Page 14 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Celestina

“Celestina.”

A deep voice called my name. The sound pulled me back from the darkness.

“Celestina!”

The world exploded.

“What’s happening?”

Hot metal rained down on me, sizzling as it hit my skin.

“Get back!”

How could there be there pain after death? And whose voice was it that I kept hearing? It sounded familiar…and yet, my mind didn’t seem to be working right.

“It’s too bright! I can’t… I can’t…”

The talon digging into my flesh had never loosened its grip. Goddess, my wrist hurt.

“Celestina! No!”

My eyes fluttered open as if compelled by an outside force. I squinted through the unnaturally bright, piercing light. The cell’s walls tumbled down around me like a child’s wooden block tower.

Wings, the color of the blackest of nights, unfurled and seemed to soak up the unearthly light. Was this the goddess Perth coming for me? They said she rode into battlefields on leathery wings. With a violent tug on my wrist, the talon gripping me yanked me into the air. I gave a pained shout as the sharp movement dislodged my arm from my shoulder. Was this the goddess of death pulling me from this world so violently while the voice calling for me to stay grew fainter?

An inhuman clawed arm wrapped around my middle and pulled me snug against midnight black scales. The talons digging into my wrist released me. Battered and confused, I cradled my bloody hand to my chest and watched in horror and wonderment as the beast holding me rose jerkily out of the ruins of a rough-hewn stone building.

This wasn’t the goddess of death pulling me from the wreckage of war. No, this wasn’t death. Not when…not when I could still breathe. I drew in a deep breath, filling my lungs with the hot, dry air of Tiburnia’s desert.

A beautiful black dragon had rescued me. I tentatively touched my neck. My fingers came back wet and sticky. The skin of my neck had been reduced to painful ribbons of raw wounds, which should have been worrying. But there was no metal.

Tears filled my eyes again. But this time they were born from joy.

The collar was gone.

I’d survived its removal. I was alive, which meant Soren had to be alive. I cried out with relief. I was safe—for the moment—and in the arms of one of my beloved dragons.

And, finally, I was free.

Amaya

I flew toward home. While my first instinct was to reduce my captor’s stinking city to ashes while enacting my slow, painful torturous promises on the man and that stupidly smug Cullen, the heavy scent of blood on the dragon I’d dragged out of the dungeon cell with me was concerning enough to convince me to set aside my glorious plans for revenge.

Why hadn’t she shifted? Touching her had pulled my bound-up magic to the surface. The sudden burst of magic had forced me to shift back to my dragon form. This dragon had to be powerful to pull off a stunt like that. No dragon I knew could control the flow of magic within another.

No dragon should be able to control another dragon’s magic like that. It was unnatural. And a violation. The magic she’d pulled to the surface was mine and mine alone to call.

More of her blood dripped on to my taloned arm. It was warm and sticky and there was absolutely too much of it. In our fragile, human forms, a dragon could easily bleed to death. She needed her dragon form.

“Why don’t you shift?” I asked her.

She didn’t reply. Was she still alive? I gave her a little shake. She squeaked. Or screamed. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the sound she made, other than to think it sounded like something a prey animal would make, not a noise a fierce top predator would claim.

“Why don’t you shift?” I repeated.

Again, silence.

“Why do you refuse to answer me? Are you angry with me?” She didn’t have any right to be angry. She was the one who’d reached inside me and pulled at the magic. She shouldn’t have done that.

Except…the burst of power had blasted off the shackles and shifted me into my true form. I stretched my long neck to the left and then to the right, moving muscles stiff from disuse. The man had kept me in that human form for too long. I usually shifted at least once a day. Only rarely would I go more than a few days stuck in that limiting human shape. How could a dragon accept being stuck in such a weak form when the air and wind called to her? The pull to fly alone should cause her to shift.

No matter. I would take this human-bound dragon back to our clan. Someone there should be able to tend to her wounds. I reached out with my mind, trying to connect with my parents or my brother to let them know I’d escaped and that I was coming home with an injured dragon.

