Page 13 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Amaya

“Oh, no. No, don’t you bring that-that human in here.” I tried to block the entrance to my grimy cell, but the damned chain connecting me to the ceiling grate jerked me back from the doorway. Prince Cullen gave me a smirk. He was carrying what looked like a damsel in distress draped across his arms. Her head flopped with every step. “She’s not dead, is she? You’re not putting a dead body in here with me, are you? I mean, if I was in my dragon form it’d be a treat. I could eat her. But honestly, do you know nothing about dragons? We don’t like to eat our meat raw.” I rattled the chains loud enough that it should have woken little Miss Sleeping Beauty up. She didn’t stir. “She looks dead to me,” I grumbled.

“She’ll come around within the hour.” He settled the little piece of feminine fluff onto my pallet.

“And now you’re putting her on my bed? Nice. Nice. Why don’t you bring in more prisoners? There’s plenty of room for more on my one insanely narrow bed. Not that it’s a bed, is it? It’s a board. But it’s all I have in here. And you’re giving it to that thing?”

I couldn’t even lay on it thanks to this damned chain. But that wasn’t the point.

I snapped my teeth as I watched Cullen carefully arrange the skirt of the woman’s short dress, to make sure she was as decently covered as possible. He pushed back a bit of her hair and then whispered something only she could hear, which was ridiculous.

“She’s unconscious. She can’t hear you,” I spat.

“Maybe telling her what needs to be said makes me feel better,” he explained not looking up from his task of making the obscenely pretty woman as comfortable as an unconscious person could be on a narrow wooden board. When he was done, he straightened and turned to me. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to roast her. Give her a chance. I think the two of you will become close friends.”

Friends with that? I snorted. “Is she your sidepiece?” She had to be. He wouldn’t be so doting on her otherwise. Ohhhh, I hated how the thought of him having romantic feelings for this dewy-faced woman— did she have to look so pretty? —made me want to rip her face off that pretty head of hers and then rip his pretty face off, too. Was that a gold necklace she was wearing? Looked snug. But expensive. I bet he gifted that to her . I growled. “Did she do something to hurt your fragile ego, so you decided to banish her? Or did you find someone younger and prettier and didn’t want to bother with the fuss she’d make when you set her aside?”

“None of that, actually,” Cullen said. He crossed his arms and tilted his head as he watched me. One of his dark eyebrows quirked up. “Careful, Amaya, you sound jealous.”

“Jealous?” I snorted.

He looked like a hero guarding his beloved lady from the dragon instead of the villain he actually was.

“I think the two of you will become friends,” he repeated.

“I’m not going to befriend your cast-off lover.”

“She’s not my lover, Amaya. Current. Former. Or otherwise.” He sighed. “If you must know, she’s my brother’s bonded partner.”

“So, he’s casting her off? And making you do the dirty? What a guy. Villainy must run in the family. I’m sure your parents are beside themselves with pride.”

“Truthfully, I’m sure my brother is going to try and kill me for tearing her away from him and imprisoning her down here with you.”

I knew I shouldn’t care about anything he did. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Then why did you do it?”

“I followed what my instincts were telling me to do.” He snapped out the words, sounding angry about them. Was Cullen honestly worried about facing his brother? Maybe his brother, after murdering Cullen— wait, I want to do that! —would come looking for his “bonded partner” and free me, too.

“Do your instincts often tell you to kidnap women and toss them into cells so nasty even the rats avoid?”

He raised his eyebrows and gave me a look as if he thought I should already know the answer.

“What’s wrong with her?” I still thought she looked dead lying there with her wavy brown hair framing her delicate face and her hands resting one over the other on her bosom. Part of me wanted to go over to her and give her a sharp pinch just to see if she would react.

“I drugged her.”

Oh . “Classy.”

“I can’t stay.” His voice took on that calming quality that made me think of wind currents and ocean waves and swaying trees. “I need you to promise me that you won’t hurt her. Her name is Celestina. And she’s…she’s special.”

“So special you’ve given her the best accommodations in the place.”

He stared intently at me. “Don’t. Harm. Her.”

