Page 6 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Amaya

When I woke up again, I was feeling much healthier. And yet, the world was still swaying. Did I still have a fever?

I lifted my head, blinking in the nearly nonexistent light. Gradually, I realized where I was. I was back in the dark carriage, lying on the narrow bench with that putrid cloak still wrapped around me.

Had I dreamed up the fever, the room at the inn, and the vampire prince?

I growled. When I escaped, I would chop off the human’s dangly bits, roast them, and force him to eat them.

“Are you still coming up with creative ways to kill those who have done you wrong, Amaya?”

Startled by the amused, deep voice that rose from a shadowy corner on the opposite bench, I lurched upright. And then immediately tightened the cloak around me.

“You.” If I hadn’t been holding the cloak closed with the grip of a choking vine, I would have swiped my claws at him. Only…I didn’t have claws. Not on these useless human hands. I was so used to parts of my dragon form emerging whenever I needed them, that it felt as if someone had hacked my body to bits. If I needed fire, I could breathe fire. If I needed to climb, my claws would be there. If I needed to fly, I had wings. I didn’t need to be in full dragon form to access my magic.

Not being able to access any of it made me feel as if someone had emptied my soul. Being locked naked in a closed carriage with a vampire who wished to do me harm left me wanting to strike out and hurt the smooth-talking vampire prince before he could put his hands on me. Before he managed to suck me dry.

If I moved fast enough and surprised him, maybe I could get the chain connecting my wrists wrapped around his neck. If I pulled with all my strength, I bet I could sever that head from his body. I seemed to remember being told once—perhaps by my brother—that the only way to kill a vampire was to remove its head. I was more than happy to try it out.

With a battle yell worthy of my fierce warring ancestors, I launched myself at the shadowy prince reclining in the corner.

Of course, the chains connecting the shackles on my ankles got in the way. I went flying across the small space. My head smashed against the carriage door, and I fell into a tangled heap.

“Is this how you thank someone for saving your life?” Prince Cullen said as he reached around my waist and dragged me up. “By doing more damage to yourself?”

I struggled like an eel. “Get your hands off me.”

He set me on the bench and made a show of raising his hands in the air. “My hands are off.”

I growled.

He chuckled as he settled back into his dark corner, which only made me growl more.

“I like how feral you are.”

I bared my teeth, wishing they were the needle-sharp teeth from my dragon form. “Let’s see how much you like it when I eat you alive.”

“Oh?” He leaned toward me. “You’d do that for me?” It took me a moment to realize that he’d taken what I’d said to mean sexually.

I pulled the cloak tighter to myself. “You won’t like it.”

“You’d be surprised by what I like.” He chuckled again, which made me want to feel the spray of his hot blood when I ripped out his throat. But since I couldn’t access the necessary teeth to do the job, I turned my head toward the sliver of light coming through a crack in the shutters.

“You promised to find me clothes,” I grumbled.

“And I did.”

I looked down at the cloak. And then sniffed. Okay, the cloak tucked around me wasn’t the human’s old stinky cloak. This one was thicker and crafted from a finer material. Silk? I ran my hand over it. The heavy stitching felt intricate. I wished more light shone through the slivers where the shutters met so I could see the design.

“Being wrapped like a loaf of bread in some stray cloak you likely found in someone’s rag bag isn’t what I’d consider being provided with clothes.”

“That cloak is mine. And I merely draped it over you while you slept because you looked cold. I expect it back.”

I rolled my eyes. But it was so dark in the carriage, I doubted he could appreciate how unimpressed I was with him.

“Roll your eyes all you want, I’m not gifting you my cloak. And I did find you a dress. Had to buy it from a seamstress down the street from the inn who took one look at me and doubled her prices. So, you’re welcome.”

I stared down at my bare legs.

“A dress?”

He nodded.

Turning away from him, I took a quick peek under the cloak. Sure enough, I was now wearing a lightweight dress that cinched just under my breasts and flowed nearly to my knees.

“A nice one,” he said. “Too bad you can’t fully see how well the blue of the dress compliments your olive skin tone.”

I’d never worn a dress a day in my life. “How very…human. Wouldn’t have expected a vampire to pick out such a common garment.”

“The human seamstress wasn’t offering much in the way of choices. But I promise you, this one looks much prettier on you than the gown she’d made from a printed cloth sporting large pink and purple flowers.” He leaned even further forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Besides, the dress I purchased isn’t much different from something my sister would buy.”

