by Jenn Bennett
“I did what I thought was best.”
“Bullshit!”
He pointed a finger at me. “You’re still my daughter, and I’m still your father, in case you’ve forgotten. Watch your mouth.”
“Or what? You’ll take something else away to punish me? There’s nothing left to take. You’ve hurt both of us, me and Huck. You’ve hurt us, too,” I said, gesturing between us.
He stared through the bars, his big body in shadows, firelight outlining his troubled profile. His throat bobbed. “I know that,” he said.
That was probably the closest he’d come to saying “I’m sorry.” I should have been satisfied, but I wasn’t. I was just . . . disappointed.
“I want you to know something,” I said. “If we get out of this alive, I’m not going back home to New York unless Huck comes with us.”
His brow lowered. Jaw shifted.
“Theo, I beg you. Can we please talk about this some other time? When we’re not behind bars in a madman’s lair?” He shook his head as if to clear it. Exhaled heavily. Then, in a softer voice, he asked, “You sure you trust the herbalist woman? The boy’s going to be okay?”
“If he’s not, I’ll blame you.”
He snorted a cynical laugh. “Get in line.”
“Stop acting like you don’t care. I know you do!”
“None of this is turning out how I planned. You aren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to be safe in Istanbul. Huck and I were supposed to find the ring in Tokat, and it was supposed to be the right ring, and then I could have beat Rothwild at his own wicked game and taken it back home. The ring is your mother’s ancestry, and it belongs to her. I just . . . wanted to find it for her,” he said, leaning against the wall. He slid down it and sat on the rocky floor. Defeated.
All the times I’d resented my father and wanted to prove him wrong.
This was as close as I’d come.
Strangely enough, it was less satisfying than I’d imagined.
“If Mother were alive, she’d be more concerned about keeping all of us together as a family than a ring.”
He sighed as if the entire mountain had settled onto his shoulders.
“I could have helped, you know,” I said. “This summer. If I had, things may have turned out differently.”
“Maybe.”
“But you never let me help you. You just stick me in hotel rooms, and that’s not fair to either one of us. I don’t need your protection. I need your confidence. I need you.”
“Empress . . .”
“Never mind,” I mumbled. “Just forget it.”
I hadn’t even meant to get into this with him. I needed to concentrate on figuring out an escape plan. So I methodically checked the bars, looking for a chink. A flaw. Something loose. There had to be a way out. If I could just focus harder. If I could stop thinking about Huck’s ashen face. Now that Father was questioning my trust in Lovena and the twins, it made me doubt myself. I’d abandoned Huck with strangers—and for what? To get locked up with my father? Who wasn’t speaking to me now?
There was no use trying. The prison cell wasn’t a puzzle that could be solved. All of this was a mistake. I was no better than Father. I’d failed.
Despondent, I gave up and sat down against the wall across from him. We sat together in silence. Both defeated.
Twenty-five across, “all-time low.” R-O-C-K-B-O-T-T-O-M.
Minutes passed. An hour. It was hard to tell.
The flashlight finally burned out, leaving us in the dark. That made things so much worse, which I didn’t think was possible. Light from the candles and the flame in the dragon statue’s mouth did not extend into our cell. I thought of the white bug, scurrying under the rock pile, and phantom itching made my skin crawl.
I tried to get my mind off our situation. To formulate some kind of plan. What to do when Rothwild returned. How long could he keep us here? Would he take the ring band from me by force? And what then? Would he slaughter us? Impale us? Wouldn’t that be rich?
I stared through the bars, watching the robed guards. They didn’t talk. Not much. Anything they said was too low and too far away for me to hear. But when they both jerked around and raised their sickle-shaped swords at the opposite side of the cavern, I sat up straighter.
“Is he back?” Father whispered next to me in the dark.
He wasn’t. But something was here. Moving. Invisible in the shadows. Stalking. I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it. The guards left their post and tried to seek it out. Only for moment. Then they gave up, muttering to themselves. But I was worried now, because they looked spooked. Were there ghosts in here? All the misbehaving children who’d been whisked here in the local fairy tales?
