Page 9 of King of Fire and Scales

Then, much to his dismay, she rebutted, biting into each word confidently.

“You are the King of the Mountains. I live in the human territory. So your order falls short in these parts.”

Drake sighed. He swallowed, re-centering himself to appeal to her intellect. He thought she was enthralled by his revelations and would eagerly oblige his orders to escape the drab existence of a humdrum caregiver.

“Listen to me, Thalia. A Creation Sorceress is a valuable commodity among the Wildwoods. Not only for gracious leaders such as me, but for far more malevolent ones…”

He turned toward the room where she had taken her frail father. When he looked back, her eyes had glassed over.

“Another of my kind seeks you out to do his bidding. He is also a dragon shifter. But he is far less…civil.”

Thalia scoffed, which only made the king’s blood run hot once more.

“Then I will refuse him too. I will not leave my father. I will not do as some dragon king demands.”

There was a foot of space between them, so Drake closed it off. She stayed leaning against the wall, pressing her chest out like a wild creature, ready to defend her kin.

Drake raised his eyebrows at her flippantly, careful not to become lost in the spin of her gleaming, slightly frightened stare. Not to mention her scent, that lemon-salt blend.

“Thalia, Creation Sorceresses are not only valuable when they are living. Deceased, your very spirit can be distilled into a potent source of raw, creative power. That is not something my foe is beyond indulging in.”

The king watched as the pulse in Thalia’s neck began to hop up and down like a panicked hare.

In the dimming slants of light, he waited. He imagined the ambrosia of the sweet nape of her neck as he did.

FIVE

THALIA

Until the point that Drake sneered at her to pack her things, Thalia had been having an interesting, even pleasant time. It wasn’t every day that a dragon shifter—and a king, no less—came to visit a human village and proclaimed that she was a sorceress beyond the reaches of her wildest dreams.

He had been courteous, receptive to courtesy, and refined in a way that she imagined all royals were raised to be. But the moment she rebuffed his orders, he turned a corner, shadows descending upon his neat and regal exterior.

She was frightened, yes, but more so for her father. There had been a handful of ruffians who infiltrated the village every now and then, some driven by the innocence of hunger, others with slightly more malicious intentions.

A hoodlum had once used a rabbit as target practice for his own amusement and left it splayed across an elderly neighbor's doorstep.

She had shrieked and sought out Thalia’s help.

The abiding witch had gripped the axe she left resting against the garden shed and chased them off. Bratty children, and nothing more, disappeared with feverish laughter into the night.

But standing before her was no child. He was tall, perhaps nearly seven feet, and lean like one of those wrestlers she’d heard so much about at the village tavern. He was as solid as an ancient tree. Cords of muscle stood out from his neck and the patch of forearm that peeked from beneath his cloak, making Thalia think of the vines that laced around her garden fortress.

He would not be scared off by her axe, or even a sternly raised voice.

Thalia pushed away from against the wall, even-footed, and folded her arms over her chest. The king was glaring at her cruelly.

“Did you not hear me? I won’t go. There is nothing you can say that will make me.”

Just as she was finding momentum, she spotted her father hobbling out of his bedroom. He looked pasty with fear.

“Listen to him, my child,” he pleaded with her. “Go with him and do not talk back. He is a king, after all.”

“Listen to your father,” Drake snapped, smiling smugly.

He then raised his voice into a harsh bark, telling the soldiers that had traveled with him to begin packing her things.

Her father remained hidden behind a sheet that she drew in the evenings when she couldn’t sleep, nestling herself under warm blankets next to throbbing embers of the dying fire. His eyes were hazy like that of a senior dog, afraid and cautious.

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