Page 11 of Dragon Lord

Soon they were airborne again. When Draknart spotted a nest full of eggs high up in a tree, he swooped low and fetched them for her, nest and all. The small slurping sounds she made as she drank them filled him with contentment.

He allowed her another brief respite at dusk, then took her to the sky once more, impatient to reach Belinus.

The wait had been too long, a century without true hope.

Anticipation burned through Draknart as he flew.

He was as eager for the lifting of the curse as a young dragon for his first deer herd.

He stopped only when midnight neared, at the ruins of an ancient castle, alighting in the window of the only remaining tower. The roof was missing, but the night was clear, no clouds to threaten rain.

Einin slid from his shoulders and surveyed the ruins the moon bathed in silver. “What place is this?”

“Castle Blackstone.” Draknart snatched a couple of pigeons from what remained of the rafters, gutted them with a talon, then roasted them with a few puffs of fire.

Einin’s eyes flared with hunger.

He pushed the pigeons toward her. “Go ahead.”

She sat and ate one, watching him carefully the whole time. He ate the other one—even if the small bird wasn’t worth the bother—just so the lass wouldn’t worry that he meant to eat her.

After they finished, he cleared a spot in the middle of the space. He swept away rocks, chunks of wood, and dead leaves with his leathery wings. Then he dropped to the stones and stretched.

Einin walked up to one of the windows. She stared wide-eyed, as if she had never seen anything half as grand as the broken drawbridge over the swampy moat, the collapsed guard towers, and the rock-littered castle yard.

With the vast forest surrounding the place, everything bathed in moonlight, Draknart supposed, the ruins had a certain charm.

The wistful, wonder-filled expression on Einin’s face made him want to show her the world.

He huffed and shook off the thought. He’d show her Fae Land. Belinus could show her the rest.

“What happened to the castle?” she whispered without taking her gaze off the scenery.

“Some decades ago…” Draknart let his gaze linger on the graceful lines of her body. “The old lord of the castle took a young bride. He was a rough man, a hard man. He beat his dogs and beat his horses. He beat his servants too. One night, after too much ale, he beat his young wife to death.”

Einin spun around to stare at him.

“The bride’s brothers came and took revenge. The siege collapsed the walls and killed most of the men. The rest left.”

Einin shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself.

Draknart opened a wing. “Come and rest.”

She stepped away from the window with a doubtful look. She did bed down, but at a distance from Draknart, so he folded his wing again. She kept her eyes on him, as if waiting for something. Midnight?

“You dislike being a man,” she said after a while.

“I hate it with the fire of a thousand dragons.”

“Because to be dragon is to have flight.” Her tone turned wistful.

“To be dragon is to be free.”

Her forehead furrowed, then after a moment, it smoothed out again. “Because if someone tries to take away your freedom, you can eat them?”

’Twas part of it, so Draknart nodded.

The furrows returned, and her arms moved, flexed. She looked at them in the moonlight. “The stronger you are, the more freedom you have.” She sighed. “’Tis why men have more freedom than women.”

Draknart considered her words. “Being strong helps. Yet the birds are free in the trees, and the fish are free in the lake.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then she said, her voice full of melancholy that was unlike her, “At the village markets, I’ve seen birds in cages that could not fly away. I’ve seen fish sold in barrels.”

Draknart was used to thinking about her kind as reasonless vermin. They lived in villages bound by rules. They bent the knee to their lords and their priests. Yet, Einin… Could she value freedom as much as he did? ’Twas an odd thought to have about a human. “You wish to be free?”

“More than anything. I want to choose the path I take.”

A twinge of guilt cut through him. She did not choose to go to Belinus.

Yet he was fair certain she would, if given the choice.

To be the god’s favored one was an honor.

She would be safe in Fae Land. She would see neither hunger nor whippings.

Aye, when Draknart handed her over, she was going to be grateful to him.

She had her eyes closed. Draknart closed his own. At first, he heard the wind and the wolves, a brook in the distance. Then, after a while, he heard her teeth chatter.

He opened his wing again. “Come on, lass. You survived being given to a dragon as sacrifice. No sense in freezing now.”

