Page 4 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Amaya

I woke up shivering and hot. And confused. So confused.

“She has a fever.” I didn’t recognize the voice who’d spoken. And I found what he’d said hard to believe. I had a fever? Me? I’d heard of those. Humans fell ill with fevers. Dragons didn’t. How could I, a superior creature to humans, fall prey to a fever? “How did this happen?”

“The dragon has been unable to heal the wound she received when I shot her out of the sky. It’s festering.” That was the man . When I escaped, I planned to roast him alive and suck the marrow from his bones.

I was no longer in the carriage, though it still felt like the world was swaying around me. There was a mattress beneath me and a blanket over me. It took quite a bit of effort, but I managed to peel open my crusty eyelids. Although my eyesight was blurred, I could make out the shape of a tall black-haired man. He was dressed in dark colors and wore gold-rimmed glasses. The frames glinted in the sunlight coming through the narrow window. He must have noticed that I was watching him. His gaze locked with mine. He stepped toward me.

“She’s naked, why?”

“Because I had to act quickly to secure her. The dragon’s system quickly dispels the poison I used to capture her. The first dragon I shot escaped and killed the man I’d sent to carry out the task of securing it. I needed to get those bindings on her immediately. And I can’t very well take them off. As soon as I remove them, she’ll shift back to her dragon form and kill me.”

The new man continued to stare at me. “I doubt she’d have the strength to do anything other than growl at the moment.”

“With your help, Prince Cullen, I plan to nurse her back to health and get her back into her dragon form as quickly as possible.”

So, this is the friend who would scramble my mind? I’ll use his ribs as toothpicks.

I took a sniff. He wasn’t—

The room swam in and out of focus. What was I thinking about? Toothpicks?

“I don’t know.” The prince’s gaze felt like it penetrated deep inside me. Like he could see all my secrets. Like he now knew everything there was to know about my family and my home. But that couldn’t be right. No magic could do that, could it? “With her so weakened, I might damage—”

“You agreed,” the man snapped. “I’m taking a great risk getting your brother and his dragon into Tiburnia without alerting those in the army who would wish to seek revenge against him for how he decimated our forces. And in exchange, you agreed to—”

“Yes. Yes. Very well,” the prince angrily interrupted. “I’ll do what needs to be done.” With a sigh, he crouched next to the bed. After a silent moment, he adjusted his glasses. His brows furrowed. “What’s your name?” he asked, his voice as soft and gentle as a warm summer breeze.

“Amaya.” My voice cracked.

Why did I tell him that? He was the enemy, the one who’d been brought here to break my mind.

My mind is already broken. The fever seemed to have done that.

A smile creased the corners of the prince’s mouth. “Amaya.” I liked how my name sounded on his tongue. “A beautiful name. Doesn’t it mean the journey’s end or homecoming?”

“Heavenly valley.” I had to work to get the words out.

“What’s that?” He leaned closer.

“It means heavenly valley in the Eirid tongue.” Again, why would I offer that? It must have been this fever that was weakening me, causing me to make these awful mistakes. Causing me to speak too much. At least I hadn’t told him that I was named after the spring green valley not far from my family’s home.

“Beautiful,” he repeated. “Let me see if we can do something to help you feel better, Amaya. I’m going to lift this blanket to have a look at the wound. I won’t touch you other than to care for your injury. And I will find clothes for you to wear. Do I have your permission to do this?”

“Permission?” the man scoffed. “She’s my possession. You do what needs to be done to keep her alive whether she wants you to or not. Why don’t you just burrow your way into her head now while she’s weak and crack her open like an egg?”

Prince Cullen closed his dark brown eyes and drew in a couple of deep breaths before rising. Though he was a slender man, he was tall, taller than the stranger who had captured me.

“You need a weapon— her —for the coming war, is that not correct?”

“You know that I—”

“If I take away her thoughts, you’ll have nothing. On a battlefield, she will serve as a warrior in the air. You need both her dragon’s instincts and her ability to think for herself.”

“I don’t need that. I will be riding her.”

Excuse me? He’ll be doing what?

“True, but you still can’t do all the thinking. Even a warhorse in the thick of battle makes many of its own decisions. And you’ll be riding not a horse on the ground, but a dragon in the air, which is a thousand times more complicated. What you don’t need is a useless shell. I can soften her to you, but you’re going to have to do your part to convince her to help you, to work with you.”

