Until the Dragons Fly

Chapter 1

The world has become a place of gray and black, with nothing in between. Every day resembles the hour before a storm-torn night, when the sea is dark and the sun has all but vanished.

Should the curse persist, future generations may never know sunlight’s warmth, nor look upon a sky glittering with stars.

-Anonymous, two years after the curse.

I dream of starry night skies often, but chances are, I’ll never see that sight in my lifetime. I only know them from the paintings I’ve seen, from the drawings in books I’ve read.

It’s what I see now, behind my eyelids that are squeezed shut. When I finally open them, a vicious, hate-filled face looks down at me.

The stranger has a black stud through his eyebrow.

How strange, I think, as he straddles me.

I’ve never seen such a thing before. The dragon lands are so far from my homeland, and many of their customs are unfamiliar to us. And I’m already learning that some of them are… odd.

His face is the only thing in clear focus as I lie frozen beneath him, meeting his gaze.

He has cold, dark blue eyes that are unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

It’s hard to look away from them. The blue almost seems illuminated…

as if there’s a flickering blue flame behind each of them, lighting them up.

His hair is a shade of light brown that reminds me of something, but I can’t think of what. I’m a little preoccupied.

As my gaze trails the waves of it, it clicks anyway, as I’m transported to the dark sandy shorelines of my kingdom. It’s almost that same shade. Somewhere between beige and the color of chocolate.

I hate the sand. It gets stuck in everything. I don’t spend much time there if I can help it.

And I hate this bastard holding a knife to my throat as his knees and heavy frame hold me pinned to the ground.

I’ve already tried fighting, but I’m helpless against the strength of this dragon shifter.

He doesn’t look as strong as he feels. Sure, he’s muscular, but this is…

impressive. Slightly terrifying. And he can’t be more than a few years older than me.

He barely just became a grown male. Probably.

But his height towered over mine, before he swooped me to the ground in one easy motion.

I’m not a skilled fighter. I’ve never claimed to be.

I did not pick this fight.

So how did I find myself in this situation? Wrong place, wrong time, I suppose. Seems to be the story of my life.

“What the fuck did you hear?” he says with a cold, even tone. As if he’s holding a tiny fairy on the ground by the wings with one finger, and not a full-grown female elf. An average-sized one, but still. Grown. Almost twenty-one years.

“Nothing,” I reply, my voice puffing out in a strained whisper.

“Liar.”

“No. Please.” I barely sputter the words out. The cold steel against my throat is only getting deeper. The pressure causes a tear to slip free from my eye and fall down my temple at an excruciatingly slow pace, eventually dampening my hairline.

Damn it.

I watch his eyes as they track the traitorous drop of liquid all the way down. And yet, his eyes still do not soften as they return to meet mine.

“I’ll ask you one more time.”

“Maybe we should let her go, Daegan. I think she’s telling the truth. She looks a bit pitiful,” his friend drawls from somewhere behind him. Another bastard dragon. No wonder our people don’t get along. They’re making a horrible first impression.

“Only a fool underestimates their enemies, no matter if they’re male, female, elf...” He tilts his head as he studies me. There’s no mercy or pity there. Only stone-cold assessment. “Perhaps she’s a talented actress.”

I have an urge to slap him in the face, but I’m incapable of that with my hands still pinned by his knees.

“Look at the ears,” he remarks to his friend, a humorless chuckle escaping his lips, not a hint of a smile there. “They’re so strange,” he adds as he glances at one of mine and flicks the pointed tip.

His friend laughs behind him.

“You can’t kill me,” I finally say. “You’re here so our people can have peace again. How would the king like it if you killed one of his own people on his soil when he graciously invited you here?”

“Graciously?” He sneers, and a lock of his ashy brown waves falls onto his forehead.

“Yes.”

He may not agree with me on that point, but I’ve got him. He won’t hurt me.

“You don’t know me, the things I’m capable of. You wouldn’t be the first creature I’ve cut up with this blade.” The words come out like a smooth, calm river, sending a chill down my spine.

“I don’t. But I stand by my words. You won’t kill me.”

He cranes his neck, glancing toward his friend. I can’t see either of their expressions, but I know some sort of communication is passing between them.

“Fuck,” he curses. And then, finally, he lifts his blade. But he nicks me as he does so. I feel a slight sting and a small trickle of blood as I reach my hand to my throat.

I take my first deep breath in what feels like an eternity, narrowing my eyes at him. “You did that on purpose.”

He shrugs, his eyes unreadable. He doesn’t even bother to give me a proper response.

He turns his head away as my chest rises, running his hand through his hair. He lets the first bit of emotions show, only for a flash. I think he’s stressed. Worried.

“Can you get off me now, dragon?”

His gaze flicks back to mine, and the corner of his plump lips turns up ever so slightly. There’s no mirth in his eyes, though. I find my gaze wandering to that black stud again.

What purpose would it have there?

Finally, after a painfully long pause, he rises, his black boots planting on either side of my body as he towers over me, taking his time.

The asshole looks down at me with amusement one last time from his full, towering height, and I realize I’m still frozen on the ground, staring up at this male in a power stance over me.

I scramble away at last, only realizing after that I should have given him a swift punch right to the dick for what he did to me.

“There. Now that I don’t have a knife to your throat, would that make you feel more comfortable telling me what you heard?”

“For the last time. I heard nothing. I was merely on my way out to the gardens for an evening stroll when you grabbed me from the shadows. I hadn’t even seen you prior to that, and even if I had, I would not have been deterred from my journey by the likes of you.

” I suck in a breath. I hadn’t even fully recovered before I just rambled, so now I’m really struggling to catch my breath.

“I did not grab you from the shadows. We weren’t hiding.”

“Okay. I didn’t say you were.”

He narrows his eyes. “Well, we won’t keep you from your late night… stroll?” He pauses and gives me a cold, dead look. Though his eyes seem to be lit from within, they appear cold and emotionless at the same time. “Is that what you call it around here?”

“I call it what it is.”

He breathes deeply, his chest puffing out as he crosses his arms and looks down on me with heavy lids, his jaw sealed tight. “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you, little elf. I don’t trust you.”

“Good luck with that.”

He gives the most subtle nod, and I raise my eyebrows as he looks at me expectantly.

“You can go now.” He says it as if I’m an insect who got in his way, one he’s swatted at a few times and he’s now growing impatient with.

“Gladly.” I turn from the small room and head back into the obsidian stone hallway with my head held high.

“She definitely heard something,” I hear him comment to his friend, disdain dripping from his voice. Something in his tone makes me shiver as I pick up my pace, leaving their echoing voices in the distance.

I feel jittery now. Anxious. I don’t know a lot about the dragons, besides the limited amount of information we’ve been told in our histories and texts, but I know they have tempers, and I know that historically, they don’t like my people. At all.

Fear and unease start creeping up inside of me. Maybe I had it all wrong. Perhaps he will hurt me. Maybe he doesn’t care about pretending to play nice at all.

And he shouldn’t

I heard everything.