Page 29 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Celestina

“Tiburnia? How did it get all the way to the most northern kingdom?” I demanded, still not sounding the least bit calm.

“Someone must have put it there,” Soren said. “Someone who wants us dead.”

“But we’re well armed and protected.” Certainly, an overgrown rat couldn’t harm a large group of highly trained vampire warriors.

Gray circled around to the rear of the carriage.

“Rat-vipers are nearly impossible to kill,” Raya said as she lowered her sword in front of me. Soren did the same. “Those scales are as hard as steel. We’re in serious trouble.”

“And the claws and fangs are coated in deadly venom. If it breaks through our defenses, you need to run,” Soren said. “Don’t look back. Just run.”

I shook my head. “Not going to happen.”

“Please, don’t argue with me.” The rat-viper sprang out of the carriage. Its long tail undulated from side to side like a snake. It held its front claws up near its body, ready to strike. Its wide mouth gaped open, exposing long viper fangs. Soren and Raya both backed up as the rat-viper slithered toward us. “You don’t even have a sword.”

“I don’t need a sword.” I snarled at the revolting rat.

The small, beady-eyed variety of rats made my skin crawl, and this one was a hundred times worse. It was as tall as I was. And the stench. It smelled like a pile of rotting meat.

“Stop!” I told the beast in my most growly and magical voice. I felt the magic flow up through my feet and out of my mouth. The sensation made my entire body tingle.

That was new. Did that extra awareness of my magic mean I was starting to break free from Queen Frieda’s magical curse?

“It worked.” A little too well. Everyone in the field stopped moving, even Driscoll and Cullen who were still near the airship, which was a fair distance from the carriages. They’d been busy securing the anchors. Cullen was partially bent over with a rope in his hand. Driscoll had another rope and had been moving toward the far side of the airship.

“The rat-viper,” Soren muttered through lips that didn’t move, “isn’t magical.”

The gray scaly beast crouched as it tilted its head and stared directly at me. Crap. Crap. Crap. It was going to leap at us.

“Move! Move! Move!” I growled. My powers of compulsion only worked on magical beings. In my panic, I barely managed to get a ripple of magic moving through my body. But it was enough to counteract my earlier compulsion. Both Soren and Raya sprang into action. They struck with their swords. But their weapons scraped uselessly against the rat-viper’s impossibly hard belly as it launched itself into the air and toward me!

Soren tossed me to one side, putting himself in the path of the rat-viper’s deadly claws.

“No!” Raya shouted and jumped in front of Soren.

I hit the ground and rolled.

No. No. No. The rat-viper’s venom-soaked claw was going to dig into Raya’s chest. Its deadly claws would kill her. And I couldn’t do anything to save my friend.

No. No. No.

The rat-viper had raised its claw. Raya didn’t have time to do anything. She was dead. Or would be as soon as that claw struck her.

But before the claw moved, the rat-viper exploded.

Bloody bits of rodent (or was it a reptile?) rained down on the carriage, the practice field, the airship, and on us.

I would have screamed and danced around, trying to rid myself of the hot, bloody carnage that had landed on me if this had been the first time I’d been splattered with fleshy gore. Thanks to Queen Beatrice’s violent spectacles, I merely brushed what appeared to be part of the rat-viper’s ear from my cheek and stared at the spot where the nasty creature had once occupied. In its place—for the briefest of instants—I’d seen a dragon. It hadn’t been fully visible. Just the outline of a long, graceful neck, outstretched wings, and a tail that could easily break a leg. A shimmering, see-through dragon. And then a blink later, it was gone.

“Did you—Did you see—?” My heart thundered in my chest. “Was that—Was that my dragon? My moonlight dragon?” The legends spoke of the moonlight dragon being luminous and see-through. Had I conjured my moonlight dragon as a separate piece of me? Was that even possible?

Soren wrapped his arm protectively around my shoulder while holding his sword in his other hand. “That was an assassination attempt. We need to get you out of here.”

The King’s Guards who’d come to meet us had spread out to search the area for additional threats.

“How would someone get a beast like that into the carriage without being killed themselves?” It seemed impossible.

“They’re trainable,” Raya said as she jogged toward the carriage that had once held that stinky rat thing.

“Gross.”

“I agree.” Gray ran up to us. “Nasty beasts. I searched the carriage over there.” He pointed to the one he meant with the tip of one of his swords. “It’s clear.”

“Let’s go then.”

“What about Cullen?”

“He’ll be fine. We need to get you to safety, Sky Girl.”

“You don’t think that rat-viper-thingy was sent to attack me, do you?”

“It was either me or you, and I’m not willing to risk you. There might be more of those things out here,” Soren answered.

“More?” I squeaked.

“We should be safe once we get to the palace.”

I was now the one tugging him to go faster to the other carriage. I didn’t even use the stairs that had been put down. I jumped inside, landing sideways on one of the cushioned benches. Soren came in right behind me. And then Gray entered, closing and latching the door behind him. Almost immediately, the carriage jerked into motion.

