Page 18 of Lady Dragon
Samansa blinked, halting in her tracks. “Maybe. It never occurred to me.”
“Could youlovea woman, the same as you wish to love a man?” The dragon girl still said the word with disdain.
“I—I don’t know,” Samansa stammered, pierced by those silver eyes. They bled the truth from her. “Maybe.”
“Hmm,” Kirek said. “Interesting.” And then she turned on her heel as if it weren’t very interesting at all, just as she had from the princess’s favor. She stalked off across the courtyard without another word, let alone a farewell.
“Wait,” Samansa called after her. “Why is that interesting?”
She received only the dragon girl’s back in response, and even that vanished around a corner with the rest of her.
“Cat,” Samansa muttered, and then turned and hurried in the opposite direction, hoping that dragons didn’t have excellent hearing in human form. She wasn’t only fleeing from Kirek; she needed a bath even more now, after her exertions.
The image of water sluicing over smooth skin and taut muscle, slicking back dark hair, flashed once again in her thoughts. Except this time, she didn’t let herself imagine a face, so she didn’t have to feel awkward and attempt to stop the feeling that flooded her, warming her from head to toes, dizzying, as if she were already thoroughly steamed in the bath and had perhaps downed a couple of glasses of wine beforehand.
And so it was, with her mind entirely elsewhere, she didn’t see the masked figure leap out at her from within an alcove. Notuntil it was too late. She did, however, see the dagger plunging straight for her heart with almost perfect clarity.
Not that she could do anything about it.
She didn’t even have time to scream. She could only throw up her arms, cringing away, fully expecting to feel the blade pierce her breast. But nothing happened.
Her eyes, which she had screwed shut like a fool, flew open, and she slowly dropped her hands.
Kirek was standing between her and the would-be assassin, pivoted at her narrow hips, the hilt of the dagger caught in her grip. The princess had no idea how she had gotten there in time. The stranger was quivering, trying to push the blade closer. To reach Samansa.
The dragon girl didn’t budge. She wasn’t straining herself in the slightest. In fact, she was grinning, a long breath hissing through her bared teeth, silver eyes alight.
She looked terrifying.
Samansa stumbled back, not only from the assassin, but also from the expression on Kirek’s face. She definitely understood better what it meant when a dragon smiled.
Kirek’s grin flew even wider as she twisted sharply. The snap of breaking bones pierced the air, along with the stranger’s scream behind the cloth mask. A woman’s scream.
Of course. Easier for a woman to sneak into this area of the castle, which was off-limits to men.
“You will not touch her,” the dragon girl breathed, low and deadly.
The woman’s strangled reply didn’t last long, cut off by the dagger that Kirek wrenched from her limp fingers and slammedinto her throat. Samansa heard a gurgling of blood behind her mask, saw the whites of her eyes rolling back, but Kirek didn’t stop there. She planted herself in front of the woman, seized her arms in either hand, and gave them a swift jerk.
The limbs tore off at the shoulders, as if they’d decided to part ways all by themselves. It all happened so quickly, and Kirek had barely seemed to move. Blood sprayed in wild arcs. Some of it splashed across Samansa’s cheek.
A scream tore through the air again. Samansa only belatedly realized it was hers.
Cut loose, the body teetered and collapsed like a felled tree trunk, armless and gushing fountains of blood. Kirek turned to Samansa, the severed limbs still in her grip. Her own arms were painted red up to her elbows, the silk of the princess’s mark of favor blossoming with new scarlet droplets amidst the flower pattern, her forehead and chest spattered in gore.
The dragon girl’s face was expressionless. At least she was no longer grinning.
Samansa’s breath was ragged and panicked in her ears as she tripped backward over her skirts in her haste, falling, and scrabbled away on hands and knees. She wasn’t sure if it was more to escape the corpse or Kirek.
“Apologies. I should have kept her alive for questioning, but I apparently got carried away.” Kirek sounded a touch surprised, and then made an impatient noise. “See, I told you I have less control like this.Andthat you wouldn’t want to see it,” she added.
Samansa couldn’t meet her eyes. She could only stare at what the dragon girl still held.
Kirek glanced down as if remembering, herself. She merelydropped the limbs atop the body and frowned at her blood-splattered attire.
“NowIneed a bath,” she said, as irritably as if she’d gotten herself muddy. She turned and held a red hand out to Samansa where she sat stunned on the ground. “Shall we both go together?”
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