by Loki Renard
She did not believe him, but her thirst was demanding that she sip the liquid in the cup. She could see condensation beading around the rim, indicating the coolness of it, and every animal part of her brain told her to drink it.
“You promise you’ll take the collar off if I drink this?”
“You will never worry about that collar again,” he assured her.
With little in the way of choice left to her, Lilly reluctantly bent her head and touched her lips to the rim of the goblet. The wine was sweet and tangy and… in an instant she had gulped practically the entire vessel down.
“Good,” the old man smiled. “You will feel better now.”
Lilly didn’t feel better. She felt lightheaded. She sat down and put her head in her hands. “I feel really weird,” she mumbled. “I mean really… really…”
* * *
“The blood of the obsidian dragon must flow.”
She must have fainted. When she came to consciousness again, she was lying on a stone slab, looking up at a vaulted ceiling. All around her came ominous chanting. She tried to look to see what was going on, but it was impossible because her head had been fastened in place with a strap running over her chin and forehead. She could not move a muscle, and even when she cast her eyes to the side, she saw only the heads and shoulders of the priests and their monks.
Some kind of ceremony was taking place. A ceremony with her at the very center of it, lashed down to an altar. She did not know what they were doing, but common sense told her that it was not good. Nothing positive ever happened to people who woke in such situations.
A priest loomed over her, his face hidden by a mask of stone formed to look much like a dragon’s face. He held a black dagger in his hand, gleaming with some red liquid. Suspending it over her breastbone, he began to chant.
“The obsidian one has come to us, her blood sings to us, demands we be cleansed, demands that the world be cleansed.”
As he ceased speaking, the others took up in response.
“We sing to the obsidian blood… We sing… Arrgghhrrgggllbbrhh…”
Their confident chants turned shouts of surprise and then grim gurgles and cries. The priest looming over her dropped the knife and fled with a very un-priestly whimper.
Something was happening.
Her senses were addled enough from waking up bound and whatever lasting effects the brew had, but she knew that not only was something wrong, something had gone wrong with the wrongness.
With some effort, she twisted and turned her head inside the confines of the leather straps holding it down. She saw what was at the root of the commotion.
Death was causing the chaos. Death at high speed and at the hand of a man she knew very, very well.
From what seemed like a mile away, Vitomir was racing toward her dressed in full armor. It was probably leather, but it was a bright blood red across the chest and legs, with arms and accents of gold. He wore no helmet and she saw his eyes from across the space, lit with pure fury. The temple was too small to hold a dragon’s form, but he was clearly just as dangerous in his walking state. He was wielding a sword against the cultist priests, the blade flashing so fast it looked like a thing of pure light. But the effects of it were nothing like light. They were entirely physical, slashing through the bodies of the cultists, spraying their blood across the walls and floor.
His expression was cold rage, focused with an intensity she had never seen before. Not even when she had tried to kill Casimer. She felt a tremor run through her, an elemental prickle that made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand erect. She was seeing pure fury in masculine form and it was being visited on those who harmed her with utter ruthlessness.
When the last of them had fallen, he rushed to her side and slammed the pommel of his sword against her shackles, making the metal fracture and fall away. He sliced through the leather bindings until nothing held her but the collar that had been applied by his hand.
“Don’t get up,” he said swiftly, before she could move.
“Why?” She wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him with pure relief.
“You’re hurt,” he said, his voice gruff but tinged with something like regret. She looked down and saw some blood on her arm. She hadn’t noticed anything or felt anything, probably because whatever she had drunk was a sedative and a strong painkiller, if she’d been forced to guess.
“Not too bad,” she said, wanting to reassure him. “It’s a flesh wound, that’s all.”
“Bad enough that it will need to be sutured,” he said, his expression growing stormier still. He looked over his shoulder at the fallen cultists and she caught his thought without him having expressed it aloud. He was wishing one of them was still alive, so they could be hurt more for what they had done.
He pulled some cloth from a pouch at his waist and bandaged her arm swiftly and gently, with the practiced hands of a man who had done it many times before, and then went to her leg and did the same. He put something gently on her stomach, then wrapped his cloak around her body, carefully covering her.
“I will call my doctor when we are home,” he said. “Until then, do not excite yourself, and do not move this arm. You could worsen the wounds and the bleeding.”
That said, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her gently, held against his body. She tried to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about and that she was not overly hurt, but it did not seem to do anything. He hushed her and told her to conserve her strength, that all was well, not to worry. They would be home soon.
He carried her outside the stone temple and there stood a very strange transportation device. It was a black carriage, fully enclosed. She was not overly surprised by that. This realm seemed to take anachronisms very seriously. What did surprise her was that it was hooked not to a team of horses, but to a pair of horse-sized dragons. It was the most strange and impressive and odd thing Lilly had ever seen.
“What is that…”
“A flying carriage,” he said.
