Chapter Ten: The Dragon Inside of Me
Got some great reviews this time too! Thanks SO much to everyone who takes the time to read this story, and especially to those who give me feedback. It warms the heart, truly. Pretty soon, I'm going to go back over some of the older chapters and improve them. So if you have any suggestions, now would be a good time to submit! Just look for the message on the story description that will say "now with updated content" or something like that.
WARNING: this chapter contains some dark sexual themes. If those bother you, don't read.
(Sophie's POV)
My first feelings upon awakening were a strange mixture of terror and excitement. And also something else, a persistent itch in the back of my mind. I can only describe it thus: imagine that you have been imprisoned for months in a dark place, but that you have been digging a tunnel towards your escape. It seems utterly hopeless, but you have continued day after day because you have no choice. Then, all at once, you feel the last bits of earth crumbling beneath your fingertips, and you see a tiny beam of light enter your tomb.
That was how I felt.
Perhaps I'd better say a few words about the situation I found myself in. It was certainly an odd one, and I could think of no logical explanation for how I had arrived in it. I lying on a stone slab or table, with iron bands securing me at the wrists, ankles, stomach, and neck. They were uncomfortably tight, and I could move not an inch. By rolling my eyes, I could make out a small natural cave, lit by hundreds of candles. Strange symbols were painted on the walls in what looked like blood. The air was heavy with death and decay.
I was not gagged, but the restraint on my throat made it difficult to open my mouth. I coughed a little and managed to force out a strangled whimper, through which the words, 'is anyone here?' could barely be distinguished.
Imagine my surprise when I was immediately answered by a deep, throaty voice. From the rapid increase in my heartbeat, I knew that my body remembered that voice even if my mind did not.
"You are with us at last, sweet Serene," it - he - said. "I hope you are not too uncomfortable?"
"My name is Sophie," I squeaked in reply.
"Sophie?" said the unseen man. "Sophie was your mother, that whore who sold you to a stranger for a bit of quick gold. Your name is Selene, my kitten."
There was a rustle of cloth, and the speaker moved to lean over me so that his face was right above mine. He was in his early forties, I guessed, with messy brown hair and a strong-boned face. His nose jutted forth like the beak of a hawk, and his eyes were lidded and menacing. His mouth was a thin, cruel line; when he smiled, it was like a whip. He was in dire need of a bath and a shave. A sour, unhealthy smell hung around him.
"Who are you?" I gasped through my constricted windpipe. "What do you want with me?"
He laughed, and the sound was like hammers striking upon my ears. "Of course you would not remember me, dear one. I see that the spell I laid on you in still in effect. Well, it will be easier to remove it then to waste breath in explanation."
Before I could react, he swooped down and kissed me forcefully, exhaling his tainted breath into my mouth. I felt bile rise in my throat, and choked it down with an effort. Then it felt as if my head was exploding. I released a scream, which was muffled by his mouth, still pressed to mine. The pain was blinding. Then, in the very center where it hurt the most, I felt something: a release, a sensation of remembering …
I was very small, and it was snowing. I sat huddled on a doorstep, watching the feet of passersby making holes in the new blanket of white that covered the streets of the city. Hunger filled my stomach like a rock, scraping at my insides, but I knew it would be a long time before I could eat again. Mother still had three more men to talk to.
The snow melted and the flowers bloomed, and then the heat came, driving people down to the water in droves to splash and drink and cool off. The flowers withered and the grass grew brown. Then the leaves fell from the trees, and the sky grew dark early, and snow fell again. Time passed, and the little girl on the doorstep became a willowy child of ten, spry and agile and able to climb up walls and listen at windows. And Mother still talked to men. They would come to her frowning, and stay for an hour, and go away with a smile on their face and lighter pockets.
Men liked Mother, and by the time I was fifteen, they began to like me too. I heard some of them asking her if they could 'talk' to me. They said they would pay good money. But Mother refused. She would not sell her own daughter for gold, no matter how much. But is costs a lot to live, and the landlord was always angry. Even though Mother would talk to him for free, he still made her work too hard to pay for the rent. And one day Mother was hot and sick, and her belly was swollen, and she couldn't even get up from bed. That day, I went and took her place. I had no choice.
It hurt a lot, and I bled some. Mother said it was normal, but she cried as she said it. The man was kind to me, in his own way. He gave me more money than I asked for, and he smiled and touched my cheek, and said I was beautiful. Then he went away, and I went to the river and washed myself until I could no longer feel his hands touching me.
In the weeks that followed, a lot of men came to the place where my mother worked. They had gotten word that my mother was ill, and that her daughter was taking customers instead. Some of them were nice, but some were cruel and did things I didn't like. But when I told them to stop, they laughed and said they had paid for me, so I belonged to them. And when I pushed them, they hurt me and then refused to even give me money afterward. So I learned to be silent and do exactly as I was told.
One day, a man came in that I had never seen before. He had a harsh, brooding look, and he frightened me. But when I asked him what he wanted, he said he only came to see the girl that everyone was talking about. Then he stood very close to me and looked into my eyes for a long time, and said that I was too pretty a flower to be allowed to wither and fade. Then he went to talk to Mother, and said that he would pay her a very large sum to take me away with him forever. He said that he would teach me to be strong, so men would never again be able to hurt me. He said he would keep me safe.
