Page 7 of Exquisite Monster
I was going to kill this man.
I was going to kill my sire.
I was going to kill every human and dragon that had dared to touch Lena or conspired to tear us apart.
The Elders thought they could get rid of us so easily?
No.
There was a reason they hadn’t truly tried all these years. They needed us. Too old to sire more offspring, too blinded to the truth by their own desires, they’d crossed a line they couldn’t come back from.
I wondered if they knew.
The first few times I’d woken I hadn’t been in my right mind. Whatever they forced into my body caused me to expel flames to the point of sickness, aided by a mask that made it impossible to close my mouth. The pain of being bound and dizzy hadn’t left me time to reach out to my brothers. To Lena.
Can you hear me?
I cast my mental call outward, hoping they were near enough.
Yes. Endre’s voice, already exhausted. He sounded half dead. And…Fallen. Endre already worked at a disadvantage with his power bound. If I felt this bad, he must be in agony.
Z?
No answer.
He’s here, Endre said.Somewhere.Must be unconscious.
Unconscious and not sleeping, because passing out from the sickness didn’t feel like rest.
What are they doing to us?
A frustrated growl rolled through my mind.He won’t say.
Andaros. The man was still in this cell, watching me. I could scent him. See him a little.
Do you have your vision back yet?Endre asked.
No. The room in front of me was blurry.It’s coming back.
Good, he said.Now that I can see, they’re gathering the fire. Funneling it down below the cells. I don’t know why.
I made sure there was no sign on my face or in my body that gave away that Endre and I were communicating. We didn’t know what they were capable of, but taking control of our bodies, our fire, and robbing us of sight? I wouldn’t bet on whether they could halt the connection between our minds.
I can guess, I finally said.So can you.
He allowed me to hear his sigh.I’d rather not.
But we needed to, because the longer the three of us were held here and forced to breathe fire into the hands of the enemy, the more danger there was to all of dragonkind.
Scalefire, the weapon that had caused the war, was the reason.
When humans and dragons had been allies, we gifted the humans with the means to protect themselves against the few dragons in the world who refused to heed peace. Was it foolish to hand them the means to kill us? Probably. Yet there was a desire to prove the species could exist on an equal playing field.
Until everything fell apart.
From the little I knew of it, scalefire could be made without the fire of a dragon, but it took far more resources and far more time. Still, it was deemed important. What good was protection for the humans if they needed a dragon to even create that protection?
But with an infinite source of dragonfire, weapons could be forged in scalefire far faster. Whatever army Craisos had raised, whatever allies they’d made, they could move through the dragon lands killing at will with an army like that. Every dragon, including the Elders, could be wiped out.
