Page 22 of Burned Alive to Be His
A small, shaky smile touches my lips. I have pushed, and he has retreated.
The next day, the banter continues. He brings me a piece of fruit I have not seen before, its skin a vibrant, fiery orange.
“What is this?” I ask, turning it over in my hands.
“A tizret fruit,” he grunts. “The thorns are sharp. Try not to poison yourself.”
“You’re worried about my health?” I ask, my voice laced with a faint, mocking surprise.
“I am worried about the inconvenience of having to find a new candidate for the trials,” he snarls. “Now eat it and be silent.”
But he watches me as I carefully peel the thorny skin away, his eyes tracking my every movement. And when I take a bite, the tangy, sweet flesh exploding on my tongue, I see that flicker in his eyes again. Not approval. Not amusement. Something else. Something I cannot name.
It is this new dynamic, this fragile, dangerous dance, that leads me to the cliff.
I have been growing bolder, my words testing the boundaries of his patience. I have come to a shocking, terrifying realization. He threatens, he snarls, he looms. But he does not strike. Not since that first night.
“You won’t hurt me,” I say to him that evening, the words a quiet statement of fact.
He has just delivered my meal, and he freezes at my words, his back to me. He turns slowly, his face becoming one of disbelief and pure, undiluted fury.
“What did you say?” he hisses, his voice a low, dangerous whisper.
“You won’t hurt me,” I repeat, my heart hammering but my voice steady. “You talk of breaking me, of my weakness, of my uses. But you will not cause me true harm. You will not allow me to be harmed.”
“You think I am soft?” he roars, the sound hitting me like a hammer. He crosses the distance between us in two long strides and grabs my arm, his grip like a stone vise. “You think I am likethe weak, pathetic males of your kind? I am a dragon! I am fire and death! I could tear you limb from limb and feel nothing!”
He begins to drag me from the cave, his rage a palpable, terrifying force. “You want to see what I am capable of? You want to see how much I value your pathetic life?”
He drags me through the settlement, past the startled looks of his clan, up a steep, winding path I have not been on before. The path leads to a high, windswept promontory, a sheer cliff that drops hundreds of feet to the churning, rock-strewn sea below. The wind up here is a physical force, whipping my hair across my face, tearing at my clothes.
He drags me to the very edge, my toes just inches from the dizzying drop. The roar of the waves crashing against the rocks below is a deafening thunder.
He shoves me forward, his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look down. The world spins, a nauseating vortex of grey water and black rock. Fear, pure and absolute, claws at my throat, threatening to swallow me whole.
“Look down, human!” he roars over the wind. “Look at your death! One push. That is all it would take. One flick of my finger, and you would be a broken smear on the rocks below. No one would care. No one would even notice you were gone.”
He leans in, his breath hot against my ear. “Say I won’t do it. Say it again. I dare you.”
I am trembling, my body rigid with a terror so profound it is almost paralyzing. This is it. I have pushed him too far. His pride, his very nature, demands that he prove me wrong. My foolish, newfound courage has signed my death warrant.
But as I stand there, on the precipice of my own end, another thought, clear and sharp as a crystal, cuts through the fog of my fear.
He brought me clothes when I was cold. He brought me fruit when I was hungry. He made me shoes to protect my feet fromthe fire. He scraped the very scales from his own body to keep me safe.
He won’t let me die.
I take a deep, shuddering breath and force myself to turn my head, to look up at him. His face takes on a mask of savage fury, his eyes blazing in a wild, untamed fire. He is the monster I have always known him to be.
But I see something else in his eyes now. A flicker of something desperate. Something terrified. And the terror is not for himself.
“You won’t,” I whisper, my voice almost lost in the wind.
“What?” he roars.
“You won’t do it,” I say again, my voice stronger this time, imbued with a strange, impossible certainty. I hold his gaze, my own fear a distant echo. “You can’t.”
For a long, heart-stopping moment, the world hangs in the balance. I see the war in his eyes, the battle between his pride and his instinct, between the monster he believes himself to be and the male who cooked meat for a human slave. His hands tremble on my shoulders. The muscles in his jaw are knotted tight.
