Chapter 9 #2
“Do you have a death wish?” he yelled. “Every single day you harass me with take me to the dragons, begging and pleading on your knees for your life to end.” He inched closer. “It would be quicker and easier for me to just slice your throat right now.”
“No! I don’t want to die, which is why I need to train. You didn’t see the king or the magic he threw at me. He could have killed me. No blade will maim that man! I need a dragon.”
“You don’t need a godsdamn thing,” he spat. “You need a swift kick in the rear if anything. That pact will kill you in six months, a dragon will shred you today!”
I didn’t doubt he was correct. The dragons were deadly, dangerous beasts.
I’d watched them shred men limb from limb, which is why I was turning to the aid of one.
I had no other choice. Six months sounded like a long time, but to live it was nothing.
A passing moment, a blink of the eye. If I ignored this rising threat, I’d find myself in a pool of my own entrails.
I couldn’t back down.
“Nothing can make me stop. I will bring myself here nightly, with or without you. I will train until I’m bloody. I will do whatever it takes, but I will not lie down and die. I wouldn’t die in that Ovatarforsaken cell, and I won’t die now.”
“If this were any other situation, I’d admire your mettle.
But quite frankly, it’s the biggest pain in the arse I’ve ever encountered.
” He stomped a few feet away, gazing at the nighttime abyss before lifting both hands and alighting a flaming ring in the snow.
He snapped his fist shut like he was wrenching the very air itself, and then came the loud, distant crack of a falling tree.
I could have spoken, but I was intelligent enough to know when a man had been pushed too far.
By the time he turned to face me, the distant flames had died, but the anger that marred his features remained.
After inhaling sharply, his next words rumbled from deep in his chest. “As much as it pains me, it seems I’m left no choice.
If I say no, you’ll continue to come, despite risking life and limb.
As I have a vested interest in your heart beating—” he paused for far longer than necessary. “I agree.”
I eyed him, wondering what was hiding behind his stone face. “What’s your ‘vested interest’ in my life?”
“That is none of your business and not part of the agreement. Now, would you like to see Numen?”
Instead of falling for his obvious trap and asking who Numen was, I pressed further. “I deserve to know. I’ve already signed away my life.”
He nodded solemnly and swallowed. “My allegiance is with my people. Our future and the pact you made rest upon your father’s head, and you severing it. It can’t be any other way. If you die, it will be all for naught.”
“Why must it be me?”
“Ask he who wrote it.” He brushed me off and turned to the inky sky. “Numen,” he called, but the wind stole his voice. I thought he might yell louder, but a distinct roar came across the horizon. The same one I’d heard back in Ilyatria.
Then the sky melted and opened with a show of liquid scales drifting on the wind.
The beast fought against the brutal downwind and the threat of a blizzard to glide and then land with a thunderous boom before us.
I protected my face from the snow flurries as the flakes ran from the drafts until they finally settled into deep snowy walls.
The beast before me was a monolith, reminding me of the great barrier I’d been trapped in for most of my life. I was close enough that every hot breath poured over my skin, the steam freezing with a violent crackle.
I stumbled back, but unless I was across the clearing, it would never be enough. So I straightened and rolled back my shoulders as I gazed up at the jagged, countless teeth, pretending my pulse didn’t pound in my throat.
“How did he hear you?” I could hardly hear my chattering teeth, let alone a small shout over the squalls.
“He didn’t. My spirit called for him, and he came.”
The dragon’s eyes roved across me, pools of void. If they didn’t consume me, his giant maw might. I willed my knees to straighten and not shake as I glanced at Aelen, only to find him stepping toward the dragon. He held out his palm, and the dragon laid his snout against it.
Another huff sent the powder flying, but Aelen didn’t move or flinch. He stood straight with his head held high and ran his fingers along the decaying scales.
“How…” It got lost somewhere in my throat as I tried to swallow the lump that formed. The dragon wasn’t just letting Aelen stroke him, he wanted to be touched.
I dared to advance a step, but the dragon snapped his head up—I froze. He leered, boring into my soul, not as a friend, like he saw Aelen, but as prey.
To him, I was something to devour.
