Page 15 of Fae Reckoning

I began to wonder if the queen would forgive me if I prostrated myself to her and did everything she ever wanted for the rest of my miserable life. Would that even be enough to save Larissa? And what of Elowyn? She was mymate. Though I was loath to admit it, that was a bond that surpassed even my commitment to protecting my little sister.

Without seeing any way out of the tangled clusterfuck I’d woven for us, I forced my damning thoughts to quiet. If there was any chance of our survival, I needed to remain sharp and aware.

Larissa started down what I believed was the final set of stairs.

“Hold up,” I said so softly even she, immediately ahead of me, might not have heard.

She stopped and turned toward me, expectant.

“Let me go first,” I said.

Although time was working against us, I pulled in several steadying breaths before taking the final steps at a measured pace. I was about to confront dragons. By any standards, they were savage beasts—and these werecaged and torturedsavage beasts.

When I emerged into the cavern, I was once more struck by how very vast it was. I couldn’t begin to make out its farthest walls. The ceiling was high enough that I sensed it more than I could actually see it. The remains of the pygmy ogres the burnt-orange dragon had charred to a crisp were still down here, their bodieslittle more than bones, with the occasional clinging clump of blackened flesh, some teeth strewn across the floor. Their remains mixed with those of so many different dragons, in all sorts of sizes and colors, in varying states of decomposition.

In death, captor and captive weren’t all that different.

Larissa gasped softly at my back as I looked to where the burnt-orange dragon had last been. The creature had been badly injured and chained, but no less magnificent for it. Hiroshi and I had unchained the beast but hadn’t otherwise been able to free it.

Where the dragon had stood, a much smaller one hunched in its stead. This dragon was a brilliant, iridescent green whose luster hadn’t suffered despite overwhelming evidence of his ill treatment. When he crouched into his front legs, he hissed at us like a serpent. Though my survival instincts roared at me to tuck tail and run, I met his punishing black eyes head-on. In response, he added a snarl to his hiss. The combination made the hairs along my body stand on end.

“That can’t be good,” Larissa muttered nervously.

Unlike the burnt-orange dragon, who’d been restrained by metal chains, this creature was shackled by the same shadow-links Ivar had used on us before, which meant both the dragon’s power and his body were bound. The dragon’s torso was perhaps four times the size of Bolt, who was a massive stallion, one of the largest ever of his kind.

Grooves as wide as my wrists raked down bothsides of his ribcage, the raw flesh a deep, dark violet that pooled with blood in more of that rich hue. A puddle had collected beneath him. All four of his legs had been sliced apart until muscle was exposed, hanging free from the leg in one instance like a lolling tongue. The barb that had been the cusp of his tail lay on the floor, discarded like trash. My breath hitched—the poor bastard had been castrated as well. His ball sack lay on the floor next to the end of his tail.

Bile burned the back of my throat as undiluted rage came to a swift boil in my veins.

“The queen did this?” Larissa asked me on a thready exhale that sounded as devastated as I’d felt the first time I’d been down here.

Now I just wanted to punish the queen as badly as she’d hurt these creatures—as much as she’d hurt me and those I cared about. I wanted her to comprehend true pain, to experience every agony she’d ever caused another a hundred-fold—a thousand-fold!

“You haven’t even seen the worst of it yet,” I said miserably.

“What? How can it get worse than this?”

“You don’t want to know.” I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that the dark recesses of this putrid pit were lined with dozens, maybe hundreds of dragons. The world was bad enough as it was; I didn’t want to have to be the one to reveal to her what true evil looked like.

The dragon crouched his crested head farther down and hissed another time—before drawing in adeep, filling inhale, just as the burnt-orange dragon had done moments before incinerating the pygmy ogres that were currently crunching underfoot. Without taking my eyes off the dragon, I shoved Larissa back into the stairwell. My sister was mid-protest when I released her and raised my hands toward the dragon, remaining in the open space of his prison, but not so far that I couldn’t jump back behind the protective stone casing of the stairs should he breathe fire.

When. When he breathes fire, I corrected. His chest was expanding alarmingly. He’d exhale fire at any moment.

“Hey,” I snapped at him, not knowing anything better to do to draw his attention and distract him from his attack.

The dragon pinned glassy, accusatory eyes on me—and held his breath.

“I mean you no harm.” I gestured with one hand behind me. “Wemean you no harm, I swear it.”

I couldn’t tell if he understood me. Elowyn theorized that Saffron knew what she said and just pretended he didn’t to suit him. But she hadn’t confirmed it.

I inched my lumoon forward so it would reveal the sincerity in my face. “We want to help you. We want to find a way out of here for all of us.”

The dragon didn’t release the breath he was holding, but a cant of his large head suggested he was listening.

“We’re enemies of the queen too?—”

He hissed brutally, over and over again, reminding me of a sneakle about to attack, its fur on end, its back arched, teeth bared.

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