His scream filled the cavern as he sailed forward.
Into the flames. Into the black, oily water.
Gone.
I lay on my back, chest heaving with labored breath. And I screamed in anger. I’d lost him. Denied my revenge. I twisted around and pushed to my feet, hand wrapped around the sickle sword. For a feral moment, I considered jumping into the lake after him so that I could cut him down.
Then I spied another target. It limped across the bridge toward me. Weak. Injured. And the cause of so much anger.
He would do.
Vision red, I ducked under the statue’s hissing flame and crawled back onto the bridge. When I emerged, I held the sword in both hands and fixed my gaze on the bear of a man facing me. He’d wronged me in countless ways. Lied to me. Embarrassed me. Sheltered me. Was ashamed of me.
Took Huck away from me.
He wasn’t my father anymore. He was prey.
But as I took a step forward, my vision blurred again. The cavern swirled and ebbed with thick smoke that billowed from the flaming lake. I closed my eyes to make the dizziness go away. And when I opened them again, there was something standing between me and my prey.
Hazy figures stepped from the smoke covering the bridge. All raven-haired and dark eyes. Pale, regal faces. Faces that spanned centuries in dress and style. Generations. They all looked eerily familiar.
House of Dracule?ti.
Radus and Mirceas. Ioanas and Cristinas. Michael the Brave.
Vlad Dracul, the first Dragon. And Vlad Dracula, with his big mustache and dark circles below his eyes. The Impaler himself. Monster. Hero.
Family.
But from behind him, a tall woman shifted into view. Black hair, kind eyes, regal shoulders. She drifted to the front of the hazy figures, a dark angel without wings, fierce as a Valkyrie on the battlefield. Impossibly beautiful and ethereal.
“Mother!” I cried.
“Darling girl,” she said in rich Romanian.
I wanted to run into her arms, but I couldn’t move. My body was rooted to the cavern floor.
“My little empress,” she said. “You’re stronger than any dragon. And you know what you need to do. Your spine is steel, your chin is high, and your heart is open. Make me proud.”
“Mother,” I pleaded, but she only shook her head and turned away from me. One by one, the hazy figures behind her faded. She wavered in the smoke, smiling over her shoulder at me, and then disappeared.
“No!” I sobbed. My feet became unstuck, and I stumbled forward toward where she’d been, but there was nothing but smoke and fire. Nothing but my bear of a father limping toward me in the middle of the bridge.
You know what you need to do.
I did.
The Zissu brothers had told me. The ring showed no mercy. Once all three bands were fit together and worn, it became part of the wearer. I tested it now: it couldn’t be pulled off. It couldn’t be destroyed. The dragon would not let go so easily.
It wanted blood. So I gave it.
Kneeling on the bridge, I set my hand on the rocky floor. I raised the sickle sword with a trembling hand, exhaled, and lopped off my pinkie.
And the bone ring.
I felt no pain. Not right away. There was only the blood spilling from my maimed hand. The surreal sight of my finger lying on the rocky floor. And the terrible loss of what had been inside me.
The dragon was gone.
