Dragons were coming, and if they saw Kate, they’d be coming looking for a fight.
A blast of black flames hit the fortress nearby, and I dove for cover as stones and rubble fell over me. I covered my head, wincing when I was hit.
A hand grabbed mine and yanked me back to my feet.
“We have company,” Craig muttered.
“I heard them.”
We ducked down again when Kate and Allis made another pass overhead.
More shouts joined their roaring, and I saw three full patrols of dragons burst through the trees, armed to the teeth, and behind them a cart bearing a catapult.
“What is that?” Craig growled.
“We have to get out of here. We have to get Kate!”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” Craig gripped the Executioner blade tighter in his fist, but he couldn’t fly.
I stepped back from him, and before he could argue, I shifted, roaring as the change came over me, and my body stretched and grew until I was a dragon ready to fly up and aid Kate the best I could.
Allis was behind her again, and I saw the burns on her tail from where she’d been hit. Her right wing was damaged, and she was faltering in the air.
I pumped my wings harder and plowed right into Allis, trying to knock him from the sky.
Kate whirled around and spotted me, but before I managed to catch up to her, a shout came from below.
“It’s the prince! Prince Forrest!”
“Capture that Darrah!” another commanded, and I heard the cranking of the catapult as they readied the net.
More dragons were moving in on the ruins, and within a few steps, they were on Craig.
He tried to fight them off, but there were too many, and they wrestled the sword from his hand, pinning him face down in the dirt. He cursed and spat at them, but the catapult was ready.
“Fire!”
I heard the twang of the net being released, and flew faster, so I was between the net and Kate.
It wrapped around my wings, and I tried to break free, but fell too fast.
I hit the ground hard, shifting back immediately, to try and get out of the tangled chords so I could fly back up and protect Kate.
“My prince!” Nathan, one from my personal guard detail, was at my side, dragging me to my feet.
“Where is it?” I snapped, searching the sky frantically for Allis. “Where?”
“The Darrah?” he asked with a frown.
“No! The dragon spawn!” I spun around, but the sky was empty except for Kate.
She roared mournfully, and she appeared exhausted, needing to land.
I watched, worried she’d fall from the sky, but something still had hold of her. She shook her massive head, and more flames dripped from her jaws, narrowly missing the dragons near the catapult.
“Get another net, now!”
“No, stop!” I ordered, shoving Nathan aside to try and get to the catapult.
“Get off me you bastards!” Craig yelled, and I saw him being dragged over by four dragons, one of them holding the Executioner blade and the knapsack. “Get off!”
“We’ve apprehended your kidnapper,” one of the dragons said to me.
“Kidnapper? What, no! Let him go!”
Nathan’s brow furrowed. “My prince, you have been gone for days, and this half-breed is the reason, as well as a Darrah! We’ve been searching for you.”
“And you found me, but you can’t hurt them!” I lunged for the catapult, but Nathan blocked me, grabbing my arms to pull me back. “Release me!”
“He’s under their power, he must be.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me! Let me go!”
But they ignored my orders, shoving me away from the catapult.
Kate roared above us, and her eyes narrowed to see Craig and me held captive by my guard. She was going to attack them. She flew higher up into the clouds, disappearing from sight, and the clearing fell deathly silent.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded with Nathan, but he ignored me. “Nathan!”
Crackling blue flames filled the clouds, and I cursed, knowing exactly what was coming next.
Kate’s form burst through the clouds as fire shot from her mouth towards the dragons. They scattered and yelled, but the commander at the catapult stood his ground.
“Fire!”
“Kate!” I shouted, but it was too late.
The net soared through the sky and tangled around Kate’s dragon form, smashing her wings to her sides and mangling her legs. She spun around and around until she slammed hard into the ground.
Craig growled in fury and managed to break free of the dragons. He took off towards Kate as she struggled to get free of the net, but the dragons caught up to him.
I yelled for them to stop, but one knocked him over the head, and Craig’s body slumped to the ground.
“Get the Darrah under control,” the commander ordered. “Now!”
“Enough of this! You don’t know what you’re doing!” I tried again to yank myself free of Nathan’s grasp, but he only held me tighter.
I needed to get to Kate.
The guard moved in around her, swords in hand.
I couldn’t let them kill her, but just when I thought I was going to get free, something heavy hit me in the back of my head.
I staggered forward a few more steps, my vision blurring, before I sank to my knees.
“Kate,” I whispered, hearing her roar turn into a cry of defeat before a second hit rendered me unconscious.
19
Craig
Images flashed through my mind.
A nightmare scene.
Allis back at the fortress, him and Kate fighting before they both took to the sky.
It couldn’t be real.
Allis was dead and gone, but then my head throbbed, and I winced as someone roughly pried open my eyelids.
Harsh light hit my eyes, and I cringed, trying to pull away. Chains rattled, and I felt a strange weight at my ankles and my wrists.
