Light My Fire (Dragon Kin #7)(61)

Celyn smiled. “Thanks, Uncle Addolgar.”

“Any time. Now . . . let’s go wipe that Baron Roscommon and his city from the bloody map, shall we?”

“No, no,” Elina heard the dragon saying to his uncle as they walked back toward the rest of the group.

“What do you mean, no?” Addolgar asked.

“We’re not going to wipe out the city.”

“We’re not?”

“We would,” Elina volunteered.

The dolt turned those dark eyes on her. “No one asked you.”

“But—” Elina began, but the dragon turned away from her and then, suddenly, she was battling that damn tail of his. It kept reaching around and slapping her ass while the dragon continued his conversation with his uncle.

Elina grabbed one of the arrows she’d been given and tried to stab at the tail, but it moved too fast. Amazing, since the dragon never stopped his conversation with his uncle. It was as if the tail had a life of its own.

The tail suddenly reared up like a snake, the tip pointing right between her eyes. Now on her knees, Elina tightened her grip on the arrow she held and pulled it back for one last attempt to stop the damn thing.

“Are you done?” the dragon asked her.

“Your tail is trying to kill me. Have you no control over it?”

“Of course I do.”

“So you are trying to kill me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not about to disappoint my queen simply to get you to stop bothering me.”

“It moves like snake.”

“It moves as I tell it to move. It’s my tail. And you can stop trying to stare it down. Everyone just thinks you’re a mad cow at this point.”

Elina looked up and realized that the dragon’s kin were watching her closely.

Clearing her throat, she lowered the arrow. “I did what I had to,” she told them.

The dragons moved away without saying anything, and Celyn leaned his forearms against the rocky ground next to where she sat.

“We’re going back to the city to deal with Roscommon. You’ll wait here until I come for you.”

“No.”

“You want to go on ahead?”

“No. I come with.”

“That’ll be dangerous.”

“Again you suggest I am weak,” she snapped.

“I did not! But I’m supposed to be protecting you.”

“Yet I protect you. My arrows helped, did they not?” He let out a sigh. “They did.”

“Then I come. I want to see how decadent Southlanders handle such a problem.”

“Unlike your tribes that would—”

“Attack the city full force, capture the older boys and young men to hold until they were old enough for marriage, and wipe everything else from the land until there was nothing but ashes and the tears of the dying.”

The dragon blinked. “And that seems like a good plan to you?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “Not at all. That is just what we would do. I never say it was good idea. But I am tragic disappointment to my people.”

“Well, then, as your host while in this land, I think it is my responsibility to show you how we handle things, don’t you?”

“Yes. Then I can judge you and your corrupt, immoral people wanting.”

The dragon grinned, showing all those bright white fangs again, which sparkled like pretty cave stones. “That sounds like a delightful plan.”

“Something told me you would like, dragon.”

Chapter Nineteen

Baron Roscommon walked quickly down the third-floor hallway of his castle, his assistant following, his captain of the guard right by his side.

“What do you mean they haven’t returned with another shipment from that cave?”

“There’s been nothing from them in hours, my lord,” his assistant informed him as he worked hard to get his short legs to catch up with them.

“Captain?” the baron asked just as they reached the end of the hall and were nearing the stairs to the next floor down.

“I’ll send a unit of my men out there, Baron, and have them report back to me immed—”

The captain’s word stopped as soon as they heard the screaming outside.

“What the holy hells?” the baron snarled.

“You two stay here,” the captain ordered. “I’ll—”

The three men quickly moved as the stone wall beside them shook. The captain pulled his sword and stepped in front of them, pushing the baron and his assistant back.

The stone was torn away, the late-afternoon suns briefly blinding them until an enormous scale-covered snout suddenly appeared, the nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air. It pulled back a bit so that the baron could now see cold, black eyes staring at him.

“Good day to you, Baron Roscommon.”

“Move!” the captain ordered, before he charged the dragon with his blade.

The baron only had seconds to see the dragon pull back completely from that hole just as the captain was about to make contact. But the captain didn’t have time to change his strategy and he went flying out the opening, falling three stories. His screams of panic brutally cut off when he hit the ground.

“Ooopsie!” the dragon sang out.