Page 8 of Mountain of Dragons and Sacrifice

There was a sawing, fraying sound, then the bindings snapped. The hand pulled the rope free from my ankles.

I tugged my feet away from him. What was he doing? Why would he cut me free? Did he want me unbound for some reason? To hunt me down in the forest before he ate me? To take me back to his cave to toy with me before the end?

Then his hand was on my wrists, and my eyes flew open. He was a black shadow against the starlight, a knife glinting in his hand.

I wasn’t supposed to look at him. I would anger him if I saw his face.

I squeezed my eyes shut again, even as the knife descended.

I’d asked him to kill me quickly before he ate me. For some reason, I hadn’t actually expected him to do it.

The knife sawed at the rope, then the tightness around my wrists loosened. Fingers pulled the rope away, then cupped my hands in his larger ones, his thumbs lightly tracing the skin just above the pained ring around my wrists.

The dragon gave a sigh. “I’m sorry for this. Can you sit up?”

Could I sit up? I was shaking too hard to move, much less sit up. My teeth chattered so loudly I couldn’t think.

But the shakes worsened at the thought of staying as I was, laid out on the stone as a feast for a dragon. Gritting my teeth, shudders quaking down my spine, I rolled to my elbows, then pushed to a sitting position. I wrapped my arms over my stomach and curled in on myself. “Yes. Yes, I can sit up. I’m fine, see? All fine.”

I lifted my lids enough to peek at the dragon. The starlight was too faint to see much of him, but how much was too much?

He stepped back and produced a huge blanket from somewhere—he didn’t appear to have a pack—and held it out to me. “You must be cold.”

Yes. So cold. I lunged forward and snagged the blanket from him, my fingers sinking into thick, woven wool. When he let it go, I nearly dropped it, the weight more than I had expected.

The blanket was huge. I heaved most of it onto my lap, then struggled to tug some of it around my shoulders, shaking from the cold the whole time.

The dragon reached out, as if to help, but he halted and remained where he was.

Why had he given me a blanket? Did he prefer his meals warm rather than chilled? He had said he liked roast lamb. But it seemed breathing fire might have been the quicker way to toast me than wrapping me in a blanket. Wouldn’t the blanket’s threads get caught in his teeth? Did dragons breathe fire, as the legends said?

It was hard seeing him as the type to eat people when he appeared so human, except for the wings.

“I will take you back to my castle tonight.” The dragon knelt in the slush before the stone, peering up at me in a way that was dangerously close to splashing his face with starlight. “I will need to pick you up and carry you. Would that be all right?”

I forced myself to nod, even as I gripped the blanket tighter, its thick warmth soothing, as if it could protect me from the dragon’s intentions. A delusion, of course. The wool was a paltry shield, even if it was better than the flimsy dress I wore underneath. “Do I really have a choice?”

“Would you rather stay here and freeze?”

“Yes, actually.”

The back of my neck prickled with the searching weight of the dragon’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look up or meet his gaze. I knew better than that.

The dragon sighed, his breath clouding the space between us. “I wish I could honor your choice, but you can’t stay here. You’ll die. I know you don’t believe me, but you don’t have to fear me. I won’t hurt you.”

Oh, sure, he wouldn’t hurt me. Just carry me off to his castle to do who knew what with me.

But he had a point about the dying part. If I stayed here, either I’d freeze to death or the wolves would get me. Perhaps I’d freeze, and then the wolves would gnaw on my dead body.

I was free now. I could make a run for it down that path back to my village.

Yet the memory of the head elder’s cold gaze and his wife’s clutching fingers sent a shiver through me. Perhaps it was foolish, but they didn’t feel any safer than the dragon.

Besides, if I ran, I’d endanger the whole village. The dragon would come for me, and who knew how much of the village he’d burn. He might seem strangely polite now, but that was because he’d gotten the sacrifice he’d demanded.

Reaching out slowly, the dragon tugged the blanket more thoroughly around me, tucking it around my feet. He cradled both of my feet in his hands. His palms were surprisingly warm, even through the layers of wool.

My toes tingled as feeling flooded back into them. I wasn’t even getting that skittering, want-to-pull-away feeling. Being able to feel my toes again was just too nice.

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