“He’s alive at least,” a deep voice rumbled. “It’s a start.”
“Father, please, you must listen to me.”
That voice, I knew that voice.
Footsteps stomped around me, and I blinked, trying to clear the fogginess from my head. We were not at the ruins anymore.
This hall, I knew this place with the gilded gold décor on the walls and the granite floor beneath me.
I was in the hall of the dragon leader, Kadin, Forrest’s father.
“You have put me through quite enough,” the first voice snapped sharply. “You have been gone for days, and when you are finally found, you are in the company of a wanted man and a Darrah! What am I to make of this?”
“You have to let me explain, please. It’s not what you think.”
“What I think is my only son was taken from me, placed under some cursed spell, and now believes, what... a darkness is spreading from some world that does not exist?”
Kadin was merely an older version of Forrest, grey in his black hair that trailed down his shoulders, filled with braids and beads of pure gold and silver. He was tall and broad at the shoulders. His dark skin reflected several battle scars and the sword he carried at his hip had seen a number of those battles. He was an impeccable warrior.
And now I was his prisoner.
“Kate,” I whispered roughly, realizing the last I saw of her she was in a net. “Where?”
Forrest opened his mouth to answer, but Kadin held up his hand, and his son fell silent.
I glowered at Forrest, and he shifted his gaze, staring at the floor instead.
“The Darrah is here, a prisoner just like you.”
I heard more chains rattle, cringing as I turned to find Kate.
She was still passed out on the floor, chained worse than I was, and covered in scratches and bruises. Her clothes were bloodied, and a growl started deep in my chest at the sight of her, so badly beaten.
I struggled to get to her,
but the chains held me back. I couldn’t even stand.
“What did you do?” I snarled at Forrest. “You swore you would fight for her!”
“I tried,” Forrest replied hotly, but a snarl from Kadin silenced him again.
“Coward, you’re nothing but a bloody coward!”
Kadin backhanded me hard enough to split my lip, and I spat blood at his feet. “Insolent mutt. You are lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky? Right.” I wiped my mouth on my shoulder, willing Kate to wake up and do something incredible as she did before to get us out of a jam.
But she was barely breathing.
I feared she was too badly injured and she wasn’t going to heal.
Forrest kept trying to catch my eye, but I blatantly ignored him. I searched the grand hall, looking for a way out, but dragon guards lined the walls, and four were at the doors.
I wanted to think I could bust my way through them, but these chains were not just metal. The clearer my mind became, the more I could detect the magic coursing through them, weakening me, the longer I stayed in them.
The ones on Kate were probably the same. I had to get us out of this somehow.
The Executioner blade was nowhere in sight, nor the knapsack with the shards.
If Forrest lost those shards, the second I was out of these chains, I would rip him to shreds, prince or no prince.
The doors opened loudly behind me, and I saw a dragon rush forward, handing a message to Kadin. He leered in annoyance and crumbled the paper in his hands.
“Our guest has arrived.”
“Guest?” Forrest asked. “What guest? Who did you send word to?”
“The only one who matters in this situation and you will keep your mouth shut on this plague nonsense while he is here.”
I raised my brow.
So, Forrest had tried to speak to his father about what happened. I guessed that was a start, but not good enough.
Kate and I were still in chains while he stood beside Kadin as if he was nothing more than the prince returned home, bearing gifts for his people in the form of prisoners.
“What are you going to do to Kate?” I demanded.
“Kate,” Kadin sneered. “She is a Darrah. I care for no other name she goes by.”
“She’s the Vindicar,” I corrected. “You need her!”
“Oh, my poor misguided son,” another voice said from behind me, and my blood ran cold. “You should not care for the fate of the girl when your own hangs in the balance.”
I didn’t turn as I heard the steps draw closer, more than one set.
I sniffed the air and mentally cursed.
Reginald was here, too.
This day could not get any worse. Well, then again it could. The edge of a sword crept into my view from the right, the blade of the Executioner sword.
“I hear you were in possession of this. Where may I ask did you find it?”
I kept my lips closed tightly and my gaze suddenly locked on Forrest’s.
There was worry in his eyes and apology, but he had no idea what was about to happen to me.
“You will tell me.” Raghnall stepped before me and with the blade, lifted my face, so I had no choice, but to look into his eyes.
His solid red irises were filled with promises of pain as he ticked his finger back and forth before my face. His black hair was slicked back, and his leathery face looked nothing like my own. His rough, black horns curled tightly around the sides of his head, and were scarred from years of fighting off assassination attempts.
“You, my bastard son, you think you have experienced pain before? You will soon learn what true pain is. You, and your Darrah.”
I didn’t want to, but I gulped in fear. Reginald grinned darkly beside him, and I realized very suddenly I wasn’t going to get out of this alive. Raghnall was going to torture me and then kill me, and I wouldn’t be able to save Kate.
My quest for saving the world had come to an abrupt end.
