Page 19 of Exquisite Monster (Dragons of Viria #2)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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KATALENA

S houting woke me. Male shouting.

It echoed through the cavernous rooms and reached where Varí and I stayed, dragging us both from sleep.

He leapt into flight, facing the door.

What the hell was happening?

I wasn’t dressed. I fumbled to haul on the shapeless robe I’d abandoned and grabbed the bag. It was now full to bursting, and yet it weighed nothing. Every potion I’d brewed these last months was inside, and all my darts. Gleym had made more than I ever imagined she would.

A single action that said she cared more than she claimed. Or perhaps she felt some kind of guilt.

“I need darts,” I said, striding towards the door.

Varí dove into the bag as I walked, surfacing seconds later with two in his mouth for me before he ducked back inside.

That first layer of sound was gone, but something was wrong. I felt it in the air.

Slowly, I peeked around corners as I made my way closer to the entrance and Evrítha’s pit. Sneaking around the palace in Rensara had taught me how to go unnoticed. With my feet bare and dark cloth surrounding me, I was nearly invisible.

Metal clanged, and another shout echoed from a different direction. Varí climbed my arm and sat on my shoulder, resolute.

“ Where is she? ”

The shouted question came from… the room with the sheyten . But nothing prepared me for the sight when I peered around the corner.

Soldiers scattered around the empty space, weapons drawn, facing Gleym who stood calmly, her eyes blazing with power.

“I do not know of whom you speak,” she said.

“The girl,” the soldier closest to her said. “The princess. We know she’s alive.”

“Do you?” Sarcasm dripped from Gleym’s words. “I was unaware that humans had developed the power of foresight.”

I heard him sneer. “It doesn’t matter. If she’s not here, we’ll take you back. You’re a prize too. And if she is here, and you’re gone, she’ll die anyway.”

Gleym’s eyes flicked around, taking in the men surrounding her, and landing on me for the briefest moment. She smiled. “If you think you can take me, you have been misinformed. ”

“Our weapons are coated in scalefire, dragon.”

She scoffed. “How frightening.”

A single soldier stood a few feet from the door. I wouldn’t have to move far to reach him. But there were too many. If I revealed myself, it was likely I would be killed or taken. Could Gleym hold them off?

Yes .

Her voice sounded in my head.

I can. But this is a chance for you to practice.

I couldn’t talk back to her, but I didn’t know what I would practice here. I could hit them, but what would it do?

Killing .

My whole body recoiled. I pulled myself back around the corner and plastered my back against the wall. No. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t?—

What have I been training you for these last months if not to take life? Gleym thundered in my thoughts. Did you imagine you could survive a war unscathed? How will you rescue your mates and keep your hands clean?

I closed my eyes and knocked my head back against the stone softly as the male soldier made some other threat, dread seeping through my stomach. I already knew what I would do, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it.

This is not your choice , she said. I know that.

It also does not matter. Your decision to leave this place is one of the last decisions you will make freely.

You will have to choose between your own life and the lives of others, and it will never feel voluntary.

Or have you forgotten that just yesterday you claimed commitment no matter the cost?

Even if it killed you? These soldiers will either kill you or take you to your death.

A beat, then.

Think of me as a monster if you must, Katalena, but there is a reason I am still alive. Embrace what keeps you living if you want to return to the Heirs. I can hold them back. But even I am at a disadvantage with numbers and their scalefire. So choose .

I swallowed, feeling sick. She was right. I couldn’t claim I would do whatever it took and balk at the first test. Even if bile crept up my throat. I gripped the dart tighter. “I’ll need more,” I whispered under my breath. Varí crawled down my arm into the bag.

No hesitation. Speed and surprise were my only advantages here. I couldn’t let myself think about it.

I spun around the edge of the door and took the three steps I needed, stretched up, and plunged the dart into the side of the soldier’s neck.

He dropped with a loud clatter, and I threw the second dart at the soldier closer to me, hitting him in the arm.

Varí was there, and I grabbed the new darts as every head in the room turned to me .

Chaos broke out.

Another soldier came at me, grabbing for my arms, but he was clumsy and I dodged him, thrusting up and finding his throat. Blood exploded, hot and thick, around the wound, and I couldn’t stop to think about it.

Three soldiers flew backwards, slamming into the wall so hard there was no question about whether or not they lived. Another was engulfed in flames, and yet another was being lifted by tangled strands of violet light, grasping at the power like it was strangling him to death.

The man I’d hit in the arm came for me, catching me by surprise. He was so fast. In a blink he had me against the wall, but not before my next dart was pressed into his neck hard enough to draw blood. “If you want to live you will take your hands off me,” I said.

For a second, he blinked. “Holy shit. You really are alive.”

“Surprised?”

He sneered. “He’s going to take you apart in front of those bastards. You’ll wish you died down here.”

“Strong words with a weapon at your throat.”

