an academy for young ladies.”
    “But why Meerut? What were you intending to do there?”
    She felt color come to her cheeks. She had never really spoken of Captain Blacklock to anyone, and she didn’t wish to confide in this man who was taller than William Blacklock and—though she was loathe to admit it—even better-looking. “I . . . You see . . . When I was in England, there was this captain of the regulars, a . . . He was a very good-looking . . .” She cleared her throat. “What I mean is, we were very good friends, through meeting at balls and parties a good deal, and we went riding together sometimes, and . . . and we formed an attachment.”
    “Oh, so you’re engaged,” he said, sounding indefinably relieved.
    “In a manner of speaking. I mean, he said that he would marry me in a second if he could. But you see, he was the child of the second child of a mere country squire, and he didn’t have any money and he thought my parents would never accept his suit, which might very well be true. He was ordered to India three months before I left England myself. Something about were unrest?” She looked at him, hoping desperately he would think of that, not of the obvious confusion of her situation with William.
    But he dismissed were unrest with a toss of his cigarette onto the ground and a flicker of his eyebrows upward. “Never heard of any were unrest,” he said. “At least, not in Calcutta. Not that I’ve met any other of . . . my kind. Well, properly speaking, I’ve never met my kind anywhere, since I’ve never come across another dragon, but . . .” He shrugged. “So Captain Blacklock is in Meerut and you wish to go to him and throw yourself in his arms?”
    She felt the blush in her face become a raging fire. She imagined, having seen herself blush before, that she presented a very pretty picture with the pink coming up in her cheeks and her eyes averted. But she wished three times more that she might have more control of her reactions. “That’s an abominable thing to say,” she said. “He . . . he said that if things were different and he had a chance, he would have very much liked to marry me. So, you see, now things are different, because my parents have forced me into this position, I don’t see why I shouldn’t marry him.”
    The dragon-man didn’t speak for a long time. He looked at her in silence till she felt she would burst into flames out of sheer embarrassment. But at last he opened his mouth and said, levelly, “Miss Warington, it won’t do. Even supposing you had some way of making it across the wilds of India to where Captain Blacklock is stationed—are you sure he is stationed there, by the way?”
    “He told me he was being sent to Meerut in the Punjab.”
    “So supposing he wasn’t lying for some specious reason of his