fire. It was lava. A violent spray of lava that soaked the remaining elves. He could hear their dying screams as the elves burst into flame or simply melted from the lava that covered them.
“It’s not a fire dragon!” Caid yelled to his sister. “It’s—”
Elf bodies were tossed in front of them, forcing them to turn or jump over them. More flew at them, hitting some of their comrades and knocking them to the ground.
Caid pushed Keeley to his back. “Hold on!”
“Caid! Wait!”
Caid would have ignored her, but big back claws slammed hard onto the ground right in front of them, forcing the centaurs to rear up on their back legs to prevent them from running directly into the beast. The horses running with them, one of which carried poor Samuel, darted around the dragon and kept going.
“Stop! Stop!” Samuel yelled. “I need to go back!” But the horse—and now Caid realized it was the gray mare that Samuel was riding—kept going.
He honestly did not blame her.
With a screaming, half-eaten elf hanging from one of his fangs, the dragon leaned down a bit. Caid was ready to rear up again in hopes of protecting Keeley from the lava it would spew. But it didn’t spew anything. No. It simply growled out, “And where do you think you’re going?”
And instead of Keeley screaming and attempting to run away, she leaned around Caid so she could ask with surprise and what sounded like delight, “You can speak!”
“Really?” Gemma screeched. “That’s what you have to say?”
And for once, Caid really had to agree with the War Monk.
* * *
“Why are you yelling at me?” Keeley wanted to know.
“Maybe,” Gemma growled, “because he’s going to kill us and you’re worried about whether he can speak or not.”
“Kill us? But I saved him.”
Gemma, sitting on Quinn’s back, leaned in a bit and loudly announced, “I don’t think he gives a fuck.”
“He should.” Keeley looked at the dragon. “You should. I saved your life! If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be trapped in that cave!”
The dragon gazed down at Keeley as he picked the screaming elf off his fang, stripped the elven armor off with a talon, and placed him fully into his mouth. He chewed. The screaming stopped but the crunching began. When he swallowed, he said, “You took my gold.”
Laila’s head dropped. “You stole his gold?”
“We need the gold for the dwarves. I had to take it.” She looked up at the dragon. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“No.”
Keeley slid off Caid’s back and walked closer to the dragon, shaking off Caid’s hand when he attempted to grab her.
“We didn’t trap you in there,” she reminded the dragon. “And if you hadn’t attacked us, we wouldn’t have fought back. We did what we had to do to survive. But after it was over, I was the one who removed the cuff. I could have left it on you.”
“You thought I was dead.”
“I wasn’t sure, actually.”
“So you expect me to be grateful?”
“Yes.”
He glanced at the centaurs. “She doesn’t know about dragons, does she?”
“We don’t have dragons in these lands,” Laila explained. “Which makes me wonder why you’re here at all.”
“The elves found me when I was returning to my homelands from the dwarf cities. I was taking the underground tunnels and had stopped one night to sleep. When I awoke I was chained like some human slave and trapped in that cave. They would occasionally feed me with convicts or anyone who’d annoyed their king. But otherwise, they let me starve.”
“And the gold?”
“They buried it near me. And it was pretty. So I took it.”
“None of that matters. Keeley’s right,” Laila pointed out. “She did save you.”
The dragon looked off, but that didn’t stop Laila.
“She saved you, dragon. Let her go.”
“No,” Keeley cut in. “Let us all go. They’re my friends. They’re with me.”
The dragon didn’t answer; he was still glaring off into the distance.
“Hey!” Keeley yelled up at him, ignoring the startled gasps behind her when she grabbed a rock and threw it at the dragon’s chest to get his attention. “I’m speaking to you!”
Eyes wide, the dragon slowly looked down at her. “Did you just throw a rock at me?”
“Yes. I’m trying to talk to you.”
“I could melt your face off and eat your friends. I always did like the taste of horse.”
“Do dragons not have honor? Because it seems to me a being of honor should—”
“Honor?” He motioned to the wolves. “Do those things have honor? Your little demon dogs?”
“They’re wolves,” Caid