She fixed him with an uncertain look, but then she moved over and carefully laid herself under his wing, with her back to him. She made sure her back did not touch his body.

He settled his wing over her as he would a blanket.

The clamoring of her heart slowed first, and then her breathing.

By the time Draknart turned to man at midnight, she was asleep.

He pulled her closer to the heat of his body and kept his arms around her.

He was hard but did not try to seduce her.

Her back pressed to his chest, he satisfied himself with breathing in her scent.

She smelled faintly of roast pigeon. What dragon could find fault with that?

For a while, he just watched her sleeping and enjoyed the sight of her all soft and relaxed. Then he slept.

The next day, they took to the sky once again.

He pointed out a proper town—few and far between in the Black Hills.

She exclaimed over everything with far too much excitement.

A stone bridge. A windmill. A rich merchant on the road in a wagon pulled by a team of six matched gray oxen.

Which, were Draknart alone, he would have eaten.

In fact, of all the things in town, without Einin, he would have noted only the oxen. Her enthusiasm made him notice details he would have otherwise missed. She made him see the world anew.

They barely traveled, however, when a thunderstorm forced them to land. They waited out the storm under an old wooden bridge. He found Einin another batch of eggs, and since they were on the ground this time, he baked them in his fire, right in their shells. She offered him half.

He shook his head. They amounted to even less than the pigeon the night before. “Not worth the bother.”

She tried to hide how happy she was with his response, and Draknart tried to hide his smile. He liked feeding her.

“Tonight, we’ll dine on fresh-caught fish,” he promised.

The lashing rain and blinding lightning refused to stop.

The bad weather lasted most of the day, but he almost didn’t mind.

While they huddled together, Einin entertained him with tales from her village.

’Twas dark by the time the storm passed, and nigh midnight by the time they reached their destination.

“Look.” Draknart dipped his wing to offer her a better look. “That’s Fern Lake.”

His landing was controlled, but he stirred up the fine sand on the lakeshore nevertheless.

Everything was dry. The storm had missed the lake.

Einin coughed as she slid to the ground.

Draknart stayed still so he wouldn’t stir the sand again.

She walked away with a stiff gait, then stopped to stretch her shapely limbs.

The dragon now knew the feel of those long legs wrapped around his neck. The man in him demanded to know the feel of them wrapped around his waist.

She was a fine woman. Belinus would grant any request for a gift such as she. Yet the eager anticipation Draknart had felt when the idea first occurred to him had dissipated since.

The change was upon him before he could think much more about his suddenly dark mood. He was man again. And naked.

Einin turned from him, quickly enough to trip. She righted herself then hurried toward the water, nearly at a run. Draknart let her go. She was heading straight for the lake; she was clearly not running away.

He rolled his neck, watching the end of her thick red braid swinging over her shapely arse that popped into his mind a lot more often than was comfortable.

His body was hard and ready. He’d never before been naked with a maiden and not had her.

His body pulsed with the need to have Einin under him as he seduced her.

He wanted to be looking into her amber eyes as they widened with pleasure.

He craved the tight heat of her body squeezing his…

Shite.

Sweat popped onto his forehead. She is for Belinus. Belinus, the god . The sooner Draknart handed her over, the better.

The moment she finished drinking, he called to her. “Come. This way.”

The faerie circle was just a short way down a deer path.

‘Twas most unfortunate that they missed twilight.

They would not be able to enter right away.

As the sun dipped below the horizon to visit another world, so could travelers pass into Fae Land.

Still, Draknart wanted to see the gate before he went fishing.

The stones drew him. They drew creatures of the old world: dragons, faeries, trolls, and everything wild. They repelled most everything human and domesticated. The average villager could go in search of the stones and get lost in the forest for weeks.

The path wound around a large rock formation that blocked the view of the glen ahead.

Draknart had to go around the rock before he could step into the clearing at last. He stopped in his tracks.

An enraged, beastly growl rumbled up his chest. He tossed his head back and shouted his rage to the dark sky, waking the birds in the trees.

Nay! Not after all those cursed decades! Not when he was so close to freeing himself from the damned curse.