“What happened to the rat-viper?” Gray asked swaying with the carriage as it picked up speed. “I was on the far side of the carriage and couldn’t see how you killed it.”

“It exploded,” Soren said.

“Yes. I’m wearing parts of it,” Gray flicked at what looked like a piece of the hairless tail stuck to his arm. “ How did you make it explode?”

Soren looked over at me. “Did you do that?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.” I hadn’t felt the tingling of power push through me like I had when I’d used my compulsion. I hadn’t felt anything. And the explosion had come as a complete surprise. “In the aftermath, did you see a dragon?”

“No,” both Soren and Gray said.

Had I imagined it? The dragon had been visible for less than a blink.

“We’re almost to the palace,” Soren said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some answers there.”

Amaya

“That was a clever trick.” Cullen lifted his head after finishing off the knot he’d been tying as he secured the airship. He looked directly at me. I knew he couldn’t see me. I was nothing more than invisible particles and pieces of air. I had no form, no weight, no outline.

I’d started to follow the moonlight dragon as she rode away with her vampire toward the capital city. But a niggling feeling made me turn back to the field. And stupidly, I’d floated over to Cullen. I couldn’t seem to keep away from him. Pathetic.

“I know you’re there.” Cullen dusted off his hands and placed them on his hips.

“If I was here, your penis would have exploded along with that naked rat monster,” I told him. I was surprised I could drop into his mind like this. After all the times he’d blocked me, I’d expected to keep hitting that wall he’d built around his thoughts.

“You’re always so bloodthirsty and vicious, Darkness.” A smile creased the corners of his mouth.

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“I don’t want you to apologize. I like how you talk to me. It’s sexy.” He moved forward. I floated backward to keep my distance, not that I needed to. It wasn’t as if he could grab on to me. Not when I was the air. “Plus, that trick you did with the rat-viper saved the lives of probably everyone who was in this field. I’m grateful to you for that.”

“Who sent the beast? And what do you plan to do to keep the moonlight dragon safe from future attacks?” I demanded.

“Clearly, our friend Captain Proctor is angry at us for your escape. His interest in training wild beasts for warfare is well-known.”

I should have figured I wouldn’t be done with that bastard. “What do you plan to do about it?”

Cullen’s eyes flashed black. “I will end him.”

The vampire who was working on the airship with him snapped his head in our direction. “Cullen? Is everything all right over there?”

“I’m good,” Cullen called back. He kept his gaze locked on the empty air I was occupying. “I’ll make him suffer as I pull his life from his body while letting him know I’m doing it for you.”

Gods, that sounded sexy. I wanted a body so I could rub against him, scrape my claws down his back, and dig my teeth into his neck.

Dammit. I should have kept my distance from Prince Cullen. He was water to my fire. We couldn’t be near each other.

I needed to watch over Celestina and figure out how to get her to return to the village before the dragons started a war. I didn’t have time to play games with Cullen.

With a snarl, I sailed away from him.

I hadn’t moved far when the air around me froze. I couldn’t move forward, or sideways, or any way.

“Not so fast,” Cullen put the words directly inside my mind.

“How did you—?” I struggled against his hold. How the hell was he holding air?

“You’ve been banging around trying to get inside my head so often lately, trying to spy on what we’ve been doing, that you’ve blazed quite a strong connection between us. And the wonderful thing about connections is that they always go both ways. I’m curious, my sweet Darkness, how did you blow up the rat-viper?”

I’d acted mostly on instinct, but I was so proud of the way I’d dispatched that ugly creature that I didn’t see anything wrong with bragging a little. “I floated over to the—what did you call it?”

“It’s a rat-viper, the deadliest rodent to roam the continent. And the largest.”

“Lovely. I hope to never see something like that again. When it went after Celestina, I floated over to the creature and let it breathe me into its lungs. Once I was inside it, I shifted to my dragon form.” I became a dragon just for a heartbeat. But that had been long enough for my powers to do what they did best—destroy the rat-viper, utterly and completely.

“Gods.” Cullen breathed. His expression turned hard. “I won’t let you hurt my family.”

“I’m here to keep death from happening, not to cause it.”

“I’d find it easier to believe that if you weren’t a midnight dragon.”

In a fit of anger, I wrenched myself free from his magical binding.

“Don’t. Hold. Me. Like. That. Again.” I should roast that smug grin off his handsome face. I wondered if I could produce fire in this form. I’d have to test that sometime. But not right now. Not when I needed to protect Celestina. I hated to imagine what trouble she might stumble into next. No wonder Trace felt the need to watch over her all the damn time. The moonlight dragon attracted danger as if she were a magnet.

“There’s a palace ball tomorrow night. I expect you to attend as my guest.”

Was he unhinged? I wouldn’t go to a vampire ball. I’d get massacred.

“If you don’t show up, I’ll know how to find you.” He pushed power into that threat, power that made my many particles shiver with fear…and, disturbingly, with an unhealthy amount of delight.

Goddess, why did I lose my mind whenever Prince Cullen was near?

It was because I liked him.

Dammit.