Page 25 of Ensnared (The Dragon Captured #1)

A fter giving me the daggers, Axel all but disappeared, but now that Gideon’s here, I can’t shake him for anything. Whatever was keeping him busy must have either resolved itself, or it wasn’t that pressing after all.

Usually I’m actually almost happy to see him, but right now, he’s just making me uncomfortable. Gideon’s reunion with the rugrats should be exciting. Sammy shrieks and races toward him to give him a huge hug. Coral and Jade beam and wrap their arms around him, too.

But Axel’s glaring so openly that it sets my teeth on edge.

“How did you even get here?” Jade asks.

“He’s alive because I didn’t kill him,” Axel volunteers.

“Thanks,” Sammy says. “I’m glad.” It sounds like gwad, but Axel understands him pretty much all the time now.

Sammy’s non-sarcastic gratitude makes Axel smile, so that’s a relief.

“Gideon’s the best. I’m glad he’s not dead,” Sammy continues.

Apparently, hearing Gideon’s the best does not make Axel happy, but his pronounced frown on the heels of his smile makes me laugh.

Luckily it’s already pretty late in the day, so after eating—which is uber awkward when the servants show up to bring us our meal—I’m able to muddle through a bit of interaction here and there and then I shepherd everyone toward their rooms.

“You can have the room downstairs,” Axel says, upending all my plans.

“But that’s the master,” I say. “It’s the biggest room in the house.”

“Right,” Axel says. “I’m being polite.”

“It’s clearly yours, when you’re here.”

“I don’t sleep, remember?” Axel looks at the stairwell. “I’d rather he not be upstairs with you and the kids.”

“I think they’d be safer with me there.” Gideon leans against the wall. “Don’t you?” He’s looking at me.

Axel answers before I can. “If someone’s going to keep them safe, it’s not going to be you. Liz already has hundreds of soldiers just like you at her command, and she keeps them all across the street where they belong.”

“I’m not like any of them,” Gideon says. “Actually, I’m unlike any other human you’ve met.”

“I don’t know. You seem just as stupid as all the others to me,” Axel says.

“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ve been safe all this time without anyone here. If Axel wants you to sleep downstairs, just sleep there. The bedroom’s bigger and it has its own bathroom, and if any bad guys show up, they’ll have to get through you first.”

“If you’re worried,” Axel says, “I can work upstairs, right outside your room.”

Has he gone insane? “I’m not worried. It’s fine. Go do what you always do wherever you always do it.”

“What’s that?” Gideon asks. “Slaying humans along the border?”

“The border?”

Gideon frowns. “Houston’s been overrun. Dragons and enslaved humans are all that’s left inside their earthen walls. Everything inside 99 is under their command.”

“You put up walls?”

“You don’t even know that? They fly over them easily, of course, but the wall—mounds of earth tightly compacted—is at least twelve feet tall.”

“I made that,” Axel says. “Or at least, my troops did.”

Earth dragons. Makes sense.

“They’ve got the gulf locked down too,” Gideon says. “And even the humans we’ve found refuse to be rescued. They voluntarily head back to the interior.”

“They’re being controlled by the ensnared humans,” I say.

“Like Liz,” Axel says.

“She doesn’t seem to be ensnared to me,” Gideon says.

Axel sits on the sofa and kicks up his feet. “I let her do as she pleases, because she does better work that way.”

“How many of your earth blessed treat their humans as well?”

“My troops don’t ensnare humans,” he says. “That’s the strike blessed and the water blessed.”

“What about that red monster?” Gideon asks.

Axel stands up, his face stormy. “What about him?”

“Let’s maybe not call him a monster,” I say. “Azar saved my life.”

Gideon’s head swings my way. “Excuse me?”

“He’s Axel’s best friend, and once, when Axel was busy, he sent Azar to save me.”

“Liz had just killed two of my dragons,” Axel says. “But I didn’t punish her. I sent him to save her.”

“Twice, actually,” I say.

“Why?” Gideon asks.

“Apparently if I die, it means a bad few days for Axel here,” I say.

Axel grabs my arm. “You can’t share that kind of information.”

“So you’re his weakness?” Gideon’s eyes narrow. “Interesting. Is that true for all the ensnared humans?”

“She’s much more powerful and much stronger than she was, thanks to our bond.” Axel drags me next to him. “I wouldn’t call her a weakness.”

“Compared to a dragon?” Gideon scoffs. “I would.”

“Alright,” I say. “I think we’ve made some good progress, but I’m tired.” I fake a yawn. “Let’s go to bed. Alright?”

Gideon’s glaring at Axel.

Axel looks ready to flay him wide open.

