The Dragon Prince's Obsession

ONE

“Adela? Adela?” A grating voice called me out of a dreamless sleep. I opened my eyes to black hair falling into my face and pain searing my left side.

The only light illuminating the room was the flame in my best friend's palm. I knew Lucille was a dragon but I did not know she could be this angry. The veins on her hand were visible as she made a fist.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to sit upright despite the pain punching into my side. I found that as I tried to use my hands to support myself, something prevented me. “What in the name of –“ My hands were locked above me by a set of sturdy manacles.

“The witches took us,” Lucille muttered, eyeing the manacles.

“Why did they take me?” I hissed, struggling with the thing binding me.

It made sense for them to take Lucille. She was, after all, the Drakii princess, her brother being the king of dragons. If the witches were to take anyone asides from the king’s queen, it would be Lucille. I was just a human serving under the dragon king!

“I do not think they meant to. You just happened to be with me.” She placed her hands on the manacles and I jerked.

“Are you planning to set me ablaze!?” I hissed when I felt the metal heat. “Why did they chain me then?” I masked my anxiety with a string of questions.

For the love of god! I had suffered enough for a lifetime. I did not need to be used as - as a what? Why did a dark voodoo cult take me!?  I cast my mind back to how we got here. Lucille asked to be escorted to Dracoberg, the market of the dragons, so we snuck out despite the heavy guards the king placed on her.

“This is not my fault, Adela. How am I to have all the answers? Perhaps they chained you to slow me down. There is no way for you to get out of those like I would have.” She snapped. “Stay still. It might hurt a bit but –“ She placed her hands on the thick metal holding me. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the burn of pain and the sizzling of flesh. “Well, that was easy,” She said, surprise pitching her voice higher. I rubbed my wrist as I sat upright, my skin irritated.

“Adela?”

“Yeah?” I stood on my weakened legs, dusting off my rumpled clothes.

Being the King’s servant did not come with as much luxury as one would expect. It definitely did not come with as much luxury as I would like. It would not hurt to have clothes that were a little better, a little bright and a little less worn. Nothing differentiated us from every other servant.

Sometimes, I hated the greed and stinginess of dragons, but then, I reminded myself that when the world cast me out, when my kind looked at me with scorn, when no one else cared enough, the Drakii proved to be more humane than the humans. My king did not provide me with fancy clothes but he provided his protection.

I did not need Lucille to tell me. It did not take the ears of a dragon to hear the roar. I felt it. I did nothing wrong but fear pierced my heart with a cold that spread throughout my body and froze my blood.

“Run.”

I drew in a deep breath and charged into a sprint. Lucille, the dark-haired girl who looked too frail to hurt a fly, barrelled into the two women that rushed into the room.

The king had come.

He had come and now they would try to take us someplace else, hide us, stop him from getting to us but Lucille barrelled into them. I leapt across their groaning bodies, my movement fuelled by the urgency coursing in my veins.

A man dressed in flowing obsidian robes rounded a corridor the same time we did. I could not tell how I knew but as the man raised his hand, I knew what to expect. I hurled myself into Lucille but it was too late. His magic knocked her to the ground.

“Keep going!” She pushed me away. I watched her strength leave her. She turned ashy first, then a startling blue climbed up her neck.

I left her.

I shut down the voice of guilt that threatened to overwhelm me.

With the breaking of bones, the muffled screams, the panic that choked me, a panic that was more than mine, I knew King Nicokreon was in the vicinity. I could almost taste the steel of his wrath as I ran. He would get her. I knew that. I believed that. I hoped on that as I ran. Sweat poured down my face, dripped into my parted mouth and coated my tongue.

I feared my heart beat loud enough for the witches to hear. I feared I would dash my leg against the uneven ground and twist my ankle. I feared a lot of things. I feared for my life.

People said the witches were cunning. While dragons had no inclination to hide their nature, the witches were foes masquerading as friends. Now, they stopped pretending to be at peace with the dragons.

The humans and witches had one thing in common. An insatiable yearning for power. The zeal to put the world at their feet, to make their betters their footstool. Unlike humans, they possessed abilities that made them formidable enemies.

I ran past a room and doubled back. I had half the mind to continue on my journey but the man sitting in there would bleed out and die in a couple of hours. My body screamed at me to run, my feet shuffled on the rough gravel of the witch’s home, my heart raced from my throat. But I stopped. I stopped and I watched him for a second.

