Two Bad Choices Make a Right… Right?
Istayed long enough to see Kormark land, giving me peace of mind that they could get out of here safely.
“We need to head to the roost. That is where they decided to meet up if they got separated,” I stated as we took off into the sky.
“No way… that is crazy. One of the tunnels they are using is in that area… it would be suicide. Once they figured that out, they wouldn’t stay there,” Paxton argued.
I gritted my teeth, holding back the urge to jab him in the stomach again for arguing with me. “We at least need to fly over the area to check.”
“Women, why are all of you so goddamn stubborn? Fine, we’ll fly over it, but that’s all I’m agreeing to,” Paxton growled out as he relented.
It didn’t take us long to reach the roost, and just as Paxton warned, it was swarming with enemy soldiers. Then I noticed that the roost doors were closed like Vasin had warned me about while I was trapped in the illusion.
“Fly closer to the roost, I need to get a look at the doors,” I called out to Ninnat.
We banked and circled back, cutting as close to the roost as we could while still being out of reach. At the last moment, Ninnat shifted sideways, so I had an up-close-and-personal viewing of the doors—they were in fact, steel.
“Son of a bitch,” I swore as Ninnat shot up to safety.
I let my senses reach out, searching for Tahir and Ifra, not having seen them with the other dragon riders. When I connected with both of them, I felt fear and pain. Something had happened, and they were trapped.
“Vasin, where are you?” I screamed, fear making my chest tight.
“A wave of rogue Norden dragon riders is after the king and queen. I’m trying to hold them off long enough for them to get away.”
“Do you need us? Tahir and Ifra are trapped in the roost.”
“I’m the black dragon, remember? I’ll manage this. You save them so we can get out of here.”
“Be safe.”
“Only if you are.”
Pulling away from Vasin, I shifted my mind to Ninnat. “I need you to get as close to the top of the roost as possible.” I could feel her hesitation, but when I showed her what I was going to do, she relented.
“What did you just tell her to do?” Paxton yelled at me as we turned back to the roost.
Not bothering to answer, I glanced down on either side and spied what I was hoping to find.
As Ninnat got closer to the roost, I hit Paxton in the gut, snatched his knife out of his boot, and cut myself free of the harness.
Before Paxton could figure out what I was doing, I wrapped a part of the harness around my hand and slid off Ninnat’s back, dangling until she lowered me enough to land on the roof.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Paxton roared as Ninnat continued ignoring everything that her pair-bond was saying.
Drawing on my Birthright, I pulled back the bow string as far as I could and focused on the massive metal padlock on the top of the roost. It took four hits before it broke open, and I was able to kick it loose.
I waved my arms to get Ninnat’s attention, and she flew over once again, but this time, she latched onto the metal covering the hole on the top of the roost for dragons to enter and leave by.
Being a slightly smaller dragon, it took all her strength thrusting downward with her wings before it started to lift.
Finally, she managed to get it high enough for me to slip under it.
The part I didn’t account for was the fact it was still twenty feet in the air with only sand below to save me.
I held onto the lip of the opening and swung myself toward the wall, aiming for the cubby that had been carved out.
Slamming against the stone wall, I clawed at whatever I could get ahold of as I slid down toward my death.
Then my fingers latched onto a ledge a few feet down from where I aimed and scrambled to safety, panting as I caught my breath.
“When they find out about this, they might kill me themselves.” I gasped as the metal covering slammed back down.
If I couldn’t get the other dragons freed, then I was trapped here until this battle ended.
Since that wasn’t my plan, I crawled to the edge and looked down to see if there was a better option to get down to the floor than tossing myself at the wall.
Sure enough, hand and foot holds had been cut into the stone for people to reach these cubbies.
Gingerly, I lowered myself until my foot caught on the first step and began the slow process of making my way down.
I was a few feet away when the step I was looking for wasn’t there, and I fell backward, my arms wheeling, trying to will myself back against the wall, but it was no use.
