“Hold his head up for me,” Vyktor said. “He needs to drink.”
Aria stood behind Eldor and lifted his head in her hands. He was burning hot, and she could feel smears of his blood being left on her skin. God. What had they done? Vyktor pulled the gag out of the wounded man’s mouth and before Eldor could scream, he grabbed Eldor’s lower jaw, held it open, and poured the concoction down his throat.
“Hold him!” Vyktor yelled as Eldor began to thrash against them. It was all Aria could do not to be thrown across the room as the dragon contorted in agony.
“That made it worse!”
Vyktor looked over Eldor’s writhing form and locked eyes with her. “It has to be worse before it can be better.”
The words seared themselves into Aria. Over the next hour, three more dragons landed, all wounded in some way. Aria and Vyktor attended to them with the herbs and listened to their tortured cries as they took effect. The sounds of dragons in pain was not one Aria would ever forget. They were so reluctant to show any kind of discomfort. To see one of the strong beasts whimper like a whelpling was more than she thought she could bear. She did her work with tears in her eyes, blinking them back as she tried to be brave for the wounded.
Over the course of an hour or two, they all began to settle. Eldor was the first to recover enough to speak properly. Though he still looked weak, his wounds seemed less serious than they had been before. These dragons had incredible resilience and an unparalleled ability to heal themselves. It must have something to do with their ability to change shapes—although it obviously did not come without the cost of pain.
“What happened, Eldor?” Vyktor asked the question gently, though his face was a mask of cold anger. Aria felt that same anger burning inside her. “What the hell happened? It was supposed to be a retreat.”
“They were waiting for us,” Eldor said, his dark eyes wet with what might have been tears. “We were on the very verge of leaving this hell realm, but they closed the portal before more than a dozen or so of us could escape. Then they unleashed hellfire upon us. A great explosion which filled the sky and shook us to our bones. The land where the portal once stood is gone. It is a crater in the ground. It is a grave for our men. They killed all but a few of us in their missile fire and their detonations and…” He took a weak breath. “I do not know how many have survived, but I know this place is not safe for long. They had jets in the air before they opened fire. They were holding at a distance and we assumed that they were for human protection, but once the portal closed, they swarmed like flies. We were betrayed.” He breathed a heavy, scratchy sigh. “Your pet sent us to our deaths.”
“What!? No! I only delivered the message,” Aria said, her face pale with the shock of being accused of such deadly treachery. “I wasn’t part of any plan. I didn’t know they were going to do this. I didn’t!”
“If she had betrayed us, she would have to be suicidal to return to us,” Vyktor pointed out. “You are wounded and you are angry, Eldor. But this is not Aria’s fault.”
Eldor gave her a look that cut her to her very soul and made her feel guilty in spite of her innocence.
“I’m sorry this happened,” she said, tearfully gritting her teeth. “I didn’t want this.”
She knew command would be celebrating their actions. If she had never been taken by Vyktor, never learned the true nature of the dragons, she would have celebrated too. But now she felt only deep sadness at the loss of so many great minds and souls. Whoever authorized the strike did not understand what they were doing. So many were dead, so senselessly.
Vyktor had treated her as a pet from the beginning, which he should not have done, but humans looked at dragons as dumb animals to be slaughtered at will. Neither side was blameless, but this latest act of aggression tipped the scales of sin in the human direction.
“Now we are the prisoners,” Eldor said gravely. “Locked in a world we do not understand. Already their planes are hunting us. We will surely die.”
“No.” Aria shook her head. “No. You will live. I’m going to make sure of it. You can pass in your human forms, I think. You’ve just never really tried.”
“But our eyes,” Vyktor said. “As soon as anyone looks at our eyes…”
“Don’t worry about your eyes,” she said. “We can fix that. We can fix anything and everything we have to. You can turn dirt to gold. With that kind of power…” She shook her head. “We can do anything. But…”
“But what, pet?”
“I might have to break the law. A little.” She looked at him under her lashes.
Vyktor gave her a grim‘do not mess with me now, human,’ look. “Human law, or mine?”
“Oh, human law, of course.”
Vyktor nodded, satisfied. “Not a problem, pet.”
* * *
Vyktor had never been so proud of anyone as he was of Aria. Under pressure, she had been graceful and helped to the best of her ability. And now, her natural sense of justice and some kind of feminine human compassion had made her more than his pet—it had made her his true ally.
Under cover of darkness, Vyktor and the dragons flew down to a quiet little farm town nestled on the far side of the mountains in a place Aria called Montana. There were cultivated fields all over this region of the country, quite pretty in their own way.
Vyktor flew clutching Aria in his talons as he had the very first day he captured her, but this time he was much more concerned with the possibility of dropping her. She was the most precious thing in any world to him, and to have to bring her down from the giddy heights in his hands was more frightening for him than it was for her.
“I could just ride on your back,” she’d suggested before they set off.
“And what if you fall? No,” he’d insisted. “I will keep a firm hold of you, pet.”
