Page 75 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
“Suit yourself, proudfeyra,” he whispers, rising back to his feet.
Feyra. Bene always told me that Draconic word translated tofriend. But now that Malice has uttered it, I know that was yet another lie.
I don’t dare ask the dragon before me what it truly means, though. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of realizing he knows something I do not.
Pain bites into my wrists as strands of Air infused with cold wrap around my arms and wrench me to my feet. Try as I might to stop it, a cry of pain escapes me unbidden when I place weight on my wounded leg.
In frigid silence, Malice half-leads, half-drags me down the spiral staircase, through shadow, through cold, through dank.
I grit my teeth hard to keep from crying out again as I limp along behind him, doing my best to remember every turn we take once we depart the stairwell and journey through a series of darkened hallways together.
But the corridors all look the same. There are no markers by which I can remember the way. The walls and floors are barren. Shadows seep into every corner.
And I can swear something is following us.
Claws skitter over the ragged stone. Eyes watch me from the darkness.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end again.
“Where are we?” I finally ask, gazing out through one of the many broken windows we pass. I catch only a glimpse of what appears to be a labyrinth choked by thorny brambles guarding a tall tower at its center before I am tugged onward.
“Umbra Castle,” Malice answers me, “where I rule asking, notlord.”
“Bene is king,” I whisper back, my response automatic. I refuse to say was. I refuse to believe I merely imagined the fact that he was still breathing—if only barely—when last I saw him.
Heavy wooden doors carved with intricate floral designs faded by time line the corridor, leading to rooms that Malice utterly ignores. It is not until we come to the end of the hall that hefinally stops walking and opens the set of double doors there to reveal a bedchamber that looks decidedly out of place.
Where the rest of the palace is dark, it is illuminated by soft lanterns. Where the rest of the palace is cold, it is warm. Where the rest of the palace is austere, it is richly furnished.
My mouth immediately runs dry. This must be his room.
“No!” I rasp, my breath already hitching, my pulse already racing.
I am caught in a never-ending nightmare now playing on repeat.
It is Friedemar all over again.
I strain against the threads of Air binding me in vain. I scour the chamber before me for any glimpse of something I could use as a weapon.
But there is no need.
In the next moment, the weave around my wrists dissolves and a gust of wind slams into my back, shoving me inside. The door swings shut behind me.
Leaving me alone.
“Do sleep well, my dear,” Malice says through the heavy wood separating us, his words punctuated by the rasp of a key in the lock. “We will speak further once you have rested.” A beat. “Andbathed.”
Rested, he says, as if I could possibly sleep now that I am finally alone and can hunt for a way to escape. I try to wrench open the doors before me first, as if I didn’t just hear my captor lock them.
Unsurprisingly, they hold fast.
“Let me out!” I shout to no avail.
Malice’s footsteps are already receding down the hall, leaving me truly alone.
I whirl on my heel and make for the windows across the room, desperate to keep myself busy. If I stop moving, I’ll startthinking—about Bene, about his glassy, unseeing eyes, about his weak breath.
About what might happen if I don’t find him and help him before it is too late.
