16
Halo
A low, throbbing pain seeped through my whole body. I groaned as I came to. When I tried to touch the source of the pain at the back of my head, an unpleasant and familiar noise jingled in my ears.
The sound of steel chains.
Instantly, consciousness hit me, and I was fully alert.
My wrists were bound. Again. I blinked rapidly to clear my blurred vision, and I realized the lines of grey weren’t just leftover shapes from my aching eyes - they were bars of a cage.
Shackled, caged. That instantly put a damper on things. What else did I have to deal with?
“He’s awake.”
“Halo!”
The voices pierced my head like steak knives. I shut my eyes then blinked them a few times to adjust to the torch light in the darkness. I noticed by now that I was locked inside the same cage from earlier, except James was gone.
I followed the voices. One was Silas, leaning against the far wall with a pleased expression. The other was Kass. He sat in a chair and leaned forward awkwardly. Then I noticed his hands stuck behind the back of the chair. He must have been handcuffed, too.
The fog of pain and blacking out faded, and I remembered what happened. We were in the caverns, trying to save James, when he cried out to look behind us and then…
I glanced at the cage’s lock, then the shackles. I could shift into my dragon form - or any large creature - and break both of them instantly.
But Silas must have read the expression on my face. He thrust the pole-knife against Kass’s throat. Kass froze. The sharp edge pressed against his flesh, enough to put pressure on it but not enough to pierce the skin - a thinly veiled threat.
“Don’t even think about it. He’ll be dead before you can even try.” He glared down at Kass. “And that goes for you, too.”
“I thought I was too valuable to kill,” I said sarcastically.
Silas frowned, but it quickly twisted into a smirk. “You are. But you do have a lot of non-essential parts I can probably hack off.”
“Fun,” I muttered. “So, where’s James? You hack his non-essential parts off, too?”
Silas rolled his eyes. “He ran off, crying, as soon as I unlatched the door.”
So he didn’t try to stay and fight for us?I thought bitterly.Whatever. At least he has his own self-preservation in mind.
Silas withdrew the blade and Kass let out a gasp. “We have what we want. Anything else is unimportant.”
“Again withwe.Are you gonna introduce us to your friend or what?” I demanded.
Kass’s eyes widened in terror for my sake. I’m sure he wanted me to shut my fool mouth, but I had no intention of doing so right now. I was pissed. I was sick and tired of being captured and chained up by this idiot.
A slow smile spread across Silas’s mouth. “Yes. It’s about time you met myfriend, isn’t it?”
Despite myself, I shuddered at the way he saidfriend- even though I didn’t quite understand it yet, it was very clear they weren’t just friends.
“Master, if you will?” Silas called.
My heart raced.Master. Who is he calling master?
A low, deep sound reverberated throughout the cavern walls, followed by heavy footsteps. I froze, my eyes glued to the darkness on the opposite side of the tunnel. When the beast emerged, I couldn’t contain my tiny gasp.
A massive black dragon stomped out of the darkness and into view. Its wings scraped the top of the tunnel as it approached. The whole creature barely fit inside the cavern.
But that wasn’t what horrified me the most. The dragon’s scales weren’t smooth and glossy the way they should have been. Instead, huge swaths of scars marred the dragon’s skin, making it look mottled rather than pure black.