“You’re not going to fly me yourself?”
“Not with you injured,” he said. “I cannot risk you dangling around in this state. So I brought the carriage.”
“But…” She frowned quizzically. How had he known to bring this along? What had he been expecting? “You knew I’d be injured?”
“I know what these bastards do,” he said gruffly. “I never thought they would have the nerve to abuse my hospitality and take you from my home. They have never been so brazen before. Nor will they ever be again.”
“They’ll never be anything again,” she pointed out as he wrenched the carriage door open and lifted her inside, placing her very carefully on the soft, broad seat. “I don’t think you let any of them live.”
“They forfeited their lives the moment they laid a finger on you,” he said, settling in next to her and wrapping an arm about her uninjured shoulder. There was not a hint of guilt or regret in his voice, she noted. It was a plain statement of fact, one he was evidently very comfortable with.
“Fly on!” he called out, rapping the side of the carriage. There was a smooth rumble forward and then a weightlessness, like being in a small, slow plane. She pressed into Vitomir’s side. She had never been afraid of flight by dragon wing, but something about being inside a wooden box with wheels that looked like something out of a regency movie made her uncertain.
“Now you find some measure of fear,” he said with an affectionate smile. “You have attempted regicide, languished in a dungeon, been held in a cage, tormented by fanatics… but the carriage concerns you.”
“I also don’t like spiders,” she murmured against his side.
“Don’t worry, pet,” he reassured her, his fingers combing through her hair. “I won’t let any spiders get you.”
“And I won’t let any more crazy cults take me in the night,” she promised in return. “Or are you going to double lock me up now, so that can never happen?”
His lip
s touched the top of her head in a gentle kiss, and his voice was thick with protective anger. “I am going to keep you close, pet, so anyone who tries to take you finds themselves at the end of my blade before I am troubled to travel all this way.”
Chapter Twelve
Vitomir was true to his word. There was no cage when she returned. There was a soft bed, gentle music, and a window open to the garden where he had once made her eliminate. Now when nature called he helped her to the bathroom and gave her privacy, only coming to help her when she needed assistance back to bed. The wounds were worse than she had let on at first. In addition to the one on her arm, there was a second on her belly and a third on her thigh. She had barely noticed them thanks to the cultist’s potions, which had left her mind addled.
He changed the bandages daily, and soon she began to gain strength. Truly, she was not nearly as injured as he seemed to think she was, but saying so did not change his insistence that she rest and recover. The benefit of that was that there was plenty of time to talk. Instead of sharing bodies, they began to share their lives, and for the first time, she started to learn about him as a person and not just a captor.
“What you did to those priests… you’ve been to war, haven’t you,” she asked one afternoon. “That didn’t seem like the first time you’ve done that.”
“The realm has not always been as peaceful as it is now,” Vitomir said, answering her question indirectly. “Casimer was not always king. Before his reign, there were three kingdoms and three kings. There are now three high lords of the remnants of those kingdoms which used to war, and one king to rule over them. Casimer is a rare creature. He is powerful and he is wise. He knows when to apply force, but he is capable of mercy.”
“He didn’t show my father much mercy,” she mumbled.
“Didn’t he? Look at what I did to those who would harm you. Your father sought to harm the crown princess. He was caught in a plot to take her away. And yet your father’s blood did not coat the walls of the castle. He was sent to the human realm to live out his days.”
Lilly bit her lower lip.
“He was so angry… Lazarus, I mean. The way he talked about Casimer…”
“I’ll warrant he was,” Vitomir agreed. “He was the second most powerful man in the realm besides Casimer, and he threw it all away. I imagine something like that would rankle and poison any mind. I do not like to speak ill of the dead, pet, but he was not a good man.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I didn’t even know he existed until I was fourteen. My mother died and I would have gone into foster care, but suddenly he appeared and told me that he was my father and I was just so… happy to have a dad. I believed everything he said. And when he showed me what he truly was—and what I could do, how I could fly, how the blood of dragons ran through my veins…”
“You had no reason to doubt anything else he told you,” Vitomir nodded. “It must have been incredible to discover what you were capable of, who you truly were.”
“It was… I mean, I never questioned anything after that. Not even that he hadn’t been there for fourteen years, not that he didn’t really act like a dad. I was a dragon, and so was he and we were alone in the world.”
“Isolation can be a powerful bonding force,” Vitomir agreed.
“He told me he had been denied his place here, but that I could claim it. He said that in killing Casimer, I would right the wrongs that had been done to him. He said Casimer was the one who made him sick…” She took a halting breath. “I only knew him for four years. I didn’t know it, but he was already dying when we met. Finding him, and then losing him… then being left with nobody. No mother. No father. No money. No hope. No inheritance besides a sword and what he told me would open a portal into the dragon realm on a specific day and hour… and it did.”