Mother agreed. The baby inside her was very big by this time, and it would come into the world soon, and would need to be fed and clothed. With the money she got from that man, Mother would never have to work again. I cried when she told me the news, and clung to her, and begged her not to send me away. I said that I would gladly take her place and see as many men as I had to, if only I could stay with her. But she said that I deserved a chance to have a good life. She said that she could find me again some day and that we could be a family together: her and me and the baby.
The man's name was Salomet, and he was a powerful sorcerer who worked for the Duke. He treated me very well, and taught me how to cast spells and use magic. But I was forced to stay inside the castle; I was not allowed to go out, even with company. I wrote Mother many letters asking her how she was, and if the baby was a girl or a boy, but I never got any reply.
Salomet's temper was fierce when it was roused, and I soon learned to stay away from him when I saw a certain glint in his dark eye. At first, I saw it only rarely, but soon it began to appear more and more. He often quarreled with the Duke, or with his advisor Aldous, but he was so powerful that no one dared to throw him out or put him in prison. He could have killed them all if he had chosen.
One night, Salomet came into my room and shook me roughly awake. His eyes were burning in the darkness. He told me that we were leaving right then, that very instant, and he pulled me from the covers and dragged me out without even letting me get dressed or put my sandals on. We ran for a long time, and my feet were cracked and bleeding when we finally stopped at a shack and slept.
From then, I had no peace. We traveled from place to place, gathering a band of rough and unsavory men. Some of them tried to make advances to me, but I was strong now, and I knew how to hurt them before they could hurt me. I hit one of them in the groin with a fireball spell, and he never came near me again.
We became bandits in order to survive, attacking villages and stealing their food and valuables. I never minded taking from men; they were a worthless lot anyway. All they cared about was how much they could get out of you for their coin. But I never let any of our "companions" hurt a woman. Some of them tried, at the beginning, but I stopped them. And when they complained to Salomet about me, he told them that he valued me more highly.
But he was a man too, just like the others, and I realized it too late. Oh, he never forced himself on me - that was not his style. Instead, he addled my mind with enchantments until I believed myself to be in love with him. I would have done anything for him, and I did. Whatever he asked for was his. My body, my heart, my soul. He gave nothing in return but false promises and empty words. He used me until I had no more to offer him, and then he threw me away.
We had been on the run for three years by then, and people far and wide feared us. We were hunted by the Duke's soldiers everywhere we went. They caught up with us a few times, and there were fierce battles, and we lost many men. Moral began to falter in the group, and some of us started saying that we would be better off without Salomet, and that we should turn him in and hope for mercy. I was the only one against this. I stood up for him, saying that we had to place our trust in him. And then he came in and announced that he had made an arrangement with the captain of the Duke's army, and that we would never be harassed by the soldiers again. He would not say what that arrangement was.
That night, he called me to his room for the last time. He made love to me hungrily, with a dark passion I had not seen in him before. Afterwards, feeling drained and weak, I fell asleep by his side. That next thing I knew, I was waking up in Windbluff Tower, with the golden-haired knight sitting by my bed and stared out the window.
I opened my eyes. The pain was gone, and I was left with a numbness throughout my entire body. I looked up at Salomet. The expression in his eyes was inscrutable.
"You," I croaked. "You betrayed me. You gave me to the soldiers to be killed so that you could go free."
"Sweet Serene," he crooned, reaching out to stroke my face. I flinched away from his touch. "You were always so loyal to me, my kitten. You used to say that you'd die for me. And you would have, if not for that meddling fool of a knight-"
I gathered all the energy I had left and spat right in his face. "Don't you ever speak of Julien like that!" I raged. "You coward! You traitor! You're not even a man! You're a little worm, wriggling through filth-"
He elbowed me sharply in the stomach, cutting off my words. His eyes were on fire, but they slowly cooled, and he showed his teeth in a wicked smile.
"So that's the way it is, dear one. You are in love with this foreigner, this pretty boy who pretends at being a warrior. I hear he has been playing with fire. Someone should stop him before the poor lad gets his fingers burnt." He laughed at the anger on my face and kept talking. "Tell me, Serene, have you given yourself to him yet? Does he think you virtuous and pure? Didn't he think it funny when you didn't bleed for him?"
"He never mentioned it," I said truthfully. "He cares not for such things. That is the nature of true love, Salomet. But of course a bastard like you wouldn't know about that. You've never truly valued for a thing in your life, except for power."
His face darkened. "You're wrong there, sweet Serene. I alone recognized your worth when you were nothing more than a gutter-wench, selling yourself to anyone who came asking. I pulled you from the pit of that miserable existence. I am the one who gave you a reason to live."
"Don't insult me," I snarled. "You gave me nothing. I would far rather have stayed with my mother than ever have gone with you! At least then I could say that I was earning money for a good purpose, however filthy the work."
