I was the Dragon.
26
THE RING’S SEDUCTIVE POWER SNAKEDinside me. Rushed through me like wine. Warming me on the inside and scattering my thoughts. Chaos surrounded me, but I was unconcerned.
I looked down at myself, certain I’d find scales and talons. Still me. The thing inside me was stretching. Unhappy to share my body. It was as if I’d captured a wild horse inside me, and it was bucking and scared. Unwilling to be tamed.
Vision red, I glanced up at my father’s frightened face. I could hear his despair. His fear. His broken heart. But I didn’t care. He was only a curiosity, and my interest was drawn to everything else around us. Because I could hear it all. The sound of rats and insects skittering in cracks. The wind howling through the shaft in the rock above the dark cavern pool. The drip of black liquid from stalactites.
Everything.
Including Rothwild. He raged against the bars, shaking them. Face twisted into a hideous grimace. “I will kill both of you! Acolytes!” he shouted in Romanian to the men rushing up behind him, sickle swords drawn. “Cut them down!”
Their falx weapons couldn’t reach us through the bars. Rothwild would be forced to open the gate. But it didn’t matter one way or another to me.
I closed my eyes and listened. The dragon sharing my body whispered inside my head. It told me secrets I couldn’t comprehend. Old secrets. Lost secrets. It talked to my very soul, a dark conversation, deep down in the pit of my being.
The dragon was bargaining with me. It wanted control, and I wanted to give it.
Just for a moment.
I opened my eyes and saw red. A strange, hot wind gathered in the prison cell. Swirling. Strengthening. Growing larger. It rustled my clothes and bent all the candle flames in the cavern.
Wind. Blinding light. What was this? Where did it come from?
It was marvelous. It coursed through me, this eddying vortex.
And then it exploded.
The cell door burst open. Blew right off its hinges and knocked one of the acolytes flat to the ground. His sword clattered from his grip and he lay still, sprawled unnaturally. Flattened under the weight of the barred door.
But it was difficult to pity the man. Not when the entire cavern had been transformed.
Flames circled the bridge.
The lake was on fire.
Rothwild jumped back and shouted. Shock and shadows danced over his face. The growing fire was reflected in his eyes as his head turned in every direction. Amazed.
Flames shot across the hem on one of the acolytes’ robes. With a terrible yawp, he raced away from his recumbent partner and disappeared into the tunnel.
Behind me, my father made a noise that was part shock, part pain. I glanced over my shoulder to see him limp a step. Had I hurt him? Possibly. Somewhere inside my head, I thought this should matter more.
None of it mattered. Not my father, nor the robed man on the ground. Not the one who’d escaped in the tunnel.
What mattered was that my path was no longer blocked.
What mattered was Rothwild.
My enemy.
My father’s voice bellowed, but I shoved his reaching hand away and stepped out of the open cell. Freedom. I bent to sweep up the dead acolyte’s fallen sword. It was heavy in my hand. A real weapon.
I looked up from the blade. Excitement and an odd sort of terror rippled over me as I trained my gaze on the bearded man in front of me and saw the fear in his eyes.
He moved to make a run for the tunnel, but I blocked his path. He was big, and I was small and nimble. I watched him calculate the odds and make the decision to head backward. Across the rocky bridge in the middle of the flaming lake.
“Theodora!” my father shouted behind me.
