Page 9 of Mountain of Dragons and Sacrifice

After long moments, I sensed his eyes on me again. His deep voice rumbled, low and gentle in the space between us despite the hint of a growl to the tone. “Is that better? Can you feel your toes now?”

I nodded again. For the first time in what felt like hours, I had stopped shaking.

“I’m going to pick you up now, all right?” The dragon remained where he was, and he didn’t move, as if waiting for me to give a sign of my permission.

He’d been right that I had little choice. I gave another tense nod. With that, he stood and scooped me up from the stone.

I couldn’t help the squeak that escaped me, and I squeezed my eyes shut again. My breath caught, tense rather than shaking.

The dragon fumbled me for a few moments as he tucked the blanket more securely and warmly around me. Then he settled me in his arms, curled against his chest. He was rather warm, and once I got over the feeling of having a stranger’s iron-muscled arms around me, I snuggled deeper into the blanket, rested my head against his chest, and let myself sag with the exhaustion of the cold and draining adrenaline.

With a whump, the dragon’s wings beat the air, launching the two of us into the sky.

I whimpered, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut. There was too much I didn’t want to see. The ground vanishing beneath us. The emptiness of the air around us. My home disappearing forever. The dragon’s face, far too close to me where I might accidentally glimpse something I shouldn’t.

The wind whipping by us was even colder at this height. Flakes of snow stung my face. I tucked myself deeper into the blanket, warm in its voluminous layers and the dragon’s heat radiating from him.

I must have fallen asleep—or lost consciousness—driven there by exhaustion and cold and the terror of the night.

The slight jolt of the dragon’s feet touching down nudged me toward wakefulness. But I didn’t fully rouse myself until a few more doors opened and shut, then he was setting me on something soft in a dark room.

A bed.

I tried to scramble away from him, too tangled up in the massive wool blanket to do more than flail.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” The dragon was already moving away, his voice retreating. “I’ll send in Phoebe. She’ll look after you. If you need anything tomorrow, you can ask her or my steward. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

With that, the dragon left, accompanied by the creaking of a door opening, then the clunk of it shutting behind him.

I gripped the blanket tight around me, huddled on the bed where he’d put me.

Well, I wasn’t dead. I hadn’t been eaten. The dragon had taken nothing from me, though he had carted me off to his castle for some unknown purpose.

He was coming back tomorrow night. For what reason? Must be something ominous.

The dragon had only been gone for a few minutes before a soft knock sounded on the door. It creaked open, outlined by a cheery orange glow, a moment before a woman stuck her head in. Her curly hair coiled around her head while the candlelight illuminated the lines around her eyes. While it was hard to tell in the dark, she must have been in her late forties, perhaps early fifties. “I’m Phoebe. Is it all right if I come in?”

I nodded, then realized she probably couldn’t see much of me, huddled in the mass of blanket as I was. I swallowed and forced my mouth to open, my tongue to form the word. “Yes.” It came out more a croak than anything else.

But she heard it anyway because she nudged the door the rest of the way open. With a candle in one hand and pulling a cart with the other, she bustled into the room. “You poor thing. Are you hungry? I have a bowl of thick, lamb stew that’s been kept hot.”

I started to shake my head. Surely my stomach was still too twisted into knots to eat.

But as the scent of something savory and meaty wafted to my nose, my stomach gave a lurch, then a grumble. I’d barely nibbled on anything all day, and the thought of just holding the bowl in my hands to warm my fingers sounded lovely just then.

I changed my shake to a nod, then peeled my fingers from their death grip on the wool, letting the blanket fall away as if I were emerging from a cocoon.

The woman, Phoebe, set the bowl of stew in my hands, then handed over a spoon.

I sniffed at the stew. Would it be safe to eat?

The dragon wouldn’t have carted me off to his castle if he’d intended to kill me right away. He had mentioned he liked lamb. Perhaps he’d had a bowl of stew earlier in the night before carrying me off.

Maybe that was why he’d been so uninterested in eating me. He’d snatched me on a full stomach.

The food was likely safe. Perhaps it was intended to fatten me up, but there would be nothing gained by refusing to eat it except a death by starvation instead of by dragon. Would starvation be better? It would certainly be longer than death by dragon.

I cradled the bowl in both hands for a moment longer, the warmth seeping into my bones as I gathered the strength to pick up the spoon.

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