“How can I do that? All she does is plot ways to kill me.”

That’s the truth. And I’m going to do those deliciously gruesome things to him, too.

Prince Cullen nodded. “Perhaps that’s your own fault.”

“I captured her. How I’ve treated her afterward wouldn’t change how she thinks of me. She hates me for stealing her freedom. I tried being kind and got nothing but venom.”

The prince made a chuffing sound in the back of his throat before he crouched back down beside the bed again. “Do I have your permission to help you, Amaya?” Again, his voice washed through me.

“ Please ,” I rasped, hating my helplessness. Hating myself for letting myself become this hurt and helpless. “ Please, help me .”

He gave a curt nod and lifted the blanket. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the prince’s eyes take on the same leering look the man had given me when he’d tended to my wound. Prince Cullen almost immediately sucked in such a sharp breath that it had my eyes fluttering open. “I thought you said you’d been taking care of the wound?”

“I have! I’ve been putting this salve on it.” The man held up a brown jar. He seemed to enjoy pressing the acrid paste into my wound until I cried out for him to stop. When I escaped, I was going to rip his arms from his body while he cried for me to stop.

“With an infection this deep,” the prince pointed out, “a simple salve is likely doing more harm than good. I’m not even sure taking off the shackles will help her. The infection has her so weakened I suspect she wouldn’t be able to tap into her magical reserves.”

The man swore viciously. “I’ll start a fire. We’re going to have to cauterize it then, which means she’ll be no use to us until the burnt flesh heals.”

The prince started to say something—perhaps to agree to let the man make my wound worse by burning it—but after glancing at me, he stopped. “You know, I can make a tea my family cook used to make to heal my brother and me when we hurt ourselves as kids. It tastes awful. I do apologize for that, Amaya. But if you drink it, you’ll feel better almost immediately. I’ll need to go fetch my haversack for the ingredients. But I’ll be right back.”

I liked how he spoke to me instead of to my captor, whose pale skin I planned to turn into leather boots.

The prince wasn’t gone long, but I missed him. How strange was that? That I missed someone I’d met only a few minutes ago. That I missed someone who’d promised to scramble my brain. Maybe he’d already started that brain scrambling. Yes, that must have been what was happening. He was already using his magic on me to soften my anger toward them.

When he returned with his bag, he set up the ingredients on a bedside table. He worked with his back to the man , taking his time as he prepared this special tea of his. I tilted my head so I could watch him work.

The prince had a slender nose, deep brown eyes, and a wide mouth that even now curled up with amusement.

“What are you putting in the healing tea?” the man asked while trying to get a look at what Prince Cullen was doing.

“Sorry, friend, it’s a family secret. Mary, the cook who taught it to me, would beat me bloody with her oversized wooden spoon if I dared speak a word of what went into it.” While he hid his work from the man, he didn’t do the same with me. I watched with growing curiosity as the prince took a small blade and sliced it across the palm of his left hand. He squeezed his hand into a fist and held it over the pewter goblet he’d been using to mix his concoction. A steady flow of blood dropped into the goblet. He’d done all of this without letting the man see any of it.

“Okay,” Prince Cullen said. He tucked a cloth into his hand to stop the bleeding before turning. “It’s ready.” He picked up the pewter goblet and, kneeling next to the bed, brought the tea to my lips. I was too weak to hold the cup or even raise my head, so he had to do both for me.

I snarled at him when he cupped the back of my head and lifted.

“Shhh,” the prince said gently. “I’m going to save you, Amaya. I promise.”

I coughed and sputtered, trying to expel the foul drink he was forcing down my throat. It was poison. He was trying to kill me with that thick potion. I coughed some more. The dark liquid dribbled down my chin and puddled on my neck. The stench of it was awful. I gagged and coughed some more, desperate to get it all out.

“I know it’s putrid. But I need you to drink ,” he said.

The full timbre of his voice seemed to vibrate deep within my bones. Yes, I should drink this. He’s trying to help me . My throat relaxed. And I stopped struggling against him. I swallowed a mouthful of the disgusting tea. And then swallowed some more. Once I’d finished the goblet, or what I hadn’t spit out, he carefully lowered my head back to the mattress. I was panting from the effort.

“Did she get enough?” the man demanded.

