Captured By The Royals

by Hollie Hutchins

  Yet according to Elena, her mother did.

  We still found a way back to each other anyway. Garek continued watching her, mulling over his thoughts, and of stray, unformed feelings. He wrenched himself out of them before they morphed into anything he might struggle to deal with, and instead reflected on the fact that the baby dragon was almost big enough to carry them both and fly.

  They had a homegrown escape, if they requested for the dragon to carry them off, and Garek felt fairly certain the dragon would happily obey that command. She didn’t like the cold environment much. They’d ended up building bonfires near one of the terraced and a woody overhand so she could have somewhere to lie and warm herself up by.

  If they did escape, Garek wasn’t sure if he knew where to go. Maybe his blacksmith buddy to the north-west of River’s End to remove the shackles. Maybe find a new thieving band, or try to contact Sylas again, see if he could do remote jobs on the side, even if the rest of the den would be more than happy to watch Garek bleed out.

  “You can stop staring now, creep,” Elena barked at him, and he dragged himself out of his idle gazing, and lifted one side of his mouth in a smile.

  “I brought drinks. Figured we could get little D to try some whiskey as well.”

  Elena’s eyes widened comically as the dragon stopped about a meter away from Garek. “She’s only a month and a bit old, Garek. You can’t just feed her alcohol. She needs another seventeen years at least.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think human standards apply to her,” Garek replied, smirk increasing in volume. “Unless you know any other humans that triple their previous size in the space of a month.”

  “But her mind… she’s still so young,” Elena protested, and Garek’s amusement increased, because Elena was acting like an actual parent to the dragon. Worried about the dragon taking potentially dangerous substances, worrying about the ethical implications of her age…

  “She’s learning very fast. I’d say she’s probably smarter than most human children by this age already. Thinking like an adult in less than a year.”

  As if on cue, the dragon nudged his mind. I grow fast, she thought proudly, accompanied by a heroic picture of Elena and Garek riding her back, in the same pose as the unicirim tapestry a month before. The dragon had adored that image, and quite liberally adopted the word hero when thinking about them. Even though Elena and Garek were complete opposites to heroes. People like them stole from heroes. But since Yvonne had very subtly threatened more waterboarding on her part unless they reinforced the positive association the dragon had, Garek and Elena kept their mouths very much shut on the matter. He did think the dragon picked up on the tension, anyway, but like the people she admired, she chose not to comment on it.

  “Besides,” Garek continued, “she already eats far more than us, and her digestion is likely different from ours. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “No,” Elena said flatly. “No, I refuse to let our child be damaged by your poor decisions.”

  He smirked. “Our child, eh?”

  She flushed, and opened her mouth wordlessly. After a moment’s hopeless wrestling with whatever internal conflict going on in her mind, she said, “Kind of? I mean… we are essentially her live-in parents. She’s in our thoughts, and we hers.”

  Garek considered the matter seriously, even as a strange, fluttering feeling ignited in his stomach, over a concept he’d never put words to before.

  Their child.

  Had to be the most dysfunctional family he’d ever seen, in the spirit of honesty. Two of the parents were prisoners, under constant guard, and the child would grow up to be an absolute monster and possibly alter the course of the future if she survived long enough.

  And if Garek and Elena stuck around long enough to do so. But that meant… having his magic stripped away from him. Loss of freedom. Always having to look over his shoulder for the next threat, knowing his ways of defending himself had been drastically reduced.

  Now, if he was going to try this whole fake parent thing, he’d rather not have it be on anyone’s terms but his own.

