Page 156 of The Forbidden Dragon King
I hold him down as he thrashes. His blood stains my white outfit red.
I bare my teeth savagely, wrenching out the pin.
I take a deep breath of the coppery scent of blood. Throwing back my head, my eyelashes flutter shut.
I revel in it.
I could dance to Quintus’ death thoes, twirling in these scarlet sheets.
Like this, surrounded by the tang of blood with agleaming weapon in my hand and the thrill of a kill, I can imagine that I’m actually on a battlefield.
Joy swells through me in a way that it hasn’t since Aurelius burned my world around me in Rune Forest.
I’m in the midst of wild fighting. I’m a leader again surrounded by the featherglass, my fae brothers and sisters.
I can pretend, just for this one triumphant moment, that I’m not a courtesan dressed in thin silks stained from white to red, straddling a dying man on the orders of the true ruler and nightmare of these realms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Palace Dungeons, Shadow Court
Freya
My eyes droop with exhaustion.I stumble as I drag myself down the stone steps into the damp cold of the dungeon. I tighten my hands around the breakfast tray, struggling not to drop it.
I barely managed to sleep last night, and when I did, I was haunted by nightmares.
A beautiful monster with piercing red-wine eyes and hair fluttering to his waist like shadows searched for me in a sea of rats and a mist of moonlight moths. But then, he howled in pain, as a spark landed on his silkyhair, flaring into a raging fire. Sparks caught on the wings of the moths, scorching them from white to black. At last, the flames exploded into an inferno, burning the monster to ash.
Why had I woken up sobbing? Clutching at my throat, as if searching for the feel of fangs?
I bite my lip, as my neck tingles.
What’s wrong with me?
Why am I feeling connected to a Shadow Vampire King who I haven’t met?Who is the son of parents who murdered mine?
On the moon, maybe I’m still shaken from what happened in the Silver Banquet Hall.
Cursed daggers are all fun and games, until someone is turned into a pile of ash.
I ran out of the hall, as soon as I could, terrified of the performance that Maximinus had just made sure Aurelius put on. I’d thought that Daire’s performance had been dangerous as weaponized seduction, but then Aurelius had stepped forward and proved that he may put fresh roses in my room and sweetly suck honey from my clit but he was also the Golden Dragon of legend.
A butcher.
War swore that Aurelius wasn’t Hadrian.
Yet as I watched the shadows wreathe around Aurelius, I’d glimpsed in his expression the forbidding dragon who I’d seen in the statue in the North Tower.
Emperor Hadrian.
Suddenly, both the legend and the prophecy feels frighteningly more real.
I shiver, dragging my cloak closer around myself.
Suddenly, I jolt to a stop, as the sound of a blow echoes down the stone corridor, followed by a bitten back cry. Then a flurry of blows and kicks.
“Fuck.” I bend over to place the tray down on the mold infested floor.