“If she doesn’t improve, I’ll make another batch. But let’s just give it a few hours and see if this works,” Prince Cullen said. He grazed his cool knuckle across my achy forehead. “While she rests, we can find her some proper clothes. Certainly, someone at this inn can direct us to where we might purchase a dress. Dragons are proud creatures. You must treat them with dignity. Hauling her around naked was a mistake.”

“She would have killed me if I’d removed those bindings. She’s dangerous.”

The prince looked down at me. Our eyes met, and he smiled. “Yes, I imagine she could tear us apart without exerting much effort if given the chance. That’s why you wanted her, isn’t it?”

“That’s why I need her leashed,” the man corrected. That was all he talked about—getting me under his control. He wanted me to fight for him.

Well, cretin, that isn’t going to happen. Dragons didn’t fight alongside other creatures, especially not with humans. Humans made their own messes—messes that had nothing to do with us. If they wanted to kill themselves off, well, good. We’d happily watch as they—

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait a damned minute. What he’d said earlier had suddenly worked its way through my sluggish thoughts to a part of my mind that was actually working.

The man had said that the prince’s brother had control of a dragon?

Was this crime against dragon-kind Prince Cullen’s doing? Was he going around the continent enslaving dragons to fight for humans? Was this evil prince the reason my family had failed to return home? I drew in a long breath fully prepared to roast the men in the room with me.

But, of course, I couldn’t. The chains and bindings kept me from doing anything other than seethe. And yet, that deep breath brought the scent of the prince, flooding my senses.

Citrus and juniper and leather and something slightly metallic.

No. No. No. Dammit. It can’t be. The prince isn’t human?

The man was human. Like the sausages my brother liked to make, he stank of briny water and pig. While Prince Cullen carried a scent I’d only caught on the air once before.

“Keep away from those kind ,” my father had warned as we’d watched a small troop of the creatures cross our land many, many years ago. “ They are mortal enemies of the dragons. It’s been this way since the dawn of time.”

Prince Cullen, unlike the stupid man who’d captured me, was a vampire.

Every magical creature on the Jayden Continent could trace the origin of their magic to a mating—or multiple matings—between some non-magical creature and a dragon. Every. Single. Magical. Creature.

Except the vampires.

Their magic came from the taking of blood. A dragon’s magic was a beautiful dance between the natural world and the unseen forces that flowed through everything. Blood magic was the opposite. Blood magic tore power from nature’s veins. Theirs took without offering anything in return.

Goddess help me, this Prince Cullen is a dragon’s mortal enemy. And I’d just allowed him to feed me his blood so he could work his perverted magic on me from the inside? I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t let him infect me further. I struggled, trying to gather enough energy to fight him and the man , to get away. Damn my weak human form . My arms flailed as I tried to roll out of the bed.

Prince Cullen moved swiftly to the side of the bed. “What has upset you, Amaya? You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said more to himself than to me or to the man —the man whose eyeballs I planned to pluck out and feed to the first vultures I could find. But before I could do that, I needed to get out of this room, out of this inn.

“ Be calm .” The prince pressed his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back onto the lumpy mattress. “ Sleep .” His voice seemed to echo inside my head. No, not in my head, but through my entire body. Sleep . That one word made me feel as if a heavy weight had been pressed on top of me, and the only escape from it was to close my eyes and…start…to…drift…

“What color dragon is she?” I heard the prince ask as I sailed toward a place where I felt like I might float. It sounded as if he were suddenly speaking from the end of a very long tunnel.

“Black,” the man answered. He, too, sounded as if he’d left the room and were miles away. But that didn’t make sense, if he were miles from here, I wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Black? As in the color of the sky at midnight? That’s…not…poss—er—that’s interesting.”

“You might not know this, living so far away from the plateau. But like dogs and horses, dragons come in different colors.”

What a fool , but I already knew that about the man . Our colors were part of who we were, a part of what formed our powers. And I was the first midnight dragon to hatch in our lands since the Vampiric Wars.

“She could be purple with pink polka dots for all I care. What I need is your help to make my dragon into a ridable weapon.”

I’m not his dragon.

“Yes,” the prince said, his voice lulling me back to that calm floaty place he’d initially sent me to. “I can see how you’d want to make her that. Now, sleep , my unique Amaya. When you wake, you’ll be healthy enough to show me those pretty scales of yours. I bet they sparkle like stars in the moonlight.”