Page 18 of Ensnared (The Dragon Captured #1)

Clearly unaware of the storm raging in my traitorous body, Axel slowly guides my hand upward, until the mass of fluffy filaments, which are quite long, are centered over the center of my forehead.

“This will look ridiculous, like I’m some strange, exotic bird.” I can’t help my smile. Since he’s standing right in front of me, it’s directed right at him. “You can’t want me to walk around wearing a pompom on my head, surely.”

He blows on me then, bizarrely, his breath fanning out over my face, and something inside of me stirs alarmingly, like he’s waking up a hidden monster that lives in my body.

He waves his free hand across the front of my face, and the filaments shift .

“Now, call to it,” he whispers, his breath fanning over my face again. “Call to my magic.”

His magic.

He put magic into that blob of gold thread? I swallow, and then I reach out like Penelope taught me and I pull on the visor tuft, and it sucks in tightly against the space between my eyebrows, all the filaments binding together into bizarre golden lines.

He smiles, then, his joy unfettered as the insane thing he gave me shapes itself with guidance from his free hand.

“Not horns,” I say.

But it’s too late. He’s done, and apparently, so is my visor. I can’t see it, but I can sense it there, hovering in front of my face like a floating helmet that makes me look like his demonic accessory. Horn lady, the court jester for the gorgeous golden devil beast.

Ugh.

“It suits you.” He looks proud of himself, and I hate that it’s because I’m his creation, his pet.

“If you think?—”

He presses a finger to my mouth, and that beast inside of me roars. I want to bite his hand, but not in the way I should. I back up instead. “What?”

“For once, don’t argue. Don’t complain. Just say thank you.”

Penelope’s incredulity that I can argue with him, that I have free will around him, comes to mind.

I wonder for a split second how much of my freedom is his doing.

Is it because he’s weak that I have more latitude?

Or is it because he’s not as harsh, not as controlling, and not as angry?

Do I have the ability to be myself in this bizarre circumstance because he grants it to me?

And if so, should I be more grateful and less angry?

The thought that I should be grateful to him for not cinching my leash tighter enrages me, and I can’t do it. I can’t be prudent like I should. “I hate it almost as much as I hate you.”

He sighs. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t thank you, you horrible dragon.”

He smiles. “Mud dragon prince, to you.”

A van pulls up in front of the house. Ten humans climb out, one by one. They’re all wearing white shirts and dark pants. They’re all wearing sneakers. They line up in a row on the sidewalk, all of them staring straight ahead, all of them utterly calm.

“I was able to recruit humans who have already been subdued and taught.” He beams like he’s fishing for another thank you.

He’s lucky I don’t have anything sharp on hand. “Goodie.”

“I made sure two of them were food preparers before, so they should be adequate at preparing your meals.”

He’s acting like he’s my white knight when he enslaved ten people to do things I could be doing for myself. “I don’t want?—”

“Send them to the local stores for whatever you want, and anything they don’t have, tell me about. Some things are harder to obtain, but lots of things are in ready supply.”

Is he kidding? “I’m sure it’s hard to manage those sorts of tedious things.”

“Not really,” he says. “It’s basic administration, like ensuring the house next door is available for lodging your domestic help, and the homes on either side of that are reserved for Rufus and Gordon.”

“Wait, you’re saying we have the entire house to ourselves?”

“Other than me, yes,” he says.

“You’re not afraid I’ll, like, stab you in your sleep?”

“Oh, I’m always a little afraid you’ll stab me,” he says. “But the blessed don’t sleep. Not like you humans do.”

“That’s weird.”

“I think your sleeping is stranger, if you think about it. You lie still, or you toss and turn, while your mind churns, and you simply breathe and rest, like you’re dead.”

It does sound weird when he puts it like that.

“Your culture’s almost obsessed with it, buying beds and decorating rooms and preparing medicines and schedules and routines, all so that you can lie around and do nothing. Meanwhile, some people brag about how much they sleep, while others boast that they barely do it.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I told you, before we came, we did research. And now that we’re here, that has continued. We’re forced to integrate with you until we can locate the heart.”

I hate their stupid heart. “I’ll be praying you find it tomorrow.”

He laughs. “Unlikely. It’s surely hidden well, and the humans who know about it won’t want to part with it at any cost.”

“I really don’t think any of us care,” I say. “And wouldn’t I know, as a human myself?”

“We left the heart here as a parting gift, according to Prince Azar’s father, but it was a mistake. We never should have been so magnanimous.”

“Well, give me any details, and I’ll do my utmost to get it so you can leave. Is it a rock? I’ll dig it up. Is it an animal? I’ll make a net, or weld you a trap. A tree? I’ll chop it down.”

If they really want to leave once they find it, they should just tell all the humans that’s their plan. “I really think that if you just talked to the government leaders?—”

His jaw tightens. “We’ve attempted communication on many occasions. Each attempt was met with more attacks.”

“But—”

He shakes his head. “We don’t know what it’s made of, and we don’t know where it’s located.

We know it’s the key to flourishing life on earth, and that the planet may suffer if we take it.

Nevertheless, our people will all perish without it.

If you think of something helpful, please share.

” He shrugs. “Otherwise, we’ll keep searching. ”

“Fine,” I say. “Get me access to the internet, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“The internet?”

“It’s a communication portal,” I say. “All the things that humans knew or thought they knew is kind of tapped into it. If you haven’t attacked more areas, I’m sure it’s still up and running outside of Houston.”

“Ah, the interface of ideas we were monitoring.” He nods. “We did search there for records that might lead us to the heart. Unfortunately, we deemed it too dangerous to allow access to that inside of Houston. If you can study them, they can also communicate with you.”

That was kind of the point, yeah.

“Don’t worry that you’ll be bored, though. Your first contingent of fresh humans for assimilation will arrive in a few more days.”

I splutter. “Assimilation?”

“You should practice as much as possible with these, sending them on routine errands, increasing the distance they are allowed to move away from you incrementally until you have an idea of how far you can still make contact and maintain control.”

“No way.”

Axel smiles. “Alright. If you refuse entirely, I’ll have no choice.”

I stare straight ahead like those poor humans. “Fine. You can kill me.”

He laughs. “Not you. I’ve become invested in you.” He tosses his head. “I’m talking about them. If you refuse to take care of them, I’ll have to kill them.”

Every single time I start to think he’s a little bit human, a little bit less awful than the devil himself, he reminds me how naive I am.

“Fine,” I say. “But you’re going to hate how I manage them.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure that I will.”

But he’s smiling as he shifts back into his dragon form and heads back down the road to wherever the dragons are doing whatever the stupid dragons do.