Page 92 of Dreams and Dragon Wings
I can go nowhere so long as he has Velda.
A small smile flits across Malice’s lips—there and gone in the span of a single heartbeat. “Good,” he exhales, returning Velda to her Spirit cage. “I am glad we understand one another.”
But then his smile fades. Frozen fury takes its place.
“Ghoul! Grime!” he shouts, his voice cracking across the courtyard.
When the green-skinned goblin from earlier and Rowan shuffle forward, answering the call, he spears them with a displeased look.
“I want her back in her room and bound in chains,” Malice hisses, so steeped in his anger that I see the cracks now marring his confident façade.
The false king knows fear.
“Do you hear me?” he shouts at his minions. “She will have no food and no water until I say. She will remain bound until I say.” Turning his gaze upon me, he adds, dark and low, “Youwilllearn to obey me if you ever wish to see the light of day again.”
A humorless smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. There are so many things I wish to say, but dare not. Not while he has Velda. Not while he may yet feed her to one of his goblin horde.
As if sensing my desire to speak, he leans a little closer, still without touching me. Still without invading my space.
“Tell me,” he whispers, his gaze flicking downward. “How is your leg?”
My mouth goes dry. “It’s fine,” I lie, but clearly not convincingly enough.
Pain returns to me in full force as, with a twitch of his fingers, Malice rips Velda’s Mind weave free from my wounded leg like a man ripping a bloodied bandage from a gaping wound. A cry escapes me unbidden, leaving Malice smiling like a cat that has cornered an injured bird.
“That’s what I thought.”
Chapter 27
Aurelia
Ican no longer run, but I can limp.
Down the endless corridors cutting through the brambles, I hurry, following the sound of my dragon king’s voice.
It is softer now. Weaker.
I know I am running out of time.
“I’m so sorry for never telling you, Aurelia…” the voice whispers. “And now it is too late…”
“No!” What is it that Bene must tell me so desperately? “Tell me now! It is not too late!”
“Your gift. There is a gift that only you can bestow—”
Water splashes over my lips and trickles down my neck, jerking me awake. Coughing, I shove away whoever is trying to drown me.
The wooden cup Rowan holds clatters to the floor.
“You must drink something,Therya’fey,” he rasps, his long, narrow face drooping further. “Your light is fading.”
“Let her fade,” Ghoul hoots, clacking his teeth around the words. “She will still taste sweet, even dead.”
“She is not for eating,” Rowan savagely insists. “King Malice just wants to punish her a little.”
I no longer have the energy to recoil from their words. All this talk of eating me. Chilling as the idea is, I know there is no true danger behind it.
Not while Malice still thinks I might be of some use to him.
