Crimson Vow (Dark Flight #2)

Chapter 1 Aisling

ONE

AISLING

Iwake screaming.

Fire erupts from my palms—wild, uncontrollable, scorching the sheets beneath me. The flames climb the bed frame, lick at the walls, cast dancing shadows across an unfamiliar ceiling. My throat tears itself raw with sounds I don’t recognize. Animal sounds. The sounds of prey cornered and dying.

Weight crashes onto my wrists.

A man. Massive. Pinning me to the mattress with a grip that burns almost as hot as my flames. Wild red hair falls across his face. A scar bisects his jaw. His gaze—

Inhuman. Molten. Dragon.

“Easy, love.” His voice is rough, too loud, filling the space between us. “Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”

Liar.

The fire surges. He doesn’t flinch. His grip stays locked on my wrists even as the flames crawl up his forearms, singeing the dark hair there. His hold is iron, but not painful. Containing, not crushing.

“That’s it.” He speaks slowly, deliberately. “Get it out. Burn if you need to. I can take it.”

I thrash beneath him. Twist. Try to buck him off. He weighs a bloody ton and moves with me, absorbing every desperate attempt at escape without losing his hold. My wrists stay trapped. The fire keeps pouring out of me in waves I can’t control.

Can’t stop it. Can’t stop it. Can’t—

“Breathe.” The word cuts through the panic. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Come on, you can do this.”

I try. Fail. My lungs refuse to cooperate, my mind refuses to quiet, and I’m burning and screaming and—

The fire dies.

Not gradually. All at once. One second I’m an inferno, the next I’m empty. Hollowed out. Shaking so hard my teeth rattle.

The man above me exhales. His fingers loosen on my wrists but don’t release them entirely. Waiting for the next explosion.

Smart. I’d detonate again if I could.

“There you are.” A crooked grin splits his face. Burns mark his forearms—red, already blistering—but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Thought you might bring down the whole fortress there for a minute. Would’ve been impressive, honestly.”

I stare at him. At the rough ceiling beyond his shoulder. At the medical supplies arranged on a table to my right. Glass vials. Herbs drying on racks. Surgical instruments laid out on clean cloth.

Infirmary. My brain supplies the word automatically. Knowledge from my clinic in Cork.

Next my logical panic takes over: assess the environment, identify the escape routes, locate anything that could serve as a weapon.

Solid walls. No windows. One door. A man on top of me. The scalpel on the table, three feet away.

That gaze. That impossible heat behind his irises.

Dragon.

My captors are dragons.

The memory slams into me. Underground chamber. Channels carved in rock, dark with dried blood. Chanting in a language that made my bones vibrate. A woman’s face smiling as they drained me. Your blood sings. Let it sing for me.

I move.

Terror makes me fast. Faster than I’ve ever been in my life. I wrench my right wrist free, twist my body, and my fingers close around the scalpel’s handle. The man—the dragon—rears back on instinct, giving me the space I need to scramble off the bed and press my spine against the wall.

The blade shakes in my grip. My legs barely hold me. Three weeks of captivity have left me weak, malnourished, covered in wounds I can feel pulling with every breath.

None of that matters.

“Get back!” My voice comes out wrong. Shredded. Barely human. “I’ll kill you. I swear to God, I’ll—”

The dragon raises his hands.

Out. Fingers spread. The universal gesture of surrender.

“All right.” He hasn’t moved from the bed. Stays exactly where he is, those burned forearms on full display. “All right. You’ve got the blade. I’m not going to take it from you.”

“Liar.” The word tastes bitter. “You’re all liars. Every bloody one of you—”

“Probably true.” He shrugs. Actually shrugs. “Dragons aren’t exactly known for their honesty. But I’m not lying now. You want to hold the scalpel, hold the scalpel. Makes no difference to me.”

I press harder against the wall. The stone coldness seeps through the thin shift they’ve put me in—not my clothes, not anything I recognize. Someone undressed me while I was unconscious. Changed me. Touched me.

Going to be sick.

“Hey.” The dragon’s voice sharpens. “You’re going pale. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Stop.” I brandish the blade at him. My arm trembles. “Stop pretending you care. Pretending any of this is—”

“Real?” He tilts his head. His expression changes—the cocky grin fading into something more somber. “I know. I know it doesn’t feel real. Three weeks in that hellhole, and now you wake up somewhere new with some loud idiot telling you everything’s fine.” He snorts. “I wouldn’t believe me either.”

The number lands like a punch. Twenty-one days of needles and chanting and that woman’s stare boring into mine. Twenty-one days of my blood flowing into channels carved by hands older than civilization.

