Page 71 of Fated for his Flame

“Trust me, I would love to stop this stupidity,” she said tiredly. “But I would alienate a lot of people if I tried to forbid the old ways. It would create more problems than it’s worth.”

“Unbelievable,” I said.

“If he wants to get beaten by you publicly, then that’s his choice,” she said. Then her voice turned had. “But the fight will be to the first scale shed. Not to the death. Is that understood?”

There was no room for argument. I nodded simply, glad I wouldn’t have to kill Caine.

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” I told him. “But I’m not going easy on you. So, if you want to reconsider, go for it. This won’t make things better.”

Caine just laughed. “Oh, but it will. You’ll see.”

“Five days,” the sovereign said. “Then we will meet. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, storming out of the office before any further idiocy could be unleashed.

My father was waiting.

“I hate you. You’re a shit head of house and an even more pathetic excuse for a father,” I spat before he could get a word in. “Right now, I should be coming to you for support and advice. But I can’t. Because you suck. So just politely fuck off already and save your whining for your offspring who still want anything to do with you because we’re done.”

Then I was gone, rushing to the roof and taking to the skies.

I needed to clear my head and order my thoughts.

Because if I didn’t, the darkness would get me. I had nothing left to fight it off anymore.

Chloe had taken the light with her.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chloe

Dragon prison accommodations left a lot to be desired. The cold rock slab hewn straight from the wall was uneven, and the thin straw pallet on top did nothing to help. There was no pillow either.

I sat with my back to the wall, fighting back shiver after shiver. The glani was not a warm garment, and down in the bowels of the palace, there was a distinct lack of heat to offset my exposed skin.

For the millionth time, I glanced around the cell. The one thing it had going for it was the surprising spaciousness. Set directly into what I had to assume was bedrock, the only way in and out was a small door-sized hole cut from solid rock. It was at the far end of a ten-foot-long hallway that opened into the huge cell.

I’d paced it out after the first hour. It was forty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. The ceiling had to be at least twenty feet high. All rock. It had taken me several hours of pondering to finally understand why it was so large.

They were meant to hold dragon shifters. The prison cell was big enough to allow them to shift, and the narrow hallway was long enough and thin enough the door was out of reach of a dragon claw.

With the mysteries of my new residence unlocked, I settled in for the long haul. Surely, they would send someone down to question me. That was my current line of thought.

Would it be questioning? Interrogation? Or outright torture? That was just one more problem. There was such a lack of intelligence about dragons and their methods that I didn’t know what to expect. That unknowing was, in some ways, worse than knowing.

The sound of activity at the door brought me back to the present. I frowned, consulting my internal clock. It was far too early for my next meal. I figured they were bringing one at every six-hour intervals, but it had been somewhere between three and four hours since the last.

“So, it begins,” I mumbled, though I didn’t bother getting up. They could come drag me to wherever they wanted to question me. I wasn’t going to help them.

A single person emerged from the unlit hallway as the door closed behind them. To my surprise, it was the sovereign herself.

The weight of the dragon-scale blade at my back grew heavy, a reminder of the only advantage I had left. Of course, I wasn’t sure how I would use it. It wasn’t like I could overpower her. I would have to stab her in the back.

Killing the ruler of all dragons didn’t seem like a good way to prove I wasn’t a traitor. And taking her hostage to demand my release wasn’t an option either. She would simply grab my wrist as I held the blade to her throat and shatter it with a squeeze. No, I would be better off biding my time. Waiting.

“I must admit,” she said, speaking first, “I was as surprised as Silas when I was shown the evidence.”

“Evidence,” I said slowly.

---