Page 18 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Amaya

“Ivy and Gregory are having a get-together tonight.” Anther had nudged my shoulder and had waggled his head back and forth at me several hours ago as he tried to push me to get out of the manor house. “I’m on patrol duty, but you should go.”

I’d snarled at him.

He’d raised his hands and backed away. “You’re feeling bitey this afternoon. Got it.”

Looking to avoid more run-ins with anyone in my family, I’d hidden myself away behind a bookshelf on the second-floor balcony in the manor’s library. I wasn’t reading. I merely sat in the hard, wooden chair as my emotions boiled.

Stupid Cullen.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Why put the moonlight dragon in the dungeon cell with me? He’d said if we were still there at dinner time, he’d return. Why had he said it that way? Did he know bringing us together would cause a magical explosion? How would he know something like that about dragons? I hadn’t even known that, and I thought I knew everything there was to know about moonlight and midnight dragon lore. Maybe I should go to Ivy and Gregory’s party. I could ask Gregory about it. He was, after all, the village historian who’d taught me the stories.

Stupid Cullen.

Dammit, he was a villain of the worst sort—the kind who tried to trick others into believing that he was the hero of their stories.

“You might as well stop lurking and come on out,” I said to the old lady who still hadn’t left the manor house. “Dragons can smell better than we can see. And I can spot a mouse five hundred yards away in the dark.”

The old woman emerged from behind the bookshelf. She clutched an old history book to her chest. She tilted her head to one side. “I’m glad you escaped from the Tiburnians. They picture themselves better than everyone else on the continent, but the lot of them are nothing more than a nasty bunch of pretentious bullies.”

“I should have heeded your warning more carefully. It was—” A tremor moved through my body as I remembered how helpless I’d felt in those shackles. I violently pushed the memory down. “I will take better care in the future.”

The old woman tut-tutted. “While I am sorry you suffered at the hands of the Tiburnians, that wasn’t the trouble I saw coming. It may have been the start of the bad times in my vision. But an evil omen still muddies the path before you, child. I fear you will still find yourself standing alone and broken before the dark times have passed, unless—”

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.” I couldn’t imagine surviving another bout of captivity. Or worse.

“I wish I were. Seers’ predictions have been dismissed and disparaged throughout most of the continent as the ravings of mad women, but what I see is real and true and…” She swallowed several times. “What I have seen in my visions lately frightens even me. I’m an old woman who has seen horrors that would make a fierce dragon like yourself lose sleep at night. So, when I say I’m scared, it means something.” She set down the book she was holding on a nearby table. “I wish I could provide more help. I wish the visions gave me enough foresight to help me stop it. I’ve tried to stop disasters in the past. It never works. Knowing that, I still felt pulled to come to this village, to talk to you, to help in whatever way I could, even if it’s to offer words of warning so you can prepare your soul.”

“I’m going to die?” Great . Now I had that to deal with.

“We all die…eventually.” She coughed into a handkerchief that she’d dug out of a deep pocket in her raggy dress. “Some sooner than others. It’s good to be prepared.”

I turned to stare at the half-bare bookshelf. Why did the manor have such a large library when many of the shelves were empty? Were the shelves once full, like the sky was once filled with dragons? The manor house was old, much older than anyone could remember. But not older than the Vampiric Wars. We fled here after our defeat and built this village. An ancestor—well, not my ancestor—must have built the manor house and built this library with the idea of filling it with books. Had that been a fanciful dream? Or had the dragons once owned enough books to fill this huge two-story room?

If the books had once existed, what parts of our past were we missing? What knowledge about our magic were we lacking? We hadn’t known what would happen when I touched the moonlight dragon. We didn’t know that she could pull my magic to the surface in such a forceful way. What else didn’t we know?

And how did I go about learning it?

Prince Cullen seemed to know a surprising amount about the midnight and moonlight dragons. Where did he learn about us? The next time I saw him I would claw that knowledge out of that pretty head of his. Maybe if I eat his brains, his thoughts will become mine . Goddess, why can’t I stop thinking about him ? Why can’t I stop remembering being weak in front of him ?

“Amaya? Are you crying?”

I hastily wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweater as I jerked my head toward the sound of my mother’s voice. She was standing exactly where the old woman had been standing.

“The old woman?” I asked, looking around. “Where did she go?”