I shake loose from Axel’s grip on my arm and shove Gideon toward his door. “You, there.” Gideon looks back over his shoulder, but he goes.

I grab Axel’s arm. “And you.” I try shoving him toward the front door, but he’s so solid, it doesn’t work right.

“Yes?” His eyes stare into mine. They’re so bright. So intense.

“You don’t have to stay. You can go, like you always do.” Why do I sound so bitter?

“The humans have pulled back,” he says simply.

“Wait, so all those times you were gone. . .you were, what? Fighting?”

He frowns. “What did you think I was doing?”

My shoulders droop. “Looking for the heart.” It never occurred to me that he might be in danger. Or, you know, doing horrible things to other people. That’s the bigger issue. Obviously.

“We are searching,” he says. “The water blessed have explored the entire floor of the Gulf of Mexico and they’re working their way outward. Meanwhile, my earth blessed have already checked as far north as Pilot Knob, and we’ve scoured all eighty-six of the active surface faults in the area.”

“You think it’s hidden inside the earth?” Is it a rock? Is that why they think that?

“We’re keeping our options open, but yes. We believe that it must be hidden or buried somewhere. Otherwise, surely the humans like you would already know about it.”

“Huh.”

“Now that we’ve explored most of the areas around our settlement, we’ll need to expand our search.”

“But that’s not why you’ve been gone.” I don’t really want to, but I have to circle back to the whole humans attacking thing.

“I’m the Prince of the Earth Blessed. My primary job in the Return is to secure our settlements to keep the blessed safe while we’re here, and to search any earthen locations for the heart. Of course that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“And you’ve been killing humans.”

“Only when they attack us.”

“And are they?” I ask. “Attacking you, I mean.”

“Almost constantly,” he says. “What shocks me is that they keep using the same methods, more or less, over and over. You’d think that they’d have realized that they won’t work by the third or fourth failure.”

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t tunnel under us. Earth blessed feel that. They can’t prevail by attacking on water. The water blessed sense them and they dominate. And the strike blessed make sure they can’t defeat us in the sky.”

“How many humans have you killed?”

He shrugs.

Shrugs.

“You don’t even care?”

“I keep track of our dead, and I’m assuming the humans do the same.” He sighs. “Liz, you’re angry about this, but you shouldn’t be. We haven’t been the aggressors.”

“You invaded us.”

“Only because we had no choice. We had to start somewhere. When we made landing here, they immediately tried to eliminate us.”

“So, now what? You just roll over the whole earth like a steam roller, enslaving humans to do things for you and searching every nook and cranny until you find this thing, whatever or wherever it is, no matter how many of us you kill?”

Axel looks baffled. “Of course.”

“I’m going to bed.” I head for the stairs.

“See you tomorrow.”

I freeze on the second step. “Why? You’re not leaving to slay more humans?”

“I told you, they pulled back.”

“For now.” Then I remember what the men said. “Gideon came with a group tasked to deliver a message. The humans are going to hit this area with a nuclear weapon in less than three days.”

“Nuclear?” His eyebrows rise. “The bombs they make from either a decaying atomic reaction or a hydrogen bomb? Is that what you mean?”

I nod slowly. “It’ll kill everyone who’s living here.”

Axel laughs.

“It’s not funny,” I say. “They may not kill you, I don’t know, but you’re forcing them to play their last card. The humans who are living here will all die, including me. I imagine all of you will be having some very bad days, then.”

“Not the earth blessed,” Axel says. “And that’s most of us.”

“Lovely,” I say.

“But Liz, don’t worry. Azar can swallow that bomb and metabolize it just like all the other missiles he’s rendered ineffective. This is what I mean. They keep doing the same things and expecting a different outcome. It’s madness.”

“He can’t swallow an atom bomb,” I say. “Trust me.”

“Oh, I think he can,” Axel says. “What mechanism do you think powers his fire?”

“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea.”

“Think. Hydrogen’s the most basic element in the entire universe. Your hydrogen bomb is elemental science for us.”

Part of me hopes he’s right, because I really don’t want us to die. But part of me’s desperate for him to be wrong, because if our most powerful weapon does nothing to them. . .

Humanity is doomed.

When I wake up in the morning, Axel’s still here.

“I had your people make a few extra things for breakfast.” He points. “You look like you’ve lost some weight.”

I blink.

“And I’ve arranged for some other people to come in and fix the door and wall that were destroyed when you killed that strike blessed.”

“Gideon’s the one who’ll be freezing with that wall being exposed,” I say. “So why do you care?”

“You said he’s one of your five,” he says. “I have to keep him safe.” I can’t tell whether I’m imagining it or not, but he sounds almost like he’s being sarcastic.