Forrest shifted his weight from one foot to another, beside his father, and I flicked my gaze to him, narrowing my eyes.
He did this to me, to us.
He would be the cause of our failure.
And if I died, I would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Shards.
Legends Excerpt
Kate now knows what she is. She knows what she has to do. But she’s stuck between a Forrest, a dragon shifter prince and Craig, a half-demon bastard. And they’ve got a mystery to solve and a world to save.
The problem is: emotions. There are too many of them and they are conflicting!
Join Kate, Craig, and Forrest on their journey of adventures.
Chapter 1
Forrest
“Leave us!” Kadin demanded of his guard.
I stood perfectly still as the guards brushed past me, all of them eyeing me as if I’d gone completely mad, then stepped out of the clan leader’s private chambers.
The doors closed with a resounding thud, and I was left alone with my father.
Since being brought here, I begged him to release Craig and Kate, at least not have them chained to the floor, but he refused to hear me out. His hard-set face told me I had disappointed him in more ways than one. Letting myself be taken in by those two, and then claiming they were my friends was too much for him to handle.
“You have to listen to me, please,” I tried again, not willing to give up on my friends, but he wasn’t having any of it.
His hand shot up into the air, and I instantly fell silent. “You are unwell, my son, you have been bewitched by those who kidnapped you.”
“I wasn’t kidnapped!” I growled for the tenth time. “Well, not technically.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter, alright? I was with them because I wanted to be, needed to be.”
Kadin sank into his hand-carved wooden chair by a roaring fire in the stone hearth. He motioned to the chair across from him. “Come and sit, and we will speak of what happened to you logically. I will not have you rambling madness here, Not here,” he said firmly.
I knew exactly what he was thinking of and I swallowed hard, hating to do this to my father after all he’d suffered through. But I had suffered too, and I’d been able to see the truth of what was happening in our realms.
My father was a highly logical man who believed in the facts presented to him. I would just have to find a way to make him understand that the two people currently chained up in the main hall were my allies, my friends, more than friends really, if I believed the past lives we were presented with. And it was impossible not to. The connection I felt to those two was starting to make sense, and I was not going to lose them now.
I took my seat, wishing for a selfish moment I could have a shower and a hot meal, but Craig and Kate’s lives hung in the balance. They saved mine, now it was my turn to save them.
Craig already thought I’d turned on them, not that I blamed him. Trust was a hard thing to have between a dragon and a demon.
I sat down slowly and warmed my hands by the fire, mostly to waste time and give myself a few more seconds to think, logically, about how to explain the impossible to my father.
“Now then,” Kadin started, “tell me what happened when you first found your target.”
“Craig,” I corrected sharply, and his brow rose. “His name is Craig.”
My father’s green eyes, so like my own, darkened in warning. “You found him and then?”
I didn’t want to explain the fight at the house with Lucy in case he decided to send more men after her. There were kids in that house, innocents. They had nothing to do with our world.
“We tracked him to a house where I found Kate.”
“The Darrah,” he whispered, lip twitching in disgust.
“She didn’t know what she was, father. She was forced to remain in human form all these years, and her memories had been muddied.”
“By a witch?” Kadin’s hands
tightened on the arms of his chair.
“No, will you just stop for five seconds and let me speak!” I roared. “Lucy took care of Kate for years after her father was murdered! They would have killed her too if she had not escaped… and she believes it was because of you. Was it?”
“Was it what?” he shot back.
I wasn’t going to stand here and argue with him about Kate all night long. “I want you to free them both, now. We have to keep moving. If we don’t find the rest of the shield, we’re all going to die! Don’t you understand that? All of us! In all the realms!”
I jumped to my feet, pacing angrily around his chambers. I was usually known as the cool-tempered prince, hard to anger, and I rarely lost control, but after experiencing Kate’s death, seeing how our previous lives had ended, a new anger rushed through my veins, raw emotions that wanted to lash out at anything that moved.
And attacking my father right now would do nothing to help my cause.
“You speak of the plague that the demon mentioned,” he finally said, after a long few moments of silence. “It is lies, all of it. Raghnall has assured me of this.”
“No, it’s not! Why does no one remember what happened back then?”
“You have been fed these false words, and I cannot believe you were gullible enough to believe them!” He was on his feet now, his hands firmly gripping my shoulders as if he could bring me back to his side by sheer will. “What have they done to you?”
“I saw it,” I said slowly, emphasizing each word for him.
“It’s not possible because it does not exist!”
“It is, and it does. We went to the Burnt World, father. I saw the plagued there, saw the beasts created by it and being controlled by it.” I tugged myself out of his grasp and turned around, lifting my shirt to show him my scarred back. “I was nearly killed by it.”
I felt my father’s eyes on me, taking in the scars that ran down the length of it, my souvenir from the Burnt World.
“They did this to you?”
Shards (Dragon Reign Book 2) Page 12