Page 54 of Ensnared
Did he just make a joke?
“Listen. I feel a little bad about keeping the swords.”
“Great, then give them to me.”
“Nice try,” he says, “but those are a blessed relic. There’s no way I’m giving them to you, Miss Stabby.”
“I saved you,” I say. “Or did you forget?”
“You were trying to save me so you didn’t also die,” he says, “but I was awake and would have come out to stop that misguided attacker no matter what you did.”
“Potato, pohtahto.”
“What?”
“I think I earned a sword. Let’s go halfsies.” I hold out my hand. “And I’m definitely going to need a pair of pants.”
“My pants kept falling off,” he says.
My jaw drops. “You tried putting them on me?” I can’t even let my mind think about what that would’ve been like.
He frowns. “First you’re upset you’re not wearing any, and now you’re upset I tried to put them on you?” His brow furrows. “You make no sense, Liz.”
"That’s all human women. Get used to it.”
“In any case, I came up with another way to reward your efforts.”
A reward? “What is it?” I point at him. “If you say pants, I’m going to stab you with the sword that’s mine.”
He stands and crosses his room, and then he rummages around in the bottom of the nightstand. If I’d had a little more time, I’d have checked there myself. When he comes back, he’s carrying a belt with three small daggers in a custom scabbard.
“Those are a little small,” I say. “Have you seen all the dragons? You guys are huge.”
“These aren’t normal daggers.”
I lean closer and narrow my eyes, searching for large, magical gems or ancient glyphs. No luck. I look up at him slowly. “Axel, did you pull them out of a rock?”
“They’ve been dipped in Azar’s venom,” he says. “If you use them on any dragon in this camp, they’ll be immediately incapacitated. And unless Azar himself decides to spare them, within an hour, they’ll die.”
Any dragon here, which implies that it would even stun him. Right? That must mean he trusts me now.
He’s an idiot.
I hold out my hand. “I still maintain that one of those swords should be mine, but I accept your gift.”
“I thought you might.”
12
After giving me that amazing gift, Axel practically disappears. At least, it feels that way. He’s gone all day, and most every night, too. Either Gordon or Rufus, sometimes both, are tasked to watch over us, typically in human form so they’re less scary to Fluff Dog.
She’s not very smart, but she really brightens everyone’s mood.
Yesterday, I caught Rufus feeding her half a sandwich. He was grinning. So no matter how much they grumble and malign her, I know at least some of it’s a show.
Working with the humans that have been assigned to me is depressing, but even that becomes a bit routine. I’m pretty sure that hand-to-hand combat will be useless for them, but it’s almost the only thing I know, so that’s what I teach them as well. Being able to compel them to do things makes my job much easier. No one can tell me they don’t have the coordination to do something—I just override their inner Eeyore and make them.
But at the end of our training sessions each day, when I assign them their post-training tasks—usually a few hours of work at some kind of distribution center—I’m beat. The best thing about every day is when I come home and bask in the afternoon and evening with the rugrats.
