Time had frozen around us, the echo of my confession hanging in the air, impossible to retract. Ember blinked at me, looking as stunned, and almost as panicked, as I felt. What had come over me? Was I losing my mind? I had absolutely no experience to draw on. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Tristan would’ve laughed at my idiocy. I had been a soldier of the Order; our love affairs involved weapons—machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles. Instruments of death, not people. The Order itself cautioned about divided loyalties, saying our hearts should belong to St. George and the mission before all else. Marriage was infrequent among soldiers; most of us died young, and dedication to the cause had to take precedent over everything else, even family. The bond we shared with our brothers, our comrades in arms, was stronger and far purer than the weak desires of the flesh. I’d known that, believed it wholeheartedly, once. I was what they made me: a weapon. The Perfect Soldier. What did I know about love?

For a second, I balked, my heart going cold in my chest. Why had I said anything? I knew she wasn’t human. Though she looked and acted and sounded like a normal girl, Ember was, at her core, a dragon. A creature that, according to the Order, could only imitate emotion. I no longer even remotely believed that, but I barely understood human emotion; I knew nothing about the hearts of dragons.

The soldier pressed forward, blank and emotionless, ready to numb all feeling. To shield me from pain and humiliation and fear. This had been a mistake. I’d left myself open, vulnerable, but there was still time to withdraw, to retreat behind a wall of indifference and—

No. I hardened myself, steeling my emotions in a different way. No illusions this time. No doubts. I knew exactly what was happening, that the girl in my arms wasn’t human. The Order would call me profane, a blasphemer, a demon lover. I was selling myself to evil. I was joining the devil’s own and damning my soul to hell. Ember might not return my feelings, not in the human sense. I didn’t know if dragons were even capable of love.