Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
This cage was nicer than my last, its walls cleaner and the window an addition I might have appreciated had I only just left my last place of captivity. But it had nothing on real freedom.
I paced the large space, my fingers roaming over the manacles which bound my wrists and closed me off from my magic as I tried to force them free for what must have been the thousandth time.
It did nothing other than mark my skin with cuts and bruises but I couldn’t bring myself to stop trying.
Just as I couldn’t bring myself to stop hurling my weight at the door or throwing whatever pieces of furniture I could lift at the window.
Because if I ceased my futile rebellion, I’d be giving in.
I’d be accepting this cage, these chains, this end to my too-brief freedom.
My room was at the top of one of the palace’s towers, the ceilings high and space large enough to accommodate my Dragon form were I to shift, but there was no chance of that while the green gemstone remained lodged in my skin.
Air magic sealed it in place, my fingernails biting into it whenever I thought to try and claw the stone free of my flesh.
But it never wavered once. The prince had cast it there just as he had cast his magic around this entire room, sealing me in and making all attempts at escape impossible. Not that it would stop me from trying.
My turbulent thoughts turned to the maker of my captivity, just as they did all too often. Of her achingly beautiful face set with resolve, those grey eyes so hard as they gazed at me.
It had been two weeks and she still hadn’t shown her face.
I was starting to think she never would. But if she did, I planned on calling in her debt to me and taking her death for my own.
I snarled as anger bit and clawed within me, its presence as dominating as the beast I shifted into, the Dragon locked inside my Fae body hungry for blood in payment for this betrayal.
But of course she was only a puppet in this play.
A puppet I might never lay eyes on again despite my fervent desire to repay her for this incarceration.
But I was certain I would be faced with the one who had been pulling her strings.
I glared at the bed I’d slept in, despising its silk sheets and soft mattress even more than I had despised that fucking cave. This place was nothing more than a lie and I was overdue a discussion with the one telling it.
As if in answer to the demands of my thoughts, the door banged open behind me and I turned from glaring at the broken furniture which was scattered around the room in pieces to take in the Fae who had arrived to disturb me.
Until now it had always been a servant bearing food, fresh linens, clothes or hot water to fill my bath.
Luxuries I’d once dreamed of but now withstood with nothing but contempt.
I’d had no choice but to accept them; magic forcing me against a wall while my room was cleaned and the broken furniture exchanged for new.
Over and over again, like a sick reset on a game I’d never agreed to play.
Like they expected me to simply give in to this place one day, stop fighting against it and learn to live here willingly.
The worst thing was, I knew they were right.
No matter how long I spent destroying what they brought me I’d also been giving in.
I’d started drinking the water first. Less than two days had gone by before I’d been forced to accept that.
It had been quickly followed by food on day four.
And I’d stopped pissing on the walls like a dog by day six because truthfully, I was the only one who suffered through refusal to use the latrine.
Day seven, I’d given up hurling water on the fires they set for me in the grate because this place was fucking freezing and I was sick of feeling the bite of the snow which clung to the window frame and reminded me that I was too far north for my liking.
Day nine, I’d made use of the bath and slept in the bed because it had become clear that it was also me who suffered the indignity and discomfort of the cold floor and the stench of stale sweat on my skin.
So now I was sleeping in their bed, eating and drinking what they offered and bathing too. The only thing left for me to give in to was the destruction of their furnishings and how many more days did I intend to start by hurling side tables at walls and burning the books they brought me?
I eyed the man who stepped into my room, hating that I thought of this place as mine already.
“Bastian Carderrin?” Prince Dragor said, turning my name over on his tongue and spitting it out like he didn’t much like the taste of it. “I know many of the great names of the houses of Avanis but yours took some time to research.”
I bared my teeth, wanting to stride straight for this bastard and snap his fucking neck but I had felt the air shield he’d placed between us and knew I wouldn’t get within five feet of him.
“Is your name some kind of homage to times past or do you truly believe yourself to be several hundred years old?” he mused.
A growl rolled up the back of my throat, smoke coiling between my teeth.
“You know I refer to the end of the Carderrin line, yes? That is where you chose to steal your name from? Though it intrigues me that you chose to coin yourself after the sole heir who ran from battle as a coward and was never seen again.”
“That’s a sack of horse shit,” I spat. “I was taken against my will. No Fae who ever met me would have believed I was a coward who chose to run from war. My family were the greatest pillar of strength Avanis had ever seen and I–”
“Truly believe yourself to be hundreds of years old,” Prince Dragor finished for me, his lips lilting with amusement.
“Tell me, Bastian,” he said my name like it was a joke we were both in on and I growled again.
“Were you born with such a tendency to fanciful delusions or was it simply that your mind cracked open after years spent beneath the ground the way my general found you?”
“General?” I asked, knowing he had to be referring to Vesper but she had never told me she ranked so highly in his army.
“Newly appointed,” he admitted. “In fact, there are a lot of new things about her since she returned to her rightful place at my heel. She was gifted a new name as well as a highborn title and her new rank in my army. General Vesper Dragonsbane – it has quite the ring to it. My brother has even gotten it into his head to make a wife of her and elevate her further. All because of you.”
A bellow tore from me, my flesh burning with the fire of my Dragon as it fought to escape the confines of the twisted magic which held me trapped in my Fae body.
