Page 31 of Ensnared (The Dragon Captured #1)

I cry, but the tears make my cheek hurt more.

I clench my fists, but the hamburger-like parts of my palms sting too badly to do it long.

Finally, I start to think about all the ways I’ll inflict pain on the bad people who are dragging me along like one of those bobbing duck-on-a-string toys I used to pull.

“When I get home, I promise I’ll cut that string and free you,” I mutter. “No one should make you move when you want to sit still.”

But no one else even notices that I’m talking.

I start to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb. No one cares about that either, but it makes me feel a little better.

I launch into Twinkle Twinkle next, but I never paid much attention in music class so I’m rapidly exhausting my repertoire.

A few songs later, I’m forced to start tapping into Christmas songs, like Jingle Bells and Rudolph .

My horrible captors don’t seem to notice that I’m singing, much less care what I’m saying or why. As long as I keep moving, they’re indifferent. If I stumble, fall, or stop, they start shouting and yanking.

The sun sets, but we keep right on stumbling along. That’s when I realize that, even though the sun has set, the sky’s still bright.

Not a normal bright. It’s red.

It’s unnaturally red. “Why is the sky like that?” I ask.

“Eyjafjallajokull,” the woman says.

“Why’s the sky red?” I ask again. “I can’t understand you.”

She points at the brightest part. “Lava. Hot.”

The place she’s pointing? That’s where we’re climbing. That can’t be good. If that’s a volcano—it must be. The sky’s red, she said lava, and then she pointed. . . If it is a volcano, I do not want anything to do with it. These crazy people can go there without me.

I stop and sit down.

Beer Can laughs. He mutters something. He yanks on my rope. The fibers of the rope hurt my neck. I’m pretty sure it’s bleeding, but that’s better than letting them walk me right up to a volcano.

“Come.” The man yanks again, this time loosening the tension and then whipping the rope as hard as he can.

It collapses my throat, or that’s how it feels. I can’t breathe at all, and then I can’t stop coughing. “No,” I wheeze. “I will not go.” That makes me cough again, but the man’s done caring.

“Up. Move.” He yanks, and yanks, and yanks. Not as hard, but more persistently, and finally, another hard pull. Bleeding skin, I can ignore. Chafing burns. But a snapped neck can’t be fixed. I stumble back to my feet and start walking.

The higher we get, the hotter the ground gets.

“Why are we going there?” I ask, my voice raspy.

No one answers me, of course, and no matter how many times I repeat my question, they still say nothing back.

I try grabbing rocks and throwing them. I wrap my hands around the rope and yank when it looks like Beer Can isn’t paying attention.

Once, I even manage to pull the rope free from his hands, but a half dozen steps away, Beer Can steps on the rope and knocks me back on my rear.

I stop trying to escape after that.

But I keep watching them, and I keep my eyes open. By the time we reach the top, there’s a group waiting, and I have a few ideas. The men seem to be the stronger ones, but I think the woman’s in charge.

“Why am I here?” I ask. “Why me?”

I know they’ll ignore me, but I can’t seem to keep from asking.

“Tattoo,” the woman says.

Her response surprises me, and I just blink at first. “Tattoo?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”

She points at the spot just above her breast on her left side. “Tattoo.”

“Do you mean my birthmark? It’s not a tattoo. I’ve always had it.” I frown. “What does that have to do with?—”

But Beer Can’s as impatient as ever. “Go in.” He yanks again, and this time, it’s from the side. I fall to my left, hitting the woman on her left side.

She stumbles, muttering loudly, and I notice something.

Her right leg isn’t quite right. When I look closer, I realize that it’s a prosthetic.

I’ve been so preoccupied with where we were going and with trying to escape that I didn’t pay enough attention to my captors.

My teacher had a fake leg, so I know what it is.

Something happened to her real leg, and they had to replace it, probably.

If she wasn’t so horrible, I might feel bad for her.

Beer Can and his driver clap and shout and point, dragging me little by little to a massive stone doorway. It’s dark inside, and I don’t want to go, but nothing we’ve done has been my idea, so what’s new? Once we pass through the doors, I hear something strange.

A lot of people are there already, and they’re chanting the word hjartanu .

Beer Can’s smiling now, and he drags me along, tugging, tugging, tugging, until I see where he’s taking me. It’s a long, narrow ledge that overlooks the volcano’s crater.

It looks like a scene out of a cartoon or something. Only the blasts of hot air that smell like ash and coal convince me that this is really happening. You can’t dream that kind of heat up.

“No.” This time, I’m more forceful. This time, I’m not going to let them drag me. I claw at the rope around my neck.

Beer Can’s driver gets tired of waiting, I guess. He leans over, knees me in the stomach, and then throws me over his shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes. A few dozen paces away, he drops me on the ground.

The woman pulls a knife from her pouch and brandishes it. She starts to yell, and the chanting falls silent. Then she leans over, and thrusts toward me with the knife. I try to scramble out of the way, but the driver won’t let me move.

Her blade slices through the thick fabric of my new coat, and she shoves it off my body.

With as warm as this area is, I don’t mind that much.

But she’s not done. With Driver’s help, she slices through my Hello Kitty hoodie and my My Little Pony nightshirt.

