Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
12
VALEN
Fuck—I barely made it! I swear it seemed like that fucking sandstorm was aimed right at us—is there some force that doesn’t want us to pass over the Poison Desert?
Whatever the case, I made it across—but not without some damage. The tiny grains of sand didn’t hurt my Drake’s hide much, but the poison winds irritated his throat.
I feel fucking weak—which I hate. I don’t know if the poison got to me or if it’s just the fact that I’ve been living mostly on bread and water with the occasional fatty, half-rotten slab of beef thrown in for almost a year. The Princess’s blood—no matter how magical—isn’t enough to sustain a beast the size of my Drake indefinitely.
I need to eat and I need to be cleaned—the poison is still all over my Drake’s underside. Which, when I take my human form again, will be my chest and the entire front of my body.
Irena will have to wash it off me. By the laws of the ring and collar, only her hands can get me clean. Wonder how she’s going to like that?
Speaking of the princess, I can feel her stirring on my Drake’s back, but I can’t hold this form any longer. Being in my Drake form takes enormous amounts of energy and I can feel that he’s at the end of his—our—strength.
With a low, pained groan, I let myself Shift back, taking human form once more. I hear her exclaim something, but the effort of changing forms drains the last of my strength.
The worlds goes dark and I know no more.
13
IRENA
The dragon begins shrinking under me, the process going in reverse as his body gets smaller and his scales are reabsorbed back into his body. His neck shortens and his head and face become human again, as does the rest of his body.
Before I know it, I’m sitting astride Valen’s bare back as he lies face down in the grass.
“Oh!” I gasp and hop off at once. We seem to have landed in a kind of clearing in the middle of a vast forest with tall trees all around, but he’s not moving, which worries me.
“Valen?” Gingerly, I take him by one broad shoulder and attempt to roll him over. It takes all my strength but at last I get his massive, muscular body turned so he’s lying on his back.
His eyes are closed but his chest is still moving up and down—that’s a relief, anyway. And the entire front of him is covered in dark brown dust—is that from the winds of the Poison Desert? If so, it needs to come off, but looking around, I don’t see a pond or a lake for him to bathe in.
What I do see is a long, winding path leading deeper into the trees. And beside it is a medium sized inn. A wooden placard hangs above the doorway picturing a severed lamb’s head leaking blood from a ragged stump of a neck. Its eyes are rolled up in its head in a horrid way and the lettering beneath says, “The Slaughtered Lamb.”
Ugh.
I don’t much like the look of the inn—though it’s certainly better than landing in the middle of the Poison Desert—but as I watch, the front door opens and out comes a woman.
She’s plump and bosomy and she’s wearing a brown homespun dress that’s stretched tight over her ample curves.
“Now then, now then!” she exclaims, hurrying up to us. She has shrewd brown eyes which flick rapidly over the two of us—me in my Court gown and Valen, naked as the day he was born. Or hatched? I don’t know the details of the Dragon People’s birth.
“Hello.” I rise and start to wipe my hands on my skirts—but stop myself in time and use my black cloak instead.
“Who are you and what are you doing on the edge of Thornmere?” the woman demands.
The edge of Thornmere? I thought the dragon was going to fly me right to the center, where the Sorceress’s stronghold is!
Still, maybe he ran out of strength—or maybe he’s been poisoned. Either way I must tend to him—even if I don’t really want to. The ring throbs around my finger, warning me. He is my servant…but also my responsibility.
“Hello, good lady,” I begin, using my best princess voice. “Thank you so much for coming to my aid. My manservant has collapsed, as you can see.”
I’m worried that she’s seen Valen in his dragon form or that she’ll ask questions about why he’s naked, but she seems to have her own explanation for that.
“Got too close to the edge of the desert, did he?” she asks. “I expect that the sands ate his clothes away—they’re monstrous hungry, so they are!”
“Oh, er—yes, something like that,” I say, nodding.
“And you’re a noblewoman?” She squints at me shrewdly, her eyes flicking up and down my sparkling silver-green gown and the golden pins still in my windblown hair.