  “I guess you’re right, but if she wants to, we should be willing to give her all the experiences and tastes humanity can offer,” he said, his smirk now going teasing, because her blush was adorable. And he liked provoking that kind of reaction, seeing what effect he had on people. It was glorious. He wouldn’t mind being able to provoke more reactions like that, run the gamut of all the different facial expressions she had to offer. Sure would provide some great entertainment, since he couldn’t read the guards in their helmets, and when they did take off their armor, they had equally unreadable faces, and were obviously under clear instructions not to interact with the shadow witches any more than necessary, lest they charmed the pants off them. And since the dragon didn’t have facial expressions remotely similar to human ones, and he’d seen his face in the mirror every day… that left Elena. Elena with her light brown hair and equally light eyes, and her button nose and sharp features.

  Elena slid off the dragon, one hand on her hip as she regarded Garek, before snatching one of the whiskey bottles. She twisted the cork out of it, before giving the liquor a dubious sniff.

  Personally, he much preferred mead, but honey was a scarce commodity up here, and they had to make their alcohol from the available crops, after all.

  “My guts’ll hate me for this later, but I could really do with getting myself that nice little buzz. Maybe I’ll be less inclined to scratch out my own eyeballs in boredom, since someone doesn’t want me to visit the village.” She gave him a rather pointed glare.

  “Fair enough.” No arguing with that. “Though I really don’t think you’ll enjoy it. I barely do. Everyone just talks about pickaxes and their lost lady loves. I just hope that all the monotonous conversations I endure will eventually yield something useful. And who knows – maybe I’ll become a gold prospector at some distant point in my life. Stake my fortunes on finding little nuggets of gold.”

  Taking a cautious gulp of the whiskey, Elena pulled a face, tongue sticking out in disgust. “God, that’s vile.”

  “Nobody forced you to drink it, darling.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, thanks.” She glared at him once more, trying to look fierce, but her face resembled more of a cute, angry hamster with stuffed cheeks. He tried very hard not to laugh at that image. “At least it feels like it’s setting my insides on fire, so that’s plus one against the weather. I do like snow, but the heating in this place could do with some tweaks.”

  “You already know my opinion on snow,” Garek said. He considered Elena, thinking now would be the time to ask her more questions. A pleasant stirring in his stomach occurred when she sighed, lips parting, before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, breath condensing into the air.

  “Don’t give the snow a hard time. It’s peaceful to watch, beautiful when it lands, and cleanses the ground for spring. But the best thing?” She leaned forward conspiratorially, and he unconsciously leaned as well to listen. “No mosquitoes.”

  “Shit, you’re right. Suddenly I like snow.” They shared a smile, and an instant, stray thought hit Garek’s mind. What if he just reached across the last few inches? Would she pull away? Would their lips touch?

  Would the touch repulse them, or lick through them like molten lava?

  The moment vanished when she stepped back to pat the dragon on her snout. The dragon beamed images of the drink, along with distaste at the pungent smell whiskey offered.

  “Nobody willingly drinks it for the taste,” Garek said to the dragon. “They just like looking mature because they can drink it, or it’s a part of their culture, or it gets them drunk very, very fast.”

  The dragon snorted in response, and stuck out a long, forked tongue, a question mark in her mind.

  “Ah well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Garek replied, and before Elena had time to stop either of them, he splashed a generous portion of the liquor onto the dragon’s tongue,
and she rolled it back in like a mousetrap, giving an audible gulp.

  “You monster,” Elena hissed, eyes wide. “What did you do to our precious little darling?”

  They both, however, watched the golden dragon, waiting for a response. She stood perfectly still, making a smacking sound with her mouth and tongue. Then she hopefully rolled out her tongue again.

  “No,” Elena said. “We are not teaching that particular habit. I don’t want to think about what’ll happen if we get you drunk. No, baby. No.” She lightly tapped the dragon on the snout, and Garek noted her easy slip of baby. Isolation did funny things to people.

  “I’m sure it’ll take a lot to get her drunk,” Garek said with a smirk. “And she’s got to learn sometime. Better it comes from us than from some stranger trying to take advantage of her.”

  Both of them glanced at the golden dragon.

  “Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s taking advantage of that,” Elena said dryly. “That’s a piss-poor excuse to get someone drunk.”

