Page 19 of Ensnared (The Dragon Captured #1)

I ’m not sure whether it’s the visor, or whether it’s like it was with the burpees and practice makes you stronger, but controlling the humans is much, much easier than it was trying to force Penelope to do things.

Once I establish that I can get them to move by sending them all inside the house, I start trying my hardest to undo all their training.

“I’m Elizabeth,” I say. “Welcome.”

They stare straight ahead, like their brains don’t work.

“I’m not like the last, uh, person who told you what to do. You know, whoever sent you over here.”

They don’t move.

“You can kind of do what you want with me.”

Several of them frown.

“Like, I have to ‘keep you in line,’ or whatever, but I’m not going to control you.”

A woman on the end with long hair and pronounced crow’s feet asks, “Are you freeing us?”

I cough. “I mean, I’d like to free you, but if I do, they’ll just kill you or round you up and bring you back to another ensnared.”

“So you aren’t freeing us.”

I shake my head. “Look, I’m an underling. I’d love to free you. I’d love to free myself, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

The woman frowns. “How is this any different than the last assignment, then?”

I sigh. “It’s not really, I guess. Except I would prefer to just list the things we need to get done, and once they’re done, you can just do whatever you want to do with your free time.”

“I want to be with my family,” a bald man says.

“I want to play Minecraft,” a chubby guy says.

“I was only here on a business trip,” a skinny woman with dark hair says. “My boyfriend didn’t even want me to come.”

I close my eyes, hating Axel a little bit more for making me do this.

When I open them, they’re all still standing there, but instead of the homogenously impassive expressions, they’re frowning, irritated, or confused.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like all of you. I went to my brother’s Halloween party for his school, and an electro dragon ensnared my mom. ”

They’re all watching me now, at least.

“I took my siblings, my brother Sammy and my sisters Coral and Jade, and we ran.” I sigh. “Only, we got caught right in front of our house, and after I tried my best to fight my way free, I was ensnared as well.”

“I hear it’s an earth blessed who ensnared you.”

“The prince of the others, if that helps,” I say. “But yes, it was. His name’s Axel, and he’s horrible like they all are, but he puts up with a lot from me. And.” I pause to make sure they’re all really listening. “He let me keep my siblings here with me. He’s vowed to keep them safe.”

They’re all murmuring now, and I can’t keep up with the directions their conversations are all going.

“You’re saying we can do whatever we want?” the chubby guy asks. “Because I hated scrubbing floors all day.”

“Is that what they had you doing?” I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure that you’ll need to keep this house and the one next door clean, but I don’t think that will take too long.”

“I can scrub the floors once a week in both,” the chubby guy says.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Joseph,” he says. And then he smiles. “No one’s asked me that in a while.”

“We weren’t allowed to talk unless necessary,” the dark-haired woman says. “My name’s Rachel. I’m from New York City, and to be honest, I hate Texas.”

I laugh.

They all do.

We introduce ourselves. We make a plan and assign tasks.

“So you’re not planning to, like, fight them,” Rachel says. “But we’re going to try and live as normally as we can?”

I make eye contact with each of them in turn. “I can force you to do things, just like all the other ensnared can.” I think about all of them folding their arms, and I push the thought.

They all do it at exactly the same time.

“I can be just as awful as the last ensnared human you worked for?—”

“They call themselves Master,” Joseph says. “Like they think that being called that makes them less slaves themselves.”

“The whole thing’s messed up,” I say.

“Can you still take away my anxiety?” Joseph asks. “I kinda liked that the other guy did that.”

“Wait, you want me to take your anxiety away?”

Joseph grimaces. “It’s always been bad, but since I was picked up and brought here. . .nothing.” He shrugs. “Way better.”

“Um, sure, if you want me to.”

“And my depression too,” the woman with the crow’s feet asks.

“Sure,” I say. “I guess. But until we can figure out how to escape or how to get them to leave?—”

“Or how to kill them,” a tall guy named Kevin says. He’s a college basketball player, and he’s definitely the angriest person in the room.

I don’t even disagree with him, but I can’t have them walking around talking treason. There are too many of them. “We can’t talk like that,” I say.

“Not while anyone else might hear, anyway,” Rachel says.

She’s smart. I like her.

