Page 43 of King of Fire and Scales

“Not simply surmised,” she swallowed again and blinked slowly, maintaining the aura of empty-headed innocence. “I know, Pyralis. If I am dead and you eat my flesh, you will have lost any opportunity to regain your position of power."

His lips had thinned out, and before Thalia could continue her blind seduction, the sounds of cannons and violent pleas came to an abrupt halt. Pyralis noticed, and glowered.

“What in the gods is going on?”

He moved frantically from the table and peered through a small patch of window with a periscope. He was muttering to himself when Thalia settled her eyes upon the bindings on her ankles, then her wrists. She morphed the incantations she mumbled under her breath to stretch the steel wide enough for her to quietly slip her bare feet out of, then easily did so with her wrists.

“Gods, they have halted. Why have they halted?”

Pyralis was infuriated and screaming. Thalia tried to lift herself from the table and sneak away, but her balance was off from the potion and the sweltering environment. She stumbled forward, holding her hands out at the last second to keep from smashing her skull into the stone wall.

The bastard spun around, incensed. He came at her with two hands outstretched, poised to choke her.

Despite his frail appearance, Pyralis was still quite strong. It was the dragon shifter in him that allowed him to tangle his fingers into her locks, and tug as if hauling a bag of potatoes.

She screamed. Thalia tried to slap his hands away, to trip his feet so he crashed to the cobbles, but it would not do. She attempted to source her magic to fight him off, but she was highly unpracticed in the art of mystical combat.

“You bitch,” he sniveled, his arms relentlessly squirming to find her throat. “You don’t know what’s good for you. None of you do. You stupid sorceress.”

Thalia could barely hear him through the hot searing pain of her hair being yanked from her scalp. When he couldn’t get his grip on her, he grunted, then dropped her to the floor.

Thalia landed on her swollen elbow. The pain scorched through her like a firestorm.

“Let’s see how smart you are when you’re dead.”

The witch heard the crumbling of stone first as she winced, her skull pulsating like a giant bee sting, her elbow a maddening scratching of claws. When she looked up, she saw that Pyralis had shifted into dazzling shades of appalling sleek black and pungent green.

Pyralis did not look like his slender self in his dragon form. He had a dominating, wicked presence that made the witch’s heart turn to ice.

She tried to cry out again. But Pyralis snatched her up with his talons, enfolding her in the same way Zendel had at the inn. The grip was strong and solid.

She shrieked.

Pyralis burst through what remained of the humid room and leaped into the sky. Thalia was instantly hammered with freezing rain as her body flailed viciously in the dragon’s grasp, the sky a bright smear of an apocalyptic tapestry. She tried to dig her nails into the feet that cocooned her, but it was no use. The scaled skin was dense and impenetrable.

Thalia clamored, refusing to accept her fate as some sly dragon’s final meal. She thought of her parents, her healing father, the mother she barely knew but who took up copious space in her heart, and the man who had come to call himself her king.

Lightning lit up the sky. The fraction of a flash revealed to her the battlefield below where bodies of dead men lay turned up to the heavens.

Drake, she lamented in her mind. Drake, find me. Wherever I am, find me. I will be yours again. I want to be yours.

The battle had commenced, but the fight had only begun.

As if kindled from a spell, Drake’s glorious dragon form soared upward with heroic grace and tempo.

TWENTY-TWO

DRAKE

The king wandered onto the battlefield just as the first cannon was fired. He ducked, pulling Sorcha beneath him to shield her from the crumbling dust that rained over their heads. They broke into a sprint, half crouching, and found safety behind a barricade midway through the hillside.

“We have to get to your cousin,” Drake said, his arm wrapped around Sorcha’s shoulders. “I can shift and fly out to him, but he will likely take it as a direct attack.”

Sorcha’s eyes were a rich, brilliant blue. She peeked briefly over the barricade, and another cannon ball soared over her head. The king pulled her down once more until she was leaning up against the blockade.

“Let me try something,” she yelled over the screams of peril and exploding weaponry.

“Anything,” Drake shouted back.

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