  The not-so-little dragon bathed them in a warm, happy image, seeming to accept that they wouldn’t give her any more of the drink, before ambling off to the furthest end of her makeshift shelter, right by the bonfire, closing her great eyes, and attempting to fall asleep.

  “Guess that leaves just us and our happy companions over there,” Garek said, indicating the surly huddle of guards who probably hated the weather even worse than them. Bastion was a milder climate, and easier on the armor, which could rake in cold. “Know any activities we can do?”

  The moment he said those words, an image of Elena, flattened on the ground beneath him, his arms hovering on either side of her as he tasted the skin on her neck leaped to mind. That’d be an activity for sure, he thought, firmly banishing the image for now. He didn’t want to end up with an awkward erection. Not when they were trying to be so careful with one another.

  “Twenty-one questions is one. Truth or dare’s another, but I don’t think I’d want to do that one with you,” she said frankly, taking a sip of the whiskey and grimacing. “Never have I ever’s another… but… no. I’d get too drunk from that.”

  “Sounds intriguing,” Garek said, mind already whirring with potential questions. “The twenty-one questions one. Is this an earth game, or…?”

  “It is, but I’m sure you’d find it in Albalon as well.”

  “I haven’t,” Garek admitted, enjoying how relaxed Elena seemed right now, sprawled on the little, snow speckled blanket they’d brought outside with them, next to a little wicker basket with some basic buttered rolls to chew on. “People’s idea of entertainment is a little different. Taking shots until we can’t walk straight anymore. Arm wrestling, knife skills, card games, boasting competitions.” Not to mention talking about the different things they’d gotten women to do with them in bed in the Smuggler’s Den. There were female thieves, but they very much preferred to keep themselves separate from the men.

  “Twenty-one it is,” Elena said. “I’ll start.” She scrunched up her face in thought, and Garek wondered if she’d go risky, or keep her questions light and safe. He hoped she’d go risky. Because he could think of a few risky questions to give her in return. Or maybe you weren’t supposed to go risky. Maybe it was just a safe, light endeavor to get to know one another…

  “What’s your favorite place in the world to go to?” she asked.

  A small twinge of disappointment hit his stomach, but he hid it from his face as he considered. Several places came to mind, but it took him a minute to settle. “There’s an area by the coast that I like, called Spinner’s Hand. It’s a very jagged bay, and the boats there are beached on grayish sand, which sometimes gets so sticky that it’ll cling to everything if you step on it, or seep with water. You have the smell of seaweed and salt and waves, and there’s a little cave within the cliff-face that you can reach at low tide only. Inside the cave, there’s a patch of wall shimmering with what looks like blue crystals. They’re not worth anything, really, but it gives the place a kind of solemn glow. So…” he trailed off, suddenly feeling awkward. “Guess it’s the crystal cave in Spinner’s Hand.”

  Elena smiled, her attention rapt on him. “Sounds amazing.” They fell into silence again, until she coughed, and said, “Your turn.”

  “Wait, you’re not going to tell me your favorite place?”

  “Only if that’s one of the twenty-one questions,” she responded, with a mischievous smirk adorning her lips.

  “Well, that’s annoying,” Garek said, not wanting to respond to her questions as an echo. “Okay, let’s try this. Your house is on fire, and you can only grab one thing before running out. What do you grab?”

  “Oh, that’s a typical one,” Elena said, grinning, before scrunching up those thin eyebrows of hers in thought. Garek liked the look of concentration, because it made her cute. Certainly made a change from the glowers she sent his way often. “My money bag. Then I can just buy whatever I lost, ‘cause there’s a lot in it.”

  “No sentimental items of value, eh?”

  “I don’t get that sentimental. My mother and father keep a few things, but me, not so much. Also you’re getting more information out of that than you should.”

  “That would seem to be the intent of the game,” Garek said. “Otherwise I think it’d be boring, just firing questions back and forth without wanting to delve deeper into matters.”

