Dragon Rising (Dragon Gods #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

FOX

“You should go home, Pale One,” Eha said. The dragon’s voice was soft and cool in Fox’s mind.

He pushed the reading glasses up his nose and rubbed his eyes, a few strands of pale blond hair falling in front of his eyes.

His knee bumped the rickety desk where he was sitting, sending his pen rolling.

He caught it with his left hand and winced as his bandaged finger throbbed at the sudden movement.

His father had broken it in their fight, right before Fox had driven the blade into his chest. He’d told the healer an escaping prisoner had done it.

“You are too tired,” Eha said. Her voice was gentle but insistent.

In the few days he’d known the dragon, she had already taken to parenting him.

His stomach twisted. She deserved better.

When Chief Commander Harlow had brought Fox down here directly after the prison break, Eha had thought Fox was there to free her.

Her and her child.

You came for me.

But he’d failed them both. She was still chained up and her child was locked away somewhere deeper in the cavern’s tunnels, to be dragged out when they needed to ensure Eha’s cooperation.

All Fox had done over the past few days was translate nonsense journals and watch Chief Commander Harlow and his fellow soldiers abuse and degrade Eha and the Dragonborn they had imprisoned in the back cells.

He needed to do better.

“I’m almost done with this journal. I have fewer than a dozen pages left.”

He looked back down at the page he was currently translating, grimacing at the words that seemed to swirl and dance before his eyes. Eha wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t stop. The faster he translated these pages, the faster he found the information Harlow needed.

And the faster Fox could destroy it.

“When did you sleep last?” Eha asked, sounding more mother than fierce dragon god.

“I slept yesterday.” Fox paused. “Or the day before that.” He didn’t actually know what day it was.

Harlow had told him when he handed over the papers and assigned Fox to translating them that there was another scholar helping with the work.

Every page that Fox didn’t translate, they might get ahold of.

And that meant every page Fox didn’t translate was a page that could lead to the ruination of the Dragonborn.

Fox had his doubts about whether Chief Commander Harlow would discover some secret to mind-controlling the dragons.

But he was also searching for any information on the whereabouts of the lost gods.

And Fox knew there was no way he could allow the army to find the last of them. Sofia would never forgive him.

The name sent an ache through his chest, and his fingers clenched hard around his quill. The page before him swam again, and he took a breath, looking up and blinking into the dimness of the cavern.

His small lantern was the only light on his level, but just a few levels below him the torches that lined the main pit were lit, never quite allowing Eha the peace of darkness even when there was no one else around. She was chained to the ground, her white scales dull in the shadowy cavern.

“When is she coming?” Eha asked, and Fox realized she’d read his thoughts again.

She—Sofia.

“I haven’t heard from her yet,” he said.

He hadn’t gotten used to speaking through his mind to the dragon.

And he definitely hadn’t gotten used to her constantly poking around his thoughts.

The longer he spent in the cavern with her, the easier it was for her to simply prance into his mind and settle in there. “She’ll come, though.”

Even as he said it, he doubted himself. And he felt Eha’s own disappointment as she felt that doubt.

“We didn’t have time to make a plan when we separated, but she will come back. She has things to do.” His lips flattened. “Chief commanders to kill.”

Eha snorted, and he heard it from below.

“She will have to fight me for the honor.”

“I’ll let her know for you.”

“I was thinking of ripping his throat out, but that may be too quick. Humans are such fragile things. Perhaps I will go for his hands first. He loves doing that, does he not?”

Fox listened as she described in detail all the small ways she hoped to torment the man, and his stomach twisted.

In the week since Chalia had flown off with the resistance and Fox had promised to spy for them, he hadn’t gotten used to the idea of truly going against Chief Commander Harlow.

He had spent over two decades worshipping the ground he walked on.

But he knew, no matter his own feelings toward Harlow, he couldn’t let the man win either.

The chief commander winning meant the destruction of the Dragonborn.

He swallowed. He thought again about the way Harlow had looked at Sofia when she’d been beaten and chained in his office.

Hateful. Rageful. Hungry.

Fox wouldn’t let him look at her like that again. Even if that meant killing the man himself.