The monster has a sister?

No matter. A sister to a monster must also be a monster.

“Dresses are for the weak.” I didn’t know if I really believed that or not. The old woman who was staying with us at the manor house wore a patched gown. And I didn’t consider her weak. She had, after all, survived the long hike up onto the Andalotian Plateau. How had she gotten up there? And why? Was she the reason the herd had been slaughtered and I was captured? Had she been sent as a harmless-looking scout to find us?

I should have killed her.

This is what hospitality had gotten me—me and my people.

When I escaped, I planned to scorch the human’s and vampire’s lands. I’d turn the ground so black with cinders, nothing would ever grow there again.

Ugh! I wish I could do that now.

“I don’t wear dresses,” I grumbled, keeping my head turned away from the prince.

“Pants might be warmer and more comfortable, but pants would cause trouble when you had to, you know, answer the call of nature. With your wrists and ankles…” He pressed his wrists together, miming how mine were shackled.

Although he might have had a point, I wasn’t going to agree with him.

“I’m told you are a—” He stopped.

I looked over at him.

“It seems impossible. Well, two impossibilities occurring at the same time seem even more impossible.” He shook his head as if trying to clear away the thought. “Is it true, Amaya? Are you a midnight dragon?”

“How could I be? There haven’t been midnight dragons on the continent since the Vampiric Wars. They were annihilated. The eggs smashed. The babies torched. By the vampires. By your kind.”

His soft brown eyes looked large behind his glasses. “Yes, Amaya, how could this be true? How do you exist?”

“I don’t. Not like you and your delusional friend out there believe,” I said, leaning forward now, too. “Dragons are myths, bedtime stories created to entertain children. I’m a simple village girl from the plateau caught up in a deranged man’s fantasy. Abused.” I rattled the chain connecting my wrists. “Trapped.”

Prince Cullen chuckled. “If only that were the truth.”

“My brother will come looking for me,” I warned.

Anther must be tearing apart the plateau searching for me. He would have found the slaughtered deer and scented my blood on the ground. And my wound had been bleeding and festering (like I was a human) for days. It would be easy enough for him to follow the scent trail.

It should have been easy to follow me.

“He should have found me by now,” I said aloud.

“I am sorry,” Prince Cullen said softly.

“Sorry?” I jolted off the bench. “Sorry?”

Did that stupid human kill my brother? Did he kill the dragons that had stayed behind in our village? Were they all dead because I’d let myself be captured? No, that buffoon couldn’t have managed to do something like that. Not without a vampire’s help.

Dammit. The human did have a vampire’s help.

“I’ll kill you!” I threw myself at the prince for a second time and managed to drag my nails through his face before he grabbed my wrists. He gave my wrists a painful twist before he roughly shoved me down to the carriage’s hard floor.

With the efficiency of a highly trained fighter, he released my wrists and pressed a knee against my side, pinning me against the dirty, rough boards.

“Damn, that hurt,” he grumbled.

I glared up at him, wishing I could tear his heart out of his heaving chest. Even in the gloom of the closed carriage, I could see the score marks I’d made across his cheek. Blood beaded from the four of them. I might not have been able to produce my claws, but I supposed these frail human nails weren’t as useless as I had thought.

“I hope you bleed to death.”

“You’ll have to dig in a lot deeper than that to cause any serious damage, my pretty menace.” He pulled a black handkerchief from his jacket’s interior pocket and pressed it to the side of his face. “As I’m sure you’re already aware, vampires are notoriously difficult to kill.”

“Then I’ll eat you alive.”

“Ah.” He lifted the handkerchief and studied the blood there. “Haven’t you already promised to do that for me?”

I snarled at him.

And the bastard chuckled.

The way my captor had looked at me had made my skin crawl. But Prince Cullen didn’t leer at me in the same way. Instead, he stared as if I were a puzzle he wanted to figure out. He spoke to me as if he were somewhat in awe of what I was. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to kill him.

“The reason your brother won’t be able to find you is because of those.” He pointed to the shackles around my wrists. “They not only deaden your magic, but they also render you untraceable.”

Driven by instinct, I reached out to my clan. It was one of the powers I had that the other dragons lacked. It was a power that felt as natural as breathing. I could connect with anyone who was talking about me or thinking about me. But like all my magic, my access to this ability had been so solidly blocked, that it felt as if I’d never possessed it in the first place. “Blood magic.” I curled my lip in disgust.