I easily shrugged off the compulsion he was trying to weave around me. But I decided to willingly agree to what he was asking of me. For one, I didn’t need or want to prolong my time with Cullen—the vile bastard who was too handsome for his own good. “I already told you that I don’t eat my meat raw. And in case you forgot, I don’t have access to my fire.” While killing her might be a way to hurt Cullen, I suspected that the unconscious woman being thrust on me was simply another innocent, another victim. And I didn’t have the stomach to harm an innocent. “I’m not a mindless beast. I do have standards, especially when it comes to what I put in my mouth.”

“I’ll have to trust…” He stared at me for several moments before giving a sharp nod. “Yes, I trust you’ll give her a chance. If you’re still here by sun fall, I’ll return with two plates of dinner.”

With that, he walked out of the cell. This time, he closed the door behind him and made sure to lock it.

As soon as he was gone, I did what I always did after spending any amount of frustrating time with Prince I’m-too-handsome-for-my-own-good Cullen. I stomped my feet and growled.

It accomplished nothing…but felt good.

Wait…he said if I was still here . What did he mean by that ? Where would I go with shackles that make it impossible to cross the entire space of this cramped cell? It wasn’t as if I had the means to get them off me. If I had, I would have escaped immediately. I would have then roasted the man’s balls and force-fed them to Cullen’s decapitated head. Maybe I’ll keep Cullen’s pretty head on a shelf in my bedroom to look at.

Why did Cullen think I’d be gone by dinnertime?

My gaze darted over to the sleeping woman.

Does he think she might —

No. She looked incapable of harming anything. Not even a lacewing fly needed to tremble in her presence. Cullen couldn’t be concerned that she might kill me.

He must have said that to tease me…or to trick me into treating his brother’s bonded partner with a level of respect I didn’t usually give to humans.

I moved closer to her.

Her eyelids twitched and fluttered as if she were desperately trying to escape her drugged sleep.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to wake up or not. As long as she didn’t prattle on like an empty-headed ninnyhammer, I supposed I wouldn’t mind the company. And it was creepy sharing a cell with someone who looked like a corpse. Besides, if she woke up, we could join forces and plot devious ways to torture and kill Cullen and the man .

But what if she were an actual danger to me?

Well, that didn’t really matter either, seeing how I was already slowly dying. Maybe Cullen had brought this mysterious Celestina woman into my cell as a twisted sort of kindness. Of course, he could have simply removed these shackles if he’d wanted to help me.

The damn vampire hadn’t done that.

I leaned down to peer more closely at the woman, which wasn’t easy to do with the chain that had me tethered to the ceiling. My wrists throbbed every time they were jerked above my head. Bending down like this also made my shoulders twist to an awkward angle as my arms were pulled in the opposite direction to the wooden pallet.

“You’re in my bed,” I grumbled as I studied her perfect olive skin.

As if responding to my voice, her eyelids started to move more frantically.

“You should wake up and entertain me.” I rattled the chains, hoping the noise would rouse her. “Come on. Watching you sleep is soo fucking boring.”

She moaned.

“That’s it. Wake up! You don’t get to sleep when I’m forced to stand here and stare at you. Wake up and entertain me!”

“Urrrgggg…” she groaned. It sounded slurred. I think she might have been trying to talk. “Soooorrr…”

“Sorry? Yeah, you should be sorry,” I said. “There’s barely room in here for me. And you’re hogging the one place where I can sit down.”

Her eyelids fluttered and then opened. Her one green eye and one brown eye stared directly at me in such an intense way, I immediately straightened and backed away. My heart thumped wildly in my chest.

“Soren!” she shouted as she sat up with a jerk. If I’d still been leaning over her, we would have knocked heads. She spun on the wooden pallet until her feet were on the floor. She tried to stand but wobbled and plopped back down. “Soren?”

“Sheesh! You don’t have to shout. I’m the only one here. And the guards out there don’t like the prisoners to scream. They’ll come in and use their fists to shut us up.”

She blinked her large, odd-colored eyes several times and then, groaning, let her head drop into her hands. “Cullen betrayed us. Why?”

“Why wouldn’t he? He’s ruthless. Cruel. Brutal. Hard-hearted. Callous. And he forced me to wear this dress.” I kicked out the skirt and then watched it flutter back into place. “I despise dresses.”

The woman looked up at me. “That was quite a thesaurus of hatred there. Cullen is my…” She wrinkled her brow. “He’s Soren’s brother. And he’d promised to help me.” She shook her head. “But then he said he had to do this to save—” She gasped. “ You .” She tried to stand again. And this time she succeeded. “You must be the one he was trying to save.”

