Page 52 of The Dragon Warlord
I’ve also got an eye going to Amira and Ikara now and then. Has she been successful in healing her mother? It looks like she’s stopped coughing up blood and she’s getting to her feet, but the beast notices too.
With the beast distracted, I leap using the last of my leg strength and impale my sword up and under its ribcage. It sinks into the soft tissue, bleeding rusty-red blood and drowning the cheery garden flowers.
Trying to yank my sword out is met with resistance. Fuck. All I’ve done is piss it off and lose my sword in the process. It howls knocking me on my arse—that’s going to leave a bruise—and tears the sword free from its guts, tossing it to the other side of the garden.
That sucks.
I have just enough time to throw another shield up before it blasts me, and its thick fist pounds through. As I wear out, so does my ability to wield any magic, dragon or Elf. Suddenly, I’m dragged across the flower beds by an invisible force—River. He yanks me to him in time for the beast’s fist to slam down a second time through my shield, which is non-existent by this point. The tails of my red-scaled jacket flare behind me.
“You’re not becoming a dragon pancake today, Warlord,” he says as I get to my feet quickly.
He’s hardening his heart, which is so unlike River that it tips me off. What else is he shielding himself from? There’s no time to find out.
There isn’t much left of me, but if this is the day I die, then I die as I’ve always wanted, in the heat of battle. Fuck, I haven’t even worked out a contingency plan. Will the dragon lord have the decency to tell my family of my demise? Probably not.
As I reach to call for my sword, I’m frozen by the sight of Amira striding toward us. She’s a vision of deadly chaos with blood streaked across her face, weaving her arms through the air as if she’s moving them through water. Shimmery energy builds around her. Dragon magic. The weather changes drastically in a heartbeat. Gray clouds consume the sky, and it cracks open with thunder and rain. A bolt of lightning crackles and lands in the center of the winged beast, ripping it open and spilling its horrid stench and guts everywhere.
But that’s not all the lightning cracks.
The floor breaks off from underneath her, a whole hunk of garden breaking into the abyss. Amira falls with it.
Without thinking, I shed my heavy jacket and dive after her, capturing her small wrist in my large hand. We’re not out of the woods by far and in a precarious position. I’m hanging onto the ledge with one hand, but what I really need is two to support my new weight. I’m heavier than I was before and while it’s given me more natural strength than I deserve without working for it, I haven’t earned the conditioning to go with it. More than that, I don’t have the endurance. My muscles are sapped from the one hundred-story climb, and the arse-kicking I took from the beast. I haven’t the strength left to toss her up either.
I don’t know what to do, but I’d better figure it out quickly. The floor is crumbling.
“Warlord!” River shouts from above.
“No! Don’t come over here! Your weight will sever us from the tower!”
Regret fills my head when I slowly but surely realize there is nothing to do. I can’t get both of us up. In fact, the only one I can get over the ledge is me, but I would have to let her go.
“Don’t be a fool, Warlord. Let me go,” she says. To make it easy for me, she struggles, the remaining bit of stone I’m hanging onto crumbles. “This is the way it has to be.”
“Stop it. Stop it. Let me figure this out. I can save us both.”
“No. You’ve already come to the same conclusion I have. There’s no point in both of us dying. I made my choice, Warlord. I won’t survive the wound in my side anyway. Whatever I was stuck with, won’t allow me to heal properly.”
“You don’t know that. We could search for something, a way to heal it.”
“I do know. Iknow, Warlord.”
She doesn’t wait for me to decide and gives a mighty yank. Unfortunately, too mighty, and my hand slips from the stone, and then we’re falling through the sky.
* * *
Ihave died before. It was at the bottom of a lake. My most grotesque thoughts have me wondering if my human form lives at the bottom of that lake still. Maybe it was my consciousness that simply slipped into an Elven manifestation. I don’t know that I want to find the answer to that query.
In any case, it didn’t seem like dying in the real sense because I wasn’t gone for long. I woke up into my Elven life soon after I left the human one. This, right now, is going to be for good. I won’t wake up from this death. I’ll simply be gone.
A frustrated roar breaks the sky and I land on the shimmering white scales of Alpha. It’s the only way I can respond to him when he’s like this. So powerful. So majestic. My heart beats against his neck as I fill with contentment. Did he catch Amira? I don’t know. I wish I could care more, but I’ve been drugged with magic and our bond lulls me into a place where I’m not asleep, but I’m not awake either.
Landing on a mountain somewhere he sets something down that he was holding in his claw.
There’s laughter in my head that isn’t mine.
Oh, how I wish I could keep you like this, pet. Maybe someday I might. Your freedoms are because I give them to you. I could hoard you somewhere and keep you under like this. You’d do anything I asked, wouldn’t you?
“Yes. Of course, Alpha,” I say out loud. A small voice tells me that I should be outraged, but I ignore that voice. I’m with Alpha and there’s no better place to be.
