Page 49 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Garrex

Something drags at my heart, as if a steel hook has been punched through my tired body, to be slowly winched in.

Come. Come.

Light filters through my eyelids and I open my eyes. Blue light flutters, waning into a paler gray as my head breaches a barrier.

Gasping, aching in mind, bone, sinew, and muscle, I crawl upward, fingers crooked to angle into the stony crevices.

Come. Come.

Air is here. Rocks crunch and roll beneath my hands, abrading my skin.

Staggering, I rise and open my mouth to inhale the night I’ve been gifted.

Though I know not where I was, I was elsewhere for eons.

I fell, once, did I not?

Agony afire in my dragon body, a sword forged of evil my immortal form. The thrust was lethal and pierced my heart. I was dying.

I look down upon my nakedness to trace a white scar on my chest, above where my heart thuds. I am whole and in man-fae form. Arching my spine brings a cracking and crunching as the small bones realign. Life! I have life again! My roar of joy results only in a harsh rasp that barely travels past the nearest rocks.

I know this place. Above and around me soar miles-high rock walls. This is a chasm dug into the earth of Artreos, and I am at the bottom.

I am in the Maw. This …this is where I fell in some convoluted, confusing battle.

The crash of steel, the whistle of arrows, and flash of spears. The complexly wrought syllables and the plumes of twirling etharum as mages cast their spells. The screams. What reason for this battle, though? Why was I there?

I know not why we fought.

My fist makes a pleasing shape, and I hold it aloft. As I do so, I study the surrounding funnel of the Maw’s tremendous walls.

The yearning that hooks my heart pulses again, leaving a taste for more on my tongue.

With my arms stretched taut and straight to either side, my body forms a cross as I prepare for the change. I search for the hows of shifting and begin the process.

It comes swiftly, ripping through my body, pushing, pumping, accelerating metabolism, rending me into a not-man shape, instead I become…

DRAGON.

To the world, I roar in that muted whisper the truth of my metamorphosis before launching upward. My wings are at full stretch as I flap and turn, as I soar toward the freedom waiting above.

When I reach the Maw’s rim, the brisk night and that ethereal hook in my heart drag me to the west, muttering promises I cannot quite decipher in full.

Come. Come.

I need to discover the reason for my rebirth.

I suspect someone has summoned me.

The amount of etharum and the magikal ability required to extract me from the Maw would be colossal.

Therefore, the reasons for someone to do this must be compelling.

Compelling to them, anyway.

Me? I may swallow them whole if they irk me.

I am ever-so hungry.

Akila Larkspur

My final act echoes in my memory as I cast aside the lethargy and admire the Maw.

Have I triumphed?

I remember a battle, plunging my sword into the heart of the…of Him…a dragon.

Surely I killed him, for my aim was perfect. The steel was forged with hooks and cunning magik to destroy a dragon’s heart.

As the blade slid through the scaly hide and sank into his flesh, his blood gushed forth, flooding down my arm, filling my mouth. It mixed with my own blood and with the flames licking across me.

Carried by the wind, specks of blood, ashes, and embers floated by.

The blood boiled on my skin and my fingers turned black as they burn down to the bone.

For I bled from a claw wound and the dragon’s breath that…

That…

What happened?

I was ripped from breast to hip. Fire seared my eyeballs, blinded me, and dried my last tears. Bleeding out, I drew a final breath.

I killed and was simultaneously dealt an awful wound.

But now? I am naked and… I examine my body to find only a white scar winding across my front. I am healed?

I can breathe. My heart pumps adequately.

Yes. I am whole and healed.

I scan my surrounds and spot the distinctive shape of a black dragon rising against a darkening sky. His wings cup the wind then he disappears over the edge. A swarm of fireflies drifts toward me on the breeze, I bid them a welcome, and they dance for me.

Something whispers.

Come. Come.

I start to climb. This is going to take a while, like the entire bloody night. I am not amused, but I have no choice.

Come. Come.

Besides, I need to see where He goes.

So I can kill him again?

Maybe.

Rorsyd

I stand behind Wyntre, my arms wrapped about her, marveling at how peace infuses the very air of this somewhat holy place. The blink of the fireflies casts a drifting net of the smallest beads of red—signaling, I hope, the end of war and disputes among our kind for a long, long time.

When she turns in my arms to bury her face in my shirt, I smile. Her breath warms my skin, while her soft body warms and satisfies my heart and my soul.

“My love”—I kiss the top of her head—“We should go back to the chalet soon.”

“Soon,” she says, sleepily. “Not yet.”

I pull her with me as I take a small step away from the loose gravel at the edge of the Maw, only to halt when something moves below. My eyesight is excellent, even on this moonless night. Has something crawled from the seething lake of etharum? Concern makes me reluctant to mention this to Wyntre. Though it definitely moves, the shape is too small for me to be certain it is fae and not animal.

Until it begins to transform.

The seconds pass, and I discover what that something is. Miles below, yes, but I know. It is unmistakable.

Silhouetted against the vibrant, magikal blue is a dragon. A black dragon.

It rises and circles, slowly flapping its wings and ascending in a spiral, staying close to the far side.

Unless it heads our way, I will say nothing.

Whatever this dragon’s intentions, someone else can deal with it.

I clutch my mate to my chest as it reaches our height and flies westward, into the darkness. Wyntre only sighs and mutters into my shirt, hugs me even tighter.

Perhaps our hand will be forced, but for now, I will have tranquility, rest, and happiness for my soulmate. The chances of that being the dragon that fell into the maw four hundred years ago, at the time of the Wars of the Monsters? Nil?

Or very tiny. Tiny is good.

Even if this were that ill-fated, ill-famed dragon, the army it flew with is long dead and forgotten by all except a few historians.

I kiss Wyntre again, breathing through her hair as I pray the black dragon continues to the west until it falls again, into the ocean on the far shores of Wenway.

She is safe. I have her safe. No matter her unsurpassed skills with necromancy, battle will have its due with most of us, once it has us pinned beneath its talons. It kills most, destroys the many, leaves few unscathed.

It will not have Wyntre.

Yet questions spin in my mind, whispering nefarious thoughts.

I know it must be him. I cannot deny it. The dragon from legend.

Why now? Why has the black dragon emerged from the Maw, after four hundred years?