Page 10 of Dark Fire Kiss

Viktor didn’t bother speaking quietly. “This is the only dragon lair I’ve been to.” He looked up at the castle. “One’s as good as any, I suppose.”

I followed the direction of his gaze. The castle boasted thick, square towers—the perfect landing spot for a dragon. My heart began to pound.

Viktor swung back to me, and his incisors gleamed as he grinned. “Don’t worry, dhampir, their kind would rather bugger each other than a female as puny as you.”

He channeled away.

My stomach dropped. I was alone in the Scottish Highlands—a world away from Krovnosta—without a means of getting home.

I peered through the mist, my gaze on the looming castle. What was I supposed to do now, just knock on the door? If what Aleksander said was true and the dragons blamed the vampires for killing their females, they were unlikely to welcome one into their home.

Let alone hand over their precious tears.

The mist swirled thicker, and my heart hammered against my ribcage. Needing something to hang onto, I clutched my gown in my fists. Even in the darkness, the grass under my feet was lush and green. In the distance, moonlight sparkled on the surface of a lake.

A familiar sense of longing filled me, and I found myself straining forward, eager to get a better look. Krovnosta was surrounded by mountains, but I’d heard the thralls speak of the sea. Everything about my father’s court seemed heavy. What would it be like to wade into all that water and float, free and weightless, without a care in the world?

Fog drifted before me, obscuring my view of the lake and shocking me out of my daydream. No matter how beautiful, this was no time to gawk at my surroundings. I was helpless—even more so than usual. And I had no food or weapons. Not that the latter would have done me much good. Even if I knew how to wield one, weapons were useless against dragons. On the rare occasions my father spoke of them, he lamented that they couldn’t be killed.

And now I was meant to offer myself to not one but two indestructible creatures.

“I can’t do this,” I said, my voice a pitiful whimper in the quiet clearing. But if I didn’t get those tears, my father would die. I couldn’t go back to Krovnosta empty-handed—

My breath caught. I couldn’t go back to Krovnosta…but did I really want to?

I cast my gaze around the clearing. The rocky hills stretched in all directions, but there had to be a road in there somewhere. I could follow one until I reached a human town. If I was careful, I could pass for human.

Of course, I’d have to find somewhere to stay when the sun rose. That might prove difficult, considering I had no money. I didn’t even have an ID, whatever that was. The thralls spoke of it sometimes—some kind of paperwork humans carried to buy things and get on airplanes.

I hugged my midsection. Who was I kidding? I didn’t know the first thing about the human world. How could I ever hope to survive in it? And as much as I disliked blood, my body needed it. In some cruel twist of evolution, dhampirs couldn’t go without it as long as purebred vampires. But we couldn’t die of starvation, either. We just grew progressively weaker, until we couldn’t move or speak.

That had been one of my earliest lessons as a child.

Defeat rushed at me. I might not want to return to my father’s territory, but mingling with humans wasn’t an option. I knew little about their world, but I knew blood donation was highly regulated. And I lacked the vampires’ ability to lure and enthrall prey, so I couldn’t take what I needed from the vein, either.

Tears burned my throat, and the castle blurred.

I rubbed at my eyes. But the castle stayed blurry.

No…not blurry. Misty.

The hair on my nape lifted. While I’d been feeling sorry for myself, the white fog had surrounded me.

Only now it was joined by black—and it was too thick to be natural.

I stumbled backwards, then turned to run.

“Not so fast, little leech,” a deep voice said just as a hand clamped down on my shoulder.

A scream lodged in my throat as I was spun around and faced with a broad male chest.

A bare male chest.

Oh gods. Whoever had me was nude—and huge. Trembling, I let my gaze travel up and up…until it reached a square jaw and a pair of silver eyes that danced with tiny flames.

Not human. Not anywhere close.

The scream broke free, and I jerked my shoulder from the giant’s grip.

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