Page 15 of Dragon Lord
Her eyes narrowed; she held the sword high in front of her in a tight grip, both hands on the hilt.
That’d be another no, then.
Ah well, if she was disinclined to polite conversation, they might as well have a little sport.Draknart blew another careful puff of smoke and moved forward.She jumped back at last, with a yelp, and took off running.He chased her for a while.Then he backed away, let her try her skill on him.She was quick and fought more with brain than brawn.She sparred better than most of the knights Draknart had eaten.
He only thought to stop their game when her breathing grew labored.She would probably exhaust herself to the point of death before she admitted defeat.That was his Einin.
“We should rest then, aye?”He watched her with admiration.And while she eyed his teeth and talons, he wrapped his barbed tail around her slim ankles, yanked her up, and dangled her upside down in front of his face.
Her shirt slid down to her armpits, revealing a silky tuft of fur between her legs and those breasts he’d been longing to see naked.He finally got his fill.
Then she twisted, and his blood cooled.Deep grooves covered her slim back, the ruined skin speaking of a merciless whipping.Old scars.Ragged.She must have received them as a child.She was a wee lass now, how much smaller must she have been back then?A miracle she survived such torture.The thought ignited dark fires inside Draknart, a rage that had him pawing the ground, dragging his talons over the stone.
She dropped her sword and scrambled to keep herself covered.“Put me down, you great beast!”
“Caught thieving?”He thought of his hoard and shifted with unease.
Even so, as much as any dragon hated a thief, the sight of her ruined back filled Draknart with fury at the blackheart who’d flayed the small child she had been.“What did you steal?”
A half-embarrassed, half-outraged sound escaped her.“I stole nothing.I spilled a bit of milk.”
He stayed silent as he tried to puzzle out her meaning.
Twisting to face him so she could glare at him, she added, “My mother died when I was young.The people in the village didn’t think it was right for a girl to be raised by all men in the house.A farmer’s wife offered to take me in.She had only sons.She told my father she would raise me for a daughter.”
“Who gave you the whipping?”
“She did.She kept me in the barn with the cows to take care of the mucking and the milking.She whipped me often to teach me not to grow up lazy.”She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, as if she could still feel the bite of the lashes.“One day, carrying two heavy milk buckets, I tripped.She whipped me until I fainted.”
“Did you run away?”She had a feisty heart.She’d been too young and too small to fight back, but Draknart could see her running as an act of defiance.
“I couldn’t run.”She huffed.“I couldn’t even move.But while I hid, my father stopped by to bring me a small round of herbed goat cheese as a gift.He found me lying in my own blood in the hayloft.He carried me down the ladder and carried me home.He refused to return me, no matter what the village elders said.”
Draknart began to absentmindedly sharpen his talons on the stone.“This farmer’s wife… Which one is she?The pigeon-toed hag?”
Einin wiggled to get down.“What difference does it make?”
The hag and her cows would make a nice meal.
Draknart knew the far field where the cows grazed.He nuzzled Einin, meaning to comfort her, but she took his gesture the wrong way.
The vulnerability disappeared from her eyes in an instant, replaced by outrage.She swung her body, boxing the air inches from his snout.“You conscienceless, murderous beast of the devil.Set me down!”
By the gods, the woman could screech.Yet all she did, Draknart found sweetly entertaining.She could amuse the gods themselves…
His great body went still at the thought, even his breathing cut off, as if time itself had ground to a halt.He didn’t move as much as a talon, not even an eyelid.
For the most part, he thought of the gods only when he thought of the curse Belisama had put on him.The goddess wasn’t likely to ever lift the curse—she was that much of a shrew—but…
Her husband, the god Belinus, could.
In exchange for a gift fit for a god.
For the first time ever, Draknart had just such a gift.His gaze fastened on the wee lass hanging upside down in front of his face.Einin.
Belinus had a known weakness for beautiful maidens, and there had never been a maiden more beautiful, more fiery and brave, and more worthy of attention than the one Draknart was holding.
Mayhap it was most fortunate that he hadn’t breached her maidenhead in the night.Although, it hadn’t felt lucky at the time.
