“Can you talk to dragons?” I ask as I return.
Roiven doesn’t move. A question isn't a command, and my prior order for him to respond must have ended when my last line of questioning did.
“Answer me.Can you talk to the dragons.”
“One of them.”
“Can you kill it? The dragon? Tell me.”
A silence stretches between us so long that I wonder if he’s somehow found a way around the enchantment. I wind the cloth around his arm. He turns his head and stares at me with unbridled disgust, his face inches from mine. I can see the tracks of tears on his cheeks.
“No. I could not,” he finally says between gritted teeth, like the words are being forced from him.
“Roiven?” a woman’s voice calls from the observatory upstairs.My hands freeze halfway through tying the first knot in the makeshift bandage.
More of them. Gods, how many witches came to rescue this one man? I finish tying the knot. Roiven is silent as he rises back to his feet. Every line of his body is tense.
“Don’t do anything to…” I start to tell him.
He charges. Roiven barrels into me and wraps both arms tight around my body. I’m so startled I don’t get my sword unsheathed again in time to run him through. The enchantment keeps him from hurting me. How is he doing this? But I only have a moment to be confused, because he’s towing me off the stairs, down the short hall, past the bodies and towards the window his friends tried to escape through. As I thrash I catch a glimpse of a woman in red leather armor coming down the stairs. Her skin is deep brown and she's carrying a naked sword in one hand. Roiven plants his foot on the sill and launches us out. He’s twice my size and built of muscle, and doesn’t even seem to register me fighting. I was always a better fencer than wrestler.
“Let me go,” I bark.
It’s a command. He has no choice but to listen. His arms release me. Too late.
We’re falling.
11
I turn in the air, grabbing for the castle’s wall to slow my fall. My body slams down onto something hard. It’s a four-story fall to the hard rocks below.
Except I’m not on the rocks, and I didn’t fall four stories.
I was grabbed by a dragon. Each individual claw is wider around than my thigh. The dragon’s grip squeezes, pressing my neck in an uncomfortable angle and threatening to crush my ribs. Held sideways instead of upright, the wind rushes over my ears and I fight the urge to vomit.
My arms are pinned to my sides. I flex my fingers, trying to reach my sword’s hilt, hoping it hasn’t fallen from the sheath. I’m not insane, and I know there’s no chance I can single-handedly kill this thing. Not without a Hellion or a full suit of enchanted armor. But I refuse to go down without a fight.
A cut on its paw won’t do more than annoy a dragon this big, but it would besomething.
“Let me go!” The wind snatches my words away, but the claws holding me tighten. I draw a thin breath, feeling my body bow in asmy arms are pressed in front of me. I can’t get my sword. The dragon’s grip is too tight.
As my legs kick and each lurching beat of the wings pulls me higher, I’m strangely clear-headed. I can’t see Roiven. I can barely see anything. Moonlight glitters on the black night ocean below, telling me we’re over the water now. Above me there’s only pitch-black darkness: the dragon itself, blocking the cold glow of the stars.
I think I see the other dragon flying behind us for a moment, and then it’s gone, and we’re alone. At least the other exiles will survive. Well, unless the second dragon killed them all before following us, but… I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself they’ve lived, even if I won’t survive.
Death doesn’t come.
Maybe the dragon didn’t realize we were mortal enemies. Maybe it thought I was one of Roiven’s allies. My mouth moves in a silent laugh. There isn’t enough breath in my crushed lungs for the sound to escape.
I run through plans in my head. What to do if the claws ever loosen. How to move my arms to cling to the dragon if it tries to drop me. I imagine scaling up its leg and climbing the beast’s neck, to ram my sword straight through one of its eyes.
If I manage it, the beast will surely burn me alive. Again. A cold sweat breaks over my body at the thought, but I’m dead either way.
An hour passes, maybe two. Then another.
We fly lower. I hear the ocean crashing against rock. Cold salt spray mists my face, and my face scrunches in disgust. The heavy wing beats slowly. The claws loosen.
Stupid, to think I’d be able to hold on when the drop came. My whole body is numb, my living arm and legs asleep, and my reaction time is worn down a nub. I slap down onto damp, rough stone. Not a bad fall, maybe a foot. I reach for my sword hilt.
