Page 39 of Dragons' Mate
I exchange a look with Lee. Women are dead and injured, yet we should be grateful that this little game pleased the priests’ deity? I clamp my jaw shut lest my disgust with the priests leads me to make a poor life choice and try not to listen to his speech.
Ignoring him is easier than I expected. I’m hurt and I’m tired and there is soft music playing.
“I know that song,” I murmur.
“We need to get her out of here.” Quinton’s hand is against my side again, his magic seeping into me.
I pull Quinton’s hand away. He’s barely able to stand himself.
He tries to put his hand right back but fortunately the priests release us just then and we move on to a new disagreement.
“I don’t want to be carried,” I tell Tavias, who is gearing up to do just that. Having just felt like a warrior, I don't want to go back to being lugged around like a turnip sack.
“Have you learned to fly while I wasn’t watching?” Tavias inquires with overstated patience. “Because your leg can’t hold you.”
“Just give me an hour to rest and I’ll deal with the leg,” Quinton insists.
“I can fly her,” Hauck offers to the immediate uniform rejection from Tavias, Cyril and Quinton. I’m with Hauck though, and the rest of the pack finally relents to allowing him to ferry me up in his talons—no one trusting either me or him to let me ride mounted.
That turns out to be a wise decision, because somewhere between take off and landing I lose consciousness. When I'm aware of my surroundings again, I’m back at camp, laying on a sleeping pallet. Naked.
Hauck grins. “There she is.”
“What are you doing?” I demand, sitting up and grabbing a blanket to cover myself. Seeing a bowl of water and washcloth beside him—and the fact that I’m no longer covered with grime—gives me my answer before he needs to explain. My cheeks heat, even though the males have seen me naked plenty of times.
I raise my chin, going for a measure of dignity. “So what’s the damage?”
“Well, your piranha trick nearly made my balls explode,” Hauck says. “There is still a threat of that by the way. So if you’d like to—ooff.” He cuts off as Cyril smacks him.
“Better than expected,” Tavias tells me. “The leg isn’t broken. There is a deep gash along your ribs that we’ll suture, but nothing vital was struck. You were lucky.”
I don’t feel lucky. Especially with Tavias’s plan of running a sharp needle through my flesh over and over. I’m not sure the males, who’ve had much worse done to them over the years, would appreciate that though.
"I want her out," Quinton says from the back corner of the shelter, where he’s been lurking. He looks awful. Worse than the bloody mess that he was before the trials even started. Hell, he might be worse off than I am just now.
Tavias turns toward him. "Of the shelter?"
"Out of the trials.”
“After all the trouble I just went through to stay in?” I sigh when he doesn’t even smile. "I don’t believe that particular option exists.”
"It does.” Quinton’s certainty makes a shiver run over my skin. “If there are no other competitors, there are no more trials.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Right, well, I vote against mass murder.” Even if Quinton’s plan wasn’t suicidal, which it was, it would make us no better than Geoffrey. Lee and her pack and the others like them didn’t deserve to die. Hell, none of us here deserve to die. A fact which seems to be lost on the priests of Orion. “Speaking of homicidal sociopaths, how do the priests of Orion have all this magic that no one else does?”
Everyone turns to Cyril.
“Am I the only one who paid attention at any lessons?” he asks.
“I paid attention,” Tavias says a little too pointedly. “At the ones that concerned me.”
Cyril ignores him and turns to me. "Long ago, when the dragons’ fertility was just starting to wane, Prince Emric fell for the stunning Illiana. Star-crossed love, all that. All is good until their pup doesn’t make it. Twice. Illiana's heartbreak is so profound, Emric fears she'll fade away.
"Emric, in his desperation, pleads with Orion to help Illiana and the other dragons facing the same plight. The goddess is touched. She guides Emric to a sacred ground with flowers that, when brewed into an elixir, can restore fertility. He brews the elixir, Illiana drinks it. They have a pup. But of course, making a deal with a god always has a price.”
I frown. “Let me guess. Drinking the elixir made Illiana mortal?”
Cyril gives me an approving nod. “Exactly. Illiana becomes mortal and Emric is shackled to the sacred grounds for eternity, becoming the first priest of Orion, empowered by her blood but chained to her temple."
