Page 29 of Ensnared (The Dragon Captured #1)

A fter our eyes meet, Mom’s widen. “Oh.”

“That’s me. The loser dragon’s vassal, at your service.”

Mom swallows, and then she exhales gustily.

What are you waiting for? Her dragon’s just as horrible today as she was when she ensnared Mom. Destroy the abomination.

But did she really summon me here. . .just so she could kill me? “I feel like I keep having to say this over and over. I’m just an average human. No mutations or growths of any kind.”

Your Master has overstepped. He should never have ensnared you.

I think I hate Mom’s dragon more than I’ve ever hated anything on earth, including that red nightmare. “Sounds like you’re attacking the wrong person,” I say. “Your problem’s with him, not me.”

The silver dragon tilts her head. But killing you is easy, and it’ll weaken him.

Her logic’s not wrong, sadly. “Yes, but at what cost? I hear the guilt from something like this can be really bad. Do you want wrinkles before your time?” I’m not sure whether dragons can even get wrinkles, but if I kill enough time, maybe Axel will get his crap together and realize I’m gone.

I send the brightest red feelings of panic that I can muster down the bond.

Clearly, your Master’s unable to control you. Killing you is a service.

But why isn’t Mom defending me? She’s just sitting there on the dragon’s neck, not even moving.

“I think Axel may have things right,” I say. “I follow his rules, but I’m not a robot. You might want to learn from him.”

“Don’t be rude,” Mom says.

Those are her first words to me? Really?

Before I can respond, six more electro dragons circle and land on all sides of me. The courtyard in front of the conference center is massive, but with them closing in, it’s feeling much smaller.

How shall we kill her, Your Majesty? asks the largest one. He sounds male, but who knows? I’m not sure how I can even tell which one is speaking, but somehow, I just know.

If we strike her, Azar will be angry, says the smallest one. She’s standing a solid dragon’s distance away from the others. Nervous Nelly. That’s what I call her in my head.

“Yikes.” I cringe dramatically. “You’re right. Azar won’t want you doing this. He and Axel are close, and if I were you, that big red dragon would scare me. Badly.”

Mom’s dragon laughs.

“Look, Princess Petunia, if I know one thing, it’s this. You do not want to upset Prince Azar.”

I don’t plan to, she says, her head tilting toward the other electro dragons. Fly her high up, and then drop her. Her gaze is crafty. I won’t have anything to do with your death or know a thing about it.

I can’t believe I thought Mom or Penelope or any of the other ensnared might speak up for me.

No one says a single word in my defense.

Good thing I know how to defend myself. “As I’m dying, I’m going to think about all the ways Azar might torture you before he kills you.

I had one of my humans tell Axel where I was coming and at whose orders before I left.

Azar will find out, and you’ll pay the price, no matter how you try to disguise it. ”

She smiles. No one trusts the word of humans.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Axel actually listens to me, and you may think it’s a weakness, but I think you’ll find it has its perks. You know, when you’re dying horribly.”

Either way, you’ll already be dead.

She may be right, since it’s currently seven dragons to one paltry human. But what she doesn’t know is that Axel armed his useless human. A sword would have been better, but at least I have three daggers dipped in Azar’s venom.

Fly her up and drop her. Now!

Nervous Nelly steps back, but two other electro dragons aren’t as nervous, and they both advance. I grab one dagger for each hand. “Let’s play, drag-queens.” I’m actually smiling at my stupid joke they won’t even get. I must have lost my mind.

But now that they’re actually trying to kill me, I sink into the calm place. The spot where I hang out during a fight. I might die, but that means I have nothing to lose by fighting my hardest. That makes my decisions terribly simple.

The biggest silver dragon is one of those advancing on me, and he opens his mouth and whips his head toward me preternaturally fast, but I’m not a normal human anymore, either. I leap sideways and slash with my right hand.

The blade catches him on the side of his triangular head, and unlike every other blade I’ve tried to use with them, it slides through his hide like a hot knife through butter, even sizzling.

His scream of pain is a beautiful thing.

Which is good, because while I was distracted with him, the other beast snapped its horrible maw around my left leg. The pain tries to incapacitate me, but I step away from it.

I trained for this—well, not exactly this , but to ignore pain.

With great determination, I block it out, and focus, bending at the waist, twisting like a rat in a trap, and plunge the other dagger in the psychopath’s eye.

It roars, widening its jaw, which releases me.

I stumble away, tripping over the massive body of the first dragon.

It’s utterly motionless in the center of the courtyard, and I’m not the only one who’s shocked by that.

The other gathered dragons are backing away.

Axel wasn’t lying. These daggers are, hands down, the best gift I’ve ever received.

“Alright, who’s next?” I’m smiling maniacally.

