Page 65 of Fire in Stone

Isar shifted her weight to another foot.

“If she did, he abandoned her,” she observed casually. “We found her on the riverbank, half-naked, hurt, and alone.”

A needle of loss pierced my heart. Did Elex really abandon me? Would he bring me here just to leave me?

I didn’t really know him. We’d spent only a few days together. Somehow, I wished to believe in the best in him, despite him taking me from my world against my will. I wanted to believe Elex wouldn’t just leave me like that. But then it meant something happened to him, and I feared the worst.

Mother’s expression turned calculating as she made another circle around me, inspecting me with a new scrutiny.

“A human…” she said slowly. Raising her hand, she lifted a strand of my hair and rubbed it between her fingers. “With hair the color of the royal flame.” Her chest expanded with a heavy sigh. “It can bring a lot of trouble to you, child.” Her voice rang with worry. “And to us, by default.”

Ertee shifted closer. “We can’t send her away. Mother, please. She can’t even warm herself. She’ll die out there by nightfall.”

A shudder ran through me at the realization of how true that statement was. With the temperatures below the freezing point out there, I wouldn’t last long in my wet clothes. “Nightfall” sounded like a generous assessment at this point.

Mother settled her heavy stare on me. “Answer me truthfully, human. Do you have a dragon interested in you?”

The only dragon I knew was Elex. And I couldn’t say with certainty whether he was “interested in me” or even if he was still alive.

“No.” I said. In this world, like in any other, I had no one to count on but myself. “It’s just me. Always has been.”

She rubbed her chin, lost in deep concentration.

“Has anyone seen you coming here with her?” she asked Isar.

The other woman stood taller, her shoulders rolled back.

“No.”

I guessed Weyx didn’t count, since he was now dead and couldn’t speak of what he saw, anyway.

Mother nodded with satisfaction.

“Good. No one can know the human is here.” She touched the strand of my hair hanging over my face again. “This needs to go. Shave… No, use the tar tree wax to get rid of every single hair of this color on her body. And remove this thing from her nose.” She pointed at the piercing in my nostril. Her eyes, the color of the chilly winter sky, met mine. “If you’re smart enough to stay quiet and out of sight, you may survive, human.”

Nineteen

AMBER

Ifought them as they tried to lay me down on one of the many long stones in the other end of the hall. I even landed one satisfying blow on Isar’s high cheekbone. Though it hurt my hand more than it affected her in any way. She caught my hand, then twisted my arm, effectively immobilizing me.

“It will be done, one way or another, human,” she hissed in my face, her hot breath hitting my chilled skin. “All you can do is make it worse.”

“Here.” Ertee searched through the folds of her robe with trembling fingers, producing a small vial of shimmering liquid. “Take a sip of this.” With a glance over her shoulder in the direction where Mother had left the hall a few minutes ago, she brought the vial to my lips.

I jerked my head aside. “I’m not drinking it. I don’t know what it is.”

“Smart,” Zenada murmured approvingly, sitting on my legs as they had me pinned to a flat slab of granite erected in front of a female statue at the end of the hall. “But make an exception just this once. Youshoulddrink it.”

“It’ll make you care less about what we’re about to do to you,” Ertee urged. “Trust me, it’ll make it better.”

“I trust no one,” I snapped. “Definitely not a bunch of weak-minded females who blindly follow some psychopathic woman who ordered them to hurt me.”

Isar’s eyes flashed with anger.

“Weak-mindedwould be to refuse to take precautions. This world isn’t safe for anyone who’s different. You’re the only human in the whole of Dakath. How long do you think you’d last? Especially with hair of the color that belongs to the royal bloodline? It’ll bring attention to you when your best bet to survive is to remain invisible.”

Even having my hair color was now a crime somehow. I’d been in this world for but a hot minute, and I’d already become a criminal here too.

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