The cost of using blood magic was high for the user. I hoped the man ended up with boils on his bottom and decades off his life for what he’d done to me.

“That’s right. Blood magic crafted the shackles.” Prince Cullen lifted his knee. He reached down and, grabbing hold of my wrists, helped me maneuver on to the bench across from him. “Your shackles have been imbued with one of the most powerful blood magic spells in existence. And that spell is what made it possible for you to be stolen.”

It didn’t matter if I couldn’t be traced. “My brother will be tearing up the sky, searching for me.”

“I’m sure he will be. And, if he’s lucky, he’ll learn where you’re being taken.”

“Good.” My clan would burn down the world to rescue me. “I look forward to the destruction that will befall you and your people for stealing me.”

“My people are not stealing you.”

How could Prince Cullen claim that? He was the vampire. He was the one with access to blood magic.

“Don’t lie to me. You gave the human the blood magic he used to trap me, which makes you responsible.”

“No. We don’t—”

“Then how would a human get it? How would a human even be able to use it? I don’t smell even the smallest trace of draco power on him, so he’s not from the line .”

“From the line?” Prince Cullen asked. His voice was so smooth, like silk gliding over glass. “What does that mean?”

“Those that are from the line can trace their roots to foolish, and unfortunately promiscuous, dragon ancestors. That’s where the root of all human magic comes from. If they have magic, they’re from the line . Related to a dragon, but not fully related.”

Prince Cullen sat back and steepled his fingers below his full lips. “If dragons are no more than myths, how could this be?”

Dammit. Why was I talking so much? “What’s the use? You and I both know the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy picking the meat from your irritating bones. Stop pretending.”

“I’m not pretending, Amaya. Yes, I’ll concede that I know of the clan of dragons living somewhere on the Andalotian Plateau. It’s your existence that confounds me. As you said, the midnight dragon line was killed off during what you call the Vampiric Wars. We call it the War of the Magics.” He locked his gaze with mine. His voice deepened. “Stories have existed for centuries telling of a moonlight dragon hidden away somewhere, that this moonlight dragon would one day return to the world. But there are no such tales about midnight dragons. So, if centuries ago all of your kind died, how do you exist?”

This was a secret only a handful of dragons within the clan knew. “Not all the eggs were smashed in the war.” Why did I tell him that? “Two eggs were hidden away. One egg contained a midnight dragon. The other egg held a moonlight dragon, the kind of dragon that the world likes to tell stories about. Two powerful magics—one light and one dark—kept in stasis as a failsafe if war should happen to break out again. The two dragons, when hatched, were supposed to work together to safeguard our secrets, to protect the last of our kind. And to eventually produce a new line of warring dragons, if necessary.” I’d carried this knowledge all my life like a heavy cloak. At times, as a child, it felt like I would collapse under its weight. How could I be the savior of a nearly decimated race? I didn’t even have the aid of the moonlight dragon. She’d been stolen away when we were only a few days old. It wasn’t until I’d grown older that I learned how to trust myself, and that I wasn’t alone. While the responsibility to protect my kind sat squarely on my shoulders, I had all the dragons in the clan to aid me.

Save for one.

She’d been forever lost to us. Perhaps, by now, she was dead.

“But there is no war.” Prince Cullen’s soothing voice reminded me of waves on the sea. “Why did the eggs hatch?”

“No one knows. It’s considered a—”

I tore my gaze from his. The spell he held over me seemed to snap. Dammit! I shouldn’t have told him any of that!

“A bad omen?” he guessed.

Yeah, that’s what it was. But I wasn’t going to let him know he’d guessed right.

“You used your compulsion against me. How. Dare. You.”

“You wouldn’t have told me otherwise. And”—he shrugged—“I was curious. I won’t tell Proctor if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Who?”

“The human who captured you. You’re telling me that you traveled with Proctor for days, and he didn’t give you his name?”

“Why would he? I’m an animal to him. Do you go around introducing yourself to your horse or your dog or your dinner?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Seems like good manners, no?”

I snorted.

“Don’t pretend to be friendly to me. You could have used compulsion on the human and helped me escape. But you didn’t. You’re as guilty as he is.”

The prince was quiet for such a long time I thought he might not respond to that. But then, in a quiet voice, he said, “You’re right. I am.”