Page 16 of To Charm a Dark Prince

Now she was also screaming because she was on fire.

It only got worse when she saw what landed in front of her. The damn thing was the size of two or three school buses stuck together. It took her a few seconds to focus on it, considering everything else that was happening.

It was a dragon wearing twisted, warped, and bizarre armor.

No. It wasn’t a dragon wearing armor—it was a dragonmade out of armor.

It was hollow on the inside, with gaping exposed “ribs” made out of panels of plate armor that looked more like they were made from overgrown weeds painted iron than hammered out of flat shapes. It towered above her, its eyes glowing a strange, eerie white that seemed to shimmer with color like an opal or an oil slick. In its chest was a crystal of the same color, suspended where its heart should have been by chains that kept it tethered to the monster’s ribs.

It stepped closer to her, its limbs seemingly being puppeteered by the rest of it, as tendrils of metal oozed and stretched to yank it along, its movements halting, jerky, and…well, terrifying.

At some point, Gwen had lost the ability to scream, instead staring up at the thing and waiting for it to open its enormous, jagged-toothed maw and tear her to shreds.

The sight of the thing had also made her forget, however temporarily, that she wason fucking fire.

She had wanted to see a dragon.

Now she really wished she hadn’t had that thought.

Because she was probably going to get to see the inside of a dragon in the worst way possible. Hollow as it was, it was the ride there via its sharp and pointy teeth that she was worried about. The dragon peered down at her with its glowing eyes, the creak and groan of metal growing louder as it approached.

She was going to die.

She was going to die.

She was going to die.

Her panic attack was now in fullgo mode, her breathing shallow and rapid as she stared up at the thing, waiting for it to open its mouth and rip her apart.

It dropped down to its elbows with a resoundingthud.It was only then she noticed that the thing had a rider. A man was climbing off the dragon’s back. Gwen couldn’t decide if this made the situation better or worse. She could barely see the figure in the darkness. But as he stepped closer, into the glow of her fire, she decided it was definitely worse.

This had to be the Prince in Iron. Ithadto be. There was no possible way it wasn’t.

The man was huge. Towering in height and broad-shouldered, he looked like something out of a nightmare. He wore elaborate, ornate, and chaotic plate armor that seemed to be made of the same strangely organic rusted metal as the dragon. Over which, he had a long cape cut into pointed sections that reminded her of feathers, or maybe blades.

He wore a black hood that obscured most of his face. All she could see of his features were a few locks of hair that looked gray—not white, but literallygrayin the dim light.

His armor clanked as he walked up to her. As he drew closer, she wished she could run and hide. She wished she could do anything. But the man was heading straight for her, and she was chained to a post.

And also on fire.

It wasn’t like she was blending in anytime soon.

The man must have been pushing seven feet and was built like a professional wrestler. Or at least, she assumed so with how wide he was, even accounting for the armor. He stopped a few feet in front of her, tilting his head to the side slightly as if studying her.

Even in the flickering light from the fire that burned all over her, as if she was actuallymadeof it, she couldn’t see much of his face. Just sharp shadows and a flash of pale skin.

The man was wearing armored gauntlets, the fingertips ending in claws that looked almost like rusted knives. The points were all sharp and impossibly thin, but the blades themselves were jagged and missing chunks as if they had corroded that way.

The man had knives for hands.

Knives. For. Hands.

Gwen was wondering if death-by-dragon wasn’t the better option.

Her stomach was twisted up in knots. She couldn’t breathe. She felt like she was going to puke. There was a dragon. She was on fire. So she did the only logical thing—she started blabbering. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to. I shouldn’t be here, but I didn’t have a choice and now I’m on fire and I don’t want to die and I’m so very sorry and I don’t want to die, and I don’t know why I’m on fire, but now I can’t stop and—”

Something very sharp and pointed touched the end of her nose, breaking off her words as quick as a light switch. The man had lifted up one of his gauntleted hands and placed the end of his pointer finger there.

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