Page 4 of The Fire Dragon's Mate
I’d only just passed the threshold into the cave when the cursed creature stepped back into what looked like a swirling tornado of flames. It was just suddenly there, and he was engulfed. I stumbled to a halt, not sure what had happened. Did he just kill himself?
But no. With a startling swiftness, from out of the flames stood a dragon that must have been at least thirty feet tall from the stone beneath his claws to the horns on his head. Dark scales covered his hide, enormous wings filled the room, and glowingeyes focused on me. The roar out of the beast shook the mountain.
I raised my sword again and braced my feet. If only I’d realized that the dragon and the man had been one and the same. I could’ve killed him with one blow when he’d first appeared to me. Now? I would never survive fighting him in his full dragon form.
But I wouldn’t give up either.
When he stepped toward me, I rushed him with another yell and a determination to make at least some part of him bleed.
The air was suddenly knocked out of me as his giant hand slammed me backward. I crashed into a wall, my sword flew from my hands, and I hit the ground hard. The room swam before my eyes as the dragon snarled and growled, great white fangs on display.
I gasped and thought this must surely be my end just before everything went dark.
Iawoke with a start, blinded by light as someone held one of my eyelids open. The light moved away, and I grabbed a man’s wrist. He gasped and dropped the candle, and someone hollered to grab it. He struggled to free himself, but I held on despite now feeling like my head might be about to explode.
“What’s happening?” I rasped out.
“I’m Zelig,” the man said down to me. “I’m one of only two medically trained people on this island, so let’s not kill me, yes?”
Considering that my head and heart were pounding equally hard and I could’ve sworn I was at sea from the wobbling inside me, I realized I did need help. A dragon had smacked me intothe wall of a cave. A dragon I’d thought would kill me. I must have succumbed to unconsciousness instead.
And the dragon let me live?
I released Zelig’s wrist. He backed away and another man leaned close.
“Phineas?” I whispered as emotion gripped me.
“Hey, little brother,” he said with a smile. He brushed the hair from my forehead and asked, “How do you feel?”
And just like that, my painful joy at knowing he lived was replaced by memories of what I’d seen him doing and what had happened to me afterward.
I smacked his hand away and tried to sit up, to leave, but a wave of vicious nausea took me back onto the cot like a punch. I clutched at my head, feeling like my skull might split open, and couldn’t hold back a pitiful whine.
“You have a concussion,” the man Zelig said from somewhere nearby. “Give him that vial there.”
I opened my eyes as a hand cupped the back of my head and lifted slightly. Phineas held the vial to my lips, and I drank the bitter liquid. I was angry and confused and wanting to fight, but gods did I need relief from the pain.
Phineas let me back down and it was some time before I could open my eyes again. He sat near my elbow with a table beside my head, the candle flickering from on top of that now. Zelig wasn’t in my sight at the moment, but another man—older, deeply tanned and bearded, with a wicked scowl—stood on the other side of me with his thick, bare arms crossed over his chest.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax, like maybe that would help my head and stomach calm. I’d never had a concussion before and, gods, I hoped such things healed quickly. This was torture.
“Talk to me,” Phineas said quietly.
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“Cighyss took me in.”
“Who?”
“The dragon.”
The beast had a name. “The dragon that is sometimes a man.”
“Yes.”
Cautiously, I opened my eyes and peered at him. When my head didn’t explode, I asked, “And you didn’t fight him with your men?”
Phineas shook his head. “I got drunk with them the night before we entered the bay. Girding our loins and calling down our courage,” he said with a laugh like it was all a joke. “When I woke in the morning, I was on shore with no weapons or provisions, hungover and alone. The ship was gone.” Phineas cocked his head. “What did they say happened to me?”
