Page 32 of Mountain of Dragons and Sacrifice

If anything, seeing my parents’ terror, I felt the disconnect even more keenly. I’d been trying to be a good maiden sacrifice and follow what I’d been taught, but in the past three weeks, I’d grown. The dragon had prompted me to think more deeply about my beliefs.

“How did you get here? Did you escape the dragon?” Mama’s eyes were so wide they were like twin moons in her starkly white face, her gaze unfocused as if she wasn’t even seeing me there in front of her. “You must go back. You were given to the dragon. He will be angry if you escape. Perhaps if you hurry back, he won’t know you were gone.”

I opened my mouth to tell them the dragon had been the one to bring me, but I snapped my mouth shut. I didn’t think they would believe me if I told them. They were too wrapped up in terror of the dragon to listen to a word I said.

Mama shoved me toward the door. “You must not let anyone see you here.”

Bapi opened the door for me, his voice low and pained. “You must go.”

“All right, Mama, Bapi. I’ll go.” Somehow, I kept my voice steady. Somehow, I managed to hug each of them and tumble out the door. I stumbled my way back through the olive grove.

By the time I reached the dragon, my eyes were too blurred with tears to see his face. I choked on sobs. Shook with them. “My parents…they…”

The hazy form gave a nod, as if he’d expected this.

Of course he had. He’d warned me that this would happen. I just hadn’t believed him, thinking his words were a threat instead of a kindness.

If I’d been wrong about those words, how many of the other things he’d told me should I have believed all along?

The dragon placed a cloak over my shoulders before he scooped me up in the safety of his arms.

I buried my face in his tunic and let myself cry as I hadn’t cried even on the night he’d taken me from the stone in the forest.

I didn’t remember anything of the flight back to the dragon’s castle. Much like that first night, I didn’t register much until the dragon was setting me down on the bed in my chamber.

As soon as I was safely deposited, the dragon backed away, giving me space, as he always did. He started to turn, as if to leave.

“Wait! Don’t go!” I swiped the tears from my face with my sleeve.

The dragon halted, then turned to more fully face me again. In the darkness of my room, I couldn’t see his face.

But it was time I did so.

I’d lived with fear of the dragon and of seeing his face my whole life.

But it was wrong. The village elders, my parents, our whole village, were wrong about the dragon. It was time I stopped playing mind games with myself, trying to twist the evidence I saw with my own eyes to fit the fear I’d been raised to feel. Tonight, my parents had proved just how damaging the fear was.

I was done being afraid.

With steady fingers, a peace settling in my chest, I reached for the candle. While the dragon watched me, his arms crossed, I lit the candle.

Chapter Nine

I thought it had been faith to cling to what the village elders had taught growing up, despite seeing the truth from the dragon’s word.

But it took far more faith to believe the dragon’s word and light that candle.

The wick flared to life, and I lifted the candle high, shining the light onto the dragon’s face.

Evander stood there in his familiar blue tunic. Yet the wings fluttering behind his back were foreign to the Evander I knew. Something about his face was also sharper, more reptilian and less human. Or less fae, rather. Even his eyes were different. Still blue, but now streaked with amber.

Perhaps I should have been surprised, seeing him there where the dragon should be. But the sight of him was so strangely right even as it was so wrongly strange that there was no room for surprise.

His shoulders relaxed as he released a breath. “Finally.”

“So…nothing bad is going to happen, right?” My fingers trembled as I set the candle on the table beside the bed, a bitter tightness still quaking through me. As much as I wished, I couldn’t immediately banish that old fear from being taught that something bad would happen if I looked at the dragon’s face. It was a struggle to meet Evander’s gaze when everything in me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m not about to get swept away to face tedious trials because I lit the candle? Or you’re not going to be called away because of some curse you’re under?”

“Nope. No curse. No tedious trials.” Evander’s mouth curved into his familiar, warm smile, his words holding a hint of his chuckle, though it was deeper and more growling in this form. A glimpse of fangs glinted in the candlelight as he spoke. “All that’s going to happen is that I’ll finally explain what’s going on.”

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