AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Where are we?” I stand up and look around the room. It’s small—just two beds, one of which I just vacated, a bunch of machines, Gideon and the other man, the frantic one in a white coat, who’s still telling me I need to lie down and let him redo the IV.
Delusional.
“Where are we?” I demand. “Someone tell me.”
“Your dragon’s brother immediately followed us,” Gideon says. “But I knew he would—he wasn’t weakened by losing a bond-mate like his brother. We had a plan in place, though.”
“A plan to do what?” I step toward him, angry enough to strangle my oldest friend. “A plan to ruin everything?”
“Liz, it had to happen,” he says. “I can’t believe you’re not grateful!”
“Grateful?” I take another step, shifting around the edge of the bed.
That’s when I see them—the edge of my swords, gleaming up at me from the other side of the bed I just vacated, like they stripped me of my weapons and then placed me on the bed. Which is probably exactly what happened.
Swords that can pierce dragon hide.
Gideon can tell me all day long that he killed Azar—I believe that he succeeded in destroying our bond by killing me—but I won’t believe that Azar’s dead until I see for myself. Until I see his massive, red corpse, I’m assuming he’s alive and that he needs me.
“I can’t stay here,” I say. “I have to return to Selfoss.”
“I’m not even sure whether they’re there anymore,” Gideon says. “The storm hit moments after I killed you, and after. . .” He coughs. “After your bond was gone, we rushed you away. In all the madness, Hyperion followed us to Reykjavik in the middle of a snowstorm. Liz, it was like Mother Nature was on our side, and we lost him, but he razed that entire city to the ground, killing over a hundred thousand innocent humans.”
“Hyperion and Azar weren’t killing anyone,” I shout, still advancing on him. “Mother Nature wasn’t on your side. No one was! You attacked them, unprovoked, and you’re celebrating a victory right now for a war that you started.”
He keeps backing up, just happy that I’m engaging with him, I think. But it’s working. He’s moving backward, which allows me to move toward the swords. “They would have attacked us, given enough time,” he says. “They did it in Houston, and it was only a matter of time before they did it in Iceland, too. Everyone knew that but you.”
“Azar made them leave half the bonded humans and all the enslaved ones back in Houston.” Another step. Closer still. I wish my knees weren’t wobbling and my heart wasn’t pounding. I lurch another step forward, and spots dance across my vision for a moment. “And we were so close to getting what they wanted, and then they’d have left forever.”
“Taking you with them,” Gideon says. “And if you think I was going to allow that to happen, you don’t know me at all.”
My vision clears just in time.
“You really need to lie down again,” the doctor says. “Until you’ve been given the full dose of?—”
“Enough,” I say. “Tell me it was a lie. Tell me you didn’t really succeed in killing him.” Then I can go back, and I can help them remove the heart, and?—
But Gideon, his jaw locked, pulls a phone out of his pocket. He taps a few buttons and flips it around, and I watch as the scene I saw from below, bleary and exhausted and apparently about to die, plays out in full color glory on a tiny screen in front of me.
The first ice-spear that hits him appears to just piss Azar off. But the next dozen are enough to knock him to the ground. After that, he disappears into the earth. Less than a minute later, fire erupts from the earth like a small volcano, leaving nothing but a blackened crater behind.
“I didn’t want to show you that,” Gideon says, “but all they found when the pit cooled enough was chunks of red, scaly flesh, seared and smoking.” His shoulders slump. “What else will it take to convince you?”
I dive down and grab my swords, but standing up again while holding them is harder than it should be. Their tips wobble. “You’ve convinced me.” I step closer, the edges of my blades pressing against Gideon’s neck. I realize that tears are streaming down my cheeks. “I won’t feel the least bit guilty when I decapitate my oldest friend, thanks to how clear you were.”
When the door bursts open and soldiers stream through, all of them with guns aimed at my head, my disgust only increases. A tall man in the doorway grunts. “You told me she’d be on our side, Evans. You swore it on your life.”
“She will be.” The movement of his neck as he speaks causes pressure against the edge of my blade, slicing his skin. The scarlet of the blood reminds me of Azar’s scales, which enrages me, and I want to press harder. Harder and harder and harder.
I want to kill him—it was his idea, this whole thing. He orchestrated Azar’s death himself. He knew what it would do to me, and he did it anyway. “I hate you, Gideon Evans. I’ll hate you until the day I die.”
“Seize her.” The troops move toward me slowly, waiting to see whether I’ll really kill Gideon, I suppose. He hasn’t made a single movement to stop me, and he never does. Not right up until they take my blades and cuff my hands behind my back. Not when they haul me away, over the doctor’s vehement protests, and stuff me into a locked room without even a window. I sit on the bed, noting only a small collapsible table and a bucket I assume will function as a chamber pot, a few seconds before the lights go out.
Just before the lights go out, I notice my hair has changed color. It’s not gold. It’s not red, either. No, it’s a color I haven’t seen since the day of the Boo Bash—my hair is back to being brown. For some reason, it sets me off.
I’m not sure how long I’m bawling in the room like a teenage girl whose boyfriend dumped her. But at some point, my rage begins to eclipse the pain, and that’s when I start to make a plan.
First on my list of tasks is to figure out where I am, so I can somehow get back to the dragons. If Azar really is dead, they’ll kill me. That would actually be a big relief. My heart hurts so much that death would be a welcome mercy.