"Do you want me to hurt you, Serene?" he shouted suddenly. The violence in his voice made me fall silent. My fury had been making me brave, but the truth is that I had forgotten how frightening he was when angry. Additionally, I was in a terrible position to be cursing him.
"Do you want to know what kind of power I have over you?" Salomet continued in a calmer tone of voice. I didn't speak. He unhooked the iron band from around my neck and forcibly turned my head so that I was staring at the cave wall. And what I saw there made my heart turn to water.
He had my Julien! My beloved was lying on his side, unmoving. I could see blood on his face and in his hair. I cried out, my body instinctively struggling to get free and run to him.
Salomet got up and walked over to him, chuckling. He grabbed Julien by the hair and lifted his head up so that I could clearly see his face. There was no mistake; it was him.
"Still alive," the sorcerer said, releasing Julien carelessly. "Although I imagine that he could use some healing, and soon. My boys weren't exactly gentle."
"How did …" I couldn't even finish the sentence. This was like a nightmare, a horrible dream from which I could not escape by waking.
"Oh, he came here looking for you," Salomet replied. "You see, I left him a message telling him where he could find you. What a brave boy your champion is! He even came alone and unarmed, just like I told him to. He offered his life in exchange for yours. Truly, you could not hope to find a more loyal man. I believe his love for you is genuine."
"Julien," I whispered, my gaze fixed on his face. "Julien, why? You should have just left me." I could feel tears filling my eyes, faster than I could blink them away. They ran down my cheek and soaking into the stone.
"Are you regretting your decision to fall in love with him?" Salomet asked. "It hurts, doesn't it, knowing that it's your fault that he's hurt. If only you had kept your distance. If only you had pushed him away."
I met his gaze squarely, all my hatred for him focused in that single stare. "What are you going to do with us?"
He grinned. "Right to the point, eh? Very well, I'll tell you. I am going to give you a choice, sweet Serene. The same choice that I had to make half-a-year ago. Let's see how well you do with it. You see, I am very close to completing the ritual that I need to finalize my power and become ultimate. But that ritual required a blood sacrifice, but not just anyone will do. The victim has to give themselves willingly, otherwise it won't work. Now, I know already that young Ser Julien is more than ready to volunteer his life for yours. But the question is, would you do the same for him? One of you must die, and the other will leave here alive. So, sweet Serene, which is it to be? You, or your lover?"
"Kill me," I said at once, without an ounce of hesitation. I silently apologized to Julien for the pain I knew this decision would cause him. But I could not let him die because of me.
Salomet began to laugh, and chills ran up my spine. "How noble," he said, "but I'm afraid that your answer was irrelevant. I just wished to know which path you would take. I actually require two sacrifices. Willing or no, it makes not a bit of difference."
And then, while I watched in horror, Salomet drew a knife, chanted a spell in the dragon language, and plunged the blade into Julien's heart. Blood - terrible amounts of bright crimson blood - gushed from the wound. I screamed, but no sound came out. I was beyond sadness, beyond anger, beyond pain. The only thing I could feel was disbelief.
No, no, no … it was like a mantra in my head, an endless repetition. This cannot be real. Julien can't be dead.
I felt a pressure building up inside of me, swelling and growing until I was sure I must burst. My skin was tingling with it: a vast amount of raw power, more than anything I had felt before. It hurtled outwards in a great shockwave, snapping the iron bands that held me down and extinguishing all the candle flames. I heard Salomet shriek once, an awful, tortured sound that was cut off by a deafening roar. And then, there was only silence.
I sat up. Surprisingly, I didn't feel weak or exhausted at all. In fact, I had never felt stronger in my life. It was as though every inch of my skin was charged with electricity.
I looked around for my beloved, sure that he would still be clinging to life, and that I would run to him and pour my healing magic into his veins, and he would recover.
But the next moment, I felt as if Salomet's knife had been driven through my own heart.
Of Julien and of Salomet, nothing remained but two pitiful piles of bleached white bones.
(Julien's POV)
My lungs were burning for want of air, but I could not stop running. I had discarded my weapon long ago; it only slowed me down, and speed was of the essence. My entire life had become devoted to one purpose only: reach the Arisen.
After the Dragon's appearance, there had been an eruption of magical light from the top of the fortress. It had gone on and on, and the deep voice of Beast himself was ringing in our ears, and then everything had collapsed. I was struck on the head by a stone flying forth from the ruin, and had temporarily blacked out, and when I came to my senses, I was informed that the Arisen was alive and unharmed, and that he had gone on alone (except for his pawns, of course) onto the Twisted Mount to challenge the Dragon.
But only I knew that his Duchess was not safe and sound at the second sanctuary as he supposed. Only I could warn him, if I could reach him in time. Please don't think me callus or cold-hearted: my heart and soul were aching for news of Sophie, but I could not fail the man who had done so much for me. Not in this crucial moment. I knew my darling would understand. Besides, I had complete confidence in her ability to care for herself.
I paused a brief moment to catch my breath and ran onwards.
Okay, if you were confused by the ending of this chapter, just hang in there. I promise that I have an explanation that will make perfect sense! And you won't have to wait for it very long. Hope you enjoyed reading!
