Page 20 of Beautiful Beast

The three dragons angled themselves toward a goal I couldn’t see, heading towards jagged rock faster than was possible. Too fast for any of us to survive when we crashed into the mountain faces.

I was about to scream when the red dragon carrying me tucked in his wings and dove through a passage that was too small to breathe, and for three full heartbeats, we dropped.

Wings snapped open, catching us and slowing inside what looked like a hollowed out peak. I merely caught a glimpse of what looked like hallways and fires, but my dragon split off from the others, flying lightly down a smaller passage. It shrank as we went, getting smaller and darker, the air growing damp.

Torches lit the stone we flew by, and dizziness suddenly struck. He moved me, shifting me to one massive claw, and?—

A scream fell out of me as I was dropped.

The ground was only a few feet beneath me. I tumbled to a stop on a stone floor. I whipped my head up to be met with a clang of metal bars over me. I was in a cage. Or a cell. There were others around me, but they were all empty.

Above, the ruby dragon glared down at me with large golden eyes, assessing me, just as he had before stealing me away. But this time he did nothing, turning and stalking back down the hallway we came through, this time on his feet.

I blew out a breath when he disappeared, lowering myself back onto the rough stone floor.

At least this place was warm. A large brazier filled with flame burned right across from my cell, quickly banishing the lingering cold in my limbs. Thank goodness.

It allowed me to take a deep breath and rest for a moment before I investigated my surroundings. There was a bed in the corner which looked fairly comfortable, complete with very warm looking blankets. A pitcher of water sat near the bed, and there was a hole that sank into darkness in the other corner, making clear what it was meant to be used for.

“Varí,” I whispered, lifting my skirts off my legs. “I believe it’s safe to come out now.”

He let go, sliding down my side and came racing out, looking at me like he was making sure I was all right. His coloring had morphed to the palest pink, but it darkened as I watched, like he’d been cold too and was quickly coming back to life.

The pouch Helena sewed for him still rested on his back, and I still had the knife buckled to my thigh. I didn’t think it would do much good against a full grown dragon, but it made me feel better all the same.

If I was going to have a chance at defending myself at all, I needed to make sure I wouldn’t get tripped up the way I had in the garden. Now that I was in a place of warmth, and there were blankets, I had options. It didn’t seem like they were going to freeze me to death.

“How clever are you?” I asked Varí, looking at him as he explored the cage. His body was small enough to go through the gaps in the bars easily, but he did not. Merely examined all sides—including the one at our backs hewn from pure stone—before returning and sitting in front of me with his head cocked.

“Think you could help me get out of the dress?”

He coughed a little flame and looked at me. Was that what I meant?

I laughed quietly. “No, that’s all right. I’m going to use the knife. But if I need the fire, I’ll let you know.”

It was for the best. The laces in this dress were well hidden, in order to create something which looked seamless.

Pulling the knife out of its sheath, I went to work, slicing the dress away from me in pieces. I managed to get the heavy skirt to drop on the ground and blew out a breath. “Thank the Fallen.”

The rest of the bodice didn’t take long, leaving me in nothing but my shift. I didn’t care. It would be much easier to run or put up any kind of fight without being hampered by yards of lace and silk. I put my grandmother’s necklace around my neck, replaced my blade in its sheath, kicked the remnants of my dress into a pile at the end of the bed, and looked around.

My shoes had fallen off as soon as we took off, so if I was getting out of here, I’d need to find something for my feet.

But was I getting out of here?

I didn’t know. My base instinct to run and hide still roared within, screaming at me to listen and get the hell out. The reality wasn’t nearly as certain. Dragons. I’d been taken by dragons.

Like the old offerings, my mind whispered.

There was something I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

I sat on the bed and patted beside me. Varí leapt and fluttered his way onto the bed, curling up beside me. “Maybe I’ll be part of a story someday,” I said to him. “Like the people long ago. Maybe mine will make a difference to someone the way theirs made a difference to me.”

One of the many stories my grandmother told me. Back before the dragon wars, humans would offer themselves to the dragons. They never returned, and their families were always provided for, but no one knew the truth of it. The dragons said that humans were needed to maintain the magic of the world, but they wouldn’t take anyone who was unwilling.

That was before the war.

After, humans were still taken from time to time. But the dragons no longer asked for permission.

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