Heartless

The Dragon turned, and a burst of fire scorched the stones. Though she crouched safely on the far side, Una could feel the heat of the flames through the rocks. The Prince leapt away in time and darted across the yard, running for the gate. The Dragon, spitting more fire, turned and followed.

Una struggled to breathe amid the thick smoke and pressed her hands over her mouth. Choking back tears, she staggered across the fire-scathed yard.

“Una!” Felix shouted when he saw her coming through the haze of smoke. Fidel raised hopeless eyes, and joy filled his face at the sight of her. She fell on her knees before them beside the broken statue, and they flung their arms around her in a tight embrace.

“Look,” Felix said, pulling away. He pointed. “The soldier dropped them when he fled.”

Una looked and saw the ring of keys not three yards away. She leapt up and ran for them, hardly able to see for the smoke around her. She scraped her knuckles grabbing them up and rushed back. Felix was chained with only one cuff on his wrist, attached to his father’s arm. She tried several and soon found the key that fit his lock, and Felix pulled himself free. But Fidel was chained with links between his hands and feet, and one about his neck that the soldier had secured to the base of the statue. Una freed his hands and feet, but each key she tried for the neck chain refused to fit.

A hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed her shoulder. She screamed as she was yanked to her feet, and the keys dropped from her hands.

“I must say,” the Duke of Shippening’s voice growled in her ear, “I never thought I’d be so pleased to see you alive, princess!”

She screamed again, and Felix, roaring like a young lion, hurled himself headfirst with all the force in his young body, catching the duke hard in the side just below the ribcage. The duke grunted and staggered, and Una freed herself from his grip. She swept up the keys, feeling through for the last few that she had not yet tried. She heard the scrape of a sword being drawn but did not look around. Only three keys were left untested. She fitted one in the lock around her father’s neck and heard a click.

Fidel rose like a hurricane and threw the chains he held into the face of the duke. The duke caught them, but one of the links flew back and struck him across the forehead. He stumbled back.

“Felix!” the king cried. Felix, on his hands and knees at the duke’s feet, scrambled up, half crawling toward his father. The duke reached out a meaty hand and grabbed the young prince by the back of the shirt, his sword upraised.

A hideous roar shook the stone. Una, clutching her father, saw the Dragon approaching, his eyes red like flowing lava, and before him ran Aethelbald, his gaze intent on the duke. He leapt forward and grabbed the blade of the duke’s sword with his bare hand, pulling it from his grasp, and simultaneously brought his knee into the small of the duke’s back. He and the duke tumbled onto the stones, and Felix burst free and ran to the king and Una.

The king grabbed both his children and dragged them behind the base of the statue just as streams of fire roared past them, burning the air, melting the far side of their shelter. The duke’s scream pierced their ears for an instant and was swallowed up in flames the next.

For half a moment Una breathed as the fire lessened. Then with a cry she broke free of her father’s grasp and ran from behind the stone into the swirling smoke and ash. Coughing, she stumbled forward but could see nothing.

Red eyes glowed above her, cutting through the darkness and ash. She saw by their light the charred bones lying upon the stones.





37

"Aethelbald,” Una whispered.

She looked slowly from the bones up into the eyes of the Dragon. Fire streaming from his mouth, he lashed his tail, and it wrapped about her like a python. With a sickening lurch she rose into the air, feeling the biting cold of the wind on her face at the same time as the awful burn of the dragon scales that dug into her skin, and she lay limp as a rag doll in his grip.

They flew from Goldstone Hill down into the ghostly ruins of what had once been her city, and there, in the middle of the square that had formerly teemed with life but now stank with death, the Dragon dropped her. Una lay where she fell, curled into a tight ball, and felt the ground quake as the Dragon landed.

“See, little princess?” The Dragon’s voice hissed, filling the air and echoing down the long, dark, dead streets of Sondhold. It seemed as though a thousand demon voices repeated each word, flinging them at her like knives. “See, even he has failed you. Even he burned in my fire. What good is his heart to you now?”

She pushed herself up, her hair covering her face like a veil, and knelt in the ashes, her face in her hands.

“No one withstands my fire,” the Dragon said. She felt his great heavy body above her, felt she would melt in his heat. “Give it up, little princess!”

Una lifted her face and gazed into endless depths of flame.

“Give up his heart,” the Dragon said, his poisonous breath tossing her hair back from her face. “Take back my fire, or you will surely die here and now!”

Lost in the black and burning night, she could find no voice.

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