The blood seeping across the floor, making my insides cold.

The van lurched forward, bounced once and gained speed as it rumbled over the sand. We fled into the desert, the roar of St. George behind us, the head of a dying dragon resting in my lap.

PART II

All That Glitters

Cobalt

Twelve years ago

“Agent Cobalt? They’re ready for you now.”

I stood and rolled my shoulders forward and back, trying to shake out the stiffness, then followed the assistant down the hall toward the room at the very end. I hated meetings like this: sitting in a cold office building, being polite and deferent, while the flat, appraising glare of a senior dragon bored into me from across the table. Normally, Talon didn’t bother with face-to-face conferences, speaking to me directly only when they felt the assignment especially important. I’d rather the organization contact me the usual way: via an envelope or a folder left at a dead drop, where I could read through my assignment in peace. Where I didn’t feel like I was being judged.

Especially now. Especially since I was still furious with the way the last assignment had gone down, the lives lost because of me. Because Talon had lied, and I’d believed them.

I strode into the meeting room, where a trio was seated around a long wooden table in the center of the floor. I recognized Adam Roth, a youngish-looking man in a perfectly tailored gray suit. One of Talon’s junior VPs, though he was still older than me by at least a couple centuries. I held his gaze a split second longer than was probably safe, saw a flicker of something lethal go through that calm expression before I averted my eyes, glancing at the pair seated across from each other a few chairs down.

My stomach dropped. My trainer, the crusty old bastard himself, sat quietly with the tips of his fingers steepled against his lips, ignoring everything around him. Or appearing that he did. I knew better. Nothing in this room would have escaped his notice, not even the pigeons nesting on the sill behind his head. He was older than Roth, one of the oldest trainers in the organization; a tall, thin man with a sharp chin and even sharper black eyes that were never still. His dark hair was streaked with silver, and the jagged scar beneath his left eye only added to his mystique.

Not long ago, the sight of him would have filled me with both anticipation and dread, like a nervous schoolboy handing his report card to his parents. Now the only thing I felt was resentment. Why was he here? As if I needed someone else judging my every move, silently criticizing.

The last person in the room was barely noticeable, his presence overshadowed by the two adult dragons. A human, I realized when I finally studied him. Thin and gangly, with a mess of brown hair and a rumpled collared shirt half tucked into his pants. By human standards, I guessed he was fairly young; maybe eighteen or nineteen. I was surprised. If he was in this room with Roth and one of the oldest trainers in the organization, then he had to know what we were. Who was this human, and what did he do, to warrant such privileges? He didn’t look like anything special to me.

“Ah, Agent Cobalt,” Roth said, rising smoothly from his chair. “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the table, and I sat one chair down from my trainer, leaving the human on the other side by himself.

“Hello, Cobalt,” the Chief Basilisk murmured without looking at me. One corner of his lip curled in that faint, amused smile I hated. It had been more than a year since I saw him last, but he could always make me feel like a bumbling hatchling again with just a look. “I hear you’ve been doing well.”

“I’m sure you have,” I muttered as Roth sat down, smoothing his tie, then folding his hands before him on the table. “I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of things about me lately.”

This was not smart, antagonizing my trainer in front of the VP. A few years ago, I could have expected a swat upside the head at best and a six-hour training session at worst. But the years of being cowed by him were over. I was a full-fledged Basilisk, and not only that, I was one of their best. This might be a dangerous game I was playing, but it was no more hazardous than the missions they expected me to pull off without a hitch. Let him know I wasn’t happy; I couldn’t do anything about Talon or my assignments, but I didn’t have to be thrilled about them.

My instructor’s thin mouth twitched—impossible to tell if he was angry or amused by my lack of respect—before he turned to the head of the table. The VP was watching us now, dark eyes intense.

“I have reviewed your previous assignments, Agent Cobalt,” Roth began, dispensing with the pleasantries, which was a relief. I didn’t have the patience for useless small talk about my trip and what I thought of my accommodations. “Your trainer speaks highly of you and, from what I can discern, with good reason. We have not had such a young Basilisk do so well in a long time. When we asked your trainer who was best suited for this assignment, you were his top pick. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said flatly, dredging up a polite nod and a stiff smile. “I do what I can for the good of the organization.”

I almost gagged on the words. But it was what I was expected to say. I was not so crazy as to insult the organization itself; if I did, I probably wouldn’t walk out of this room alive.

Mr. Roth smiled, though his expression was cold. Turning to the giant screen on the far wall, he pressed a remote, and an image flickered to life: a satellite feed of a snowy wilderness in the middle of nowhere. A scattering of plain gray buildings sat within a fence at the edge of the mountains.