Page 3 of Firebird (The Fire That Binds #1)

I I

MALINA

My scream died in my throat as the monstrous red dragon, the general, carried me away. I lost my breath from his claw pressing on my chest and stomach.

He’d snapped my attacker in half with his giant jaws.

The general.

I had stood there in awe, recognizing the centurion of long ago. He’d changed, grown even bigger, his hair short and militant, his golden eyes cold. But it was him.

Then his dragon ripped out of his body, changing into the beast in less than three seconds. A man behind him screamed when he was thrown by his thrashing tail. A red-scaled dragon with black-rimmed eyes and black-edged wings towered above me, his head even with the top of the tree line. But his height and girth didn’t make him slow. He killed that disgusting monster who attacked me with gruesome speed.

Then I found my voice, screaming as he loomed over me with blood dripping from his finger-long teeth, seemingly proud of his kill. He lowered his gargantuan head, his serpentine, gold eyes narrowing. I had no breath to scream once he gripped me around the waist and carried me into the sky.

My stomach fluttered and twisted into a knot as the ground fell farther and farther away, my legs dangling in midair.

Bendis, save me.

I was going to die. He was going to take me high into the air and drop me, letting me fall to my death. I was, after all, the witch who’d kept them at bay three times before.

All for naught. My clan was dead and enslaved anyway. I saw Enid being herded toward the carrying nets. The kind older woman who’d become my savior, who’d convinced her clan to take me in, who’d cared for me as any mother would. Because of my failure, she was going back to Rome and to the slave market, her people dead and scattered. Just like my own.

Bunica was wrong.

My gift wasn’t strong enough. I hadn’t turned the tide of any war. I’d only stopped an incompetent general and his men until a better one came along.

The centurion.

The gold aureus around my neck dangled freely in space. I reached up and clutched it, somehow still not wanting to lose the one treasure of my old life that I still had.

Tears welled at my sad reality.

Since that night I’d been given the coin, I’d worn it secretly on a leather thong around my neck, underneath my blouse. Whenever I began to sink into despair, I remembered that Fortuna had singled me out for her favor. I never prayed to the Roman goddess, but some part of me wished that she might somehow help me succeed.

The night the Romans attacked our village three years ago, the night of my sister Lela’s wedding to Jardani, it was the only possession of value I managed to escape with. Everything else—the brush Papa had carved for me, the red fust? from Bunica, the quilt Mama had made, and the embroidered blouse from Lela—all were gone. Likely burned in the fires with our village. I didn’t know because I escaped during the attack. I ran and kept running until I collapsed with exhaustion miles from my home, alone in the cold and the dark.

Pathetic girl, I chastised myself.

Running from her family. Leaving them behind. And still holding on to this aureus like Fortuna actually cared about me. Look where she led me now, clutched in the talons of an enemy. I wanted to laugh at the coincidence that it was the Roman who’d given me hope in this small shining coin who had finally defeated and destroyed my Celtic clan, my adopted family.

I tried to yank it from my neck so I could throw it into oblivion, but one of his claws had my elbow pinned. With the other hand, I gripped the curve of one talon, unable to pry my fingers loose, too afraid he might suddenly drop me.

The fires and smoke of the burning Celtic encampment and battlefield grew distant. We rose into the clouds, and I wondered if a death from this height might be better. Closer to the stars, I wished I could keep going higher and disappear into the night sky.

“I’m sorry, Bunica,” I whispered into the dark, sniffling at her loss yet again.

I’d lost them all—Mama, Papa, my sisters. The last thing I remembered was a soldier grabbing Lela while another bashed Jardani over the head, my sisters Kizzy and Kostanya screaming. My father threw me behind him, then turned terrified eyes on me. “Run, Malina,” he’d ordered gruffly.

I obeyed. Fear spurred me deep into the woodlands in the dark until the screams and cries vanished like a dream. A nightmare.

The only thing that had kept me from taking my own life to join my family in the afterworld was Bunica’s foretelling, “You will save us all.”

But she was wrong. I’d become a slave like everyone else. Perhaps death would be better.

What would this dragon do with me now?

He’d caught the Celtic clan’s witch. He’d punish me accordingly, likely a public execution or torture. Rumors of the brutality in the capital city of Rome were legendary. It was said the Romans kept the corpses of their enemies on display in their forum, that they drank from the skulls of defeated kings, that they used their slaves abominably.

I shivered at the dreadful future in store for me, even if it was short-lived.

Then we started to descend, his great wings beating more swiftly as he angled down out of the clouds. In the near distance, torchlight from many homes and buildings dotted the city of Rome.

I gasped, having never seen so many lights together before. I could even make out the circular curve of the Colosseum under the moonlight. But he banked in the opposite direction toward the edge of the city, a green hillside where large, white-stone buildings jutted out of the earth.

He slowed his descent, obviously aiming for a wide terrace to one home in particular. The general was wealthy.

But of course he was. I’d known it that night we met by moonlight. He reeked of noble blood. I’d been fascinated. Now, I was simply terrified. But I wouldn’t let him know.

Lowering slowly over the terrace, he beat his wings rapidly until I was only a foot off the ground and then he let me go. I caught myself and watched as he landed on the terrace beside me, a painful groan rippling through him at the same time, the sickening cracking of his bones and revolting morphing of his body shrinking him down to a man. A naked man. I stared in sheer shock, but he didn’t even glance my way. He walked directly into the arched entrance of his home without saying a word to me.

I couldn’t help but stare at the magnificent man he’d become—physically anyway. Over seven feet tall, his body thick with muscle, his manhood hanging long and heavy between his legs as he marched inside.

I was panting in fear. When I finally realized that I was just lying there on the cold terrace, I stood and looked around, wondering if I could make a run for it.

“Don’t try it, girl,” came a harsh voice.

I snapped my eyes to the arched entrance as an older man walked toward me, a limp in his gait.

“You’ll be picked up by patrolling centurions and brought back here.” He had a dark complexion and gray-speckled hair. “Or worse. You’ll be brought somewhere else,” he warned. “Come with me.”

“Where am I going?” I asked as he turned and marched back toward the archway, expecting me to follow.

“To your new room, of course. You’ll get cleaned up.” He looked at my clothes over his shoulder and sneered. “And change clothes.”

“Then what?”

“Then the master will want to see you.”

The master. My master.

I gulped hard at my new reality. My centurion from long ago, the man who’d given me a gold coin and hope and dreams of a better future, was now my new nightmare, my new master.