“But my sister already killed two of them,” Sammy says from the stairwell.

“Is that your brother?” the woman with the crow’s feet asks.

“You did?” Kevin’s eyes are wider than I realized they could be.

I shake my head. “No, I stabbed two.” I glare at Sammy. “It’s not the same.”

“He makes up stories sometimes.” Coral grabs him and whispers in his ear. She’s a lot quicker to pick up on things. We can’t go around telling people that I’ve murdered dragons, or Axel could get in trouble. He might even decide that I’m too much work.

“They healed almost immediately,” I say. “Trust me when I tell you that we’re not going to be killing any dragons.”

“That’s good,” Axel says as he opens the door. “If you were, we’d need to have a talk.”

I hate how often he comes and goes, like he thinks he owns the house.

Although, I suppose he does.

“Welcome to Elizabeth’s home,” he says. “I’m her bonded, Prince of the Earth Blessed.

I know she harbors some radical views, and I’m trying to work with her on them.

I hope you understand that’s between Elizabeth and me, and you are to behave as proper workers should.

” He scans them all in turn, but they’re all on their knees, like Penelope was, staring at the ground.

“If I hear that any of you are speaking traitorous thoughts, or that you’re not doing as she commands?

” He exhales slowly. “I’m not sentimental like her.

I’ll just kill you. You’re very replaceable. Don’t forget that.”

And with one little speech, he undoes all the work I’d put in to try and help them be less stressed and abused. Even several days later, they’re still keeping their heads down, not using names around me, and acting like rabbits hiding in holes.

But at least Sammy, Coral, and Jade are doing well.

They almost seem happy. Sammy’s spending half the day building things with Legos—Kevin fetches and delivers things, and he found loads of Legos for Sammy the first day.

Coral and Jade play with Fluff Dog a lot, who is calming down a great deal.

They also take turns writing plays and then performing them, though Sammy’s tired of playing all the male roles.

It’s almost like they’ve forgotten that we’re captives, biding our time until we can somehow escape or defeat our captors.

They’re kids. They probably have forgotten.

But I haven’t. I never will.

I spend an hour or two each day training with Penelope, who no longer thinks I’m an idiot.

Apparently the visor aids in focus quite a lot.

But also, it’s nearly impossible to command another dragon’s ensnared human.

Once I have my visor on, she’s as bad at pushing me around as I was.

For our session today, I test how far I can sense the humans—several miles, at least—and how hard I need to push a command to make it stick—not hard at all—and how much resistance they can exert against any of my orders.

Not much, sadly.

Since our control over them seems to mirror the dragons’ control over us, that’s disheartening.

Penelope was right about the most important part.

Our job’s painfully easy. Commanding my ten humans became almost effortless by the third day, and I can see how easy it would be to settle into complacency with a task once it becomes routine.

After Sammy nearly revealed how I’d killed those two dragons, I realized that I couldn’t treat a bunch of humans I don’t know as family.

If it was only me, I could risk that kind of familiarity.

But Axel did me a favor that day, reminding me that both he and I have a role to play.

He’s the Prince of the Earth Blessed. I’m his ensnared.

I can’t let them wander around, and I can’t really free them from the leash, either.

One rebellious human might be comical to the right dragon.

Lots of them running around will get us all killed.

I struck a deal, and I have to uphold my end, however distasteful.

If I don’t, then Sammy, Jade, and Coral will die.

I can’t risk that, no matter how unsavory I find my new job.

Even when I have to start asking more and more of my humans—they work for me primarily, but Penelope brings me an increasing number of tasks they’re supposed to handle locally.

Without a government in place, without utilities and management teams, no one is at the helm on food production, water sanitation, keeping the grid running. The dragons stepped in, but they’re using humans to keep those things going.

I think it would be easier for them to simply dump us all outside the barricade, drag in a lot of cows or whatever they like to eat most, and live a human-free existence.

If they didn’t need to figure out what this heart thing was and recover it, they might have done just that, because most of what the humans are doing is keeping the area livable for the humans.

“I’m the leader of the earth blessed,” Axel explains on the morning he brings my first fifty workers. “I’m in charge of many things, but due to her past experience, we’re putting Liz in charge of building a defensive human force.”