Chapter Nine
Vanessa
I stared at the giant beast as he sat there, all but preening in his other form.
What a sentence. His “other form.” Ten minutes ago, that wasn’t something I would have ever considered. Now, I was … in the middle of some sort of magical world, staring at a man-dragon.
His wings, tucked safely against his sides, were a lighter, more platinum color compared to the silvery sheen of his scales, which all but reflected the light in the cavern. Light that I couldn’t find a source for.
“You want me to ride you … your dragon, whatever, is that right?”
“Up at the base of my neck,” it, he, whatever, said, twisting its neck so I could look up the long snout at both eyes. “You’ll be able to straddle me. Like a horse, basically.”
“Do I say h’yah and whoa, too?”
In response, Vil the Dragon bared his teeth at me. I shuffled backward over the stone while emitting an audible meep.
“It’s still me, Vanessa. I’m still in control. It’s not like I turn into an animal and lose all control.”
“Oh. Right.”
I still didn’t move.
Vil sighed and slowly extended a wing toward me until the tip of it touched the ground in front of me, forming a long ramp up to his back. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“Where are we going to?” I asked, not taking a step. “You already said you brought me to your home. Now you want to take me elsewhere?”
“That was my home on Earth. Now, I will take you to my true home.”
“Do you guys like, uh, build nests? You know, like birds? I don’t really want to go to some giant wooden nest on the side of a mountain or whatever. If that’s the case, I’ll just go home if it’s all the same.”
Vil was laughing by the time I was done, the sound oddly human despite coming from a dragon’s throat. There was a sort of grunt-cough aspect to it, but it was very similar, nonetheless.
“I promise you, it’s nothing like that,” he said.
“Fuck it,” I said, starting up his wing, doing my best to ignore the stabs of pain from my heavily bruised body. I was not looking forward to the morning.
“That’s the spirit,” Vil encouraged, staying perfectly still as I picked my way through the forest of two- and three-foot-long spikes that adorned his back until I found a blank space near the base of his neck, just as he’d promised.
“Okay, now what?” I asked, settling in, gripping a rather conveniently placed spike that required me to lean forward just a bit.
“Now, hold on,” he said, spreading his other wing and gathering himself.
“Ok—ahhh!”
The wind stole my scream as we launched into the air in a huge leap, his wings driving down to propel us even higher.
They beat swiftly at first as we gained air, the cavern floor quickly retreating until even the massive arc-thing was little more than an ant-sized speck.
Meanwhile, above us, the four giant holes in the cavern roof were still far away, forcing me to readjust the scale of everything.
We shot up into one of the holes, but there was still room for dozens of dragons on either side of us, wingtip to wingtip.
More, even. Up we went until we emerged on the side of a mountain that defied all comprehension in its size.
I craned my neck to look back as we flew away from it in a straight line, staring way up to where the upper third or so disappeared into a gray-blue cloud cover that obscured everything.
“Talk about imposing,” I said, noting no other mountain peaks nearby. Those I could see in the distance were like toddlers to a giant in comparison. I stared in awe until my neck hurt, forcing me to look forward, squinting my eyes against the wind as we sped toward our destination.
“This is your home?” I asked, looking down at the rocky, blasted landscape. “It’s rather … bleak, don’t you think?”
“Thank you,” he said dryly.
“But there are no signs of life. No greens, blues, no color. It’s all just black and brown and gray. How does anything live here?”
Vil didn’t answer. We crested a hill a minute later, and far below, in a giant crevasse in the ground, I spied my first signs of nature.
Verdant green grass and what appeared to be trees filled the giant hole in the ground.
I could see little trails winding throughout and several clusters of buildings at different points.
Onward, we flew, and I began to see other such signs of civilization of a sort. All were below ground in valleys and craters gouged from the earth. Aboveground was nothing but blasted rock and nothingness.
The land around us sloped upward, and we burst over the top of the huge spiny ridge with a flourish, Vil spreading his wings wide and gliding forward as I saw what lay in front of us.
“That’s your home?” I asked, staring down at the star-shaped fortress sprawled out below us.
“Yes, it is,” Vil said in a voice that suggested I shouldn’t be too insulting about his place of residence. He seemed quite proud of it.
“It’s, um, nice and big,” I said helplessly, at a loss for what else I could say about the very militaristic and uncomfortable-looking structure. “Very tough. Like a dragon’s scale.”
Silence reigned. I held on to the spike on his neck a little harder. I didn’t think he would try and dump me over the side out of spite, but you never knew with dragons. Literally. I didn’t know anything about them. Other than they apparently existed.
Unless, of course, this is all a hallucination ‘cause I hit my head during the accident. Or maybe I’m dead, and this is like purgatory.
It kind of looks like it. Not quite hell, but certainly not lace and lilac and fluffy white clouds with harps strumming and all the delicious food you could ever want!
“I appreciate your attempt at being polite,” Vil said as he swooped closer before banking around a central courtyard.
A very packed courtyard.
“Uh, what’s going on?” I asked, noting the people milling about, carrying banners and the like.
“That,” Vil said uncomfortably, “is a very good question. I have no idea.”
“You didn’t plan this?”
“Absolutely not!”
We landed in the space left open by the people. I slid from his neck, and the crowd pushed in closer as Vil reassumed his human form.
“Vil,” I said uncomfortably. “What is all this?”
Trumpets and horns started blaring, and the crowd to our left parted.
“I don’t know,” he said, staying close to my side.
A row of men appeared, with a row of women on the other side, forming a corridor for us.
A voice barked above it all, and they all raised their right hands in unison.
Their fists glowed bright silver, and then, as I watched, swords appeared out of their hands like magic, reaching out toward the swords of the rank across from them.
At the end of the row, two people stood, a man and a woman.
“Figures,” Vil hissed under his breath, taking my hand and escorting me under the extended swords toward the waiting pair.
“What figures?”
“That’s Cruce,” he said, indicating the male half of the pair. Both were grinning widely. “And the woman is Ferra.”
Before I could ask anything else, Cruce raised his hands, and the crowd went silent, including the trumpeters and other instruments.
“Hail the prince!” Cruce called loudly. “Hail the prince and his mate! They have arrived!”
I wanted to crumple as all the eyes turned toward me. The weight of a thousand stares was not something I was used to, nor ever really wanted.
Then the words hit home.
“Vil,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “What did they just say?”
He shifted uncomfortably.
More of the words registered.
“And why did they just call you a prince? And me your mate? Why would they do that?”
“Because he is,” Cruce said, interjecting. “And you are.”
I smiled at Cruce. “Thank you.” Then I turned to Vil. He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Run that by me one more time. You’re a dragon prince? And I’m your ‘mate’?”
“Yes,” Vil said, locking his eyes on mine, that silvery gaze hitting me harder than all the looks of the assembled crowd combined. I nearly took a step back.
“I don’t even know you,” I hissed somewhat icily. “So, what? I’m just supposed to stay here and be your dutiful other half, locked up against my will?”
“No,” Vil said, his eyes flashing with conviction. “In time, you will be my princess, Vanessa. You will rule at my side. We will be a team. Together. The two of us. Not me, with you at my side. Us.”
The fierceness of his reply did have me take half a step back, but not out of fear. Out of surprise. Vil was speaking from his heart. He truly believed everything he was saying as if it were preordained or something.
I needed to know more, to understand. “Why me? We’d never met until last night. You couldn’t possibly have walked into Luxe and just decided I was the one. Could you?”
“Of course not. That would be completely ridiculous,” he said, waving a hand.
“Good. I agree.” I frowned at him. “So, how did you end up choosing me?”
“I didn’t. The Watching Mirror showed you to me.”