Kingdom of Villains, page 14
I stopped, though I wanted to run to him and ask what I could do to help, to ease his evident suffering. To stop the convulsing that tore back his head and spread his arms and dug his fingers into the soil.
“Fia,” he gritted, the command that followed an animalistic growl, “Run.”
And then it happened.
His head tilted farther, nose aligned with the moon and his entire body shaking. Shaking as if he were a leaf being rattled by a storm—or possessed by an evil spirit.
He was.
And I tripped backward as it took hold.
As it swallowed him in a cloud of smog so dense, all I could see was growing darkness beyond. All I could hear was the howl of the wind stirring into a frenzy, swirling around the cottage clearing in a whirlwind, followed by a monstrous groan.
Then crunching, like twigs underfoot. His bones. Stretching, reshaping, changing entirely…
The groan became a low, unearthly rumble. A growl of soil-disturbing thunder rolling along the ground.
My heart kicked back into the correct rhythm and succumbed to the fear, and I finally ran.
Too late, something within me warned as I skidded through the trees beneath a growling, growing darkness. It advanced too quickly, soon swallowing every inch of light from the moon and stars and making it nearly impossible to see.
I veered too far from the path in my panic and tripped over two crossed logs. But the castle was just up ahead, the door to Colvin’s chamber hopefully still open. I climbed to my feet and pushed forward, telling myself not to look back. I could make it, could run straight through that door before—
A roar cleaved the night, and it melted like butter as the sound rained from the sky above.
From right above me.
I slammed into an invisible barrier, hard enough to make my ears scream again. My head spun as I bounced back to the ground and blinked up at the impossibly dark sky.
At the underbelly of a dragon.
I rolled to my hands and knees, a scream trapped in my throat as I scrambled to crawl around the base of the nearest tree. Panic bleated through my blood, coiling my limbs so tight that I wasn’t sure I could move or what the point was when the monster was right there, watching.
Rocks rolled and leaves jumped off the ground. Trees curled and snapped as the dragon lowered onto all fours and prowled to the edge of the clearing housing the cottage.
Pushing to my feet, I ran to the next tree, and then the next. A furious roar covered the scream I let loose as I moved faster. Faster than I ever thought myself capable. But it was in vain.
A giant, clawed foot landed right next to the tree I attempted to hide behind. A thick hind leg flexed as the beast lowered and turned his head.
And stared straight at me.
Familiar gold eyes stared back at me, but on the face of a scaled and snarling beast. The dragon opened his mouth, another growl displaying rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. I was fairly certain I knew what he wanted. He was warning me—telling me just who was in charge here—but I had to try.
I ran again, hurtling from tree to tree.
The dragon stomped forward, reaching me in just two giant steps.
I froze and whimpered, knowing I was playing a losing game, but there had to be a way. There had to be a place to hide until he found something else to hunt or changed back.
The tree’s exposed roots next to me appeared larger, so I launched for them, ducking into the deepest crevice and wincing as my head hit the tree root behind me with impact.
Dark wings stretched through the clearing, each sharp apex rising into curved spikes, and I prayed the beast would fly away.
He didn’t.
He tucked those wings into his sides and lumbered toward me—a hunter who knew his prey had been sufficiently cornered.
I could run again, perhaps even climb the tree, or I could stay put and shield as much of myself within the tree roots as possible. My panic ebbed into something else entirely as I realized I was doomed no matter what I did.
The dragon could not only fly but also breathe fire.
And I had his full, undivided attention.
Webbed feet hooked into the soil, carving trench-like grooves with each seemingly patient step. My eyes swam up his legs and the mass of scale-covered muscle to his huge, swaying head. It was so dark, so unforgivingly dark, as his towering form slowed to a stop right before the tree, his scales an impenetrable black that made it hard to study his features. To gauge what might happen next.
Then he lowered to the ground with a growled, steaming puff from his nostrils.
Soil and leaves dusted the air. The dragon leaned forward with a tilt of his head, and I knew exactly what would happen next.
“Colvin,” I shouted, throwing an arm over my face and pushing myself deeper between the roots. “Stop,” I begged, though it was pointless. It would seem the fates had indeed decided that I’d wrongly escaped death after all.
The idea of making history for being eaten by a dragon, and by my mate no less, was so much less appealing than being strung up by iron at the hanging tree.
The beast grumbled, each breath it took similar to an incoming thunderstorm. Breath so hot, the soil beneath my hands and legs melted into mud. Sweat slid down my forehead, collected over my chest and stomach. But his snout didn’t touch me. His teeth didn’t pluck me from the ground.
So I peeled an eye open, my lungs expelling gulped, heaving, painful pants.
To find the beast that had stolen my mate’s body simply watching me.
“Oh, fuck,” I whimpered, ransacking my empty brain for what to do.
Move. I should most definitely move, or at least quit staring at him. Perhaps play dead. I had a feeling that last one wasn’t something I would get away with, nor did I wish to try if it meant he might throw me around like a toy doll.
The creature huffed, the plumes leaving his cave-sized nostrils burning briefly and drenching my arms in more sweat. He shifted closer, however that was possible, his snout looming over me and tilting down, almost in line with my head.