It might have been nice if Axel mentioned whether they’re multi-use, or like a one-dragon takedown type of thing. Either way, one’s stuck in a dragon’s eye, and the other’s been used. I have one sure-thing left. I hold it in my right hand, my dominant hand.

What magic is that? Princess Petunia’s not backing down, and she looks ticked.

“I told you Axel and Azar are tight, idiot. Did you think I was just going to stand here and let you splatter me on the pavement?” I look over my shoulder at the second dragon, also now lying unmoving on the ground.

Did I kill them? Or are they just unconscious? I definitely don’t know enough about dragon anatomy to be able to tell.

Disarm her!

At first, I’m not sure who she’s commanding, because no one moves.

But then my mom slides off the princess’s back and walks toward me, her brow furrowed. She isn’t a warrior. She knows nothing about fighting. I could incapacitate her easily.

And I should.

But my hand trembles as she approaches.

“Mom?”

No reply.

She’s not even meeting my eyes.

“Mom.” It’s not a question now, but a plea. Why are my eyes welling with tears? “Mom!”

She finally looks at me, and I realize that she’s in there, but she’s not in control. She lifts her sword arm. A sword . My mother’s holding a sword.

And all I have is a poisoned dagger.

When she swings it at me, I barely duck in time, my wounded leg a misery with every movement.

I make the mistake of looking down at it, and blood’s steadily flowing from my thigh downward, pooling in my shoe.

My entire calf’s bright red. Even if I can ignore it, losing that much blood’s going to slow me down soon enough.

While she’s distracted, take her. Fly her up and drop her. Now. Go! Great. Princess Petunia’s ordering more dragons toward me.

Mom’s not slowing down either, and her movements definitely aren’t hers. Mom’s graceful, but she’s gentle and kind. She cares for everything, from the smallest bird to the largest beast. The woman hacking at me isn’t my mother. It’s a puppet piloted by Princess Petunia.

But if I kill the puppet, Mom dies.

It’s an impossible puzzle that I can’t solve, not even with a magical, venom-infused dagger. It feels like, with every dodge and stumble, I’m stumbling closer and closer to a total loss.

Mom’s sword clips my right shoulder. Now I’m limping on the left and slow at using my right arm. I flip my dagger around and spin into Mom’s guard, slamming the hilt into her nose.

She stumbles back, spraying blood on my chest.

I hop back out, limping as quickly as I can on my bad leg before she can hit me back. But that move cost me.

Nervous Nelly was not who I expected would dart in and grab my left arm, but she does. I almost hate stabbing her, but not enough to let her gnaw on my arm. I drag my slow right arm across my body and stab her on the nose.

She’s resigned as she releases me—I can see it. She snorts before her eyes close and her body goes slack.

Mom’s sword swings toward me again, a hairsbreadth behind Nelly’s collapsing body, and I leap backward. Only, my left leg can’t support my landing, leaving me to tumble over Nelly’s unconscious body in the process of evading it.

And. . .Princess Petunia had six helpers, and I’ve only dispatched three, which means there are three more dragons and the princess herself.

When another confounded silver dragon grabs my already wounded left leg, I bite off a swear word, wrenching my arm into motion. I fight back a wave of terrible, cutting, burning pain, but this time, when I scratch the dagger across the stupid dragon’s mouth, it merely clamps down harder.

I drop the dagger with an agonized shout as the dragon bunches up and then vaults into the air. I’ve never been in a helicopter, and I’ve never been bungee jumping or skydiving, and if I survive this, which seems unlikely, I don’t plan to ever do any of those things.

The trip into the stratosphere while dangling from a dragon’s mouth has ruined air travel for me permanently. At least it won’t be my own mother that kills me.

When the wretched son of a worm drops me, my heart quits working a little early. The ground may be very, very far below me, but no one gave me a handy pocket-parachute, so clearly this is the end of the line.

Surprisingly, as I plummet toward the earth, my thoughts turn to Axel.

He’s so despised by his own people that they’d hunt down his bonded human and murder her, and yet, he’s just earnestly doing his job most days.

He was kinder to me than any of the other dragons seem to have been. I might not have been very fair to him.

And my death is about to be very bad news.

I’m pretty sure the second I die, they’re moving on to him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my eyes welling with tears.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t get out of this.

I’m sorry you’re about to be attacked when you’re already weak, and my last wish is that you will be able to kill all those silver devils.

” I’m smiling one last time at that prospect as the earth races to meet me.

Because, surprisingly, I really want him to be fine.

But instead of splattering on the pavement below, a huge, blood-red dragon slides in underneath me just in time, his massive wings pumping furiously, and suddenly I’m moving upward again instead.

Azar.

Somehow, when I was about to die, Azar found me again.

Axel may not be very well liked, and certainly the Prince of the Return has his flaws, but I can’t fault Axel’s faith in his friend. He comes through in a crunch in a big way.