A crash behind him told me Gleym had taken down another soldier. One more ran past us and out the door. I didn’t know how many were left. At my side, I felt a nudge, and Varí slipped a new dart into my free hand with his mouth.

The soldier laughed. “Think that’ll stop me?”

He didn’t have a chance to move. I brought the second dart up and shoved the one I already held, piercing his throat from both sides.

He’d been standing so close to me that his body nearly took me down with him.

I stumbled away from him, gasping at the warm wetness of blood under my bare feet. Seeping into the bottom of my robe.

The floor of the room was littered with bodies. Only one man remained alive, held against the sheyten by Gleym’s power. He struggled and smacked the stone behind him. “The only reason you have any power is because of this. We should fucking destroy them all.”

“You do that,” Gleym said. “Hasten your own end, by all means. Katalena.” Her voice summoned me, but I stood still. She nodded her head toward the man. “Him too.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“Kill him.”

My mouth opened, and I closed it again. I swallowed. He was pinned and now unarmed. Not attacking. I couldn’t?—

Magic flowed over the man and seemed to sink beneath his skin. Gleym’s hold shook him a little. “Repeat your orders for coming here.”

“Fly to Evrítha and down into the pit to see if there’s any chance that Katalena is alive. If she is alive, bring her back, so I can kill her myself. If she’s alive, I need her to break them. If she’s dead, try to find her body so I can use that.”

She looked at me, expression expectant. I understood the lesson though my stomach revolted. This man was here to take me to Andaros and my death. The second she released him, he would try, and he would end up dead anyway. I looked back at the bodies on the floor. Three of them were already mine.

Would they forgive me?

I shook my head. They’d already killed for me. More than once. If the roles were reversed they wouldn’t hesitate. So why was I?

The blood on my skin felt hot and vile, sweat gathering at my temples. I approached the man slowly. “If you were to go free, what would you do?”

His eyes fastened on mine, and he struggled again, unable to fight Gleym’s hold. “What?”

“If you were free to go, and did not have to return to Craisos, what would you do?”

He glared at me, and it was clear he was trying to keep himself from speaking. Still, the words were forced out of him slowly. “There is no world in which I would not return. I will follow Andaros to the death if it means the dragons finally lose their hold on the world.”

Fuck.

“My—” I stopped. This man had no reason to know who they were. “The dragons you hold captive. What are you doing with them?”

“Harvesting them. And breaking them.”

“ Harvesting ?”

He smiled, the movements of his body growing slower as his strength waned. “All that fire we can turn back on them. We’ll burn them all to ash and they’ll stand there and let us do it once we take their minds. They’ll make every dragon present themselves for slaughter.”

The power holding his mind and tongue shivered out through his skin, his face going slack before alertness returned to him with force. “What did you do to me? What did you do to me ? You and every dragon will burn. I swear it.”

I startled when something touched my hand. Varí had a dart in his hand, and I’d never seen his scales that color before. A brown so dull it was fading into grey. Sullen and dead and angry. Sad too. He pressed the weapon into my hand slowly. With regret, but no hesitation.

He was with me.

Curling my fingers around the dart, I walked forward, placed it against the weak point of his armor—exactly where I’d been trained with a blade.

“No,” the soldier begged. “I take it back. Please. Don’t kill me.”

I drove the dart home. He went limp as the dart pierced his heart.

Gleym let him slip down the wall and slump to the floor.

Heat built in my throat, and I sprinted for the door.

I made it to the bubbling edge of the cave and fell to my knees before hurling what little was in my stomach into the water.

There was no forgetting the feeling of puncturing someone’s skin. No erasing the sensation of blood welling up against your fingers. And certainly no turning back the passage of time to the moments when I wasn’t a killer.

There was guilt, and yet there wasn’t. I chose to kill him, but Gleym would have killed him anyway. There wasn’t any dishonor in defending your own life. I would have to do it more than this. If I claimed I would do anything to get them back, then I needed to believe I would. And actually do it.

Still, my stomach roiled and wouldn’t stop heaving over the edge.

A shadow moved in the pale light falling from so far above, and I scrambled away from the edge. One of them had run out of the room. Had they gotten away and were coming back?

“ Gleym .”

I ran for the door and was thrown to the ground as the beast landed behind me, shaking the stone like the land itself quaked. It was too big to be a drayg. That meant it was a dragon, and the dragons wanted me dead.

My arms were scraped from catching myself, and I forced myself to move despite growing bruises. They couldn’t burn me, but I wasn’t immune to dragon claws.

Magic shivered through the air as I ducked behind the edge of the doorway for the tiniest bit more safety.

“I hoped we’d find you in some sort of oasis, but I suppose this will have to do.”

That—

Varí’s head popped out of the bag and he stared at me like I was staring at him, before we both stepped back into the doorway and stared together.

“Idroal?”