A mass of black scales, each as large as a shield, and whiskers were all I could see. But when I dared to break eye contact and look down, I noticed the scales at his chest faded into gray and then silver. They cascaded toward the belly of the beast and hugged his sides.
The monster grumbled again, louder this time, and my head snapped up. His golden eyes were still upon me and narrowed slightly.
His mouth remained closed, mercifully, the skin around his nostrils like that of leather. It grew thicker closer to his eyes, his cheeks—if you could call them that—and rolled into scales that fanned over the back of his horned head.
The moon could be seen again between the two giant milk-white arches behind his small pointed ears.
I was thankful for that much at least. To see it one last time.
“If you’re going to do it, you’d better make it quick. Bite my head off and swallow it whole because I’m not a juicy treat,” I warned, leaning forward to stab my finger at the beast’s snout, “I’ll be the most bitter thing you ever fucking tasted.”
The dragon blinked, but otherwise, it remained wholly still.
I was an idiot.
An idiot crazed with fear. For I knew talking to a monster such as he was futile and just plain stupid. But the apprehension spearing through my every vital organ would kill me before he could. So I scowled up at him, shouting, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Instant regret stopped my heart when the dragon finally moved, and I screamed, slinking back and wondering where in the fuck I’d lost my brain.
The ground shook. The tree above me swayed as the beast rose to his full stomach-turning height and seemed to peer through and above the treetops. Then he gave me one last glowing look before turning and lowering to the ground again.
This time, facing away from me.
His tail flicked. The spikes along his spine fell into a mace of sharper ones at the tail’s tip that would club me into next week if I dared move.
So I didn’t. The creature was waiting for something. Maybe a better, less foolish meal. I curled into the soil, sweat drying to my skin as I shivered and watched the mountain of scales watch the forest.
I startled awake to the loud screech of a bird and sat up instantly.
My head swam. My bleary eyes blinked half a dozen times, absorbing my surroundings as I remembered exactly where I was and what had happened. It had been too much, the ache in my muscles and neck from sleeping beneath a tree wrapped in nothing but fear, to be anything but real.
I rubbed my eyes, the cool tip of my nose. The sun was rising, bringing warmth and chasing away the dark from the forest floor. In its absence, there was no more dragon.
There was a naked male asleep on the grass, surrounded but untouched by fallen leaves and debris, where a beast had once been.
“Colvin,” I croaked, crawling free of the roots and across the grass to him.
I pressed my hand to his shoulder, knowing my cool touch would likely startle him but not caring if it meant he’d wake up.
He wouldn’t. “Colvin,” I said, louder and close to his ear, shoving his arm.
Nothing.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. I knew little of shapeshifting, but I knew enough to know he was supposed to be awake and moving. He was supposed to be just fine…
Warmth left his nose when I placed my fingers beneath it, and after trying to rouse him once more, I knew it was time for help.
I climbed to my feet and ran.
Remembering the barrier I’d hit just hours ago while running from Colvin’s dragon form, I slowed when I saw the castle and placed my hands before me. Within seconds, they met a vibrating warmth that would warn off most creatures looking to roam too close. It shimmered.
And then it fell to reveal a queen.
Olette stood there, a fur-lined cloak draped over her shoulders. Her cheeks were stained pink from the cold, as though she’d been waiting behind the wards for quite some time. “You’re okay.” She dragged her eyes from the trees and set them upon me. “It’s done?”
“He’s…” I struggled to find the words I needed to use. “Help. He needs help.”
Olette’s hand clenched at her chest, at the bronze clasp of her cloak. “Jarron,” she called, her eyes not straying from me. The question was low and clipped. “What happened?”
“I thought he was asleep, but…” I looked back to the forest. “He won’t wake up,” I said, my voice strangled with ice that had nothing to do with the crisp morning and everything to do with a newfound taste of fear.
Gripping her lace nightgown beneath her cloak, she said while looking at the trees, “Go inside,” then called for Jarron again.
The male came running from a side courtyard I’d yet to visit. Skidding through a leaning arch of roses, Persy nearly collided into his back when he neared us and slowed suddenly. “Where is he?”
Their wide eyes assessed me. My torn dress and my wild state.
“Just over here,” I said, and led the way.
Jarron and Persy hurried ahead when they spotted Colvin through the trees, and all I could do was watch as they hefted him back through the foliage toward the clearing.
To the cottage.
Olette walked inside ahead of them, and slowly, I followed, numb to my core though certain the early spring weather wasn’t entirely to blame.
“You should go,” Olette said when I entered. “Return to your rooms.”
“This is normal,” Persy reassured me when I didn’t move from the doorway.
Jarron snorted, grunting out as he shifted the prince over the large bed at the back of the cottage, “He’d already be awake if he’d just fucking listened to me.”
“Don’t,” Persy hissed from the kitchen nook, where she finished filling a pot to place on the stovetop. “What’s happened has happened. He’s okay. That’s what matters.”
“He’s out cold and barely breathing,” I retorted heatedly. “That is not fucking okay.”
At that, Olette quit fussing with the patchwork sheepskin blanket. Her chin lifted as she surveyed me. “When I said you should go, it wasn’t merely a suggestion.”
