Page 34 of Kingdom of Flames & Flowers
Flies scattered as I approached the corpse, and I steeled myself against the sight of maggots buried in the rotting flesh. I reached in and snapped the bone in half, whipping around to point the broken, jagged edge at the dragon’s nose.
If I could just jab it in an eye, maybe it would get distracted enough that I could stab it—
I stopped cold. The eyes that held mine weren’t that of a savage beast. There was an intelligence there—a sense of recognition that stopped me in my tracks. This close, I could see the eyes weren’t completely gold; their innermost rings were flecked with green and silver.
“What are you waiting for? Kill her!”
The queen’s voice screeched up to us, muffled slightly by the dome, but still heard all the same. The dragon twitched his head toward her, then back to me, again sniffing. Like lightning, one clawed hand shot out and pinned me to the hot surface of the platform. My weapon skittered across the dome, falling down in the depths of the kingdom somewhere. Dimly, Zion was yelling. The sun blinded my eyes, blocked only by the silhouette of the monster who held me down. His clawed hand seized my neck and squeezed.
His snout nudged my chest and I reacted on instinct, punching it as hard as I could.
He shrieked in anger. The sharp edge of the claws around my lips went limp as the heavy weight of the dragon disappeared, and soft lips descended onto mine.
ChapterEleven
Dragons don’t kiss.
That was the first thought that ran through my head. The second was how hot his lips felt against mine. My eyes shot open and smooth skin and black curls greeted me. What? Where was the dragon? Had Zion gotten the trap door open after all?
I tried to push him away—we had to run, not kiss! My palm met hot flesh as I pushed him away, and I flinched backwards. Zion made a guttural sound in his throat, and I realized with a jerk he was filthy andnaked. Wild eyes tinged with green flickered between silver and gold.
I glanced beneath my feet, seeing therealZion put a guard on the ground with a vicious right hook. If Zion was below me … then who the fuck was this? It certainly looked like Zion, but with a feral, starved looked in his eyes.
Zariah is hungry….That’s what the queen had said, hadn’t she?
Oh shit. Ohfuck.
They were goddamn twins. Zion and Zariah were two separate people. And Zariah was also the dragon.
I bolted for the door and Zariah screamed at me; the roar coming from his throat all wrong for a human to make. He took a step toward me and then fell over, his skin rippling as gold scales pushed their way through again. His eyes flickered black and gold, then silver and green.
“Fucking OPEN!” I screamed at the hatch, and somehow it did. Perhaps in his haste to descend, Karthus hadn’t locked it properly behind him, or I hadn’t tugged on it the right way in my earlier panic. My upper body fell through the hole just enough for me to see what happened next.
“Karthus,” the queen intoned at her captain, glaring at me as if all of this was my fault. Without hesitation, Karthus withdrew his sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He stepped up to the two soldiers who’d been holding Zion (the one he’d punched had gotten up and grabbed him again), and stabbed both in the heart simultaneously.
A high-pitched gasp left me as the soldiers fell, their twin looks of shock and betrayal something I would never forget. Blood poured through their hands as they clutched at their wounds, too little too late.
It only took them seconds to bleed out and die.
The queen met my eyes with venom in her gaze. “Kill her.”
Karthus sprung at me, and I shot back up through the hatch, slamming it after me. Between the man with a sword and the dragon, I would gladly choose the dragon. I ran straight toward Zariah/the dragon/whatever the fuck he was, stumbling as Karthus easily opened the hatch and lunged toward me with his sword in the air. Out of the two beasts near me, the dragon had proved himself the least likely to kill me.
I screamed and Zariah jerked, then my world exploded in a haze of heat and scales. The dragon bellowed his fury at Karthus, who backpedaled so fast it would have been comical had I not been half-convinced I was going to die. Something hard and sharp seized me in a vice grip and suddenly I was floating—no, I was flying. The hatch opened and Zion sprung out, screaming and waving his arms frantically. The dragon—Zariah?—paid no attention, beating his wings hard and leaving the dome and kingdom far below us.
“Don’t drop me, don’t drop me …” I pleaded out loud, but could barely hear myself over the thump of his wings as I dangled in his claws. Terror shot through my veins as I rose higher and higher and realized I’d never been outside the dome’s protection in my life.
Sooner than I thought possible, we landed, and the hard grip around my middle loosened. I sucked in a deep breath and clung to a large rock, realizing we were in a rocky overhang that led into a dark cave. The dragon took a big step toward me, then turned back into Zariah, naked and dirty.
“Zariah, I—”
He rushed me blindly and tackled me between the rock and the ground. I grunted in pain as my back hit the rock, thankful I hadn’t cracked my head on it. Before I could squeak in protest, Zariah’s nose nuzzled in my neck, sniffing me as his fingers buried into my hair and twisted.
“Did he touch you? Did he taste you?”
Zariah’s voice was rough and gravelly, almost unrecognizable from the smart-aleck fireguard I knew. I drew my knee up to my chest and kicked him as hard as I could.
He gave a comical ‘oomph’ as he fell backwards, and I frantically looked around for an escape. We were so high up I got dizzy, taking a stumbling step toward the edge. Nothing but black, charred earth was visible as far as my eye could see. The landscape was a disgusting, ugly eyesore devoid of any beauty or life. This was what I’d been so eager to see? The only untouched portion was the kingdom back to the east, wrapped up in the protective dome and high walls.