My mother frowned. “There was no one here, dear.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “We’re worried about you. You haven’t been yourself since your escape. Anther told me what happened earlier. How you growled at him. Are you sure you don’t need to talk about your time in captivity? Did the Tiburnians hurt you in ways we can’t see?”

“Just because I don’t want to be around a bunch of drunken jerks doesn’t mean I’m injured,” I growled at my mother and instantly regretted it.

“If you say so, dear.” Juniper stepped away from me the same way Anther had. “I’m here when you’re ready to talk about it. Not all wounds are visible on the outside.”

“I grew up with a healer for a mother, of course, I know that,” I grumbled more to myself than to her. I hated when I got like this, when I pushed everyone away with my angry words. But I didn’t know how to stop them from coming. I didn’t know how to be someone different, someone better.

Celestina, with her soft voice and cautious manner, would have made a better daughter.

Just thinking of Celestina made me want to tear out someone’s eyes. I should fly back to Tiburnia and tear out the man’s eyes and shove the pair of them down Cullen’s throat. I’d like to see the look of shock on his arrogant face when I did that.

I growled again and then prowled up to my bedroom. Without even bothering to remove any of my clothes, not even my boots, I crawled into bed and pulled a heavy blanket over my head. Completely encased in the woolen cocoon, I finally felt safe. My body, exhausted beyond comprehension, shut down.

For the first time since returning home, I slept.

“She’s still alive,” Cullen’s voice cut through the sea of nothingness my slumber had slipped me into. I blinked several times, bringing the forest scene in front of me into focus. Was this a dream? No, it felt too real to be a dream. Cullen, atop a roan horse, was speaking to his brother. And somehow while I was sleeping, I’d slipped into his thoughts. “You know Celestina is alive because you’re still alive.”

His brother grunted. The two brothers were riding through a dark forest with three others—two males and one female. From the smell of them, all but one carried the cursed blood of a vampire. The other stank like a human.

I thrashed, trying to snap myself out of this connection with Cullen. It had unnerved me that he’d been able to sense me the last time I’d wandered into his thoughts. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Others weren’t supposed to know that I’d made the connection unless I made myself known. But Cullen had managed to sense me there even though I hadn’t wanted to announce my presence. And, I suspected, he knew I was in his head again. I needed to break the connection. But the more I struggled to free myself, the tighter I seemed to connect with him. It felt like Cullen had clamped a hand around my wrist and was holding on to me.

“Stop ,” I forced through the connection.

“No ,” came his quick reply.

We shouldn’t be able to communicate like this. He wasn’t a dragon. And talking to animals wasn’t how my magic worked.

“This isn’t real. I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not dreaming.” His voice started to take on that quality that made me think of a burbling brook. “ Tell me where you are.”

“I-I’m— No!”

“I have a connection with Amaya. I’m going to try to use it to help guide us.”

“The hell you will.”

Cullen chuckled. “She’s a feisty one. And as strong-willed as a burl ox.”

“And you’re as ugly as a warty monkey.”

“So, we’re calling each other names now? I hadn’t meant what I’d said as an insult. Burl oxen are celebrated for their stubborn natures in our society.”

“Liar.”

“I have lied to you, but not about this, my pretty dragon.” His voice in my head seemed to float on calm waters again. “ Tell me about Celestina. Is she safe?”

Celestina. Celestina. Why was everyone obsessed with her? She was weak. She couldn’t even heal her own injuries. And she didn’t care for her own kind. If it didn’t mean putting the entire village in danger, I would tell Cullen how to find us so they could take the traitor away.

I’d rescued the moonlight dragon. I’d returned her to where she belonged. And Celestina had this woe-is-me attitude, acting as if we were holding her here against her will like a freaking prisoner.

If she couldn’t see how lucky she was, then good riddance. We’d managed well enough without her. I was more than capable of protecting the village without whatever she could do. What could a moonlight dragon do? I bet Cullen knew, curse him.

“Tell me about the moonlight dragon powers,” I demanded. “ How did you know what would happen when you brought us together?”

“It was more of a hunch about what might happen than hard data,” he answered. “ I do have a book or two that helped guide me to that hunch. I could share them with you if you let me know where you are right now.”

I needed those books. My thoughts floated happily within my dream as the pieces seemed to fall easily into place. Cullen’s books could be the key to figuring out how to change the old woman’s dire predictions. Those books could help save my life. And Cullen wasn’t evil. He wanted to help me. All I had to do was meet up with him, and he’d give me everything I needed from him.

