Page 10 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)
Amaya
Magic is a strange and beautiful power. Like the air around us, it flows through every living being, providing one of the necessary substances for life. Dragons were the first to be gifted with magic. Others, like vampires, wrenched control of the world’s magical currents in an unnatural way.
Through blood.
Blood magic taints and corrupts all it touches. Thanks to the blood-enchanted shackles digging into my wrists and ankles, I could feel its corruption burrowing into my soul. I needed to get them off before the damage became irreparable. The man had taken me to his southern lands. Tiburnia, he’d called it. The dragons had a different name for the land below our Andalotian Plateau—the Torrere, or burnt sands, Desert.
I supposed I should have been grateful that the man had stashed me in a dungeon beneath his ugly palace. At least the air felt cool this far down in the ground.
He’d attached a long chain to the shackles binding my wrists after I’d attacked him when he’d entered the dungeon one afternoon. I’d managed to tear a piece of flesh from his shoulder with these worthless human teeth. The long chain he’d added connected to a hook on the ceiling grate far above my head.
Because of that chain, I couldn’t walk the entire length of my cell. I couldn’t sit on the wooden platform that served as a bed without the chain holding my arms in the air. I couldn’t lay down at all. I could barely eat, could barely take care of myself without that chain getting in my way. I yanked on the damned thing—not for the first time, or the second, or the hundredth. It refused to break. In a pique of frustration, I threw my head back and screamed and screamed and screamed.
The metal door to my cell flew open with such force that it crashed against the stone wall with a loud clang.
“What’yer caterwauling for again, creature?” A burly guard came thundering into my cell. He pulled back his arm to hit me. My face already bore bruises from past encounters with his fists. I pinched my eyes closed and tensed in preparation for a world of hurt. If I was lucky, I would pass out quickly like I had the last time.
“Don’t.” A familiar, grumbly voice warned.
“She’s screamin’ again. Disturbs the others down here.”
“Don’t touch her.” Cullen’s voice carried the full strength of his vampiric compulsion. “Ever.”
I opened one eye in time to watch that ugly guard drop his arm and, like a zombie, walk out of my cell. Even before he was gone, Cullen moved as quickly as a striking viper. He grabbed the side of my face and tilted it to one side.
“Did he put those bruises on you? Did he?” he demanded.
“Why do you care?” I jerked my head away from his grip. “The guards treat me with the same respect you and the man do.”
“So, the guard hit you.” Cullen stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. A muscle in his jaw tightened. “If you call Captain Proctor ‘the man,’ I suppose you call me ‘the vampire.’ I have a name, you know.”
I sniffed and turned my head away from him. I didn’t want to let Cullen see how vulnerable I felt around him. He could melt my thoughts, turn my mind inside out, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. That he hadn’t done it yet didn’t give me comfort. But he was wrong. The man was ‘the man.’ I couldn’t be troubled to remember the inconsequential slug’s name. Why would I need to know his name when I pulled his bones from his still living body? But Prince Cullen? For some reason, his name had stuck with me. His handsome face stuck with me. His likeness visited me in my dreams—dreams where he rescued me from this hell. Stupid dreams.
“Look. While I don’t agree with the captain’s methods, I do understand his reasoning for why he thinks he needs your help on the battlefield. And there is a battle coming. Maybe that’s why yours and the moonlight dragon’s eggs hatched when they did. You have a part to play in the coming conflict.”
I stared at the wall as if the bare stones were the most interesting view in the place. It wasn’t. That honor belonged to the dashing Prince Cullen, curse his pretty brown eyes.
“No matter what I say, what I do, you’re not going to help us, are you?” he asked.
Those stones were stacked quite neatly to form the dungeon’s wall. But over toward the corner, the stones looked as if they were haphazardly laid . Two different workmen? Two different time periods? I wondered how handsome Prince Cullen would look after I bit his nose clean off his stupid handsome face.
“Look at me, Amaya,” he said in that deep, voice that was thick with magic.
My head snapped toward him, not because I wanted to, but because of the power of his compulsion. But as soon as my gaze landed on his, I was able to shake off the magic.
“You have a strong will. Stronger than most,” he said. “My compulsion won’t last on you. And there’s nothing I can do or say to convince you to help us, is there?”
“Why should I help a vampire, or even a kingdom of vampires? If you and the humans wish to go to war to kill each other to extinction, this continent will be a better place.”
Cullen sighed deeply. “What if our war threatens your kind as well?”
“Why should it? We no longer live within your reality. We keep to ourselves, away from your settlements. Most in the four kingdoms believe the dragons all died out centuries ago. Others question if we ever existed.”
“And yet, here you are, Amaya. A mythical dragon chained in a human’s dungeon. So, not as separate and forgotten as you’d hoped, perhaps?”
I snarled at him. The inhuman sound that came out of my mouth seemed to startle him. He backed away to put more distance between us but stopped himself. He stiffened and then leaned in closer.
“Amaya,” he said softly. “I hate this for you.”
“Soon, none of it will matter.” I dropped to sit on the wooden platform I was supposed to use as a bed. The chain yanked my hands above my head. “I’m dying.”
“No. Proctor won’t allow you to die. You’re much too valuable to him.”
“Doesn’t matter what that creature wants,” I spat. I thrust my chin in the air as if proud of what I was going to say next. “Dragons and vampires are mortal enemies for a reason. Our magics are incompatible. Your blood magic is corroding my insides.”
“It’s not my—” he tried to explain, but I didn’t let him.
“Every day I’m forced to wear these shackles is a day closer to my death. Soon, nothing you do will be able to save me…not even removing the shackles.” His blood, the man’s blood. It really didn’t matter where the blood came from. The magic was poison to me.
He sat on the platform next to me, hooked his thumb under my chin, and turned my head so he could stare at me from behind his thick glasses for a long breathless moment. “You’re telling the truth,” he said slowly. A note of awe blended with worry as if that lone fact surprised him. “You are dying.”
“Why should I lie about this?” I rattled the chain connected to the ceiling, making it bang loudly against the thick bars on the ceiling grate.
“To trick me into releasing you.”
“What would it matter?” I hated how defeated I sounded. “If you were going to help me, you would have already done it.” I needed to accept my fate. The two dragons born into a world they were supposed to save were destined to be killed by it. Maybe that meant the world wasn’t worth saving. Maybe that was why fate had chosen this path for me and the moonlight dragon. Because it was too late. The world had already been so corrupted by blood magic that there was nothing left to save. And the only meaning left in my life was my death.
“If you promise not to fight us, not to escape, I could convince Captain Proctor to remove the shackles. All you have to do is promise to work with him instead of against him. Can you do that? Can you take that small step toward helping save yourself and, well, maybe all of us?”
“You release me from these bonds, and I’ll grind your bones and drink it like tea,” I said holding his gaze with mine.
He smiled at that, but there was no humor in the expression. Only sadness. He patted my knee. “Still so creative with the violence.”
He stood and, without a backward glance, walked out of my prison cell. He didn’t even bother to close the door behind him. Why should he? The chains alone kept me from escaping.
I stared at my bruised wrists and sighed. I was going to die here. Like this. With my hands suspended above my head.
Goddess —I stifled a sob— I don’t want to die .