Then, he heard a cry, high and raw and human.
Elowen!
Eighteen
She sawthe torches before she reached the gate.
And the men holding them.
Two guards stood just outside the village wall, faces pale in the firelight, swords drawn. Next to them, stood the man who had been shouting of dragons, and even more painfully, her father.
Her blood ran cold.
The guards began to bark at her. “By order of the Council, you are to be seized and brought forth for punishment.”
She didn’t run, didn’t beg. She should have known someone would have noticed her sneak away, but she hadn’t expected her own father to turn her in, however much he might have threatened it before.
Elowen let her hands fall slowly to her sides, and nodded once. They bound her wrists with rough rope and marched her through the gates and into the center of the town.
The entire village had gathered beneath the cold sky,stormclouds rolling in heavy and fast. The downpour was loud, but not as loud as the Council loudly proclaimed her a traitor.
They didn’t ask her to explain, nor did they offer a trial. Their bone-carved masks flashed with the lightning above their heads.
“Twenty lashes. No less. We must purge the treason from her blood!”
The punishment post stood tall in the center of the square, a wooden beam stained with blood, time, and pain. Elowen’s legs trembled as they tied her to the post, and she whimpered as they forced her to her knees. She began to cry when they cut open the back of her dress, not because of her immodesty, but because she knew the pain would come next.
The wind and rain bit against her bare skin as the storm howled with its own harsh judgement.
The whip cracked through the silence, ripping across her back like fire. She screamed, but the second one was worse. By the third, she could hardly breathe. By the fourth, she was begging for mercy—mercy she knew no one would give.
They didn’t stop. By the tenth, she was barely conscious, delirious from the pain, crying because it was only half over. She began to wonder if she would even make it that long. Her voice had gone hoarse, and her breath came in ragged, uneven gasps. What remained of her dress was heavy with her blood and the rain.
She felt the world go quiet, and Elowen thought she had finally died. She looked up as lightning cracked acrossthe sky overhead, painting the world in a flash of white for naught but a second.
And in that flash, she saw a shadow. Massive, unmoving, perched atop the stone wall of her village. Another bolt lit the world again, and the shape became more clear.
“Midas…” Elowen croaked, her voice nothing against the wind and the rain and the thunder.
He stepped closer, descending from the wall like a god of legends, rain falling off him in waves. His golden eyes burned through the downpour, and his breath grew orange against the cold and the dark.
He did not roar, he did not run, he walked deliberately, silently toward her, every step shaking the very stones beneath her knees. He stopped in front of her, his eyes scanning her small, broken, bloody form. He saw the way she was tied to the post, and then his eyes landed on the man in a mask made of dragon bone, holding a whip.
And Midas snarled. It wasn’t a roar, it was darker, lower. It was far more terrifying than anything she’d ever heard. It was not a warning, it was harsher than that.
He lunged forward, his teeth biting the man holding the whip in half. He did not eat the body, he left both parts there in the square for the others to see. Then, he raised his sharp claws and slashed clean through the ropes tying Elowen to the post.
She collapsed forward, and he caught her gently with his claws. He curled the talons around her with a tenderness he’d never shown anything before. He lifted her away from the cruel village, and carried her into the storm.
She had been tellingthe truth.
Though she smelled of the poison, she had come to warn him. She risked everything for him.
And he hadgrowledat her. Driven her away. Called her a liar. Doubted her, doubted everything they had built together in the serenity of that forest.
Her body hung limp in his claws, breathing shallow, as he carried her into the mountains, into the very depths of his cave, where he could shield her from the cruel village that would bleed her dry for her kindness.
He would never forgive himself for making her bleed. He might as well have held the whip himself.
