Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,73
couldn’t control Kayda.
“Better than an evil cunt,” she muttered before her fist slammed into the countess’s face.
The nose snapped and gushed blood. The woman let out a yell. “How dare—”
“I dare!” Wham. Wham. Kayda punched the woman a few more times until she hit the dusty ground on her knees wheezing.
“Mercy,” the countess begged through bloody teeth.
“Mercy?”
This woman had people from the Necropolis culled. To feed a dragon she’d chained and tortured.
Her daddy always said a king couldn’t be weak. And neither could a queen. She dragged the countess to her feet and marched her a few paces before shoving her hard enough she stumbled.
Kayda looked at the dragon who had both eyes open. “Your enemy is my enemy,” she said aloud.
Then stepped back.
She did, however, turn away. She hated when people stared at her as she ate. Despite not seeing, she couldn’t block the wet, crunchy sounds or the short shriek.
The countess was no more.
The soldiers lay on the ground, motionless.
The drake finished crunching and emitted a single feeling: satisfaction.
She turned and faced the beast.
“Kay, what are you doing? Get out of reach.”
“Not yet. Give me a moment.” She moved toward the drake, keeping her gaze locked with his.
“Don’t get eaten.”
“I won’t,” she said softly.
But the dragon must not have liked his tone. He stood and stretched his neck, turning a baleful glare on Cam.
“I don’t think he likes me,” he stated.
“I don’t think he does either.”
Another feeling stroked over her that made her think of a smirk.
She was close enough now to the drake it could decide to make her its next meal. “You’ve been here a long time,” she murmured, eyeing the collar where it was sunken into its skin. “Can I see?” She wasn’t sure how much the dragon understood.
Apparently enough. His head lowered so she didn’t have to crane. She got even closer, enough to put her hands on its scaly hide. Hot despite the cooling night. The metal collar was a jarring contrast to flesh. She ran her hand over the thick manacle that brought a shudder to the giant beast.
“You poor thing,” she crooned. She stroked the skin of its neck. “How dare they do this to you. We need to set you free.”
“Are you insane? You can’t release it,” Cam exclaimed.
The dragon turned its head, offering Cam a baleful glare and the distinctive emotion of “I don’t like you.”
“Apologize,” Kayda suggested.
“Seriously?”
“You’ve got to realize Mr. Drake here has been sorely abused by humans. Not to mention you can’t blame him for the fact he’s got a particular diet.”
Puny two-legs bitter. This tastes better. She got a sudden image of some fat animal she’d never seen.
It wasn’t hard to interpret. “Um, I think Mr. Drake here just told me he prefers food that isn’t human, but I don’t think it’s available in our kingdom.”
“Are you telling me the drake is talking to you?” Cam remarked.
“We understand each other.”
“Because of your magic.”
“I don’t think that’s what my father would have called it,” she murmured as she eyed the drake that supposedly killed her father. Or had it? If it was willing to listen to her, then shouldn’t it have listened to her father?
“You have an affinity for dragons. Axel has a similar thing with wolgars.”
“Wolgars?”
“Wild animal in the Emerald forest, now living in the marshes since a group of them splintered to form a new pack. Axel can talk to them mentally.”
She cocked her head. “What I do with Gellie isn’t talking. It’s more as if I can understand him through feelings and images.”
“What about the drake?” he asked softly. “Is he communicating with you, too?”
“Yes.” No point in denying it. The dragon should have eaten her by now yet hadn’t.
“Have you asked him how he got here?”
She looked at the drake, and before she could voice anything, she got a flurry of memories, images, feelings, a sense of dragging time.
Her brow crinkled. “They caught him early on in the apocalypse. They saw him roosting in the tower and dropped a sedative bomb on him. While he slept, they chained him.”
“Instead of killing him?”
“The first count of the tower had a sadistic bent.”
Cam’s lips flattened. “Sorry.” The heartfelt word for the dragon not her. A commiseration of pain caused by the evil of others.
“He doesn’t like it here.”
“Then maybe he should go back home.”
This time the dragon growled.
“Sorry,” Cam raised his hands. “I wasn’t trying to be a dick.”
The drake continued to stare.
“He would leave if he could, but he can’t break the chain.”