I didn’t know how long. Had no way to track time in that underground chamber. Part of me thought it had been months. Years. Forever.

The dragon watches me process this. Stays silent. Still.

“My name’s Rurik.” He says it carefully. “You’re in the Brotherhood’s fortress. We got you out two nights ago—”

“Brotherhood.” The word scrapes out of my throat. “More dragons.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t try to soften it. “More dragons. Different dragons. The ones who took you were rogues. Working for someone bad. We’re—” He pauses, seems to reconsider. “We’re the other kind.”

“There is no other kind.”

A flicker crosses his face. Not anger. Sadness, maybe. “Fair enough. Can’t exactly argue with that logic given what you’ve been through.”

He moves then—slowly, telegraphing every action. His massive body folds in on itself as he lowers to the ground. Sits with his back against the opposite wall, legs stretched out before him. The position puts him well below me. Vulnerable, even if a creature that big can ever be called vulnerable.

“There.” He spreads his hands again. “Now I’m down here and you’re up there with the weapon. Better?”

It shouldn’t be better. Has to be a trap. Some game I don’t understand.

But my legs are ready to give out, and he’s down there on the floor, making himself small. Making himself less.

“You can stab me if it’ll make you feel better.” His grin returns, crooked and somehow disarming. “Just—do me a favor and avoid the face? I’ve got enough scars.”

A sound escapes me. Not quite a laugh. Closer to a sob. The scalpel wavers in my grip.

What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with any of this?

The door swings open.

I spin toward it, blade raised, every nerve firing. A woman steps through—chestnut hair falling past her shoulders, gray gaze assessing me with unnerving calm. She’s carrying a tray. Steam rises from it, filling the air with the smell of bread and soup.

My stomach clenches. Traitor.

The woman’s attention flicks from me to the dragon on the ground, then back to me. Recognition crosses her face. Understanding.

“Out.” She doesn’t look at Rurik when she says it. Keeps her focus on me.

“Selene—”

“Rurik.” Her voice carries quiet authority. “Out.”

He hesitates. I see it in the set of his jaw, the way his fists curl against his thighs. He doesn’t want to leave. Every line of his body screams reluctance.

But he goes.

Unfolds from the ground with surprising grace for someone so large. Moves to the threshold without looking at me, though I feel his attention like a weight. At the edge, he pauses.

“I’ll be right outside,” he says to me, not the woman. “If you need anything.”

Then he’s gone.

The door closes behind him with a quiet click. The woman—Selene—sets the tray on the table beside the surgical instruments. Then, to my shock, she lowers herself to the floor. Back against the wall, legs folded beneath her.

“I’m Selene.” Her voice is soft but steady. “I’m a Fire-Bringer. Just like you.”

My grip tightens on the scalpel. “Another one.” The words come out flat. Bitter. Being a Fire-Bringer is why they took me. Why they drained me. Why that woman smiled while my blood flowed into ancient carvings.

She holds up her hand, and gentle flames dance across her skin. Controlled. Deliberate. Nothing like the wild inferno that poured out of me minutes ago. “Eight weeks ago, I was exactly where you are now. Terrified. Furious. Certain every dragon wanted me dead.”

The fire flickers on her palm—warm orange, dancing shadows. My fire had been different. Hotter. Angrier.

Because I have no control. No idea what I’m doing. Because I’m—

“You don’t have to trust them.” Selene closes her fist, extinguishing the flame. “The dragons, I mean. I’m not asking you to trust anyone. But I thought—” She hesitates. “I thought maybe it would help to know you’re not alone. That someone else has been where you are.”

“Where I am.” The words taste bitter. “You have no idea where I am.”

“Underground chamber. Channels carved in rock. That woman with the raven hair telling you your blood sings.” Selene holds my gaze, unflinching. “Feeling like meat being carved up for a purpose you can’t fathom. Waking up in a new place and wondering if the monsters just changed faces.”

My breath catches.

“I can’t claim to know everything you went through.

” Her voice gentles. “But I know enough. They had me for a little over a day before Drayke found me. One day of being drained. Of watching my blood flow into carvings I couldn’t understand.

A single day that felt like an eternity.

” A muscle twitches in her jaw. “You had three weeks of that. So, yes. I have some idea—and I know yours was worse. A lot worse.”

The scalpel lowers. I don’t consciously decide to drop my guard—my arm just gives out, too exhausted to maintain the position. I slump against the wall, sliding down until I’m sitting on the floor.

Selene stays where she is. Gives me space.

“How did you—” My voice cracks. I hate it. Hate the weakness it reveals. “How did you survive it?”