The abrupt stop onto the sands of the roost knocked the air out of my lungs, and it took me a solid five minutes to calm down before I could breathe again.
“Cass, why is Ninnat telling me you jumped into the roost from the top?”
“There was no other way to get in. They made the front doors of metal, and I wouldn’t be able to do the same trick we did last time. This way, I wasn’t in danger of getting stabbed while I tried to break the lock.”
“You are trying to test the will of the gods. That is the only reason you would do something so reckless.”
“I made it down to the ground with no lasting damage.”
“I will not congratulate you for that, Cass. What you did was idiotic. I’m coming to get you with Ninnat’s help. We’ll be able to get the seal off the top of the roost.”
“Thanks. I was a little worried how we were going to get out.” Vasin snarled in response to that comment, and I could feel his disapproval clearly through our connection.
Slowly, I sat up, making sure I hadn’t hurt myself from the fall, and brushed off the worst of the sand from my nightgown. “Why do these things always happen to me when I’m in my nightclothes?”
Hobbling around slowly, I searched the main caves, but I didn’t see any dragons.
Then I worked my way to the ones deeper in the back of the roost, where Vasin had been attacked as a baby.
That’s where I found Ifra bleeding and bound by a spiked metal chain that tore at his scales any time he shifted.
“How can that be? Our metals don’t pierce through dragon scales…” I muttered to myself as I shuffled my way to him, using the wall to steady me.
When I reached Ifra, I took Paxton’s dagger and tried to pick the lock, but it wasn’t slim enough to work. If only I had my weapons and tools, but they were left behind in the rooms when Payson stole me away.
“Are you looking for these?” a familiar taunting voice said from behind me. Spinning on my heel, I found Lord Everett at the entrance to the cave, keys dangling from his outstretched hand. “It seems we meet again, little queen. You really should have killed me when you had the chance.”
I’d beaten the bastard before, so what’s to stop me from doing it again?
“What have you done with the other dragon, the red one?” I demanded.
He dropped his hand and started to swagger his way toward me. “Oh, you mean the one that belongs to the Grim Reaper, the best-known assassin of the clans? The man who killed his own parents because he was paid to? He seems an odd choice for you to pick as a guardian.”
No, that can’t be true. Then I remembered everyone’s reaction to him when they saw him and how Acton refused to acknowledge him as family, saying he was the clan leader, not Jade’s father.
Does it really matter, though? Vasin knows the whole story and isn’t worried about me.
There must be a valid reason it happened.
“What queen doesn’t need a good assassin? It keeps people like you from doing shit like this,” I replied, brushing off what he said, not letting him rattle me.
Lord Everett drew his sword as he got closer. “Yes, Payson did share that the assassin was getting quite attached to you and might cause problems… so I eliminated the threat. Much like I plan to do with this dragon and his blind-as-a-bat pair-bond when I can find the little rat.”
“Not if I kill you first,” I pointed out, clinging to my bravado. “This time, I don’t have any reservations about killing you. Last time, I let you live because I wasn’t going to be controlled.”
“So young and so much to learn about the world. Everyone is controlled by someone. No one is free from their fate, not even the Dragon Queen.”
I noticed the shift in his body language almost too late, but I ducked and rolled in time to miss the lunge.
Clearing my mind from everything else, I focused on the fight at hand.
Taking the dagger, I made a cut at the hem of my nightgown and ripped it all the way up to my hip, freeing me to move easier.
Lord Everett was all power and force. He didn’t use his surroundings to his strength like I’d been taught, believing that if he can hit you hard enough, you’ll just be dead.
Well, that could work if he managed to hit me.
Steeling myself for how bad this was going to hurt, I ran right at him, leading him to believe I was going to do a frontal assault, but I slid to the ground and popped up once I was behind him.
Using the wall of the cave as a means to spring off from, I leaped up, kicking off the stone and landed on Lord Everett’s back.
He gripped my arm, locking me against him as he slammed me into the wall, trying to get me to loosen my hold.
