The faeries trying to put out the flames took very little notice of me except to shoot me a quick glance and get on with their business. That suited me fine.
The hut was isolated from the rest of the village, which appeared to be made up of several structures considerably more elaborate than my prison. The village was set in a large clearing, and my hut was right on the edge of the forest. That also suited me fine.
I scooted backward on my bottom toward the underbrush. Leaves scraped against my back. I waited until I thought everyone was engaged with the blazing hut, then went a little farther, until I was against a tree. I used the tree as a brace so I could rise to my feet. The wound in my right thigh burned like hell as I put weight on it.
Then I turned and ran. My hands were bound painfully against my back, and it made running extremely awkward. But I needed to get away. I would figure out how to break the manacles on my wrists later.
The forest was so thick and dense that the sound of activity in the village was quickly muffled by the foliage. I could hear my own desperate, frantic breathing and my unsubtle crashing through the bush, but no sounds of pursuit.
The scent of smoke drifted along behind me, clinging to my clothes and burrowing inside my nostrils. I don’t think I ran for very long, but after a while I was wiped out. My body was losing energy fast. I just couldn’t keep up with the constant exhaustion and hunger and fear anymore. With every day that passed, my baby got bigger, using more and more of my resources. I was supposed to be eating chips and dip on the couch, not running for my life from creatures that intended me harm—again.
I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going. I was just trying to get as far away from the faerie as possible.
So, naturally, I stumbled into the dragon.
3
I BARRELED THROUGH A PARTICULARLY ROUGH PATCH of brush that was full of tangled pricker branches. I fought my way through the thorns tearing at my face and arms, and finally I was out.
And there he was.
The dragon was sleeping, curled up like a cat in a small clearing. His tail was wrapped around the front of his body, which was so much more massive than I’d realized. He was the size of three city buses lined up with three more stacked on top. And that didn’t even count the length of the coiled tail, or the triangular spike that protruded from his back.
His face was long, the bones beneath the scaled skin sharply defined. The closed eyes were huge, easily the size of my head. I already knew it could fly, and breathe fire. I wondered what else it could do.
It was a plain miracle that I hadn’t woken it up by crashing through the bushes like that. Maybe it was confident enough in its superiority as the dominant predator in the forest that it didn’t need to stir just because it heard a little human noise.
I didn’t want to go backward into the thorns, so I’d have to go around the dragon. I crept slowly to the right, toward the base of the tail. I figured if the dragon woke up and attacked, I’d be farther away from its mouth and the inevitable fire, and hopefully more likely to survive.
I kept well away from the creature, leaving several feet between it and me. I just had to get through this clearing. And then get my hands and wings unbound. And then fly thousands of miles to the portal. No problem.
The dragon’s tail shifted, uncoiled and landed in front of me. I turned my head slowly, and met the orange eyes of the dragon.
I went perfectly still.
The dragon bumped me with its tail in the back of my legs, herding me closer to its head and its immense jaws.
My mind was a mass of gibbering terror. Everything had finally caught up with me—the stress, the fear, the physical wear and tear. Even if my hands were free, I don’t know whether I could have summoned a spell. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to hold it together anymore. Given the amount of stress I’d been under, it was only surprising that it hadn’t happened sooner.
I stumbled closer to the dragon, unable to go anywhere else. The animal seemed more curious than anything, but maybe I was just projecting human emotion on a monster in hopes that I wasn’t about to be barbecued. The dragon drew me closer and closer, until my face was level with one eye.
The pupil was slit and long, like a snake’s. It exhaled noisily, smoke rising from its nostrils. I couldn’t think. I didn’t have a plan, or even a half-assed idea. I couldn’t fly away. I couldn’t do anything except breathe, and hope each breath wasn’t my last.
The dragon peered at me for a long time. I stared back, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. And as I stared I felt like I was sinking, sinking into flame, flame hot enough to kill, but it didn’t hurt me.
The fire was everywhere, dancing on my skin and over my fingers. It consumed me, and it didn’t feel like death. It felt like life.
I came back to myself, to the dragon’s eye, which now seemed speculative. I leaned toward his face, yearning for something I didn’t understand. The dragon turned its muzzle toward me, nudged me with its nose. Its scales were rough and hot against my skin.
“I know you,” I whispered. “I know you.”
The dragon huffed out a smoky breath in response. Then it jerked away from me, bellowing. An arrow was embedded in its neck.
I spun around, trying not to fall over. My coordination had pretty much gone out the window with my hands bound.
The dragon roared, spitting fire at the platoon of armed faerie that surrounded us. I noticed several of them carried long shields in addition to bows and arrows. As my dragon blew flame at them, the faerie held up the shields, which were made of a shiny hammered metal and deflected the fire away.
Other faerie continued to shoot arrows at the dragon, who knocked the intruders away with his tail if they approached too close. Why would the faerie risk death at the mouth of a dragon just to retrieve me? Why was I so important?
“Go,” I said to the dragon. I couldn’t bear it if they killed him because of me. I didn’t know why, but I wouldn’t be able to bear it. “Go. It’s me they want.”
The faerie were grim-faced and obviously determined. More and more of them appeared, streaming silently out of the trees, more than I’d thought possible.
The dragon huffed out a sound that might have been refusal.
“Go!” I shouted, my eyes full of tears. I didn’t want them to hurt him anymore. Whatever they wanted from me didn’t even matter. I was tired of fighting. I was sick of death.
And if I died, I could be with Gabriel. There was a lot of peace in that thought.
“Go,” I said to the dragon for the third time. I turned my back on the faerie closing in around us so I could meet his eyes. The dragon roared, blasted fire at the faerie.
“Please.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then flapped his wings and lifted off. I followed him with my eyes as he rose above the forest. He paused for a moment, high above me. I heard a low voice in my head, almost a growl.
Then rough hands were on me, dragging me down, binding my ankles again, lashing my arms to my sides. I jerked my head around, trying to see him, trying to catch one more glimpse of my dragon.
But by the time the faerie had trussed me up again and backed away, the sky was empty. The dragon was gone.
I felt a strange mixture of relief and despair. I was glad the dragon was safe, but now I was alone again— and back where I’d started.
Two faerie came forward carrying a long strip of the same silver netting they’d used to capture me in the first place. I was unceremoniously hoisted into it and the two faerie were joined by two others who held me in it