I laughed bitterly. “How is locking you in a prison cell with me saving anyone? Cullen is only looking out for himself.”

“No. For Soren’s sake, I can’t believe that.” She stepped toward me. “Who are you? What are you to Cullen?”

“I’m his captive.” I wasn’t going to give her my fucking name. It was bad enough that Cullen knew it.

She looked human. But if she were a vampire’s bonded partner, she might be a vampire. “You’re not here to drink my blood, are you?” Had Cullen sent her in here because she was better at the powers of compulsion than he was? Likely any vampire with half a brain was better at compulsion than him. It took very little effort to shake off the magic he tried to weave around me.

“Drink your—? Why would I want to—?” Her eyes widened.

“You do know they are vampires, right? Cullen and his brother—your bonded partner? They’re vampires.”

“I know.” She blushed as she said it. “Of course, I know. How could someone not know when they come face-to-face with a vampire?”

I spotted that lie too easily. “So, you know what they are now , even if you hadn’t known right away. You must totally be hating them. Is that why they have you locked away? Because you discovered your vampire’s dirty secret after you bonded with him? I bet you hate him for that. You could help me come up with ways to torture them when we finally escape from this hell.”

“I don’t hate him. Soren saved me. More than once. I love—”

“No! Don’t say it. Don’t be that vapid heroine in those horrid romances who loves the villain even as he destroys her.”

She crossed her arms over her lovely chest and turned away from me. “I’m not vapid,” she muttered. “The stories about vampires…they’re wrong. So wrong. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t know what he was.” She paced the cell a bit, studied the heavy door, the grate at the ceiling that served as our only window and source of light, poked at a puddle in a corner I couldn’t reach with the toe of her shoe, and then turned back to me. “There’s no getting out of here. Why are you so heavily chained?”

I bared my teeth like I would if I could conjure my dragon’s long pointy canines. “Because I’d kill them if I wasn’t.”

She nodded but didn’t look suitably worried that, even with these chains, I could still harm her. Her lack of caution made me growl.

She held up her hands and smiled. “I’m not the enemy here.”

I hissed. “Everyone here is my enemy.”

“I’m not.” Instead of backing away from me, like I hoped she would, she came closer. “I know what it’s like to be a captive.” She touched the golden necklace that was cinched so tightly around her neck it appeared to be partially embedded into her skin. “I know what it’s like to lose your free will.”

“And yet, you still fell in love with your captor. Pitiful.” I sniffed. I’d always heard humans were weak.

“Soren never wanted to be my captor,” she said. “He took me to save me.”

I heard her deluded words, but the scent I’d caught on the air with my haughty sniff had so caught me by surprise that I didn’t pay that much attention to anything else she had to say about the vampires. Because the aroma I’d sensed coming from her wasn’t a vampire’s spicy scent. Or a human’s piggie one. It was a scent I knew well. Too well.

“You’re a dragon.” Dammit . “You allowed yourself to be bonded with a vampire?” That was beyond foolish. A dragon would know better than to fall into such a trap. We’re superior to all the other creatures. Smarter. Wiser. Stronger. “Dragons and vampires are mortal enemies.”

“He didn’t ask before bonding himself to me.” She rolled her eyes.

“Figures.” I scoffed. “Those damn brothers.”

“Soren meant well. This collar bonds me to him. He was only trying to even the playing field.”

“Meant well, my ass. Vampires are our enemies. They know it. We know it. Their blood magic is poison to us.” I rattled the chains while despair clawed at my throat. This delusional dragon was doomed to die like I was. “They put their tainted magic on these shackles. And it’s killing me. It hurts to keep fighting Cullen’s compulsions. Hurts to feel their blood magic spiraling deeper and deeper into my tissues, into my bones. It hurts as their magic takes my life force away from me.” I slumped, letting the chains pull at my bloody and raw wrists. “It even hurts to take a breath.”

She shook her head as if trying to deny it.

“You’re a dragon, just like I am! How can you do this to your own kind? How can you defend what wants to destroy us? How can you betray the dragons like this?”

She cried out as if I’d struck her. “The collar…I can’t…” Her knees smashed against the rough stone floor. She grabbed at the necklace that couldn’t be comfortable, scratching her neck in her desperation. “I can’t…talk…about…this…”

“I don’t care.” I wanted her to hurt as much as I was hurting. “You can’t hide from the truth. Vampires are the reason we’re suffering. We are dragons. And this is our time to make our stand and fight.”