“And we know what happened next…”
“I knew I wasn’t really ready. I knew I didn’t have any chance against the soldiers on the other side. Sometimes I think I wasn’t going there to kill Casimer,” she said softly. “I think I was going there to just end things. Someone was going to die. I didn’t really even care who.”
Vitomir nodded and pulled her close, pressing kisses to her temple and cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am sorry you were so sad and I am sorry you have had so little.”
She sank into his embrace. “You’ve never asked me about any of this before.”
“I didn’t think talking would work. Maybe I was wrong,” he admitted.
“Sex solves everything, right? You figured you’d fuck me better,” she said with a naughty little grin. “And now you barely touch me.”
“When you are no longer at risk of bursting stitches, I’ll touch you very thoroughly, pet,” he growled, kissing her with a modicum of roughness. “Until then, we will both have to wait.”
* * *
Quite a number of days passed and finally Vitomir allowed her to leave the room. He took her on walks in the fields around the estate, her collar still preventing her from flying away. She liked to explore, but Vitomir was of course keen not to let her out of his sight for even a second.
“Easy, pet.” He caught her by the hand when she showed signs of racing ahead, and forced her to walk at a slow stroll. “You are still recovering.”
“You really shouldn’t worry about me so much. I’ve lost more blood than I did back in that cave on my period.”
“Your what?”
“My time of the month.”
Vitomir cocked his head to the side, brow raised questioningly. Lilly realized that she’d never actually asked about female dragon physiology. It wasn’t exactly a topic her father had expounded on and since being in the realm she hadn’t really learned anything about it either.
“Human women bleed every month if they are not pregnant,” she explained. “It renews the lining of the womb.”
“You have been here at least two months and have not bled.”
“You’re right…” Lilly looked down at her stomach in horror, frowning. She was late. Even accounting for stress, skipping two cycles straight in a row was weird even for her shifting cycle. “Oh. Fuck. Oh, no… oh… fuck…”
“The prospect horrifies you, does it?” He was smirking, as if something was funny. She had the strong urge to slap him, but restrained herself.
“I’m eighteen years old! You think I want to be a mother?”
“Calm yourself,” Vitomir said, the smile falling from his lips. “The missing of a human physical phenomenon in the dragon realm is not any evidence for pregnancy. Besides, I have taken precautions in that regard.”
“What do you mean? We’ve had sex! No condoms, no nothing! I didn’t think… I should have thought…”
“There are preparations which prevent a dragon’s sperm from being vital. I treat myself with them regularly. There is no practical chance that I have impregnated you. Believe me, I did not intend to whelp a traitor’s progeny.”
Her blood pressure and heart rate started to return to normal. “Oh… well… that’s good.”
“You look disappointed, pet.”
“No, of course I’m not,” Lilly denied quickly.
But she was. Some secret little core part of her wished that her panic had been based in actuality. Some part that wanted to see her and Vitomir as one person, to have a little life she could raise in a fashion very different to the way she had been raised. To have a family for the first time. There was a part of her that wanted all those things.
They carried on their walk, saying little. Lilly tried to think about something else, put the idea out of her mind, but it was difficult. Her brain had latched onto the concept and now that it had, she found herself thinking about what it would be like to be a mother. She had never imagined she would be one. Ever since finding her father, her life had been dedicated to pure revenge. As of a few months earlier, she had never intended on seeing her next birthday.
* * *
“You have been quiet today, pet. Are yo
u feeling ill?”
Several hours had passed since their conversation, but Lilly could not get it out of her mind. They were sitting curled together on a large couch in Vitomir’s lounge, watching a fire crackle merrily in the grate.
“I’m not ill,” she said. “I’m just… thinking.”
“About?”
She bit her lower lip and risked telling him the truth. “I want… I want you to stop taking those preparations…”
He smiled, his hand running over her hip and thigh in a slow caress. “What happened to your maternal reluctance, pet?”
“I thought about it. I thought about what it would be like to grow up here. How beautiful it would be. With a mother who doesn’t do drugs and sleep with men for money… with a father capable of protecting her…”
“You are setting the bar rather low, pet,” Vitomir rumbled. “And her? It will be a girl, will it?”
“I think so,” she smiled. “So… what do you think?”
“Believe me, pet, I will see you swollen with child, but for the immediate moment, I think we should wait,” he replied. “You were right at first. You are young, and there is time for you to become a mother in due course. You have never even flown these skies, seen this realm in which we live. You have yet to receive Casimer’s pardon…”
“Casimer isn’t going to pardon me,” she snorted.
“I think he will,” Vitomir replied. “He is a just king, which is why we try to dissuade assassins.”
“Well, I don’t care if he does. I’m not waiting for him.”
“No, you’re waiting for me,” Vitomir corrected her. “Becoming a mother is a strain. One you are not yet ready for.”
“Who are you to say that I am not ready?” Her tone was offended, her face screwed up with annoyance.