  She struggled to find a reason to disagree, before firing off her next question. They continued back and forth, keeping them fairly innocent, like favorite colors (Elena white, Garek blue), food, most important person in their life (Elena’s mother and Sylas for Garek), and so on. It always felt like they were dancing on the edge of the far riskier questions, as if one of them was waiting for the other to test the waters.

  It became increasingly clear that Elena didn’t plan to dare, and Garek, buzzing from the increasing amounts of alcohol entering his system, felt annoyed and bored enough to launch himself headfirst into those waters. “What’s your favorite sexual position?”

  Given the last question from her was “What’s your dream house?” Understandably, this took Elena off guard. Her mouth hung open stupidly, before her cheeks flushed.

  “Pass,” she said. “I’m invoking one of my passes.”

  “That’s a bad idea,” Garek said. “Who knows what other questions I have lined up in store?” His leg brushed gently against hers, and she seemed held in his gaze, like a fly stuck in a spider’s web.

  “What’s your favorite one, then?” she fired back, almost before she had time to stop herself.

  Garek grinned. “Whichever one gets the woman off the fastest. So it changes depending on the woman. Meaning if you’d answered my question, that would be my favorite for you. Not that I mean anything about you specifically or anything,” he added a little hastily. “Just… whatever a woman likes, I like.”

  “Is that so?” Elena squeaked, her tongue tripping over the words, her flush increasing in size.

  “Of course. Seems silly to have a favorite when everyone’s different. Are you a virgin?”

  “No,” Elena said, her voice like a whip crack. “And I’m guessing you’re not, either.”

  “That’ll be right,” he said, noting how uncomfortable the subject was making her, but also noting how intently she listened. So not that uncomfortable.

  Elena licked her lips, and he followed the movement, holding his breath in that moment. Warmth pooled in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol. “What’s your most embarrassing sex moment then, Garek?”

  He chuckled. If she’d expected that one to faze him, she was sorely mistaken. “The one time I was getting it hot and heavy with a woman, and I lifted up her skirt…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Let’s just say she wasn’t a woman under the skirt.”

  Letting out a snort, Elena covered her mouth with her fingertips. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. It was a man.”

  A pause. “Did you continue
doing it with him?”

  “I’ll have to count that as an extra question if you want that answered,” Garek said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said with a rapid flap of her hand. “So did you?”

  Garek was incredibly tempted to say “pass.” But also suspected she might seriously consider killing him on the spot if he did. “I gave him a handjob for his efforts. Didn’t let him touch me. No hard feelings.”

  “Wow,” Elena said, eyebrows raised, impressed. “Bold of you. Also polite.”

  “I might be a thief, but I do have some standards,” Garek said, taking a liberal swig of the whiskey, before passing it back to her. His eyes trailed over her simple, buttoned white shirt, though the buttons only reached to her breastline. All of them were done up as a ward against the cold, but he did find himself wishing in that moment that they were all undone, enough for him to peek at whatever expanse of flesh revealed itself… “Next question. Shall we go inside? It’s getting cold.”

  She’d clearly been expecting something else, for she blinked several times, registering the question, before saying, “Yeah, you’re right. Wow, that took time to process. Okay.” She picked up the basket of rolls and the whiskey bottle he’d given to her. He held the other, and they left the blanket behind, sauntering into the house, doing their best to ignore the guards. Inside, he gestured for her to follow him into his bedroom, and she hesitated, suddenly anxious.

  “It’s either there or the bathroom, because the guards won’t follow us inside,” Garek said, and she agreed them to follow him in. He closed the door behind them, locked it, and then, with a languid smile, settled himself in the brown leather sofa. He eyed Elena, feeling something in the atmosphere between them, something charged and full of promise, before he gently nudged her for another question. Determined, at least, to finish this game. How many questions had it been now? He’d lost track.