Page 97 of Dragon’s Rebel

“Blah blah blah, supervillain blah blah,” Thorne said, rolling his eyes. “Get to the point, Corwyn, before I fall asleep.”

Corwyn gazed at him with those burning eyes until the hair on the back of Thorne’s neck started to stand up.

Finally, he said, “Very well.” He turned to Rebel. “Tell me, human. Where is the Dolphin Seal?”

Rebel smirked. “No clue, Sorcerer. Why do you think I’m here? I’m looking for it, same as you.”

“Lies.”

Corwyn made a gesture with his fingers, and Rebel’s shackles began to glow. She stiffened, biting back a scream.

“Leave her alone,” Thorne shouted, yanking at his shackles. They didn’t move. “If you hurt her, I’ll—”

Corwyn turned to him. “You’ll do what, Draken? You are helpless. I can do anything I want to your mate.” The shackles glowed again, and Rebel bit back another scream.

He let her loose, and she sagged, her face contorted in pain.

Thorne could hardly stand it. Seeing his mate in pain was worse than experiencing it himself.

And then she started laughing. “You can’t fool me, Sorcerer,” she said. “You can’t kill me. You can’t even hurt me badly. The only way you’re going to get the Seal is if I find it for you. And then I have to give it to you freely.”

She spat at his feet. “And to have any hope of that happening, you have to be a hell of a lot nicer to me than you’ve been so far.”

D’Amboise hissed through his teeth, but Corwyn simply folded his arms, tapped the skeletal fingers of one hand on the bicep of the other.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps I simply need to be less nice… to your mate.”

He snapped his fingers. “D’Amboise. Bring the potion.”

Jean-Claude pulled metal box out of his inside jacket pocket, very much like the one Rebel had used to carry the serum out of BioGen.

And the Draken toxin.

D’Amboise snapped the catches open on the box and opened it, taking out a vial of blood-red liquid. “This,” he said, “is a poison specially formulated for Draken physiology. It’s quite potent, and is fatal if ingested.”

“No shit,” he said. “Corwyn already tried to put it in our water.” He raised his gaze to Corwyn’s. “I believe one of our ‘puling humans’ thwarted that plan with…what was it? An exploding gargoyle?”

Corwyn’s eyes narrowed. “Jean-Claude,” he said softly.

“Ah, yes.” D’Amboise pulled a thin metal rod out of the side of the case, no wider than a toothpick. “However,” he went on, “when dispensed on the skin, it causes slow-burning wounds. If it’s used long enough, and the wound not cleaned, some of them never heal.”

Corwyn turned to Rebel. “So, here is your choice. You can tell me where the Seal is, and we’ll go get it together. Or, Jean-Claude will drip poison on your Draken until he’s writhing in agony, and his dragon comes out and goes insane.”

So they didn’t know his dragon was gone. Could he use that somehow to his advantage? Would it make the poison less potent?

“Don’t tell them anything,” Thorne said to Rebel. “I’ll be okay.”

Corwyn stared at him. “So brave,” he said softly. “Or is it bravery? The Draken Guardians were so fond of their duty. It was their duty to die bravely, and they all did. I refused to follow their rules, and here I am, still alive.”

“If you can call it that,” Thorne said. “That body is getting a little ripe.”

Corwyn said, “Give them a taste.”

He made a gesture toward Thorne, and his left arm was suddenly pinned up against the wall. Jean-Claude walked through the shield around him, dipped the metal rod in the vial, and then brushed just the tiniest bit on Thorne’s skin.

For a moment he felt nothing.

Then his skin began to bubble and dissolve. The pain was so intense he almost blacked out, and he gritted his teeth until he thought they would break. A strangled moan made its way out of his mouth.