11. Chapter 11 #2
“She’s been fed and rested. The heat is chemically brought on, which shortens the timetable considerably. You won’t be kept waiting.”
They’re talking about my body. My hips, my age, my blood, my children. In front of me, over me, in flat voices, checking items off an order. Neither of them says one crude word. It might actually be easier if they did. Right now, I feel like equipment.
UP! my dragon says.
And she brings me with her. I don’t know how she does it. The drug has numbed my arms and my legs and most of my neck. But she comes up through all of it—through the runes, through the drink, through everything—and this time she doesn’t stop.
My eyes go hot. Gold light lands on my own knees. My hands change inside the cuffs, fingers thickening, black claws sliding out where nails were, and the cuffs bite down white-hot against the shift and can’t stop it. Scales run up both arms to the elbow. Smoke comes off my mouth with my breath.
I’m out of the chair before either of them moves.
I get Vex across the face.
My balance is gone, and my arms are slow, and it still takes him off his feet.
Claws open his cheek from bone to jaw. Old dragon blood runs into his collar.
He goes down against the hearth, and the fire roars up the chimney as I turn.
The nearest handler grabs my arm and lets go with a shout, because my skin burns him through his glove.
“Down! Get her down; all of you, now!”
It takes all of them. They put me face-down on the beautiful carpet, one man on each limb again. Even then, I lift two of them off the floor.
“No!” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. “Get off! Get the fuck off!”
Then the runes and the drug drag my beast back under. The claws pull back into my hands. The fire goes out of my skin. I’m just a woman being held down again.
The carpet under my arms is scorched through to the backing.
“She had the full dose.” One of the handlers, breathing hard, to Renwick. “Sir, she had the full dose an hour ago. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Renwick doesn’t answer him.
When the room settles, Vex is up, standing well back from me, with a cloth against his face.
“No,” he says.
“Ilmar—”
“No. You dosed her, yet I watched her shift through runed steel an hour later, and look what she did.” He takes the cloth away, looks at the blood on it, and puts it back.
“I am the second-last of my line, Renwick. I did not survive centuries to be opened up during a mating by something your drugs cannot hold. When she is settled—properly settled—send word. Not before.”
“The contract—”
“The contract says a viable heir. It doesn’t say I bleed for it.”
He leaves. The doors close behind him.
I’m still face-down on the carpet with three men on me, and I can’t lift my head.
I smile into the wool.
Try that again, fuckers.
Renwick crouches down so I can see him. He isn’t angry. His voice stays level, and his hands stay loose. To him, tonight is a delay, and I caused it.
“That was expensive,” he says. “Take her back to her room. No food until she understands what’s expected of her.”
“I’ll die first.” It comes out slurred, and I mean every word of it.
“You won’t.” He stands and straightens his cuffs. “Do you know how long it takes a dragon to starve, Kallista? Months. Your body will eat your fire first, then your strength, then your will, in that order. I have watched it done, and I can wait. But it won’t come to that, because you’re sensible.”
They carry me back. The room is warm. The fire is lit. The closet stands shut in the corner with its row of waiting dresses. I’m dropped on the bed without ceremony.
Mrs. Nell comes in behind the men with a second bottle in her hand.
The men stand inside the door.
All four of them. They look at my cuffed hands, and at the burn one of them is carrying wrapped on his forearm. Nobody wants to be the first to touch me again.
“She’s down,” the first one says. “Look at her. She’s finished.”
“You saw her finished an hour ago,” says the burned one.
My dragon hears them. She drags herself up one more time. Heat crawls up my neck, and my eyes light the quilt gold. All four men take one step back from a woman who can’t lift her own head.
That’s as far as it gets. The gold gutters out. The heat dies on my skin.
But they saw it, and they’ll remember it.
I fight.
Cuffed and drugged and empty, I fight all four of them again, and I lose again. The second dose goes down my throat. Mrs. Nell strokes my throat after it, wipes my chin, and pulls the quilt over me.
“Sleep now,” she says. “It’s easier asleep. I promise you that too.”
The heaviness rises through me again, thicker than the first dose. The voices move to the door. The door half closes, and the words come through the gap while I go under.
“—if she won’t cooperate, it can be done while she’s under. The physician has confirmed it.”
“He’d prefer her settled. It went badly tonight.”
“Vex will come back. The money’s paid, and results are expected. And he’s not the only interested party. She needs to become productive quickly; there are others waiting on the second—”
The door clicks shut.
The room is quiet. The fire moves. I can’t lift my arms. I can’t move at all.
My dragon is still there, under all of it, muffled and raging. She isn’t pushing at the men, or the door, or the drug.
She’s leaning toward the wall. The same wall. The one that faces the road we came in on.
He’ll come, she says.
I stop arguing with her.