But I didn’t have time to worry much longer.
The sickening thumping noise returned.
“He’s coming!” I whispered to Father.
“I don’t hear anything,” he whispered back.
“Trust me.”
We scrambled to stand as a dark figure emerged from the cavern tunnel. My pulse ratcheted back into overdrive.
Striding toward the prison cell, Rothwild stopped in front of the bars and clapped his hands together. “Now, Miss Fox. What will it be? Ready to make a trade? The ring band for your freedom.”
He held up something in one hand. I fought back a wave of dizziness and squinted in the dark to see it.
A key.
He wanted to bargain? Fine. We’d bargain.
I squeezed Father’s hand. Trust me, I thought. For once in your life, please trust me!
Stepping toward the bars, I took the ring box out of my coat pocket. And I held it up like Rothwild held the key. Just out of reach. “This is what you want?”
“I knew you’d see reason.”
“Won’t fit through the bars,” I told him. “Open the door, and we’ll trade.”
He shook his head. “Open the box and hand me the band through the bars.”
“Theo!” Father warned behind me.
I flicked open the catch on the box and cracked open the lid.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
It was awful. Terrible. Unbearable. My knees went weak. I was going to be sick if I touched the band sitting inside the box. I was going to be sick if I didn’t.
Funny thing was, Rothwild wasn’t. He looked unaffected. Greedy for the band, yes. He reached his hand through the bars, beckoning for my band.
But not affected.
He didn’t hear what I heard.
He wasn’t the Dragon.
I was.
A terrible warmth raced up my hand when I touched the band in the box. I picked it up and dropped the box. Slipped the bone band onto my pinkie.
For a brief moment, it dangled loosely around my finger. Too big. Grotesquely curved. Then it seemed to . . . shrink into place.
And everything changed.
Dark, delicious chills ran through me in waves.
I felt relief. I felt stronger. I felt . . .
Rapture.
“No!” Rothwild shouted. A madman. Enraged. Like a whip, he lunged at me through the bars. Reached for my throat. Wanted to choke me. I seized his arm, and for one fevered moment, we were wild animals. Grappling. Shouting. Arms everywhere. He was too strong. His other arm flew through the bars and clutched my throat.
Pain seared through me. Breath left me. He was going to break my neck.
THUMP-THUMP-swish. THUMP-THUMP-swish.
Flailing, my fingers flew to his rings. Slipped. Found purchase.
And twisted.
Behind me, a big fist extended and slammed down on Rothwild’s arm. The madman howled and released my neck. I gasped for air as Father’s arm wrapped around my chest and pulled.
I was yanked backward.
Still gripping Rothwild’s finger. The knuckle gave. Skin tore. The finger held, but it didn’t matter.
I fell back against my father with Rothwild’s bloodied bands in my grip.
“No-o-o-o!” he bello
wed, retracting his arms. He flung his ringless hand, shaking out the pain. Maybe I’d dislocated his finger. I didn’t care. While he struggled with a trembling hand to force his key into the lock—while his robed goons raced toward us—I tugged the too-snug band off my finger with no small effort and quickly slotted it into Rothwild’s bands.
It was easy. Just like Huck’s gum-wrapper demonstration. My band fit in the middle of the others. They clicked together like magnets and formed a circular dragon design on the top.
Vlad Dracula’s war ring. Made from human bone and blood. Cursed. Powerful.
Mine.
I slipped the puzzle ring onto my pinkie, felt it tighten against my skin.
Part of me. Bone against bone.
My knees weakened. I swayed on my feet as my vison went red. Rothwild, the cavern . . . all of it filtered through a dark, crimson haze.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Steady. Strong. In unison. It was a pulse, not a heartbeat. The pulse of something big and old and mighty.
The Dragon.
It was awake.
It was inside me.
It was me.
I was the Dragon.