Wait. No .

He was trying to compel me to help him again.

Bastard .

“I’m going to twist your head off and give it to the village children to use when they play kick-the-ball.”

“I really do have books I could share with you,” he said.

“And I really want to twist your head off your neck.”

“So vicious. And here I am, trying to help you…again. I did manage to get you out of that dungeon before those shackles killed you.”

What did he want from me? A thank-you cake? He could have helped me escape many times over, and he hadn’t. No, he wasn’t trying to help me. He didn’t know anything about the moonlight dragon and her powers. I bet he didn’t even know how to read, the barbarian.

“Amaya?” Cullen’s voice cut into my seething. “ Are you still there?”

“No .”

Cullen chuckled.

“You were telling me about Celestina.” My anger floated away on that lovely calm lake he’d created. “ Is she safe? Is she well?”

I sighed, too tired to fight the compulsion he had pushed on me. “ She’s safe ,” I admitted. “ She’s staying with her protector. Because she can’t shift into her dragon form, her injuries are lingering. But I don’t think she’ll die from them. Pity.”

Cullen repeated what I’d said to the others riding with him.

“She’s injured?” Soren cried. The man looked ready to fight a wraith. “How injured? I need to get to her, heal her.”

“Amaya didn’t describe the extent of Celestina’s injuries,” Cullen answered. “ Amaya?”

“The slave collar had been embedded in her skin. It took that skin with her when it exploded,” I told him, not because he’d forced me to, but because I could feel Cullen’s distress through the connection. And I wanted to reassure him. I knew I shouldn’t have felt that way. They were the enemy. I shouldn’t even be connecting with him. Still, it seemed cruel not to tell him. “ Our healer is taking care of her .”

Cullen repeated what I’d said, but it didn’t seem to ease his worry or his brother’s.

The muscles in Soren’s jaw tightened. “They had better not harm her.”

“She’s with her own kind. They won’t—”

“You don’t know that,” Soren snapped. “She’s never been with the dragons. All she knows about them is what she’s heard from stories or read in those books she checked out of the library. You know how animals react when one of their own acts in a way that isn’t expected. They turn violent.”

“Dragons aren’t animals,” Cullen was quick to say.

“Thank you.” If he’d agreed with his brother, I would have flown to wherever he was and boiled his bowels from the outside.

“Like us, dragons are one of the original life forces.”

“Dragons are the origins from which all life emerged ,” I corrected. “ Vampires are not an origin lifeform. You’re a corruption of nature, not a part of it .”

“Rude .”

“Just stating the truth.”

“What is Amaya saying?” the female with them asked.

“She’s insulting vampires.”

“Ah. That explains the look on your face,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet her. I suspect I’d like her.”

“She does have an unconventional charm.”

I didn’t like the way Cullen had said that. As if he liked me.

“I’m not meeting any of your skanky vampire girlfriends. And when I see you again, I’m going to rip off your head and stick it up your—"

“You’re so creative with your threats.”

“Promises ,” I clarified. “ They’re promises .”

“I know dragons aren’t animals. But I also know the nature of any living creature. They’ll attack their own when they don’t conform,” Soren said. “It happens with the humans. It happens with the vampires. And I’m sure it happens with the dragons. Celestina might be back with her own kind, but she’s never been around a dragon. She knows nothing about dragon culture. And her knowledge about dragons comes from stories that have been exaggerated or fabricated from whole cloth. She could easily make a fatal mistake.”

“No one will harm her,” I assured. I wished they could see me rolling my eyes. “She’s the darling of our village. The golden dragon. The treasure. Everyone is fawning over her and thanking the goddesses for bringing her back alive. Mind, they should be thanking me since I’m the one who did the work to bring her home, but why would they do that when some faceless goddess can take the glory?”

“Amaya is saying how Celestina is being celebrated in the village. She’s fine,” Cullen told his brother. “I’m sure she’ll remain safe. She’s smart. She’s not going to—”

Three dragons swooped down out of the pitch-black sky.

The startled horses scattered as the vampires jumped down from their backs and drew their weapons.

The dragons were younger members of our clan. There was a brown sharptail, a yellow, and a sky blue. None of them had trained in direct assaults like this. But when they opened their mouths and sent fire shooting out, the vampires sent their steeds running in one direction while they charged on foot in the other direction toward the cover of the forest’s thick stand of trees.

