Pia Saves the Day (Elder Races #6.6)(9)

He hissed, “You are no winged serpent.”

“No, I’m not,” she whispered. “But that’s still my name. What’s your name—or do you have one?”

The dragon had a name. He had chosen it for himself. He reached for it and ran into that wall of fiery pain again.

The female’s gaze darkened and filled with moisture. One droplet slipped out the corner of her eye and streaked down her temple. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Be silent,” he ordered. Serpentine coils of thought writhing, he struggled to reach past the fiery wall in his head.

Agony drove him back, defeating him.

A hint of calculation flashed across her expression. She said, “I have another gift for you.”

He bared his teeth. He didn’t trust her gifts. “What?”

“Knowledge,” she told him.

Carefully, he dug the tips of his talons into the ground around her prone body. Carefully, so that his threat was clear while he didn’t hurt her. Not yet. He reserved that possibility for later.

“Why do you think your knowledge is of any use to me?” He let the possibility of her death darken his voice.

She swallowed. “Answer two questions, and I’ll try to show you.”

He paused suspiciously, suspecting a trick, but she could only trick him if he chose to answer. In the meantime, he might learn something valuable in the nature of her questions. “Ask.”

The breath shook audibly in her throat. She whispered, “How many nights have you spent on this mountain?”

His gaze narrowed. If there was some kind of trick in such a simple question, he couldn’t see what it was. “One. And your next question?”

“Where were you yesterday morning?”

Even as he tried to think back to the answer, he slammed into the fiery wall. His vision glazed. Rearing away from her, the dragon released his frustration and pain in a bellow of rage aimed at the sky.

When he could focus again, he discovered she had scrambled to the tree line at the edge of the clearing and crouched with her back pressed against the trunk of a tree.

Frankly, he was astonished she hadn’t taken off running down the mountain, and he glanced back down at the array of gold and jewels at his feet. “What do you want from me in return for all of this, along with your precious knowledge?”

She scrubbed her face with the back of one hand, leaving a smear of dirt behind. Her voice shook as she told him, “You’re the only one who can help me find my mate again.”

Drawing in a deep breath, the dragon let her scent fill his lungs, and he realized something that had lain in the back of his mind for some time.

Like, but unlike.

He didn’t know what kind of creature she was, but she was no predator. If she had been, he really might have killed her once she had dared to reach his ledge.

He realized something else, as disjointed images ran through his mind.

An explosion of pain, the first pain. Crushing weight and darkness. Shouting from a distance.

And a voice in the darkness. Her voice?

Where are you? Come on!

“Yesterday,” he said. “You were one of the people who attacked me.”

Dismay bolted across her features, and she straightened with a jerk. “No—that’s not what happened!”

The dragon regarded her cynically. Wyrm, he was called. The Great Beast. Traps had been laid for him before, and he had been attacked, but no one had ever brought him down. “It wasn’t? Then what would you call it?”

Rubbing her forehead with both hands, she said tightly, “I would call it a horrific misunderstanding.” She dropped her hands and looked at him, and either anger or desperation flashed in her eyes. Or maybe both. “If you can recall anything at all about yesterday, try to think back to what I said to you. I said, ‘It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.’ Do you remember that?”

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. He had no recollection of what she said, only the voice in the darkness, but once again, there was no hint of a lie in her voice.

He said, “No.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I know your name,” she told him. “Your name is Dragos.”

A thread of recognition ran through him, like a jolt of electricity.

Dragos.

Yes, that was his name, but the rest of what she said… he strained to think back.

The female—she said her name was Pia—was continuing, her words tumbling rapidly over each other as she stepped forward. “You’re obviously in pain. I don’t think you realize how seriously you’re hurt, but if you will only let me look at your wound, I swear I can help you.”

She pushed him too hard, too far. The only things he could recall were the pain, being buried under a heavy weight, a heavy cloud of dust covering the scene like a shroud and people shouting.

“Stop,” Dragos said. “I’m done talking. I need to think.”

Alarm filled her expression. “No, you have to listen to me. This is more important than you can possibly understand—”

“Enough.” He growled it with such intensity, the ground behind them vibrated. “I have listened to you enough. I have never needed healing from anyone before, and I will not tolerate you trying to convince me that I need it now.”

She stared at him in astonishment and the beginnings of bitterness. “That’s not true,” she said, her voice clipped. “You’ve needed my healing before. You just don’t remember it.”