Page 3 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Two

Alashiya didn’t scream. She didn’t have the breath for it.

Air escaped her in a nearly silent, high-pitched rush as she stumbled away from the door.

Her foot slid in the dusty earth, sending her crashing to the ground.

The pitiful amount of protection offered by her scissors vanished when her cramped fingers lost their grip.

They sailed out of her hand and into the overgrown grass.

She swore she could feel the breath of the beast as it puffed through the gaps in the door.

There was an almighty crash as it burst open, its rusty hinges protesting vehemently.

Alashiya scrambled backward on her hands, the grit and scraggly vegetation biting cruelly into the skin of her palms, as the beast thrust its head and upper body through the doorway.

Disbelief held her in place. Even with its coloring, she didn’t need her flashlight to see what she was dealing with. The beast came with its own light — the lick of blue flame behind its razor-sharp teeth.

The glow illuminated the massive shape of its head, crowned with four towering horns, as it advanced on her. The flicker danced over monstrous features unlike anything she’d ever seen in person.

Survival instincts finally kicked in. Alashiya twisted until she could scramble on her hands and knees. Behind her, timber crashed to the floor of the barn. That deep, thrumming growl picked up again. It was so much worse up close.

She swore she could feel its steps shaking the ground around her as she frantically searched the grass for her scissors.

It was a miracle that her clumsy fingers closed around them just as a massive talon landed beside her.

If she was going to die a stupid death, then she was determined to go down with her stupid weapon in hand.

She nearly made it onto her knees, but slipped again and landed hard on a stone. Pain lanced up her leg. She was forced to ignore it. A bruise wouldn’t matter if she died, and it really wouldn’t if she somehow managed to survive.

The beast’s breath puffed against her back, each gust of air shockingly warm. It was close. So close. There would be no standing, let alone running away, with it hovering over her.

Alashiya’s mind shut down to everything except the blind need to survive. She twisted back around, using the momentum of her movement to her advantage as her arm swung in a wide arc toward the beast’s head.

There was a silver flash as the blades skimmed the flesh just above one glowing violet eye. A strange sound erupted from its throat when her scissors glanced off its leathery hide.

It reared back, its terrible mouth opened wide in offense. Alashiya took her chance. Surging to her feet, she stumbled once before she shot off toward the treeline. That tug in her chest was stronger, pulling harder in the direction of the beast, but nothing could override the will to live.

The pain in her left leg was intense, but she couldn’t afford to limp. She didn’t have a direction in mind. There was no use. She certainly couldn’t direct the beast toward the Thompsons’ farm, and there’d be no help in town even if she could get that far.

So she simply ran, the scissors somehow still in her hand, and prayed to any gods listening that the beast would be too big to make it through the narrow gaps between trees.

It was an optimistic thought. Too optimistic.

She barely made it to the trees before she was knocked down again. The massive head struck her from the side. It sent her careening into a dense patch of wild grasses, one that disguised an old water trough she kept full in the summer for her animal visitors.

Alashiya landed hard against it. Her head glanced off the ground and the air squeezed out of her chest. Stars exploded in front of her eyes. Her lungs refused to inflate. For a moment, she was certain she would suffocate there in the grass, head split open and useless scissors in hand.

An eye swung into view again. Anger at herself, at the beast who’d invaded her sanctuary, at the gods for letting something like this happen to her again, saw her swinging blindly once more.

Whatever advantage surprise had given her before was lost now.

The beast didn’t even bother moving its head away from her slashes, but merely tilted it so the blades skimmed uselessly over its flesh.

Furious tears blurred her vision, but she continued her assault until its jaws, nearly large enough to swallow her whole, lowered enough that she could see clearly into its gaping maw.

Pale blue fire boiled in its gullet and danced across its huge pink tongue.

“Dragon, stop,” she gasped reflexively, jerking backward against the trough.

She’d known what the beast was, as she knew many things she’d never personally experienced, but it hadn’t really hit her until that moment.

She’d never seen one in person, and it was so dark.

The driving need to live hadn’t allowed any room for petty things like rational thought, likely maybe trying to stab a dragon wasn’t a good idea. Not until it was too late.

I tried to fight a dragon with scissors.

Alashiya’s bones turned to liquid. She slumped against the trough and stared, wide-eyed, into the gullet of the dragon. Waiting.

She didn’t know why a dragon might want to hurt her. Perhaps it didn’t have a reason. Not every monster required an evil motivation to act, and not every evil act required a monster.

Of course, over the years she’d given a lot of thought to how she might go.

Injury and disease were most likely, but she’d never ruled out bludgeoning, poison, and murder in the general sense.

Nymphs were notoriously easy pickings, but it seemed cosmically unfair that her demise would be entirely worse than the expected: burned alive by dragonfire.

Alashiya’s life didn’t flash before her eyes. Stitches did. Every unfinished line of silk thread and glittering chip of gold bullion appeared to her as she stared into the maw of the dragon, past teeth the length of her hand, and into the burning heart of the beast.

I didn’t finish Adon’s robe, she thought, pierced by the unfairness of it all.

She’d labored over her latest commission for weeks. Her fingertips were nearly permanently bruised from forcing her needle and thread through stiff velvet every day. She dreamed of what the man who’d commissioned it would say when he peeled back the tissue paper to see it for the first time.

She always poured her heart into his projects and she was never, ever late. Because it was for Adon. Her Adon, the mysterious figure onto which all her fantasies clung.

When the date of delivery passed without a word, would he wonder what had happened to her?