I doubled over, dropping to one knee as I fought the urgent need to shift, the loss of control making my heart race to a frantic, blazing rhythm that threatened to make it burst straight out of my chest.
Dragor watched me with a cold collection that only made my fury grow, the beast within me thrashing to be let free.
After spending so many years in my Dragon form, it was more natural to me to give in to the beast than it was to try and contain it.
I’d spent so long stuck in the body of a monster that I had never considered how difficult it would be to become trapped in the flesh of a man without access to the creature within.
“She’s good, isn’t she?” Dragor taunted.
“Did you think you saw something in her? Did you give in to the temptation of her and fall for her allure? Don’t tell me she had you fooled into thinking she actually cared for a brute such as you?
” The breath of laughter that escaped him had me seeing red and I threw myself at him with a feral roar, colliding with his air shield with enough force to send cracks spiderwebbing across it.
Dragor straightened, his smile slipping away as he took a step back, raising a hand to throw more magic into his shield and stop me from advancing.
“You’d better pray to the stars that your magic holds, Duster,” I growled at him.
“Duster?” he questioned, trying to regain his composure though I could still see the tension in his limbs as he fought to hold his magic in place to restrain me. “By the stars, maybe you really are as old as you claim.”
“You came here for a reason so why don’t you stop baiting me and just come out and say it,” I demanded, thumping his shield again and causing more cracks to race across it.
“Alright,” he said stiffly. “I came to offer you a bargain.”
“As if I’d make a deal with a devil such as you,” I sneered.
“I think you will,” he countered. “Let’s say you truly are as old as you say. That must mean you have no one left waiting for you back in Avanis?”
I said nothing but my silence was confirmation enough.
“And if what my pet tells me is true then you had no children either? No great grandbabies to think of as kin. No kin whatsoever in fact – I checked.”
“Checked how?” I demanded.
“Your entire bloodline was wiped out after you…well, history says that you ran from war like a snivelling coward but for argument’s sake let’s say that I believe you, that you were captured and held against your will.”
“You know precisely how I was held for such an impossible amount of time and what caused me to remain the way I’d been, un-aging and unchanging for those endless years.” I indicated the green gemstone his witch had driven into my skin and he gave me a tight smile.
“I had the luxury of exploring the cavern you escaped from and made a few educated guesses. Turns out I was right about that crystal being able to control you, even if I wasn’t entirely certain until the thing was done.”
“So you sent Vesper to pierce my skin with it without even knowing if it would work?” I asked. “If it had failed she’d be dead right now.”
“No sacrifice would have been too great in aid of your capture,” he said with a shrug. “But luckily it worked out just fine.”
“Lucky for you,” I muttered.
“The point is, we are where we are. And even if we weren’t you’d have nowhere to go. No one knows your history, no one misses you aside from whoever it was who had been holding you, I suppose, but they aren’t being forthcoming with their claim.”
“It was Reapers,” I said, though why I was admitting any part of my history to him, I didn’t know.
“Was it now?” he purred, his cold eyes lighting with that admission and I wished I could take it back.
But what did it really matter anyway? “Well, whoever it may have been, that is the past and I’m here to offer you a future.
I need a Dragon to help me win this war.
Especially now that the Void has come into play on the side of one of my enemies. ”
“I would never fight for you.”
“So, what? You just plan to fester in this room eternally? I can offer you riches – your kind are fond of those, yes?”
The suggestion of treasure had me glancing up at him with a longing which was all too clear in my damn expression, but I couldn’t help it. It had been so long since I’d had a hoard of my own and Dragons needed treasure the way a Pegasus craved a rainbow or a Sphynx desired books.
Dragor pressed on with his gilded speech and I knew I shouldn’t be listening to any of it but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.
“I could give you a title. Lands of your own – one of the biggest provinces in the whole of Stormfell. I happen to have one going spare thanks to a traitor losing his head and it runs the length of the Valbaren Plains – right across the border from Avanis where the mountain ranges are so very similar I can only imagine it would feel a lot like your old home. You could take a wife or a dozen wives of your choosing. I assure you plenty would be willing to bed a Dragon in hopes of breeding more of your majestic kind.”
“I don’t want–”
“You’d be so very close to free,” he interrupted me. “Just sworn in service to me.”
“And what, pray tell would that entail?” I sneered.
“I wish for you to fight in my battles for me. Better yet, I wish to ride you into war myself and watch my enemies burn in your flames.”
“In what fucked-up delusion do you really believe that could ever come to pass?” I scoffed, shoving off of his air shield and striding away from him so that I could lean against the far wall with my arms folded over my chest.
“But you haven’t heard the best part yet,” Dragor purred like a cat about to spring a trap upon a mouse and I didn’t much like being positioned as his mouse.
He moved to the door and opened it again, beckoning someone to join him from outside the room.
I arched a brow at the woman who stepped in, her hood drawn low so that it shadowed her face but the gleam of her eyes pierced the darkness beneath the cowl as she looked at me.
Dragor smirked as he made his final pitch and my heart lurched at the offer he was making, my eyes moving to the window and the impossible freedom which lurked beyond it.
“So, Dragon,” Prince Dragor asked finally. “What’s it to be?”