26
THE RING’S SEDUCTIVE POWER SNAKED inside me. Rushed through me like wine. Warming me on the inside and scattering my thoughts. Chaos surrounded me, but I was unconcerned.
I looked down at myself, certain I’d find scales and talons. Still me. The thing inside me was stretching. Unhappy to share my body. It was as if I’d captured a wild horse inside me, and it was bucking and scared. Unwilling to be tamed.
Vision red, I glanced up at my father’s frightened face. I could hear his despair. His fear. His broken heart. But I didn’t care. He was only a curiosity, and my interest was drawn to everything else around us. Because I could hear it all. The sound of rats and insects skittering in cracks. The wind howling through the shaft in the rock above the dark cavern pool. The drip of black liquid from stalactites.
Everything.
Including Rothwild. He raged against the bars, shaking them. Face twisted into a hideous grimace. “I will kill both of you! Acolytes!” he shouted in Romanian to the men rushing up behind him, sickle swords drawn. “Cut them down!”
Their falx weapons couldn’t reach us through the bars. Rothwild would be forced to open the gate. But it didn’t matter one way or another to me.
I closed my eyes and listened. The dragon sharing my body whispered inside my head. It told me secrets I couldn’t comprehend. Old secrets. Lost secrets. It talked to my very soul, a dark conversation, deep down in the pit of my being.
The dragon was bargaining with me. It wanted control, and I wanted to give it.
Just for a moment.
I opened my eyes and saw red. A strange, hot wind gathered in the prison cell. Swirling. Strengthening. Growing larger. It rustled my clothes and bent all the candle flames in the cavern.
Wind. Blinding light. What was this? Where did it come from?
It was marvelous. It coursed through me, this eddying vortex.
And then it exploded.
The cell door burst open. Blew right off its hinges and knocked one of the acolytes flat to the ground. His sword clattered from his grip and he lay still, sprawled unnaturally. Flattened under the weight of the barred door.
But it was difficult to pity the man. Not when the entire cavern had been transformed.
Flames circled the bridge.
The lake was on fire.
Rothwild jumped back and shouted. Shock and shadows danced over his face. The growing fire was reflected in his eyes as his head turned in every direction. Amazed.
Flames shot across the hem on one of the acolytes’ robes. With a terrible yawp, he raced away from his recumbent partner and disappeared into the tunnel.
Behind me, my father made a noise that was part shock, part pain. I glanced over my shoulder to see him limp a step. Had I hurt him? Possibly. Somewhere inside my head, I thought this should matter more.
None of it mattered. Not my father, nor the robed man on the ground. Not the one who’d escaped in the tunnel.
What mattered was that my path was no longer blocked.
What mattered was Rothwild.
My enemy.
My father’s voice bellowed, but I shoved his reaching hand away and stepped out of the open cell. Freedom. I bent to sweep up the dead acolyte’s fallen sword. It was heavy in my hand. A real weapon.
I looked up from the blade. Excitement and an odd sort of terror rippled over me as I trained my gaze on the bearded man in front of me and saw the fear in his eyes.
He moved to make a run for the tunnel, but I blocked his path. He was big, and I was small and nimble. I watched him calculate the odds and make the decision to head backward. Across the rocky bridge in the middle of the flaming lake.
“Theodora!” my father shouted behind me.
“Stay back!” I said. It sounded like my voice anyway. Distantly.
I didn’t want to hurt him. Not really.
But I did want to hurt Rothwild. A dozen reasons why filled my muddled head as he stopped in front of the stone dragon statue that sat in the back of the cavern on the opposite side of the fiery lake. Then he turned around and faced me, holding his hands up.
“Theodora,” he shouted as I stepped onto the rocky bridge and walked toward him. Flames jumped and flickered on either side of me, burning brightly on the lake’s surface. “We are not enemies.”
“Oh, but we are,” I shouted back.
“I’m not surprised you succeeded in finding the other bands of the ring when your father failed. It is why I followed you instead of him. He is a monkey who’s outlived his use, but you are . . . family.”
