Page 12 of Dragon Lord

The great stones of the faerie circle lay toppled over like storm-crushed trees.

No way in.

He strode up to the circle, picked up the nearest stone, then hurled it, and then another and another, his chest heaving with murderous rage. He would murder the men who had done this. He would pick off their limbs one by one. Slowly.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he turned to look for Einin.

She was nowhere to be seen.

If she ran, gods help me…

Draknart sniffed the air. When he caught her scent nearby, he calmed some. She was just hiding behind a tree.

“Come out. I will not hurt you, lass.”

She did so with caution, stopping as far from him as the clearing allowed, hesitating. Her gaze cut to the stones, then, filled with questions, returned to him. Her voice held undisguised awe as she said, “That’d be the faerie circle, then?”

Draknart wanted to pull trees up by their roots. He restrained himself. “Aye.”

“Who would destroy such a wonder?”

“Men.”

“Why?”

“Why do men do anything? They have no more reason than sheep.” He ground his teeth, plotting bloody murder. “I’d wager one of their priests was involved.” His dragon blood demanded a swift dispensation of justice. He would—

Wolves howled in the distance.

Einin took several hurried steps toward him and rubbed her arms against the chill of the night. Her stomach growled. She kept looking in the direction of the wolf howls.

“We’ll return to the lake.” Draknart swore under his breath as he strode back to the path that had brought them to the circle. He kept an easy pace, to make sure she could keep up with him in the darkness.

On the sandy beach, he picked up enough driftwood to last the night, then built a fire.

He could cough up a spark or two even in his human form.

When the goddess had cursed him to be a halfling, she also had to bless him, to keep balance.

So she’d blessed his human form to retain some of his dragon abilities: keen eyesight, sharp smell and hearing, extraordinary strength, and the odd spark here and there.

Not enough. Not nearly. He didn’t want to be a man with a dragon’s senses. He wanted to be dragon.

“You can wash up, if you’d like. I’ll keep track of the wolves,” he told Einin. Then he sniffed the air. “I scent a rabbit to the east. That’ll do as dinner.” He’d promised her a fish, but he didn’t have the patience to start fishing as a man. He’d fish for her when he was dragon again.

The hunt was short. Draknart barely had to stay away from Einin at all. When he returned, she was knee-deep in the water, her britches rolled up to midthigh. Her bare skin caught the moonlight.

“I’ll skin it,” she offered, bending forward to wash her face. Her shirt gaped. Her round breasts swayed with every movement and—

There could be no and . Draknart turned from her and dropped the rabbit next to the fire. One more night.

By the time she joined him at the fire, her britches were rolled down and her shirt buttoned to the top again.

Regardless, he looked at her as little as possible.

She was doing the same to him, avoiding his naked body.

She kept her attention on their dinner instead.

She used her sword to skin the rabbit first, then to gut it, then she ran a sharp stick through the small carcass and held it over the fire.

The front of her shirt was wet.

Draknart swallowed a groan. “I best clean up myself.”

He strode to the lake and walked in, ducked under the water, and held his breath, swimming far and fast.

Don’t think about Einin.

Think about Fae Land.

In the cold water, little by little, his mind settled. He had to have the curse removed. That was the whole purpose of their journey.

As the faerie circle has been destroyed, could it also be rebuilt?

He supposed he could put the stones back together. But what about the magic of the place? Would Belinus himself be needed for the opening of the portal? Were the circle whole again, would the god come?

Draknart surfaced in the middle of the lake without any answers. And he didn’t gain any sudden insight while he swam back to shore, either. He walked out onto the sand as frustrated as when he’d walked in, shook the water out of his hair, then returned to Einin.

She offered him a hind leg of rabbit on the tip of her sword. He shook his head. He was tired of bite-sized meals.

She kept her gaze on him as she ate a lean strip of roasted meat. “Do you not eat when you’re a man?”

He ran his tongue over his incisors. “I dislike the dull teeth and lack of claws. Hunting and eating with them isn’t worth the bother.”

She ate half the rabbit and left the other half for morning.

“Thank you for my dinner,” she said, almost pleasantly. Then her gaze hardened, sharpened as she added, “When you turn into dragon at dawn… Do not put me in your mouth while I’m sleeping. Not even just to taste me.”

He grunted.

She would not let it be. “How would you feel if someone put you in their mouth while you slept?”

For the love of dragonkind… Her words heated Draknart’s body and had him hardening all over. “I would not mind.”

“I do.” She fixed him with a glare, her hand moving to the pommel of her sword.