Nya didn’t have to stand there, hidden in the trees, gazing at the sky for long. Only a few moments after the guards made it from the castle with their prisoner in tow, fastening him to a large rock that looked more like an altar than the place in The Point back home, the night grew quiet. All of the animals stilled. The bugs stopped their chirping, night birds flew away or hid in their nests, and any predators out crawling through the high grass on the mountainside quickly dove for their burrows. Seconds later, the sound of large wings disturbing the air drew Nya’s eyes skyward.
“Who the hell are you?” Nya asked as she blinked against the fog. The man, dressed in a black shirt, open wide enough at the collar that she could see a tuft of dark hair across his chest, black pants and boots, all of it with red piping along the seems, with dark hair and intense dark eyes, staring at her with a smoldering glare, paused several paces in front of her. The fog seemed to dissipate for a moment, and behind him, Nya could see nothing but the jagged tops of the mountain. No trees, no plants, no buildings, no animals. No dragon.
The fog billowed around the man standing across from Nya. Slate, he’d said his name was. With the glint of the moon radiating off of the thin veil of wispy white, he looked even more sinister than before. She stared at him, not sure how to address what he’d said. Once her mouth was working again, she asked, “Did you say… you are the dragon?”
The giant wings of the dragon beat steadily as Nya glided through the air on his back, gripping tightly to his neck with her knees and her hands, though the further up the mountain range they flew, the more daring she became. Looking up at the stars from this angle, admiring the landscape far below her, on either side of the wicked mountain, illuminated by the silver moonbeams, she couldn’t believe just how beautiful it all was.
“All of them?” Nya repeated her question, even though she had heard Slate loud and clear. He said that all of the sacrifices were here, inside of this cave. She didn’t know how that could be possible, but if it were true, then that meant that Gavin was here somewhere.She stepped up to the railing, her eyes frantically searching the faces below her. It was far enough away that she couldn’t quite make out the details, but she knew she’d recognize Gavin’s gait anywhere if she saw him walking around below her. She didn’t see him anywhere.“Yes, they’re all here,” Slate was saying as Nya continued to scan the crowd. “It was never my intention to eat any of them.” He said the word “eat” like it was
Her lungs burned in her chest as she sprinted as quickly as she could go across the open space toward the sound of Gavin’s voice. He was running toward her, too, but the uneven terrain carved inside of the mountain was larger than she realized, and she refused to slow down to suck in air until she had her arms wrapped around him.They collided into one another so powerfully, the air would’ve gotten knocked out of her lungs anyway. Nya ignored the pain and wrapped her arms tight around him as Gavin’s arms came around her waist and he lifted her from the ground. “I can’t believe it!” she said, as soon as she could speak again. “I really can’t believe it.” Tears stung her eyes as she considered what was happening. All of this time, over a year, she’d assumed he was dead. She’d had absolutely no reason to think otherwise. The fact that her
The place where Gavin had been living for the last year was pretty remarkable to Nya. Carved out of the top of a mountain, the village looked normal to Nya, except for a few key points. First of all, there was absolutely no vegetation whatsoever. No grass, no plants, no bushes grew anywhere within the village. Nya wondered if any of the people here ever ate any vegetables. For that matter, she wondered what they ate at all.The entire town was lit by a soft red glow that emanated from a ring of glowing embers around the top of the hollowed out area in the mountaintop. As Slate led Nya and Gavin toward what he referred to as his home, she couldn’t help but look up in awe at the entire scene around her. The houses were all built of rock, which made sense considering their location, but other than that, they resembled the villages she’d seen in her own kingdom. Even the building they were clearly
Nya’s eyes flashed from Slate’s face to Gavin’s and then back again as she tried to process what the dragon shifter had just told her. “I’m… what?” she asked, her mind not quite wrapping around what he’d said. “The donation?”“Yes, of course,” Slate said, as if he had just told her she was a girl or a princess or a human and not that he was planning on keeping her in his mountaintop fortress for the foreseeable future. “You are the donation, Princess. You took the place of the angry prisoner left for me at the rocks.” He shrugged, far too nonchalant for the discussion they were having. “Now, you must take his place.”Nya’s eyes were wide as she gazed around the room. Her focus landed on Gavin who was smiling widely, as if t
The silence between them was deafening, but Nya didn’t want to be the first to speak. She wanted Slate to say something first, to tell her that she was right to be upset, that she was right to feel tricked into coming there, not realizing that he intended to keep her in his mountain kingdom until he was able to get the Heart of Magic back from the king who had stolen it from him. But Slate wasn’t talking either, so the two of them sat there, awkwardly, not looking at one another, until Nya could hardly stand it anymore.She turned her head and looked at him, studying him for a moment. He was probably the most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on, but she couldn’t let that affect her. After all, he wasn’t really a man, was he? He was a shifter. Part dragon, part man, all deceitful. How could someone who could conceal such a huge beast within himself not be deceptive in one wa