A voice erupted inside my skull like I’d swallowed thunder.
I whirled around.
A man approached me.
He was tall, his shoulders cutting a proud silhouette against the empty horizon. Long hair the color of wild honey spilled loose around his face and his radiance made my eyes water. He seemed near and infinitely distant, like staring at a mountain that shouldn’t fit inside your vision.
His eyes.
I couldn’t look directly at them. They were like dying suns, burning with an intelligence that had watched civilizations rise and fall. When his gaze fixed on me, my knees wanted to buckle. The air around him shimmered and reality warped where he stood.
“I am Lord Tazurel.” His baritone boomed inside me, male, ancient, layered with amusement. “I am what the fae bound, and what their descendants have forgotten to fear.”
The ground trembled with every word.
“You stand upon the remains of a dead world,” the man thundered. “The fae destroyed this land with time magic. Runes that bent hours, fractured days.”
“Which world?”
“Myndra is where they sealed us.” He stepped forward, and a giant winged shadow rippled across the plain, far too big for a man.
A dragon? Dragons were legends that Vaeris had rambled about, nothing more than a story to tell children.
A dark chuckle rolled through my mind. “You know me, though you don’t remember.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are not meant to. Not yet.” His eyes narrowed. “You should be on your knees.”
“Excuse me?”
“When addressing a dragon, mortals prostrate themselves. You stand before me as if we are equals.”
I blinked.
He bared his unusually sharp teeth and held out a hand. Fire erupted from his palm and blew into my face. I shrieked, turning around, but the flames ate through my skin, flaying my nerves. The smell of cooking flesh hit me and I gagged. I couldn’t breathe.
Make it stop make it stop make it?—
He snapped his fingers, and the agony vanished.
I gasped, hands pressed to my neck, but the skin was smooth. I pulled my hands away and stared at them. No burns. The charred flesh was gone.
His gaze pinned me in place. “Kneel.”
I staggered back, reeling. Then I turned and ran. I made it three steps before fire wreathed my body.
I wailed. Flames devoured the dress, through me, eating my muscles. The pain. The searing, aching, suffocating pain. I collapsed, rolling on the ground, but the fire banked higher. I could feel my bones cracking, the marrow boiling. My vision went white, black, then red. I screamed for Rheya and Kairos.
Then it stopped.
I was standing again, unharmed. My dress was intact, but the phantom memory of burning alive crawled over my skin.
I fell to my knees, shaking.
Tazurel smiled, and I wanted to kill him. “We can continue this pleasantly, or I can burn you a dozen moretimes until you learn proper deference. Which would you prefer?”
I stayed silent, glaring at the dirt.