Would he spare her a thought when she was just an ashen smear against an old, rusty animal trough?

Aside from her neighbors, he was probably the only person in the world who would think of her when she was gone. At least, she hoped he would.

Something hot splashed her cheek.

Alashiya reflexively touched her skin, but it wasn’t a tear that dribbled down her cheek to fall from her chin. It was viscous. Hot.

Dragging her gaze away from the dragon’s mouth, she was startled to see something dark and shiny streaming from its snout.

The dragon was bleeding. Not from anything she’d done, she thought, though she’d certainly tried her best. Fresh blood reflected the flickering light of the dragon’s flame.

The more she looked, the more she found: slashes along its long, scaly throat, a gouge across the width of its chest, and many more smaller wounds she could only just make out against the backdrop of its dark skin.

As she was looking, the dragon’s lips peeled back from its pearly white teeth.

There was a great movement of air all around her as it mantled its wings over them both, the appendages trembling violently with effort.

The blue glow reflected off the underside of its wings, showing off their massive width and wickedly clawed tips.

Dragons were people just like everyone else.

She knew that. They could understand speech and comprehend the world even in their four-legged forms. If they wanted to, her intruder could have communicated with her in some other way, but there was no compassion in their eyes, no clear desire to speak to her.

There was only something animal, something base and possessive in them that made her blood curdle.

The dragon looked at her like he wanted to swallow her whole.

Alashiya’s temper flared. She was weak and small, armed with sewing tools and a little good sense, but she was a wild thing, too. She bared her teeth right back at it.

Raising her scissor’s high, she rasped, “Go! This is my home, dragon. Leave!”

A hot gust of air from the dragon’s bloody nostrils was her only response. Before she could decide what that meant, it snapped its jaws at the hand clutching her scissors. A short scream erupted from her throat as she drew her arm in close, dropping the pitiful weapon.

Her mind blanked again as the prospect that she might actually be eaten, rather than burned alive, made itself comfortable in her. It’d happened to nymphs in her line before, but gods, she really thought she’d earned a better ending than that.

The dragon let loose another ground-shaking rumble before it lunged for her.

There were no more screams in her. She didn’t make a sound when its teeth closed around the front of her cover-up.

They slid through the fabric with ease, and she immediately understood how very mundane it would be for the dragon to rip her open.

One bite and she’d be little more than viscera in the grass.

But that bite never came. Neither did the fire.

Instead, she had the breath knocked out of her one more time as the dragon jerked her forward and began to drag her toward the barn, its head lowered and eyes roving wildly all around.

Alashiya was pulled off balance. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was prey being dragged back to a den and that it was useless to try and kick or punch their snout, but she did it anyway.

If the dragon noticed her struggles, her blows, her howling outrage, or her frantic twisting to wriggle out of her clothing, they didn’t acknowledge any of it.

Wings folded in a threatening stance and violet eyes flickering around the wild yard and forebay, the dragon hunched low when their hind quarters reached the entrance of the barn.

Their wings snapped closed and twitched strangely against their back. With one final burst of speed, the dragon hauled them inside the musty, half-destroyed barn. She watched with horror as a long, spiked tail swung out from behind them to draw the barn door closed.

Darkness, nearly complete save for the tiny amount of ambient light let in through a portion of collapsed ceiling, settled over them both.

The adrenaline that buoyed her strength had fled. Her limbs went heavy and numb, her mind fuzzy. The familiar scent of the converted barn — dust, hay, meals cooked over a communal fire many decades ago — filled her head as she fought to see anything beyond the dragon’s eyes.

They dropped her onto the cracked concrete floor with a massive huff.

Alashiya didn’t dare move. She fought to catch her breath as she watched those eyes glow in the darkness.

Even if she hadn’t been able to see them, she could feel how close the dragon was as they huffed and puffed and breathed all over her.

More blood splattered her face, her neck, as they snuffled at her hair.

It was an unspeakable relief when the dragon drew back. Perhaps the flames would come, but she didn’t think she was in immediate danger of being eaten if it was moving like that. The fact that she had a preference for flame over becoming dinner was something that would have to be examined later.

She couldn’t see the rest of the dragon’s massive body, but she could feel the air shift as they moved.

Old furniture, farm equipment, and debris clattered to the ground as the dragon made itself comfortable in the darkest part of the barn, away from the hole in the roof.

All the while, Alashiya watched, unblinking and still, from her place on the floor.

Outside, the owl let out another low, unbothered hoot.

Just when she’d begun to wonder if the dragon had somehow forgotten about its prey, they lowered their head again.

“Don’t,” she whispered, soft as a breath. She was too proud to beg for her life, but the word slipped out, yanked out by that hook in her chest.

There was no way of knowing if the dragon listened to her or not, but they didn’t eat her.

They gingerly pinched her ruined cover-up between their teeth once more and dragged her slowly across the filthy floor.

Talons, massive and deadly, closed around her as they tucked her against their wounded breast. They caged her there, allowing virtually no wiggle-room as they settled down onto their haunches.

Something slithered across the floor, drawing itself in a circle behind her. Their tail, she suspected.

There was another great movement of air, a fluttering noise, and then the peculiar sensation of being enclosed came over her.

What little light there was in the barn disappeared in an instant.

The sound of its thundering heart was a drumbeat against her ear.

For a split second, she thought it was her own panicked heartbeat, but it was far, far too loud.

The dragon, apparently satisfied with their arrangement, dropped its bloodied head onto the floor and closed its eyes, leaving Alashiya to stare into the darkness, trapped in its claws.