Using my other hand, I plunged the dagger into his neck, where there was a gap in the armor, severing his artery.
Once again, I was sprayed with blood as the man under me started to die, falling forward onto the ground.
I refused to move until I knew he was well and truly dead, this time keeping a finger on his pulse, feeling it slow until it completely stopped.
Shoving him onto his side, I searched for the keys until I found them tucked in his breastplate.
Crawling over to Ifra, I tried each of the keys until one of them worked, and the lock popped open.
As carefully as I could, I unwound the chains from around him, talking nonsense in an attempt to keep myself calm.
When he was free, Ifra slowly started to move out of the cave but paused and looked back at me, letting out a whistle to follow him.
I’m sure the sight of us together was frightful, both of us covered in blood and tattered, but we were still alive.
Ifra led me to another deep cave, where I found a large cage with Cole, Abbot, and Izel, but no Zan or Jade, knocked unconscious and trapped inside.
Tahir was there too, bound just like Ifra was.
“Where is your pair-bond, hmm?” I asked, running a hand over his snout.
“Does he at least have Ezzu with him so he can see?” Ifra hummed his answer, making me feel better that Zan wasn’t lost and blind out in the battle.
“Can you find him and tell him it’s time to go?
” Ifra butted his head into my chest and let out another hum before he started to shuffle out of the cave.
I decided to start with Tahir first, hoping everything Lord Everett told me was a lie. “Easy, boy, I got you. Don’t struggle or you’ll make it worse.”
Just as I got him free, a horrible screeching sound came from above, followed by an explosion that shook the whole roost. Rock started to break free from where we were in the cave, making me very worried it might collapse on us.
“Tahir, I need to put them on your back. There’s no way I can get them out of here without your help,” I pleaded with the dragon, knowing he would want to find Jade if he was still alive.
In answer, Tahir laid down next to the cage and gave me a nod.
As quickly as I could, I found the key, unlocked the cage, and started to pull them out.
I forgot that many of my guardians were large, muscular men, but I managed to drag them far enough that Tahir could help me lift them.
With all three of them on his back, it didn’t leave any room for me, and the ground started to shake yet again as there was another explosion.
“Move, Tahir, get them out of here. I’m right behind you!” I cried out as it started to get hard to see through all the falling debris.
Just as Tahir cleared the cave, it started to collapse, and I couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. “Vasin, I’m sorry.”
“You should be sorry,” Vasin snapped. “Why did you insist on doing this alone? How many times do I have to tell you we are a team, and we do things together?”
I opened my eyes to find I was shrouded in Vasin’s wings, his glowing amber eyes glaring at me with disapproval. I all but fell to the ground sobbing as he nuzzled me gently.
“You reek of blood… are you hurt?”
“It’s not mine…”
“All right then, can we go now?”
“What about Zan, Jade, and Gavin?”
“They can take care of themselves, I’ll have you know. Ifra is on his way to pick them up.”
“Okay, if we have everyone, then let’s go home. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
Vasin shifted, pulling back his wings, and rubble surrounded us, showing me how close to death I’d really been if Vasin hadn’t arrived.
I heaved myself onto his back, and we made our way out to the middle of the roost or what was left of it.
It seems the explosions had been someone blowing a massive hole into the side of the ancient building.
“What happened?”
“Paxton. That boy is a wild one. He might even have a larger death wish than you do. He piled up explosives and had his dragon set them on fire. Thankfully, I got here in time. That boy is reckless.”
“I kind of like him. He’s my real guardian, you know.”
“That’s the last thing we need. Someone to encourage your newfound thrill of cheating death.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. If you’d told me six months ago I’d be leaping off dragons and fighting off knights, I would have told you, you were crazy.
Now, here I was escaping an epic battle that lost us the Norden kingdom.
The Lost King might have won this round, but little did he know that I’d kept some things to myself.
Payson had no idea where Zan really came from or what was waiting for me when I got there.
Looks like it was time to stop putting off the inevitable.