Adrian Westergren
FIFTEEN
Pain.
Everything hurt.
Fuck.
Consciousness steadily crept into Adrian’s brain, and he realized he hated every decision he’d made that had brought him to this moment.
What the fuck? Was that his hair? Did his hair actually hurt? No, that was only the pain radiating from his skull through each follicle and strand.
Clenching his teeth, Adrian sucked in a slow, deep breath, trying to brace a little better against the overwhelming pain.
He held the air in his lungs for a count of three and pushed it out with the same slowness.
The pain seemed to recede like a wave retreating from the shore, and the fog in his brain cleared.
The last thing he recalled was walking down the street with Haru.
His dragon’s bottomless pit of a stomach had grumbled, and they’d been checking their funds to see how much money they had between them.
It hadn’t been good. Adrian had a wad of cash from both Erya and Damardor, but no Caspagir currency.
Of course, he possessed a credit card that was paid for by the royal family.
Haru had argued that his cousin wouldn’t begrudge them a hearty meal after beating the crap out of some New Rosanthe ships.
Just as they’d decided where to eat, there had been a scream.
Adrian had turned to see a woman run out of a building, her arms above her head as she’d shouted.
Without a thought, Adrian had lurched forward, his feet carrying him toward the trouble only to be thrown backward as the building had exploded.
And then nothing.
He had no memory of what had happened to Haru or how he’d gotten here.
Holding in a groan, Adrian pried his eyes open to find that he was lying on a thin mattress on the floor of an empty, decrepit room. So…not a hospital.
His eyes fell shut again, and he sighed.
This didn’t feel like a good start. Could this be one of Haru’s nightmares?
It was possible that, out of worry for Adrian, Haru had lost control of Yesuntei’s powers the moment the explosion had happened, but he dismissed that idea.
He was hurting too damn much for this to be a nightmare.
Fine.
The first step was determining if whoever had him was friend or foe.
Adrian peeled his eyes open and forced himself to sit up on the mattress.
Aches and pains filled his frame, but nothing felt broken.
He looked around, taking in the small room with its filthy, worn wooden floor.
The walls were covered in what had likely been white paint that had turned into a dingy, pale gray with time.
No other furniture or items occupied the room.
The air was stale and heavy with dust and mildew, as if no one had been in this place for some time.
A single window broke the monotony of the wall to his left, while the one door to the room was on his right.
Beyond the window, the sky was black and scarlet with flashes of lightning but no accompanying thunder.
That out there was the nightmare. Adrian’s throat squeezed, and his heart skipped a beat.
Haru had lost control, and Adrian needed to get to his side as quickly as possible. He couldn’t let his dragon hurt.
Adrian shifted on the mattress, gritting his teeth and pushing down the pain as he pulled his legs under him to rise, but he stopped when a harsh male voice cut through the quiet of the building.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do with him?” Footsteps thumped across the floor; the sound grew louder as the speaker approached. “We were supposed to get the dragon.”
The speaker’s companion snorted. “Sure. You want to go get the dragon now?” Sarcasm dripped from his words, and Adrian almost huffed a dark laugh. He couldn’t imagine anyone would dare to approach Haru right now. If Adrian were missing, Haru would be inconsolable and frantic.
“To hell with that. The entire Washerlane Quarter has disappeared, and I heard someone say that the waves hitting the harbor have swallowed up three warehouses.” The footsteps paused, followed by a soft scrape.
“Should we just kill the one we got? He’s not the prince, so it’s not like we can ransom him. ”
Adrian flicked his left wrist, ready to defend himself, and a dagger appeared between his fingers.
“Nah. Leave him for now. The hit he took to the head should put him out for a while longer. Besides, the boss said the dragon always had a companion with him. Maybe the dragon would be willing to make a trade for this guy’s life. At least long enough for the boss to talk to him.”
The first person mumbled something, but the words were too garbled for Adrian to make them out. It didn’t matter, since the sound of their footsteps on the creaking floor indicated that they were moving away from him.
Adrian sat on the mattress, spinning the blade between his fingers.
They’d said boss, not general or some other commanding officer.
