Liane turned away but heard Heinrich’s guttural screams before the wet popping sounds silenced him. She clamped her hands over her ears, stomach heaving, fearing to look and see Heinrich’s fate.
It took a few seconds before she could find the courage to look. Heinrich was unrecognizable, a bloody, pulpy mess, his blood spread out across the dock, dripping between planks, leaving a dark stain. She’d hated Heinrich, and his death was essential to save her family and the kingdom, but she took no pleasure in his demise. Just shameful relief and regret.
Erich had done that… He’d done it to protect her... but why? After a week of pretending, a single night together, none of it felt like reason enough. But she also knew from the moment they’d met she’d felt undeniably drawn to him, even now his muzzle dripping with blood, Heinrich’s blood. She did not fear him. Illogically, impossibly so. All her thoughts were on protecting him. Helping him escape the city before he was discovered… She took a faltering step toward him, a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue.
“You don’t fear him?” a man said from beside her.
She startled and turned to gaze into his molten gold eyes, so like Erich’s but different somehow.
Unlike the rest of the sailors and dockworkers who’d run in fear, he didn’t seem afraid or surprised; in fact, he seemed almost oblivious to the dragon. His strange golden eyes were trained on her. He turned his head, and she noticed the tip of his pointed ear poking out from beneath the curtain of ebony hair. An elf. Liane recoiled and instinctively put a hand against Erich’s long neck, seeking his protection, and he rested his serpent-like head on her shoulder. Was he one of the elves Heinrich wanted to sell her to?
“Don’t come any closer,” she said, taking another step back.
“I’m a friend, Liane. You do not need to fear me,” the elf said, hand outstretched.
“How do you know my name?” Shards of ice ran through her veins, and she was thankful for Erich’s bulking security because she was completely without weapons. But Erich didn’t seem concerned as he didn’t lunge or move to protect her. Could she trust the elf? What if he was under the elf’s command? Liane shook herself; that couldn’t be true.
“I dreamed of you long ago, though I didn’t learn your name until recently. The All-Mother has chosen you to restore the balance and wield the blade, and I’ve come to teach you how to use it.”
A strange, irrational part of herself wanted to grasp a hold of it. If a dragon had come to her defense, could an elf explain these powers she’d known nothing about until this morning? But Heinrich had told her they wanted to kill her… and everything she knew about elves was they were corruptors, wielders of dangerous magic.
Shouting proceeded the thundering of booted feet, and Liane turned to see a regiment of Midnight Guards rushing toward them, led by Captain Rosen. Fear spiked in her veins as Erich reared up and his large, leathery wings splayed out behind him. They arrayed themselves in a circle, weapons drawn and pointed at Erich. The elf put himself between her and the Midnight Guard, drawing a dagger and holding it in front of himself.
“They won’t hurt me,” Liane said to him. “You should worry about yourself.”
Erich roared, hissing menacingly at what he perceived as a coming threat. Without thinking, she thrust herself between them, arms splayed wide.
“Don’t hurt him; he’s not a threat. He protected me…” Liane said to Captain Rosen, her unwilling gaze flicking toward Heinrich’s mashed corpse.
Captain Rosen looked over; her expression was impassive.
“That is a dragon, Princess. A monster formed by corruption. Step away so we might protect you.”
“Only if you promise to not hurt him.”
Captain Rosen shook her head and said something out of the corner of her mouth to an archer beside her. He raised his weapon and pointed it toward Erich’s head.
“No, you can’t—” But before she could even finish her protest, they shot something toward him, catching him in the shoulder.
Erich reared back again with a pained shriek, and when he brought his feet down again, the dock shook beneath her, threatening to crack.
“Go, you have to fly,” Liane shouted at Erich.
His golden eye met hers, and she saw the resistance in it, then she shoved, hard. Despite his bulk, she felt force behind her hands, and in her ears, she heard the beating of wings. Hesitantly, he took flight, rising in the sky, neck craning back to watch her.
“Go,” she shouted, as she tilted her head skyward. Liane watched Erich as his silhouette faded against the bright light of the full moon.
33
Erich’s head pounded as if he’d indulged in too much ale. It was typical after a change, as was the taste of blood in his mouth and the maddening itching, caused by his reformed flesh from dragon scales. Returning to human form, his skin always felt too tight, as if the dragon were wearing his human skin. For now, it slept, sated for another moon’s turn. It was easier to bind it, lock it down deep in the furthest reaches of his consciousness. Groaning, he sat up and pressed the heels of his hands to his burning eyes.
The night before was a blur, coming back to him in fragments as the dragon’s thoughts were flashes of images. Liane’s face was foremost among them. Her eyes wide with wonder and surprisingly trusting. He tried to sift through memories of her, to ensure he hadn’t harmed her. Then he remembered through the dragon’s eyes as she embraced him. Foolish woman. What had held the dragon back? Somehow, impossibly, she’d broken through and tamed him at his most dangerous.
Then why did his mouth taste like blood? Erich clenched a hand as flashes of Heinrich’s death flittered through his mind. Though he’d deserved what he’d done to him, he didn’t relish in taking human life.
A forest of tall pines surrounded him on all sides, a dragon-sized indent on the ground, where he’d fallen asleep at sunrise. Midday sun burned overhead. If he didn’t cover up soon, his skin would burn from sunlight. Tattered shreds of his clothes hung around his naked body as he stood and shaded his eyes against the bright light, which illuminated the tops of a mountain range. The opposite side of the mountains behind Artria. He must have flown all night. It explained his aching muscles. But how had he escaped the city and made it here? Those memories were blurrier, harder to translate from dragon to man.
“Awake then?” Fritz asked.