A bunch of keys hung on the next door. I tried every one of them, dropping the bunch twice with hands that shuddered. Fear kicked me the more I jammed different keys into the lock.

“Calm, Adela. Calm,” I whispered to myself. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and put in the right key.

He sprung on me the second I pushed the door open. The hair on my nape rose as another chill of fear sliced through me. A sound caught between a squeak and a scream escaped my frozen lips.

The red of his eyes were dying. Yet, they burned with the hatred only the prince could muster.

“Human,” He hissed. He uttered the word like a curse, an insult, as if he wanted me to be ashamed of what I was.

For the better part of my twenty years, I believed myself to be cursed. I never once qualified myself as stupid too.

The world would be a better place without Mikhail Pendragon in it. He did unspeakable things. He brewed chaos like a demon of war. The world would be a better place without the evil, the chaos, he breathed into it. Trust Adela to rescue such a man!

A sizeable pool of his blood covered the ground he had been sitting on but this man, this monster, who was half dead still made my heart race.

“Stop it,” I whispered, choked. He did nothing but breathe in my personal space but every raggedy breath he took sucked the oxygen from my lungs. He took my breath away in the way only terror could.

“That door was magicked not to open,” He said. No, he accused. I blinked at him, wondering where his thoughts had gone. He staggered, hand pressed into his bleeding side. The dark red liquid poured faster.

“They h – have a – a key to the – the doors.” I raised the bunch of keys that I held in a death grip in my left hand. My broken words were not out of my mouth when he slumped against me.

It felt like I supported the weight of ten men who all wore diamond-studded armoury. I pressed my back into the wall behind me to keep steady. For another split second, I considered pushing him off me and continuing my race out of this dratted place. Whatever made me drag this dragon with me could very well be my death.

A strange thing permeated the air. It was more than the magic that hung heavy in the atmosphere. It felt greater than the dark magic that cast a gloomy shadow about and made my skin crawl. Something evil, more sinister, wove itself into the very magic the witches cast around their dwellings.

The minutes sped by. My heart raced faster than a cheetah, but my movement dragged on. I staggered with the weight of this man, pressing my hand into his side. The warm liquid pouring out of his side coated my fingers. The meat hanging out made my stomach turn. The dark magic that stopped him from healing irritated my skin. Knowing all this, knowing that this man had killed children, burnt villages and incited a war not too long ago, I risked my life to save him.

If he died before I got him away from the magic in here, the magic that prevented healing, at least, the king would have a corpse to bury.

As a reward for my idiotic benevolence, no one came our way.

Every small sound sent my mind into a frenzy. With every small jerk of the man I dragged with me, my heart flew into my throat. My fingers froze. My legs trembled as I moved with agonizing slowness, jerking behind boulders at every sound.

The rage of the king had gone out of the air. I could only hope he got Lucille and escaped this cursed place. The atmosphere was still, an unnatural quiet in the air, like the rocks that formed this unending cave feared for their lives.

No one came our way and every time I heard pounding footsteps close, every time I said a silent prayer for my dirty soul to be cleansed and made worthy of Paradise, the footsteps diverted. The footsteps diverted and my heart calmed only to beat more furiously.

I felt deep in my bones that an ambush awaited us right at the exit of this cave, wherever that might be.

I saw the light, left the magic of the witches behind me but the evilness seemed to whisper against my skin still. We were out but the magic did not leave.

Only a small space existed between the dark place we exited and that which lay ahead of us.

With shaky arms, laboured breathing and a rain of sweat, I dragged the Prince of Damnation into a small hideout in the next cave.

I felt tears well in my eyes. I felt fatigue wash away my strength. My throat closed up, stopping a sob in its wake. I grabbed my head in my hands, buried my face into my thighs as I sat on the ground, and then I screamed into my legs.

Everything around me fell apart with a single touch. One moment I was happy and the next, I was chained in a witch’s cave. One moment I was a child and the next I was forced to grow up. I knew I was cursed. I had to be. Nothing worked for me or with me. Everything I held dear was bound to fall apart. I knew this but this was choking me.

I could endure the anguish of the present. It was the uncertainty of the future that made frustration kick my heart beat.

I screamed into my thighs at the mother of all misfortunes that just piled on my head. I screamed but then I heard it. A disgruntled voice that silenced even the wind.

“You have saved my life.”

I lifted my head, wiped my cheeks with a sniffle before replying, “And now it is mine.”