A door banged open above, and Fox jumped up from the small desk where he was sitting, stumbling slightly in his exhaustion. He quickly shook off any fatigue as High Specialist Rogo came flying down the stairs, barely glancing at Fox where he stood.

He’d only gotten a glimpse of the man, but his face had been a blotted red and the flash of fury in his eyes was clear even in the dark.

Fox followed at a clip, taking the last couple of stairs to the bottom of the pit.

Eha was lying in the corner, her body relaxed, but Fox saw the way her eyes were alight with concern.

Rogo had already disappeared, but a moment later, the sound of shuffling drew his eyes to the passage that led into the back cells tucked inside the stone wall.

Rogo was dragging one of the Dragonborn by her curls, her feet scraping along the ground as she struggled.

“What are you doing?”

The high specialist didn’t acknowledge him, throwing the girl down on the cold floor of the cavern and quickly snapping a set of chains into place on her ankles. The man sneered down at her as if she were a maggot that had just crawled across his shoe.

Fox had never liked the man. He’d seen him helping the chief commander a few times in their mission to get Eha to speak with them and give away her secrets. He seemed to revel in the pain he delivered, much like Fox’s father used to. It made his skin crawl.

“High Specialist Rogo,” Fox said, his voice going cold. “Show me your orders.”

“This bitch is going to tell me how to control the dragons, or I’m going to take her fingers one by one until she can’t scream anymore.”

He spoke the words directly to the girl, close enough that his breath moved her brown curls.

To her credit, she didn’t tremble or even acknowledge him.

Her eyes were fixed on the wall over Fox’s shoulder.

He recognized her from the other times she’d been used in Chief Commander Harlow’s interrogations and experiments.

He didn’t know how old she was, but she couldn’t be a day over eighteen.

Her skin may have been bronze at one point, but now it was gray, her freckles stark against her face.

Yet, she’d never bowed to even Chief Commander Harlow’s threats. She reminded him of Sofia in that way.

“Do you have orders, High Specialist Rogo?” Fox repeated, his words slow and firm.

“They found my little sister in the rubble, you know?” This time the high specialist’s eyes were on Fox, wild and burning. “It’s been a week, and they just found her body, buried by a building in one of the bombs. It was nearly impossible to identify her, the way her face was crushed.”

He looked down at the Dragonborn, running his thumb along her cheek.

“Maybe instead of your fingers, I should take your face.”

The girl turned, biting at his thumb, nearly catching the tip before he pulled it away with a snarl.

“Fucking animal,” he said through clenched teeth.

Fox’s stomach sank. He was more to blame for the death of Rogo’s sister than this girl.

“Stand down.”

“Do you feel sorry for the thing?” he asked, looking at Fox.

“You’re acting outside of the chief commander’s instructions.”

“And he’ll thank me when I find out how to control the dragons.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” the girl said, voice clear and loud. “But I doubt they’d bow to your kind, no matter what.”

The man whipped around, his fist crashing into the girl’s face. He sent his foot into the girl’s side.

Eha, who until then had been quietly watching the exchange with a simmering rage that sang in the back of Fox’s mind, snapped.

He heard the scrape of metal on stone as she pulled at her chains, and a low growl echoed in the chamber.

She was only a few yards away, yet too far to do anything.

“Let me go, and I will show you if we can be controlled.”

The man didn’t react, and Fox knew Eha had only said the words to him, but he could feel the strain in Eha’s control.

She was helpless though, the chains too difficult to break.

She’d told Fox how many hours and days she’d tried to free herself when she was first captured, desperate to get to her son.

Her anguish rippled through him, and he felt his knees going weak.

“Stand down, Soldier,” Fox yelled, any veneer of calm gone from his voice.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Fox nearly stepped away. He nearly turned and ran.

He could knock on the chief commander’s door and tell him what Rogo was doing.

But then the man pulled the whip from the small weapons rack along the wall, and he watched in frozen horror as the lash came down onto the girl.

The snap echoed in the pit and sank into Fox’s bones with a cold shudder.

The softest of whimpers fell from the girl’s lips. And he acted without thought.