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Rose
The stone flooring is cold on my cheek, but my groggy mind doesn’t understand why I’m here. My muscles ache from the odd position I awake from, and I groan as I push myself off the ground. The room is poorly lit and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust.
It only takes me a moment to recognize the room. I’ve grown familiar with it over the past few days I’ve spent here.
I’m in the cellar…but how?
Then it hits me all at once.
Otis. Aeron. The garden. The verbal fight that followed and then a hand—no, a cloth?—covered my mouth. The last thing I saw was Aeron’s smug face before darkness took me.
Fear settles over my body, and I contemplate my next move. I still feel slightly sluggish from whatever they used to knock me unconscious, but I test my body’s ability and stand up.
“Ahh, you’re awake. Finally.” Aeron steps out of the shadows like a vampire who just lured their next victim into his home.
Or a dragon into its nest.
Otis, ever the loyal lapdog, appears next to him. Unlike Aeron who stands with the confidence of a man who is used to getting what he wants, Otis appears meek and unsure next to him. That could be a good thing, right? It means he could be persuaded to my side.
That dream quickly deflates when Otis catches me staring at him and shifts his expression to a glare.
“What did you do to me?” I ask, backing up to put more distance between us. Didn’t all those detective shows I used to watch say something about keeping your captive talking while you assess your situation and find ways to escape?
I doubt those victims ever faced dragons before.
“Interesting stuff, isn’t it? A simple mixture a demon once taught me. Inhaling the substance causes temporary loss of consciousness.”
Explains how I got into this situation but doesn’t explain why. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Don’t take it personally, Rose. I would have done this to anyone if I knew they could awaken the dragons. Unfortunately, you are the only one with that ability, so you are useful to me,” Aeron says, looking entirely too smug with himself.
I still don’t get it though. I understand wanting to wake up dragons, we can both agree that we share that goal. But he’s been insistent on it since the moment we learned of my abilities. What is his angle here?
“We could be working together, Aeron. We should be working together. I want to awaken the dragons as much as you do, but Malix believes?—”
I don’t see it coming until it was too late. Aeron’s hand collides with my cheek, whipping my face to the side. I stumble, nearly falling from the force of the slap, but I catch myself. The pain doesn’t hit immediately. It’s the shock that outweighs the throbbing in my cheek.
He hit me. A man has never hit me before.
“Malix is wrong,” he snarls, his body towering over me. Despite my best efforts, I flinch away. “He’s ignored the danger time and time again. He hesitates when he should strike and because of that, our people suffer. But I won’t let that happen. I will be the king Dragon’s Keep deserves and their hero when they realize it was I, not Malix, that ordered them awakened.”
“This is all because you want to be king?” My words come out slurred as a coppery taste fills my mouth. Fuck, that really hurt. And the bastard made me bleed. “Do you even care about your people? The ones you claim to want to save.” I know the answer before he even speaks.
Men like Aeron never care about others, not when power is involved. He just wants to take the kingdom and the throne.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, human?—”
“I’m your queen!”
Aeron roars with laughter as if I had just told him a joke and not that I was his superior.
“Queen?” he scoffs. “No, you are a pawn and Malix should have been utilizing your potential from the very beginning instead of using you as his own private whore.”
The words feel like another slap in the face. I’m not Malix’s whore or pawn. Right? I hate the doubt that creeps in, even though I know Malix cares for me and refers to me as his queen when around others.
“Enough of this. The hour grows late, and we have a limited time before your pathetic husband comes home,” Aeron says, pulling away from me.
“But sir,” Otis’s weasel-like voice says, “the king will kill us when he comes back and discovers what we’ve done. Perhaps we are being too harsh?—”