“Did you send these?” Cullen demanded. He sounded angry now.

“ I wish!”

“As fun as being insulted by you has been, I’m going to have to release our lovely connection .” Almost immediately, that invisible grip on my mind loosened. But I wasn’t ready to part ways with Cullen, damn is pretty eyes.

“Wait ,” I cried out.

A vast void answered.

“Wait!” I shouted as I jolted up in bed.

I screwed my eyes closed and pictured those young dragons who were foolishly attacking the vampires without proper preparation or training. One of those hotheaded lads had to be thinking about me. Please, be thinking of me and not just of Celestina .

They must have flown out into the surrounding forest when on patrol and stumbled upon the vampires. And foolishly thinking they were defending their precious moonlight dragon, they attacked instead of flying back to the village to alert the others as they’d been instructed to do. Goddess, the vampires undoubtedly carried the same blood-magic poisoned arrows that had brought me down.

I desperately tried to make a connection with one of the dragons attacking the vampires. I felt my mind slipping past theirs, but I couldn’t latch on to anything solid. Those dragons weren’t thinking about me. They weren’t thinking about Celestina. They’d lost themselves to bloodlust. The bitter metallic flavor of it assaulted the back of my throat.

“Stop!” I sent the order to them as forcefully as I knew how. “ Stop!”

Those younglings were going to get themselves killed.

I started to shift, my black scales rising to the surface, talons growing in my desperation to get to those fools, to save them. I felt as hotheaded as the younglings, anxious to join them in fighting the vampires. I could drag Prince Cullen into the air by his toes and toss him off the plateau’s cliffside to see if vampires could survive having all their bones shattered on the rocks below. He wouldn’t be smirking at me then.

But, as anxious as I was to do something, I didn’t know where the vampires and younglings were fighting other than the vague knowledge that they were in a wooded area of our territory, which described eighty percent of our lands.

I had to go about this another way. I had to be calm…and smart.

I found it ridiculously easy to reopen the connection between Prince Cullen and me.

“I’m busy here, Amaya.” He had the brown sharptail in his crossbow’s sight and was on the verge of pulling the trigger.

“Don’t hurt them!” I screamed at him.

“Don’t hurt the dragons who are trying to roast us?” His finger remained on the trigger, but he lowered the crossbow. Not that stopping one vampire from firing their crossbows was good enough. I heard bolts flying from the others traveling with him.

“They’re idiots. But they’re young idiots who shouldn’t be engaging the enemy. Tell the others to stop firing at them.”

“And do what, Amaya? Let your young friends burn us to ashes? I’m not sure I’d be able to regenerate from that.” Even as he protested, he bumped his brother’s arm, sending the bolt that had been aimed at the sky blue’s neck flying off target.

“Hey!” Soren protested.

“Amaya says these are young dragons who are getting themselves in over their heads.”

“Tell her that we’re not the aggressors here. I don’t care if they’re young dragons or not. Their fire is as hot as a full-grown dragon.”

The two brothers dove to the ground as the trees above them caught fire. Off to the right of them, the female vampire let loose the string of her archery bow. The sky blue cried out in pain as it swirled large looping circles in the air, desperately fighting to stay aloft.

I screamed my frustration.

There had to be a way to get those idiot dragons to back off before the vampires killed them all.

“Shout my name,” I told Prince Cullen.

“What? Why?”

“I need the young dragons to be thinking about me so I can connect with their thoughts. Shout my name.”

“I guess it’s worth a try.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Amaya!”

The two healthy dragons immediately stopped their fiery attack. Their heads jerked in Cullen’s direction.

“Shit, now they’re coming this way,” Cullen cried as he stumbled to his feet and started to run like a rabbit flushed from its burrow.

“That’s because you gave away our location with your bellowing,” Soren darted after his brother. “Raya! Gray! Cover our flanks. We’re heading for the bushes down the hill.”

The dragons swooped lower in fast pursuit.

“What the hell, Cullen?” Soren looked like he wanted to punch his brother.

“Amaya told me to do it.”

“This advice came from the same dragon who wants to eat your roasted balls?”

“Maybe.”

“Here’s an important piece of battlefield advice—don’t take orders from those who want to kill you.”

“Amaya? A little help?” Cullen sounded nearly as panicked as I felt.