I laughed. “Family?”
“We are connected. You are blood of my blood.”
My father shouted something indecipherably foul at Rothwild from the other side of the bridge. He sounded so far away now. The dragon’s heartbeat inside my head was far louder than his voice.
“I’m not your blood,” I told Rothwild as I crossed the bridge, closer and closer. “You aren’t Vlad’s descendant. There’s no link.”
“One will be found,” he said confidently as he closed in on me. “My mother told me it was there. Everyone in my family knows it.”
“That’s why you originally hired my father, wasn’t it? Through Dr. Mitu?”
Rothwild set his back against the base of the dragon statue. “He is a useful idiot. You are not, and I’ll admit, I respect that. It only proves to me that we share a bloodline. I am descended from Matthias Corvinus. You are descended from John Hunyadi. We both have old Transylvanian blood, back when these lands belonged to their rightful owners, the Hungarians.”
“Believe what you’d like,” I told him.
“It will be proven, I assure you. We are family, Theodora. We can share the ring. Share the power. I know so much more about the ring than you do—things no one else knows. I can teach you.”
I laughed. “Can you?”
“Theodora!” my father called from a distance behind me, limping. “Don’t do this!”
“Teach me what?” I asked Rothwild, ignoring my father’s pleas.
“I can teach you that spell I used on the banknote. I can teach you how to control animals.”
“Like you lost control over Lupu?”
“I can teach you to control people! They will obey your command.”
Something inside me darkened. The memory of Huck’s body on the floor of the Zissu brothers’ shop floated through my head. It felt like weakness. I pushed it away.
“You killed the widow and her maid,” I told Rothwild, stepping off the bridge. And onto the narrow terrace of cavern floor that held the dragon statue. “You tried to kill the baroness. You’ve threatened to kill Lovena and Huck. Give me one good reason to let you live.”
“Come closer,” he said, crooking a bleeding finger, one hand behind his back. “And I’ll sho
w you.”
“Theodora!” my father bellowed.
When I turned my head to look at him, Rothwild swiveled around. He grabbed a fat lever at the base of the dragon statue and used all his weight to pull it downward. Gas hissed. The flame in the dragon’s mouth flared and shot out toward me.
On instinct, I dropped to the cavern floor as flames spewed where my body once stood. Heat engulfed me. Pushing forward, I scrabbled beneath the gas flame on hands and knees. My vision blurred and swirled.
Red flame. Red rock.
Red Rothwild, racing toward me.
His face was gnarled and monstrous. Deep-set eyes wide with determination. He lunged for the sickle sword. But he was still big, and I was still small and nimble. I rolled away as his body flew toward me. The statue’s flame torched his back. He howled in pain and stumbled, tripping over uneven ground around the fiery lake.
His scream filled the cavern as he sailed forward.
Into the flames. Into the black, oily water.
Gone.
I lay on my back, chest heaving with labored breath. And I screamed in anger. I’d lost him. Denied my revenge. I twisted around and pushed to my feet, hand wrapped around the sickle sword. For a feral moment, I considered jumping into the lake after him so that I could cut him down.
Then I spied another target. It limped across the bridge toward me. Weak. Injured. And the cause of so much anger.
He would do.
Vision red, I ducked under the statue’s hissing flame and crawled back onto the bridge. When I emerged, I held the sword in both hands and fixed my gaze on the bear of a man facing me. He’d wronged me in countless ways. Lied to me. Embarrassed me. Sheltered me. Was ashamed of me.
Took Huck away from me.
He wasn’t my father anymore. He was prey.
But as I took a step forward, my vision blurred again. The cavern swirled and ebbed with thick smoke that billowed from the flaming lake. I closed my eyes to make the dizziness go away. And when I opened them again, there was something standing between me and my prey.
Hazy figures stepped from the smoke covering the bridge. All raven-haired and dark eyes. Pale, regal faces. Faces that spanned centuries in dress and style. Generations. They all looked eerily familiar.