Perhaps I’d run out of room to care, having narrowly escaped death twice. I didn’t know.
But my own chin lifted as I said without an ounce of regard for what the consequences might be, “I do think that after surviving half the night stuck behind a mass of muscle and scales that I have earned the right to more than just making sure he wakes.”
I waited, breath bated, and wondered if the shrieking beat of my heart could be heard.
But the queen’s mouth fell open. “You were right there?”
Incredulous, I almost shouted, “Where did you think I was?”
“Hiding in a burrow or cave because of course, there was nothing else for you to do,” Olette said, placing a hand to her forehead. “He’d scent you and hunt or wait you out.”
None and all of that had happened. He’d guarded me like a watch hound. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
The queen snorted, then shook her head, seeming as if she might collapse into a fit of laughter or tears at any second.
Sensing this too, Persy intervened, setting a cloth by the stove before collecting Olette’s arm in hers. “He’ll be fine now, so let’s get you home.”
Olette nodded, curses muttered beneath her breath as she left, while I wondered how many saw what I guessed was such a rare sight. A vicious, bloodthirsty queen reduced to shaking tatters.
It was obvious those rumors lived on for a reason, for I didn’t doubt she was all those things and more.
But perhaps only when she needed to be.
Jarron, finished with throwing logs on the fire, was standing by a chest of drawers opposite the end of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest. He eyed me with a heavy amount of skepticism. “So you survived.”
“Disappointed?” I extinguished the burner and dunked the cloth into the water, feeling his gaze like hot coals at my back. I wrung the cloth and rounded the cluttered dining table to the bed. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”
He remained where he was while I gently pressed the warm cloth to Colvin’s forehead and cheeks. The prince’s lips parted when I reached his shoulder. “Do you wish to stay until he wakes because you don’t trust me?”
“I don’t know you, and you refused to feed him when he was in need, so yes,” he said, taking a seat in the armchair below the window and crossing his legs, “I think I will be staying.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t care to. I returned to the kitchen to soak the cloth and wrung it out once more. “We don’t drink blood.”
“But you’re willing to spill it,” he countered.
I couldn’t fault him for saying that, but his attitude was beginning to rankle.
Sighing, I climbed onto the bed this time and scooted close to lay the cloth upon Colvin’s head again. “Perhaps you should spend more time wondering why you’re so concerned about a mating connection that isn’t your own.”
“He’s not just my nephew. He’s my friend. Has been since he could talk.”
“How sweet,” I muttered. “And how long have you known Persy?”
Clipped words turned scathing. “That’s none of your business.”
“And my relationship with this dragon prince I’ve found myself tied to is none of yours, so you can either make me a pot of tea or find someplace else to be.”
Jarron cursed with a short laugh. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
He stared at me for endless minutes, but I hadn’t the energy to bother saying anything more to him. When I next left the bed, my skirts brushing the rim of a large bathing tub beside it, Jarron decided to finally take his leave.
He paused in the doorway, perhaps tempted to say something else, but left instead. I couldn’t say I was sad about it. Not now that I had the prince and this cottage to myself.
If I hadn’t known it was his by scent alone, then the bookshelves lining the walls between the bed, the rusted tub, the plush-looking armchair, and the dining table would surely give it away. All of them towered toward the ceiling in a matching twisting oak.
More books and parchment covered the table and even the countertops. The latter was overflowing with various teas and teacups, some cups clean, others used, and many chipped.
Rounding the circular dining table in the kitchen nook, which took up the front half of the cottage, along with the fireplace, I smiled down at the prince’s messy, curling scrawl. Hurriedly drawn pictures of certain plants and creatures danced across the piles of parchment. More lists with chunky paragraphs below hastily drawn graphs were covered in drops of tea and splashes of food.
One particular piece of parchment was titled new potions, but before I could read it, Colvin groaned.
Wetting the cloth once more, I returned to him with a glass of water in case he woke, and waited while warming his skin.
He likely no longer needed it—likely hadn’t needed too much attention at all with the type of blood coursing through his veins—but maybe I needed it. The excuse to touch him while still marveling at all that’d happened. At him.
This prince I’d found in my family’s dungeon was certainly something. Nothing I would have ever expected to happen to me. Not even in my most dizzying daydreams. And it would seem that in my anguish, I’d easily forgotten that I’d happened to him, too.
That the fates had decided we were fit to be knitted at the soul.
I wondered how he felt about that, although he’d made it clear he was far from disappointed. I still wasn’t sure what I felt about it. What I did feel was foreign—earth turning and impossible to fight in a way that frightened me the more I gave in to it.
Watching him, the severity of his hewn features at ease, it was hard to believe he was the creature who lurked beneath his skin. Though, even when he was awake, I was beginning to see that the two couldn’t be more different.
Yet it was him, the dragon who’d watched me so carefully, who’d growled when I’d dared to look away from him. It had been so very much him. A monster, most certainly, but he hadn’t hurt me. Not at all. Perhaps I’d merely been lucky. Perhaps, even with the instinct to hunt and feed himself, he’d recognized me.