She drops the knife on the ground to her left, and then she grabs both sides of my nightshirt and pulls them back.

She shouts something else, and then she exposes the front of my body.

It looks nothing like my mom’s, but I’m still horribly embarrassed that the dozens of people gathered have all seen most of the front of me—naked.

Until I realize what they’re looking at. It’s not my flat chest.

It’s the bright red birthmark above my left chest that’s shaped in the form of a perfect heart.

Mom always told me it made me special. The hospital actually did an article on it, because I was born on Valentine’s Day so no one could believe I had a perfect heart-shaped birthmark.

Mom wanted to name me Valentine, but Dad got first pick.

Thank goodness he did.

The people watching us start chanting again, and it gets louder and louder. My actual heart’s racing, and I start thinking about what these people could be planning to do. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be anything good, but I’m starting to worry they’re planning to throw me into the volcano.

No one could really be that crazy, right?

Only, the woman grabs my arm and starts to drag me that way. “No,” I shout. “No, you can’t do this. I don’t want to go. Stop!”

No one’s listening to me. The woman’s looking at the bubbling, popping lava, beaming. She’s clearly insane.

“Stop,” I shout again, my throat so shredded that it emerges as a faint rasp.

But we’re nearly to the edge.

By the time we’re just a step away, I’m out of options. I lean away from her, and then as hard and as fast as I can, I jump and kick with the force of my whole body behind it, aiming for her bad leg.

She goes down like a battered pinata, and then, before she can regain her footing, I shove her as hard as I can.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but it does.

She slides off the ledge and goes right into the volcano below.

I watch her screaming, her arms flailing, and then I hear the explosion as she hits the lava.

It’s as awful as I thought it would be.

Maybe worse.

But it’s not me. It’s the lady who deserves it.

Driver and Beer Can clearly don’t agree, and now they’re coming toward me. I pretend to run toward Beer Can, but at the last minute, I dart right beneath Driver’s legs. He tries closing his legs around me, which slows me down, but I squeeze past as fast as I can.

Right as someone grabs my leg, my fingers close around the woman’s discarded dagger. I don’t even think. I pull in close and then spring outward, stabbing with the dagger for all I’m worth.

It stabs Driver in the hand, and he screams.

For a moment that seems to stretch forever, I stare at him. I drop my eyes to look at his hand, where the dagger slid between two of the bones of his palm. Then I pull it out, and I use even more force to stab him in the chest.

I think about leaving it there, but I can’t. There’s Beer Can and all those people. I yank the dagger out, ignoring the fountain of blood that follows, and run away as fast as I can.

Oddly, at that moment, I can almost hear my mother’s voice.

You should never run with a pencil, darling. You could poke your eye out.

I can’t stop laughing the whole way down the mountain. Somewhere along the way, I fall and drop the dagger. I don’t stop to look for it. I just keep running. One of my shoes gets caught between rocks and I can’t pry it loose. I leave it and run the rest of the way with just one shoe.

By the time I reach the bottom and I’m looking around for the car, I realize that my sock gave out long ago.

Every step behind me is marked by a bloody footprint.

The strange thing is that my foot doesn’t even hurt.

By the time I finally find the van, other vehicles are pulling up next to it.

They’re white, and they have a blue stripe.

The word Logreglan is written on them, but I have no idea what it means.

When someone spots me, they turn on flashing lights.

It should scare me, but it makes me feel better.

Police have flashing lights, right? Police, firefighters, and ambulances.

But it’s not a police officer who climbs out of the car.

It’s my mom. Her hair’s a mess, tumbling down her back.

Her mascara has smeared and made raccoon circles under her eyes.

Her floral caftan’s skewed so badly that I can see her hot pink bra.

I run on my bloody foot until I can leap into her arms.

“Oh, my darling Liz. Are you alright?”

I lie and nod.

“Your father and I were so worried,” she says.

I see Dad then, too, standing right behind her. “You’re going to be alright, darling. We’re here.”

But just when I should feel better, I hear the chanting again.

Hjartanu. Hjartanu. Hjartanu.

I open my eyes with a whimper and realize that I’m not back in Iceland. I’m not seven years old. No one’s chanting. I’m warm, and I’m not in pain. That’s when something clicks for me—I should be in pain. I was mauled by not one, not even two, but three different electro dragons.

Or was it four?

My brain is definitely still fuzzy.

But one of the reasons I’m warm is that I’m lying on a bed. And the other reason. . .someone’s arms are wrapped around me tightly. Someone strong. Someone large.

I lean back enough to see a familiar face.

Axel’s looking down at me with concern. “Are you alright? You sounded scared.”

I close my eyes again and collapse against him. “You’re alright.”

“Of course I am.” His breath warms my face, and my eyes finally stop burning.

“I’m still tired.”

His left arm releases me and his hand moves up to stroke my hair. “Go back to sleep. Your brother and sisters are fine. You’re safe. I healed you, and no one can hurt you with me right here.”

I know the world’s full of monsters—even before the dragons came, that was true. I know that no one can really ever keep me safe. But in this moment, I gladly believe his lie. My heart seems to buy it, too.

And this time, when the darkness beckons, I embrace it and let it drag me back under. After all, why should darkness scare me when I’m under the protection of my dragon prince?