“No sudden movements,” Aelen called back. “Your viscera being painted across the snow would be problematic. I can ask him to be nice, but Numen is fully grown. He makes his own decisions.”
I inched a single foot further, and that prompted the dragon to spread his jaws wide, revealing dripping, pointed fangs. I couldn’t count how many teeth there were, but it was enough to rip me limb from limb.
One single bite.
One brutal death.
I hitched my breath and didn’t dare move forward again. “He hates me.”
“No, but you’re scented with the mark of the monster.” It sounded like the leader of the I’phri, but I knew better. He meant my father.
“It’s not my fault I share his blood.”
Aelen left the dragon’s side, returning to mine while the beast rose until he towered over us.
Even cloaked in Numen’s shadow, Aelen was terrifyingly handsome.
“Not your father. There are things worse than him. Do you think your father is why we suffer? No, for him we want vengeance. Numen smells something far darker on you.”
He leaned in until I thought his lips might graze my ear, and I forced my mind to focus on something else. He raised his hand and lifted a single finger.
The dragon responded, shifting with a rumbling roar, and breathed—but what came out wasn’t fire. The snake of blue dripped out, forming a rune that flashed at Aelen’s feet.
Violent, cracking shards of ice shot up around me, pinning me in place.
Snap, snap, snap.
The cracking was deafening, shattering the silence of the night. But the brutally sharp tips stole my breath. If one shot up beneath me, I’d be impaled—straight through the center. They came quicker and quicker, one shooting up just behind me and tearing my cloak in two.
I jumped, every hair raising across me, my veins colder than the snow.
The rune before Aelen formed slowly, as a pinhole, that spread, and then spooled around itself.
Intricate characters flashed at his feet, and ice crystallized atop them, until it solidified and began to crawl upward.
Serrated rocks formed, one atop the other, until the shard reached his chest. It thinned, creating a jagged, diamond-shaped shard.
Aelen snapped it off. The sound rang out in my ears as he held it before me, the violent crystal pikes finally ceasing.
“A gift. For you.”
With a trembling hand, I took it. It was ice. A pure, solid crystal with perfect edges, but it wasn’t cold. No, it radiated heat and burned against my frost-soaked palm.
This wasn’t a gift. It was a purposeful show of power. One he knew would terrify me. I’d backed him into a corner, and he wouldn’t soon let me forget it.
I swallowed and gazed at Aelen, but he merely stared back with a cruel grin. In a quick motion, he tapped the small shard, and out of the top, a crystal chain burst that threaded until the two ends met.
He’d given me a necklace.
I wanted to drop it more than the one that had been ripped away in the dungeons. I traced a finger along my neck to be certain it wasn’t still there, but shivered when I grazed my exposed flesh and imagined Aelen’s gift hanging there.
“I don’t want it.”
“Keep it, or I will not aid you in your dragon quest. Gracious guests do not refuse gifts.” I took it and cringed, but not from the sharp crystal biting into my palm. It was something else.
Without the sigil to busy himself, the dragon loomed over me, opening his maw. Steam rolled down, drowning me and singeing my skin. He wanted me dead. I froze.
“What does he smell on me?”
He straightened, and his grin widened. “Wear the necklace, and I’ll tell you. Not a moment sooner.”
I squeezed the shard until my palm was slick with blood.
The idea of wearing this filled me with dread.
The type of visceral anxiety that I thought might drag me to the bottom of the river.
It spread throughout my veins until I shook in my leather boots.
I’d already gotten rid of the necklace of the beast once—I wouldn’t wear one again.
“No,” I mumbled as my limbs melted and I thrust it into my pocket. He could shatter every part of me that I knew, but he wouldn’t take my will. He couldn’t break me.
“As I thought. Do you still wish to train dragons?”
The woman in the clearing days prior had danced with a dragon, but all Aelen had to do was lift a single finger. For me, the serpent held nothing but contempt.
These weren’t horses, and they weren’t dogs. They had the intelligence of a person, and I thought all of them might hate me. But the only other option available was a horrifying death.
And I wasn’t going to lie down and die. I hadn’t then, and I wouldn’t now. Train a dragon, or die.
“I choose the dragon.”
Aelen cocked his head. “No, Princess. That’s where you’re wrong. They choose you.”