Page 23 of The Ruby Dragon Prince
The doors of all the cells in that particular section of the dungeon were made up entirely of bars. I assumed it was so that the guards could keep an eye on everything the prisoners were doing. There were only two other prisoners in the dungeon besides Rufus, and they both looked like exhausted servants who might have been happy to have a few moments of peace and rest as they were punished for whatever supposed crime they’d committed.
Rufus was in a cell halfway down the row. He paced restlessly in a tight circle, shaking his hands and grumbling, like he was trying to summon his magic but couldn’t manage it.
“Rufus!” I whispered, rushing up to grab the bars of his cell.
Rufus turned toward the door, then jolted, as if he could only just now see me, see all of us.
“Tovey,” he said in return, keeping his voice as quiet as I figured he was able as he ran to the bars. He wrapped his hands around mine, and without either of us thinking much about it, he leaned in so that we could kiss through the rods of cold iron.
“Thank Goddess we found you,” I breathed out when our kiss ended.
“You little minx,” Rufus said, his smile growing. It was warm and wicked and made me shiver. “You blocked my magic.”
“I didn’t try to,” I whispered.
Rufus laughed. “Why are you being so timid?”
I straightened incredulously, hating to be called timid by anyone, let alone my mate. “The guards might hear us.”
“Not with that clever protection spell you’ve cast,” Rufus chuckled.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I said, relieved the guards couldn’t hear us or see us. “We came to rescue you.”
Rufus grinned and nodded to my brothers. “So I can see.”
I winced slightly, then asked, “How do we do that?”
“By giving me back my power,” he said.
“I don’t know how.”
Rufus seemed delighted by my utter lack of knowledge and experience with magic. “Say the words.”
I blinked, then said, “I give you back your power?”
Immediately, a rush of wind, like what he’d been conjuring in the garden, blew through the dungeon. I could feel Rufus’s power swell as it returned to him. If the magic I’d used was like a candle, Rufus’s was like the sun.
“Blimey, what was that?” one of the guards exclaimed as the wind blew the torches lining the walls out, plunging the dungeon into pitch darkness.
“Get the lamps lit again!” Rottum shouted.
We heard fumbling in the dark. My brothers groaned or exclaimed or hummed, and I felt them all cluster together behind me.
A moment later, it was as if the bars of Rufus’s cage were gone entirely. He stepped right to me, taking my hand.
“Trust me,” he said in a low, confident voice. To my brothers, he said, “Hold onto each other, and follow.”
I grasped Rufus’s hand with one of mine and reached back to take Obi’s with the other. I couldn’t see a thing, but I trusted Rufus. He walked us in a line, straight through the confused guards and Rottum, although by the sound of things, they were so close that we should have bumped into them.
We didn’t, and within a minute, Rufus had calmly walked us out of the dungeon and up to an empty corridor in the servants’ quarters.
“There,” he said, pulling me into a hug once we were safe. “Now we can return home and forget this incident ever happened.”
As beautiful as that sounded, I knew it wasn’t possible, not yet.
“I can’t go with you right now,” I said, pulling back.
“What?” Rufus demanded. I could have sworn I saw smoke curl up from his nostrils. “You are my mate. You need to be with me.”
