Page 15 of Burned Alive to Be His
He says nothing for a long moment. He just looks at me, violet eyes intense, searching. I cannot read his expression. It is not the cold arrogance of yesterday, nor the savage lust of last night. It is something else. Something darker, more complicated.
“You heard the Eldest,” he says finally, his voice a low grumble.
I nod, my throat too tight to speak.
“The Serpent’s Maw is not a place for the weak,” he continues, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “The air is poison. The ground is unstable. One misstep, and you will fall into a fissure so deep your screams will not be heard. The heat will cook you in your own skin before you even see the flames.”
He is not trying to frighten me. He is simply stating facts. He is describing the method of my execution.
“I understand,” I whisper.
He takes a step closer, and I have to fight the instinct to flinch away. The memory of his hands on me, of his body pressing me into the stone, is a raw, vivid thing.
“No,” he says, his voice a deep growl. “You do not. You are a human. You understand nothing of this world. This is a death sentence, and Vorlag knows it. He is using you. He is using you to test me, to test Grakar.”
“And what are you using me for?” I ask, the words sharp, surprising even myself.
A flicker of something—surprise? anger?—crosses his face. “You are my possession,” he says, the words a familiar refrain. “Your success is my success. Your failure is my failure. I do not intend to fail.”
“Then you should not have chosen a human for your… possession,” I retort, my courage a fragile, brittle thing.
He closes the distance between us in a single, fluid stride. He does not touch me, but he is so close I feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the scent of hot stone and something uniquely his. He leans down, his face level with mine, his violet eyes boring into me.
“I did not choose you,” he says, voice sounding like an intense murmur. “The sea chose you. And I will see what the sea has made.”
He straightens up, his presence filling the small cave. “We leave in one hour. Be ready.”
He turns and stalks away, leaving me alone with the echo of his words and the sentence that has been passed upon me.
Be ready.
I look down at my torn, filthy tunic, at my bare, bruised feet. I look at the small, sharp blade hidden in my rags. How can I possibly be ready for what is to come?
But as I stand there, in the oppressive heat of my cage, I feel that spark of defiance, that stubborn refusal to be broken, flicker and catch flame. They expect me to die. They want me to die. Xvitar, Vorlag, Grakar, Phina… they are all watching, waiting for the frail human to be consumed by the fire.
I will not give them the satisfaction.
I will walk into the Serpent’s Maw. I will face the fire. And I will show them what the sea has made.
8
XVITAR
Rage is a clean fire. I understand it. It has a purpose. It scours, it strengthens, it consumes. But this… this thing coiling in my gut as I lead the human toward the Serpent’s Maw is a different kind of heat. It is a thick, foul smoke that chokes me, clouding my thoughts. It is Vorlag’s treachery, Grakar’s ambition, and the infuriating, undeniable memory of the previous night.
I tell myself the anger is for Vorlag. The old fool plays with the future of our clan as if it is a game of stones. He sends this fragile creature into the very heart of the mountain’s fire, a trial no dragon would undertake lightly, all to prove a point in his political games. He endangers my prize, my tool, and in doing so, he insults me. The rage I feel is righteous. It is the anger of a warrior whose asset is being squandered.
But as I watch her walk, another, fouler smoke rises. She is limping. It is a small thing, a barely perceptible hitch in her step, but I see it. My predator’s eyes miss nothing. I see the way she holds her body, a rigid line of pain and exhaustion. I see the faint, dark bruises on her arms where my fingers gripped her.
The sight does not fill me with the satisfaction of a master who has broken a disobedient thing. It fills me with this… this churning irritation. Her weakness is an inconvenience. I took what was mine by right. I asserted my dominance. That she is sore from it is a consequence of her own frailty, not my action. Her body is a testament to her pathetic human limits. And yet, the sight of her struggle grates on me, a constant, low-level abrasion against my will.
“Keep up,” I snarl, my voice harsher than I intend.
She does not look at me. She does not speak. She simply clenches her jaw and quickens her pace, her bare feet stumbling on the sharp, obsidian-laced ground. I see a thin trickle of blood well from a cut on her sole. The sight sends another inexplicable spike of fury through me.
We walk in silence, the only sounds the crunch of my boots on the volcanic grit and the soft, pained whisper of her bare feet. The path to the Serpent’s Maw winds up the lower slope of Bloodstorm, a treacherous trail of loose scree and jagged rock formations that look like the broken teeth of a dead god. Steam hisses from fissures in the ground, smelling of sulfur and rot. The heat intensifies with every step, a physical pressure that beats down from the sun above and radiates up from the living mountain beneath.
I am in my element. The heat soothes the fire in my blood. But she… she is wilting. Her skin, already burned by the sun, is flushed a painful red. Sweat plasters her tattered tunic to her thin frame, and her breath comes in shallow, rapid pants. She is a flower trying to bloom in the heart of a forge. It is a pathetic, infuriating sight.