My powers allowed me to connect with anyone who was thinking of me, no matter the distance. It allowed me to see into their thoughts, to see what they were doing, and to slip thoughts into their minds. It was a talent only midnight dragons possessed. At least, that’s what I’d been told. Since I was the only midnight dragon in eons, I wasn’t sure if my powers were unique to me or to my dragon lineage. Unlike the moonlight dragons, with a rich history of stories and lore, the midnight dragons’ history had been kept in a shroud of darkness. They were known for their fierce fighting skills, but beyond that, little was known about them, even within the clan elders who seemed to know everything about everything.

“Anther?” Surely, my older brother would be thinking… worrying about me. I reached out with my mind to make a connection with him.

“Like I already told you, she was dying, Soren. Short of starting a war, I didn’t know what else I could do to save her.”

Prince Cullen? Ugh! Why would I connect with that smooth-tongued vampire? Even the thought of him talking about me made me want to rip out his tongue and eat it.

I shook my head and tried again to reach out to Anther…or anyone who wasn’t a stupid vampire. But my connection to Cullen only grew stronger, clearer.

“We’ll get Celestina back, I promise.” I could see through Prince Cullen’s eyes that he was standing in the dank dungeon. Bright sunlight streamed in through the gaping hole in the roof that my blast of magic had created. Cullen looked up at the ruined dungeon and frowned. He wasn’t the only one standing in the ruins of the cell. A beefy vampire with shoulder-length black hair and startling green eyes stood next to him. Cullen’s companion picked up the shattered remains of the tight golden necklace the dragon I now held had been wearing.

“It’s covered in blood.” The beefy vampire sounded anguished.

“But that damned thing is off her. It worked. The collar is broken,” Cullen said.

“There’s so much blood.” The vampire wasn’t wrong. I could see through Cullen’s eyes the startlingly big puddle of blood in the middle of the cell. It was worrying.

“Are you still with me, dragon-girl?” I asked my companion.

She didn’t answer, so I shook her again. She whimpered.

Which meant she must still be alive, although not as active as before. I flew higher in search of a stronger current of air. I needed to get her to help as soon as possible. I didn’t relish the thought of carrying a dead dragon back to the clan with me. Our numbers were small enough as it was. Every dragon’s life was important.

“They needed to be together,” Cullen was telling this other vampire. Was this his brother? The brother Cullen had been worried would kill him for tossing his bonded partner into a dungeon? It looked as if the vampire could take out Cullen with a swipe of his hand. I hoped he didn’t. Cullen’s life was mine . I planned to chop off his stupid ears and stuff them up his stupid nostrils. “I know it’s painful for you, Soren, but this had to happen.”

“The blood.” The other vampire looked like he might be sick at the sight of the puddled blood. Who would have guessed someone with a warrior’s physique would be so squeamish?

“You’re alive, which means she’s alive.”

For now, I thought.

Cullen flinched. He looked around as if searching for something. He shook his head and muttered, “She’d said she could do it, and she has.”

“Do what?” Soren asked.

“She’d told me she could make contact with anyone who was thinking about her. Amaya has Celestina. Celestina is hurt, but Amaya is flying Celestina to her clan to get help. Isn’t that right ?”

“How should I know?” Soren asked.

“I wasn’t asking you. I was asking Amaya. She’s listening in on our conversation.”

“I have his dragon ,” I said. It felt only fair that I answered him. “ I’m taking her far, far away from you slaving bastards. But as soon as she’s safe, I’m coming back, and I’m going to roast your ass.”

“ Don’t forget you promised to eat me alive first ,” he said with a smile in his stupid voice. “ You promised me that more than once .”

I screamed and cut off the connection. I didn’t dare try to find Anther or anyone else in my family for fear of ending up in Cullen’s head again. I didn’t want to risk having the conceited jerk get the idea that I wanted to be sitting with him in his thoughts.

Although…his head was a calm place. Like the forest below the plateau on a quiet spring morning. His thoughts flowed like the serene waters traveling down the slow stream where Anther used to take me to go wading on hot summer days when I was just a little hatchling. It was so different from the firestorm of anxious thoughts that usually engulfed my head.

“Hang in there, Celestina ,” I said to my silent rider. “ The Andalotian Plateau lies just beyond that horizon .”