Chapter 8
Belle
Howls echoed in the darkness behind me as I sprinted through the forest, gasping for air, sweat stinging my eyes.
The beasts had descended upon me an hour after I’d left my hiding spot, chasing me like a pack of wolves. They were right on my heels, dark shapes slipping between the trees at the periphery of my vision, branches snapping and crashing in their wake.
They should’ve overtaken me by now, but they hadn’t. Why?
They’re toying with me.
Visions flashed through my mind: Silas’s headless corpse, the dismembered bodies on the road, at the farmhouse.
I pushed the thoughts away, pumping my arms as the ground pitched beneath my boots. My muscles screamed, but I hurtled forward through the twisted oaks. Bushes clawed at my clothes and thorns tore my skin, but I didn’t slow.
The Fates alone knew how long I’d been running, but I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t. Not while there was a chance Marcel and Gregoire were still alive.
A dark shape slipped through the brush to my right, starlight catching its powerful, clawed limbs and horns.
I jerked away, the ground suddenly dipping beneath my feet.
A ragged gasp tore from my throat as my foot caught on something, and I stumbled, my arms flying wide.
My knees hit the damp ground, and I rolled twice, then scrambled up, ignoring the pain and exhaustion that weighed on me.
Run.
That was all I could do. And yet, my legs trembled, every step leaden.
The thud of paws grew close, and a sickly scent clung to the back of my throat, sweet and tangy like a kill left out too long.
Suddenly, moonlight flickered through the trees ahead. I turned toward it, and seconds later, I broke out onto a hard-packed road, stumbling over the ruts. The cold, biting wind kissed my skin, and I looked around wildly.
The towers of a castle rose against the starlit sky ahead, some lit, others crumbling.
Fellspire. The Dragon King’s castle. It had to be.
It perched on a spit of stone that jutted out from the mountainside, its buttresses clinging to the rock like fingers.
A whimper escaped my throat, and I threw myself forward. If I could get across the narrow bridge that connected it to the road, I might live.
A piercing growl cut through the trees behind me, and I pushed my legs into a sprint. Run! Don’t be the reason Marcel’s children are fatherless.
My boots flew forward with a strength I didn’t know I still possessed. I was going to make it to the castle, godsdamnit, even if my heart exploded afterward.
The beasts crashed through the forest beside me, and claws scraped over the weathered stones of the road.
I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. I couldn’t. I was too close.
The gatehouse loomed before me as I raced across the bridge, its gray stone almost golden in the flickering torchlight.
The massive wooden doors were open, but the portcullis was down.
Panic clawed at my chest, threatening to cleave it in two.
I crashed into the iron grate, gripping its bars, staring into the darkness beyond. “Someone help me, please!”
A torch flamed to life, and I shielded my eyes. Bowstrings groaned as they pulled taut, and steel flashed in the light: a line of pikes. The soldiers made an unmoving wall, as if they’d been waiting.
“Please, let me in,” I begged. “They’re going to kill me!”
I should’ve already been dead. The beasts had been merely seconds behind.
When no response from the soldiers came, I twisted around to face my fate, pressing my back against the bars.
Three dark shapes loomed at the edge of the torchlight.
Their breath fogged the night, their horns and twisted forms casting long shadows behind them on the moonlit road. I braced for the attack.
But it didn’t come.
“Open the gate,” a harsh male voice ordered.
Timber groaned and chains rattled. The portcullis lurched against my back, then slowly began to climb.
I dropped to my hands and knees and scrambled under the rising iron spikes as soon as they were clear of the ground. “Thank you, I—”
My words cut off as I sat up. Four pikes were leveled at my chest, and behind them, the grim faces of soldiers who’d seen far too much misery.
“You’re afraid of me?” I panted, chest heaving, not sure whether I wanted to cry or laugh. I braced against the ground as a wave of dizziness hit me. “Those things will kill every one of you. Close the gate!”
“The beasts know where their domain ends,” said the male who’d given the order.
He clung to the shadows of the guardhouse, and I squinted against the torchlight. “What do you mean, they know?”
The figure stepped into the light, and my mouth grew bitter. An immortal. There was no mistaking his unnatural cold beauty. He carried himself like a captain.
“The king is expecting you,” he said.
My body went rigid. “How could the king know I was coming?”
The corner of his mouth lifted with disdain, and I had the sudden sensation of falling, arms flailing, as if I’d somehow missed some critical piece of information.
The soldier closest to me angled his pike at my chest. “Get up.”
