Page 56 of Taloned Heart

The crunch of bone between his teeth was a familiar pleasure, and one he rarely got to enjoy. His eyes rolled back as his hunger abated for a few moments until an acid arrow sank through his wing and tore a hole in the membranes that remembered this pain all too well.

Blinking, he shifted, clinging to the side of the wall like a great bat and glaring at the elf who had dared. There were only two more walls, and one wall was entirely empty where the elves had fled. But the remaining soldiers all started preparing their weapons, their hands shaking in their rush.

Ah, well. Not everyone could be so brave.

Abraxas opened his mouth and a wall of fire dripped out. He burned them all, listening to the sweet sound of their screams. It felt right. It felt wrong. He shouldn’t want to be a good man and still be able to do this, but war was war. And he would no longer deny the desires of a dragon.

A sharp whistle pierced through his hunting haze. Peering down at Lore, who stood in the center of the courtyard, surrounded by a ring of bloodied bodies, she pointed at a door that led underground. “We still have to go down there!”

Well, this size would not do then.

His sides heaving with disappointment, he crawled over the edge and then landed as a man at her side. He didn’t want to go back to this form. Every ounce of his body wanted to remain as a dragon for just a little while longer.

He’d gotten used to how hard it was to change back into this weaker form.

“Better?” he grunted, teeth gritted against the need to change back again.

“Very.” She cupped the back of his neck and drew him in for a long kiss. She tasted metallic and warm and everything that he’d always wanted.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, he tugged her against him. Her hands flattened on his chest and he wanted them on his skin. But he knew now wasn’t the time, even if he wished it to be.

Pressing one last lingering kiss to her lovely, soft lips, he whispered, “I had forgotten how wonderful it is to watch you fight.”

“I have never forgotten the terror of watching you.” Lore leaned back and traced a finger over his bottom lip. “To know that a dragon protects me is a heady dose of power. I adore you, my love. Now let’s go get our boy back.”

Humming low under his breath, he turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. Throwing it open, he asked, “How many?”

“I have no idea. The last time I was here there were maybe thirty? She might have a lot more now.”

A shadow raced toward him from the depths of the darkness. The elf brandished his sword high, clearly thinking he had the high ground, but he had never fought a dragon before.

Abraxas ducked underneath the man’s swing and came up with his hand wrapped around the elf’s throat. He threw him against the wall, the man’s skull making a horrible cracking sound against the stone before he slumped.

“Hm,” he grumbled. “I used to think so highly of the elves. Their fighting was renowned throughout the kingdom.”

Lore stepped over the man’s body and palmed the two knives in her hands. “They were.”

Another elf launched at them, smaller than the other. Female, perhaps? Lore parried her sword, catching it in between her knives and twisting them. The woman was unarmed when Lore plunged her blades into either side of her throat.

Tsking, he maneuvered around the woman’s body. “Then what happened?”

“Years of servitude? Years of becoming servants and bakers and farmers. Margaret forgot these people are not fighters. They were not born into the life that our ancestors were.” Not even breathing hard, she gestured for him to go in front of her. “Your turn.”

And so they fought. All the way down the stairs and into a larger room lined with cells. He didn’t look at who occupied them. They were not important to him, and Lore knew that. Neither of them would waste time on anyone else. If she wanted to save them, then she would.

Considering Lore also didn’t look at them, he could only assume they deserved to be there.

A wall of broad warriors stood between them and a final door at the end of the hall. Abraxas tried to relax his shoulders, but he was getting too old for this. His right shoulder was already stiff.

He should have stretched before they came down here.

Pressing her lips into a thin line, Lore stared the men down. “I will let you leave here alive,” she said, her voice ringing in the dungeon. “All you have to do is put down your weapons.”

“You think we’ll trust you?” The man who spoke was tall and blonde, a lithe looking creature who would likely be difficult to kill. “You forgot your own kind.”

“I’m half elf,” she snarled at him. “I won’t make this offer again. Drop your weapons and leave. Go back to Margaret and beg for her mercy, or flee from this isle and find yourself a new land. I don’t care what you do.”

Two elves did so. A man and a woman who looked at each other with history in their gazes. They skirted past Abraxas, flinching when he even so much as breathed. But then they raced from the room and up the dark stairwell.

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