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Tipping her head back, she invited his kiss—
But a sudden darkness flooded in. She found herself on the opposite side of the room from him. Dim moonlight flowed through the window bathed everything in shades of blue. In her hand she held a small dagger. Sticky blood dripped down the thin blade.
Not again!
Khalstorm’s expression contorted with rage. His normally grey eyes glowed green—as though he were on the verge of a transformation—and flashed with betrayal and hatred. She knew what she would see if she looked down. She was never able to resist.
As her gaze dipped, she screamed.
The dream shattered and she shot upright with a gasp. She didn’t know what was worse, the dream that plagued her nearly every night, or waking up to find herself still trapped in this dark dungeon.
She gulped down lungfuls of cool air tinged with humidity. She imagined it might be raining outside or was about to be. Her cell didn’t have windows, but the hall that wound through the dungeon eventually opened to a high up cliff that overlooked the vast ocean.
She knew this because before locking her away, Rathmort had dragged her out there and threatened to throw her over the edge, into the crashing waves below, bellowing about her lack of obedience. For him, anything but total loyalty was akin to treason. “I should be rid of you for good. You are just like your sister.”
For the longest time, being compared to Xanthia was an insult of the highest order—though she never knew the reason, Xanthia had been declared a traitor to the clan and banished when Celeste had been very young—but now Celeste absorbed the words with pride. Aside from her late father—and Khalstorm—her sister had been the only one to show her true kindness, even though they had both been taught to view kindness as a weakness. A character flaw.
“Kindness gets you nothing but taken advantage of,” her mother would often say. To the clan, sympathy, charity, and generosity were traits to be ridiculed. But to Caryn, they were the qualities of an admirable character.
Khalstorm had taught her that.
She recalled their first meeting just after the king had announced that he’d invited her and Elora to stay in the palace and were to be treated as honored guests. Khalstorm had been suspicious.Everyonehad been suspicious. Hell, even Celeste had been suspicious of what her mother had done to draw the eye of a dragon king and garner such an invitation. She figured magic had to have been involved, an infatuation spell or something, but at the time, she hadn’t put much thought into it, content with simply following her mother’s lead.
Yet despite his obvious suspicions, Khalstorm never once treated her poorly. Gruffly, sure, but never poorly. Even endeavoring to develop a friendship with her.
Look what that had gotten him.
It might have been better for them both if he’d never spoken to her that day…
She watched the prince warily from the corner of her eye as he escorted her toward a guest room. His shoulders were stiff, his expression pinched, and she knew he barely tolerated her presence at the king’s behest. After being regaled as a child with stories of their violent and unprovoked attacks on her kind, she’d always been terrified of dragons, but her mother had taught her to conceal her fear, for to show fear was a weakness.
Yet, every now and again he’d glance her way and she’d feel her muscles tense.
“What is your age?” he asked, his tone gravelly.
“Seventeen,” she replied with a blush in her cheeks and a tremor in her voice. Though she was inherently terrified of him, she couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was.
“You look barely out of diapers,” he shot back gruffly. She didn’t know it at the time, but he was just trying to get a rise out of her. It worked. His words grated more than they should. Perhaps it was his disdainful tone.
“No, I don’t!” she’d shot back, though this wasn’t the first time she’d been told she looked young for her age. She glanced down at her dress, wondering if the simple cut and design made her look childish. “Do I really?”
He surprised her with a warm chuckle, her bleak expression seeming to break through his cold exterior. “No, not really, but I always imagined witches to be older and a little haggard, I suppose.”
“You’ve never seen a witch before?”
“No, I have.” He replied, then sent her a crooked smile. “They all looked older and a little haggard.”
She pursed her lips but couldn’t suppress a grin. “And how old are you?”
“Nineteen,” he said proudly as tough having achieved some sort of accomplishment simply by advancing in age.
“Well, you look ancient,” she lied out of spite. “Maybe you’re really a witch in disguise.”
He burst out laughing, and from then on, they were at ease with each other.
Though heart wrenching to recall, that memory was one of the most precious of her life.
A scuffling sound made her squint through the muddy darkness. Then suddenly the orange glow of a burning torch crept in, followed by unusual-sounding footsteps.