His captors weren’t part of the Federation of Order’s invading forces.
The only other people he could think of who might be interested in Haru right now were the assholes who’d held Tyche and Shey prisoner.
If you were trying to collect magic from gods, would you be so picky that you’d pass up a dragon?
Not likely. Their boss might even realize that Haru was in possession of something far scarier than dragon magic.
As the building grew quiet, he debated whether it would be worth it to take out these two guys. It sounded as if there was no one else watching him. He could kill one and get information out of the other. Two against one—the odds weren’t terrible. He’d faced far worse.
Adrian shoved to his feet and rethought his earlier estimate.
Nope. Two against one—the odds were horrible. Impossible. His legs trembled and his ribs ached. The blade clenched in one hand almost slipped from his fingers as he struggled to adjust to the pain. He couldn’t beat one of his captors, let alone two.
The smarter choice was to escape. He needed to get to Haru as quickly as possible. They’d worry about people hunting the dragon when they got to the castle. If they were lucky, Vitor would have gotten into Ruben’s computer and could tell them who the fuck they were facing.
He edged over to the door and pressed his ear to the wood.
Muffled sounds came through. The people guarding him hadn’t left the building.
Sneaking past them wasn’t the best option.
A slender throwing knife pinched between his thumb and forefinger, Adrian pushed it between the door and the jamb near the hinges.
This should slow them down. They’d have to break the door to get into the room, potentially buying him a couple of valuable minutes to escape.
With a smirk, he conjured up a few more blades to squeeze between the door and the wooden jamb. Might as well be thorough.
After the door was as secure as he could make it, Adrian tiptoed to the window, trying to keep the floor from creaking under his feet.
His stomach sank as he looked out. It was a literal hellscape out there.
What those men had said about the Washerlane Quarter and harbor made more sense.
The nightmare they’d faced when attempting to dock at the Isle of Stone was nothing compared to this.
There were glimpses of buildings that appeared as if they belonged to Sirelis, but he’d blink and they’d shift, becoming mountain crags or smoldering rubble.
In the next second, the buildings would return as if nothing had happened.
A black mist wove between the buildings as if dark clouds had dropped from the sky to claim the city.
Fires raged, sending up plumes of gray smoke, but it was hard for him to tell if even those were real.
Whatever control Haru had possessed over Yesuntei’s powers was long gone, and dragon magic had to be feeding into it now.
There was only one way to stop this chaos. Adrian had to find Haru and help him get the magic under control. They’d made a mistake in leaving the goddess’s powers in him. They’d thought Haru could stay in control, and he could…so long as nothing happened to Adrian.
On the bright side, a rusted fire escape was outside Adrian’s window.
Under normal circumstances, Adrian wouldn’t have touched it, but he didn’t have any choice.
He needed to get to Haru. Adrian conjured up another knife and worked it around the window, cutting through what felt like decades of grit and grime, loosening it from the wooden framing enough that he could slide it up with a minimum amount of noise.
It was an annoyingly slow process, forcing him to stop every so often to make sure he hadn’t caught the attention of his captors.
The second he had the opening wide enough to squeeze out, he shimmied onto the fire escape that groaned and squealed under his weight.
Fuck it. There was no helping it now. Adrian charged down the rungs, his heart racing with every step he took.
The metal fire escape trembled under his feet, threatening to collapse beneath him.
He was only four stories up on the side of what appeared to be a brick apartment building, but he had no desire to plummet those last couple of floors to the hard concrete below.
At the bottom of the ladder, Adrian let out a cry and hit the ground hard.
Pain shot up both legs, and he stumbled several steps, finally catching himself against the wall of the next building.
But he didn’t stop. Limping, Adrian ran away from his temporary prison, searching for a major street.
He didn’t know where in Sirelis he was or even where Haru was. But he had a guess.
As he reached a street clogged with cars that people even now were abandoning, Adrian looked toward the north to see that the sky had taken on a deep red cast, as if the very air was on fire.
Black clouds swirled, forming an ever-widening funnel.
The ground trembled under Adrian’s feet.
There was the center of the nightmare. The gaping wound that was Haru’s heart.
That was where he had to go to save his mate.