AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m cold,” I rasp out. “It’s warmer back here.”
Damian makes a sound of disbelief. Keeping the knife to my throat, he peers around the corner, his body relaxing slightly. I am anything but relaxed, though, if there was nothing around that corner that gave him pause.
Has my plan failed already?
“If you had lied, Mother’s protection wouldn’t have saved you from what I would have had to do to you. You know I cannot tolerate being lied to.” He lowered his blade, smoothing back a lock of his hair.
I try not to scoff at the idea of Madame protecting anything but her own interests, but I know he really does believe that. Besides, he’s lying.
“We both know you wouldn’t risk her mission,” I correct him.
He lives to make that monster happy. Instead of balking, though, amusement filters into his scowl.
“I would have just blamed it on your beast of a husband.” His expression turns thoughtful. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea...”
He slides his pointer finger up my arm, and I jerk away from him. With all the courage I can muster, I stalk around the corner. Dread pools in the pit of my stomach when I behold the decidedly empty chamber.
Have I chosen the wrong cave?
Instead of the creature I expected to see, another glimmering pool rests in this alcove. Its blue-green waters steam and sparkle more intensely than the first pool, and it gives off an ethereal essence I can’t quite describe.
Then, my heart gallops at a speed that shouldn’t be possible, thundering in my ears, pounding in my temples.
Because the weirdly luminescent pool isn’t even the most astonishing thing about this cavern. Blood-red roses stretch and climb up the far wall on an endless black vine, but they aren’t ordinary flowers. Their petals come to a distinct point, and below each budding rose is a single black thorn.
I gasp.
Damian doesn’t pay them any mind. And why would he, when he has his prey in his sights at last?
He stalks toward me, examining the surprise that I wasn’t cautious enough to conceal. One slow step after another, he takes his time. Just as I am certain he will with whatever sadistic plan he has for me.
He’s waited fifteen years for this.
And I’ve just gift-wrapped myself for him, far from civilization, where no one can hear my screams. Something I was counting on if I had found the sands-blasted correct cave.
“What is it?” Damian’s voice claws its way through my thoughts.
I count the steps again from the tree line to the cavern, retracing my steps and visualizing the outer wall of the cave. This has to be the right cave.If that’s true, where is the dragon?
Damian is in front of me now, his hand roughly grabbing my face, forcing me to look into his serpentine black eyes.
What did I do wrong?
When he slams his mouth against mine, crushing and bruising my lips with the force of his own, I knee him hard in the groin.
He crumples to the ground, choking and gagging from the pain. Blind panic seizes hold of me as I wrack my brain for my next steps. I wasn’t bluffing about him being larger and better armed, and all of this amounts to nothing if I die here alone.
I take the humid cavern air into my lungs, trying to think, to focus. Seconds have passed, but they feel like hours.
Before I can turn to run, he grabs hold of my ankle, yanking it, and I fall flat on my back. The impact echoes loudly through the corridors, but I barely register it. I see stars, and my vision slips in and out of focus.
His body is on top of mine, pinning me to the ground. Everything continues to go darker and darker by the second.
No.
He will not win. He will not put his contemptible hands on my little sister’s body. Blackness edges into my vision, but I refuse to give in to the temptation of its proffered peace when I have not yet done what I came here to do.
Just as I realize I will have no say in this, no more choice in my death than I did my life...just as my limbs go limp from lack of oxygen, a blast of hot air washes over me.