I shoved myself onto one aching leg, then the next, even though the only thing I wanted to do was to lie down in the dirt and cry.
They were on me the moment I stood. One man ripped my bow from my shoulders, another my quiver and the meager handful of broken arrows I’d recovered.
A third yanked my tattered pack off my back, emptying the contents onto the ground.
My waterskin. A little jerky. My well-worn book.
That was all—the last vestiges of the life I’d lived just hours ago.
Before Silas and his soldiers were killed.
Before Marcel and Gregoire were taken by the dragon.
My anger sparked, and I jerked against their hold. “Get off me.”
“Enough,” the captain said, his voice edged with a promise of violence. “I’ll take it from here.”
The soldiers withdrew instantly, but they held their weapons at the ready as they followed us through the courtyard. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would’ve laughed, because I was the least of their worries.
The muscles in my legs pulsed with fatigue, and I was fairly certain my feet had been rubbed raw to bleeding. The cold night bit through my leather vest, turning my sweat-slicked skin to ice, and I hugged my arms around me as I took in my surroundings.
Half the castle’s towers lay in ruin, and sections of the battlements had crumbled away.
Abandoned gardens flanked the carriageway ahead, their flowerbeds overrun with ivy and rowdy blooms of flowers I didn’t recognize.
Perhaps once they’d been cared for. Now, they were a wild tangle of nature, beautiful in an unruly sort of way.
Everywhere I looked, there were signs of damage and neglect. Why would the cursed king live in a derelict castle?
My gaze caught on something high up on the mountainside. A cavernous gap behind the castle’s highest tower—big enough for a dragon to fit through. Unobstructed. Inaccessible. The perfect lair for a winged monster.
Were Marcel and Gregoire up there? Were they still alive?
A light flickered to life in the cave, and a shadow moved into the entrance. A man.
My feet rooted in place, my pulse quickening as a tingling heat crept down my spine.
He was tall and broad shouldered, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was watching us. Watching me.
“Keep moving,” the captain growled, shoving me forward.
When I looked up again, the figure was gone, as if he’d never existed. Had it been my imagination, a trick of the eye? Who would dare enter a dragon’s lair?
Its master.
I sucked in a trembling breath and steeled my spine. Alive or dead, there was only one path forward now—I had to face the king.
Statues of guardsmen in ancient armor flanked a heavy wooden door ahead, their weapons raised and faces twisted in fear, as if they were fighting off the cursed beasts themselves. They were unnerving and grotesque sculptures, and when the captain opened the door, I quickly stepped through.
Despite the flickering warmth of the entrance hall, the icy chill inside me lingered. Faded tapestries of forest scenes decorated the otherwise drab walls, lit by torches, and a deep sense of melancholy permeated the shadows.
“This way,” the captain said, stealing my attention.
He guided me through an elaborate central space with blue and yellow wallpaper, gilded murals, and a domed glass ceiling.
It was beautiful, yet it carried the sense of another time.
A housemaid flitted into one of the adjacent halls, her heavy skirts sweeping across the floor as she disappeared.
What had brought her to this awful place?
“Stop gawking.” The brute pushed me toward a set of sweeping double stairs that opened onto four upper levels. “The king’s waiting.”
My hand curled around the stone railing, and I winced as I lifted my battered foot to the first step. “If that’s true, he’s going to have to wait a moment longer,” I ground out.
My legs were beyond exhausted, my soles battered. Four flights of stairs seemed an impossibility.
“Pathetic mortal.” The captain seized my arm and hauled me up the stairs, my feet screaming. I had to force back tears as he dragged me along, half-running just to keep up.
Harp music drifted from ahead. The sound of angels in a demon’s lair.
We exited on the third landing and approached an ornately carved set of doors guarded by two sentries. The captain motioned to the men, and they opened the doors.
He shoved me into an intimate, dimly lit space.
Carved wooden panels decorated the windowless walls, lit by glass sconces.
A dozen richly dressed men and women lounged on low cushioned benches and plush rugs laid out below a throne.
Their voices fell silent as their gazes cut to me, each of them studying me with a mix of curiosity and interest that pebbled my skin.
The door behind clicked shut. The captain was gone.
My heart pounded as I stared at the empty throne that sat atop two low steps. It had been carved from a deep burgundy wood and inlaid with dark stones. Simple and unassuming. Completely the opposite of what I’d have imagined of a bloodsucker who commanded a dragon.
Prickles danced across my neck, and I looked across the sea of faces. “Where’s the king?”
“Behind you,” a deep masculine voice said.