Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,74
sighed. “I get the hint. Guess I am helping you free a dragon.”
The dragon returned to gaze at her, and while she didn’t get the same huge flooding impression of images like she did with Gellie, she felt something. Eagerness. Fear, but the kind she understood. A fear of hope.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Cam muttered.
“Not a clue.” She ran her hand over its snout, startled by the heat. Gellie was always cool. “Call it an instinct. I don’t think he’ll hurt us.” She stroked the drake’s nose. “He’s tired of being here and just wants to go home.”
“Home being where?”
She frowned as she got a sudden flash of images of a cavern, massive in size, more than she could comprehend, with rivers and lakes of fire below it into which water fell, steaming as it hit, the mist rising and feeding an ecosystem that clung to the ceilings and walls. And there she saw the fat beast it preferred to eat.
“I think he lives in some huge underground cave.”
“Which would make sense if they emerged because of the crack in the volcano.”
She frowned. “They didn’t emerge because the ground cracked. When the volcano exploded, it affected the flow below ground. They were just following the heat.”
“Meaning maybe if we stop that volcano, they’ll go back home.”
Home. The way the dragon thought it held such nostalgia.
“First, though, he’s long due for some freedom.” She ran her hands down its cheek to its neck, over the scar, where she paused as she felt the dragon tense.
It remembered getting that wound. The pain.
She shivered. No more. She would free him.
Its skin wasn’t like Gellie’s. It was dryer for one. Cracked in spots. Crusted, too. The poor thing forced to subsist inside a small space. She knew it hated being dirty. Wanted to bathe in fire of all things.
She wanted to help him; she just wasn’t sure how. The collar wouldn’t be coming off anytime soon. It would take flesh with it if she even tried, but she could do something about the ridiculous chain.
She nudged the dragon’s head so that it would lift it, thinking what she wanted at the same time. The drake tilted and exposed its vulnerable neck.
It trusted her and was obviously intelligent. If she could communicate with it, surely her father could as well? Or did he never have a chance to try? Was he killed by soldiers first? That made no sense. Zee never said anything about Ruby soldiers. He told her it was the dragon.
I didn’t kill him.
The reply surprised as her hands closed around the metal links of its leash.
She thought back, Then who did?
The images came quickly, rewinding her into a past she’d only heard about. The moment when a bad situation turned even worse.
She watched as a large group of people entered the tower area. In daylight, she realized.
The sun shone, making it easy for her father to be seen along with his entourage. Adults she’d once known. All gone that day. There at the back, Zee.
Her father left the group behind to approach the drake, hands outstretched. She got a general impression of them greeting, coming to an agreement. Then her father walked away from the drake, unafraid, as if he trusted it. He shouldn’t have, according to the story. She waited for that moment when it happened. When the dragon attacked and killed her father and all the people with him.
Only it wasn’t the drake that killed her father.
The Ruby soldiers shifted into view, their presence concealed as if by magic. It was utter carnage. Bodies mowed down as they were caught by surprise.
Except for Zee and his daughter. He held her off to the side as she struggled.
It took her longer than it did Kayda to understand what happened. For the betrayal to sink in. For Zee to approach a Ruby soldier, hands gesturing while his daughter backed away from the traitor.
Right in the path of the dragon, who had no interest in Pelana. But she didn’t know that. She heard it move, turned, and fired.
Bullets hurt.
The drake reacted, and Pelana screamed. On that point, Zee got the story right.
But it was the only part.
Her father wasn’t dead because of the drake. He was betrayed by a man he trusted.
The same man she’d just sent back to Necropolis.
“What’s wrong?” Cam must have read her expression.
She pursed her lips. “The dragon doesn’t want to be here.” She tugged at the links, seeing the sturdy welds.