This was the reason I was born. This was the reason midnight dragons existed in the first place. We were fighters, warriors, killers. I’d been told my entire life that there would come a time when I’d have to lead my fellow dragons into war. “The time has come,” I said, “for dragons to step out of the shadows and take back what is ours.”

“Please,” she whimpered and reached out her arm as if her movement could block my words.

“No!” I grabbed her wrist and squeezed. “You must face this!”

Magic sparked and danced like a lightning storm in the air between us. Was this her magic? No, the sharp sting of power felt distinctly like mine. But how could that be? The shackles blocked all access to my magic. And yet, my skin burned from the intensity of the power gathering where my hand was touching her skin.

Touching this other dragon had unleashed my magic. Which would have been great if I had the ability to control it.

“Who are you?” I cried.

Celestina

“Who are you?” the other…the other… dragon …had demanded. Gah! I couldn’t think about what that creature clasped on to my wrist like a lamprey was…or what I was, for that matter. Doing so would surely kill me. The collar was already punishing me for her mentioning that I was—a thing—not to mention how it’d been sending steady beads of pain down my spine just for being so far away from Soren.

Soren. I prayed he was safe. He had to be safe. Cullen wouldn’t kill his own brother. He wouldn’t!

And now, I had to figure out how to stop this… urgh! … Can’t say what the creature is . But I had to figure out how to stop it from triggering the collar so much that it ended up killing me. I had to stay alive. If I fell, Soren fell. I would not be the cause of Soren’s destruction. I would not let that happen.

Oh, how I wished he hadn’t bound himself to me in such a fatal way.

The shackled woman tightened her hold on my wrist. Her magic pinging off my skin hurt almost as much as the collar. “I know all the dragons in my clan,” she growled as her grip on my hand tightened more and more. “And the dragons outside of the clan are few and old. So, who are you?” Her eyes sharpened with a pained look. “How are you doing that? How are you…? You’re pulling my magic to the surface. How?”

“I am?” The collar sent a sharp warning down my spine, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. She needed to let go of me. She needed to break the connection or else I would die, and Soren would die. And despite learning from Proctor that Soren was planning to use me as a weapon for his army, I didn’t want my prince to die.

The lightning storm brewing in the dungeon cell started to expand. The sparks landed on my skin like hot embers. They sizzled and burned.

“What are you doing?” the shackled woman growled in a voice that no longer sounded human. Her eyes, like the hand wrapped still around my wrist, were now glowing as bright as the sun. It hurt to look in them. And her skin seemed to have become black as if the sparks had burnt her to a crisp. She threw back her head and screamed.

Suddenly it was no longer a hand that held my wrist, but talons. Their sharp points dug into my flesh. Tears streamed down my face from the pain. I was going to lose my hand. But perhaps that wouldn’t matter since the collar kept growing tighter. The collar was going to break my neck, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I’m sorry, Soren. Maybe we’ll get another lifetime. Another chance. Another world.

Vampires and dragons. Two incompatible fates. How could our story’s ending be anything but tragic? My biggest regret was that Soren wasn’t here with me. I would have liked to have held his hand one more time. Looked into his expressive green eyes. Whispered to him how much I loved him and thanked him for how safe he’d made me feel in a world that could never be safe. Not safe for him. Not safe for me.

And I regretted that fate hadn’t allowed us more time.

The dank cell seemed to tilt toward darkness as the last reserves of air in my lungs were used up. I hadn’t been able to breathe for a while now. And honestly, I no longer wished for air. I welcomed the thought of being released from this endless cycle of pain. Free. I would finally be set free. It would be a relief.

Was this Cullen’s plan all along? He couldn’t save the abused woman in this dungeon, but he knew bringing us together would cause a violent magical reaction that would free us both from our bonds…forever.

I could think of no other way to save her , he’d told me.

Perhaps he somehow knew what would happen in the same way that he could see past a person’s artifice by simply looking at them. I prayed he’d be able to live with himself…in the after. He’d make a good king as long as he was able to forgive himself and move beyond his grief after losing a brother he clearly adored.

I hoped for peace for him and for his kingdom—a kingdom I’d once envisioned making my home—as my heart thudded…

One.

Final.

Time.

A sea of black silence washed over me.