Page 32 of Dragons' Future

“A brutal start to a great order. But then, no throne is seized without spilled blood. Just ask your king.” Emric nods to Ettienne.

Ettienne lifts his face, his eyes bloodshot. “Why would Roshana let Emric go exploring for new lands? Not…” he pants between words, “not the kind of journey you make secretly and return in time for supper.” Ettienne tries and fails to sit up straighter. “Plus, five eggs from one dame? Impossible.”

Anger flashes in Emric’s face. “Roshana was not the last dame on the continent,” he snaps at Ettienne. “Not then, and not after. Others have been… convinced… to help. As Kitterny will help.” The malice in his eyes grows as Emric weighs me with his gaze and smiles. “I thought you looked familiar, scalewench. But now, I understand. It was your mother who drew the last set of runes for me. She did an exceptional job of it too.”

No. No. “My mother would never have helped you.”

“Never underestimate what a dame will do to protect her egg. It was fortunate that she carried one, for we’d just lost an egg.” He clicks his tongue, his smile widening. The bastard is enjoying this. “You never even knew she was pregnant, did you? Dragons and their lies.”

No. No it's not true. It can’t be true. But even as I tell myself that, my stomach drops. My mother’s song. The magic’s pull to bring me here. It isn’t a coincidence. It is my mother’s doing. Emric might have forced her to draw the runes, but he didn’t know she did more than that. My mother infused her love and memories into the marks. She charged them. A last hope that one day, when I was strong enough and had a pack, I would hear the lullaby and come to protect the egg she could not. Tears sting my eyes.

“Yes now you see,” Emric tells me.

He has no idea.

“Now it is your turn to serve the goddess Orion,” Emric continues.

“Go to hell.”

“You’ve worked out by now that only a dame can build the eggs’ womb,” Emric continues as if I’d not spoken. “You broke the one prior dames built, and now you shall fix it. It’s simple, really. Rebuild what you broke, binding the planks with your blood until all is restored to how it should be.”

“I will never?—”

“Tsk, tsk. Let’s skip the ‘never’. I’ve been through this chat a dozen times in the past centuries. It always ends the same.” He reaches into his robes and uses a handkerchief to pull out what looks like a pair of wide wooden bracelets, the same color as the crate wood. He tosses them to Cyril.

Cyril catches the bracelets on instinct, then drops them to the floor with a hiss. Pain shoots through the bond between us.

“Put them on,” the priest orders.

Cyril growls.

“No? Am I not convincing?” Emric makes that motion with his hand again. The eggs scream. He makes another, and the tattoo on my back blazes with pain that shoots down each nerve. I bite my cheek to keep from screaming, but drop to my knees.

Cyril bears his teeth, murder flashing in his eyes.

“Kill me and she dies by the way,” Emric says a heartbeat before Cyril can launch himself at the priest. “I thought that much would be evident.”

My back arches. This time, I fail to hold in the scream.

Cyril rushes to me, but I’m convulsing too much for him to hold me safely.

“Intricate magic, that tattoo,” Emric continues in a conversational tone, as if I’m not writhing on the floor. “Difficult,fickle magic that only a few in our order can use. And even then only in close quarters. I’ve been working for years toward a more scalable solution, but alas there is still much to learn. I really should have suspected something when it manifested the way it did on her. Perhaps all this unpleasantness could have been avoided.”

“Let her go,” Cyril shouts, stepping between Emric and me. As if he can put himself in the middle of the magic the priest uses for my torment.

“Her fate is entirely in your hands. You can put an end to this anytime you wish.”

The bracelets. I’ve no notion what they do, but it cannot be good. “Don’t do it,” I manage to say through my teeth. “Don’t.”

“I’ve been told that when that particular rune is active, it feels like being skinned alive,” Emric continues, gesturing to me. The words are becoming harder and harder for me to hear through the agony. “I could let you feel it for yourself, but this is more meaningful, no? I remember the feeling well. I recall every moment of watching helplessly while a dragon shredded the person I loved right in front of me.”

My vision flashes. The world spins. When I can focus again, Cyril is reaching for the bracelets.

“No,” I beg him. “Don’t do it.”

"A hard dilemma,” Emric says to Cyril and cocks his head to the side, as if watching a curious experiment play out before him. “You don't know what those bracelets do. But you suspect that whatever it is, will likely hurt you. You don’t want that. At least she doesn’t. But each moment you hesitate, she is the one getting hurt. So who will it be? Hmmmm.”

“Me,” Cyril pants. “Take me.”

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