The female vampire with the wicked good aim had her bow raised and was in range to take a shot at the brown sharptail.

Thanks to Cullen shouting my name, I managed to slip into the sharptail’s mind.

“Victor! Veer off! You’re about to get hit!”

He shook his head as if not sure what was going on inside his mind, but he banked sharply to the right. A heartbeat later, an archery bolt sailed past him.

I huffed out a sharp breath.

“Now get out of there! All of you! You’re not qualified to take on a troop of vampires.”

“Amaya? Where are you?” Victor asked, his head jerking around as he searched the skies.

“At home where you should be heading. And find a safe place for Yarrow to land. He needs to shift and heal before going much further. Can you do that?”

“But we need to stop the—”

“You need to get home and report to the elders what you saw and where you saw them. That’s the orders you’re given every time you set off on patrol. If you don’t want me to go tattling to Trace and Anther that you’re breaking those orders, you will do as I say, and you’ll do it now.”

“Yes, Amaya.” Victor gave a low roar that caught the yellow’s attention. The two of them turned toward the injured sky blue. Though the sky blue was bleeding and clearly in pain, he’d managed to stay in the air. The poisoned arrow had taken me down immediately. Were these bolts not poisoned?

“Don’t shoot them,” I cautioned Cullen, still surprised at how easy it was to slide into his thoughts. “ They’re leaving .”

“Hold your attack! It’s over!” Cullen called to the others. “That includes you, Driscoll.”

One of the vampires snarled and showed his fangs, but he lowered the crossbow that he’d been about to fire.

“Is this Amaya’s doing?” Soren asked. Even though the dragons were gone, he continued to scan the sky for threats.

Cullen grinned. “Maybe despite her threats, she’s not so keen on seeing my balls get roasted.”

“Maybe I want the pleasure of doing it myself,” I said.

“I’m sure your dragon wants the pleasure of doing that herself,” the female vampire said as she jogged up to the two brothers.

“That’s what Amaya just said, Raya,” Cullen admitted.

“I knew I liked her.” Raya laughed. “I hope we get to meet her soon.”

Cullen’s easy smile seemed to suggest that he thought we would be getting together, partying together like the older dragons all would do at Ivy and Gregory’s cottage.

“Cullen, I can never meet up with you or your friends. You must turn back. The clan won’t let you get anywhere near the moonlight dragon.”

“My brother will never agree to let Celestina go ,” Cullen cut in.

“You’ll have to convince him to change his mind. Pushing forward will only get the four of you killed. Now that the clan knows you’re out in the surrounding woods, they’ll double the patrols. Triple them. And this time they’ll send mature dragons who have years of battle training. They’ve waited too long to get her back. The entire clan will go to war before losing the moonlight dragon again.”

I waited for Cullen to say something. To argue. To agree to leave. To answer. Why didn’t he answer?

All I got from him was silence.

“Cullen?”

It grew harder to hold on to the vision of the forest where they were still huddled.

“Cullen! Don’t do this! Don’t shut me out!”

It was too late. Cullen slammed the door on our connection.

I sat on my bed, staring into the room’s darkness. I could no longer feel the icy breeze blowing down from the plateau. I could no longer hear the sizzle from the trees that were still burning from the dragon fire.

After experiencing the battle, the stillness inside my room felt unnatural.

“Cullen?” I tried again to slip into his thoughts. It had been so easy to do, easier than slipping into a dragon’s mind even. Of course, dragons are superior creatures, more complex, and smarter. It would make sense that it would be harder to slip into a dragon’s mind.

I’d fallen into Cullen’s thoughts even when I didn’t want to. But now that I needed to get into his head, I kept hitting a steel wall. My inability to reach him wasn’t because he was no longer thinking of me. I could feel his thoughts like a soft caress down my spine. He seemed to be thinking about me now even more than ever. And yet, at the same time, he was actively blocking me from getting to him, blocking me from seeing what was happening around them.

Foolish vampire. His stubbornness was going to get them killed. Not that I cared if he lived or died. I didn’t. I was simply angry that I wouldn’t be the one to have the pleasure of killing him. The clan elders, worried about my safety after nearly losing me to the Tiburnians, would find an excuse to ground me.

“Cullen, don’t do this. Please.”

Nothing.

I growled.

I had no other choice but to go tell the others. I needed to warn them that it was time to start preparing for war.