Page 87 of Lethal King

“We’re at a mansion on the beach.”

“Who’s mansion?”

“Leander’s.”

It only takes that name to overwhelm me. A flood of recent memories crash around inside of me.

A cursed reunion. An expected betrayal. A cruel trap. Vibrations. Hard rock. Cold water. Salty darkness.

My thighs clench.

This nightmare isn’t over. I’m in the belly of the beast. And Rian’s contraption still clings to me like a ball and chain.

“I’m leaving,” I cough.

But when I try to sit up, Tytus effortlessly pushes me back down again.

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Like hell.” Curling onto my back, I try to roll off the other side of the bed.

But the act only makes my pounding headache explode, and I’m quickly sent falling to the floor.

“Stop it!” Tytus orders.

His heavy footsteps crack against the floorboards as he races around the bed to pick me up.

“Leander wants to marry me…” I remember out loud. “And Drago wants to help him do it. I have to get out of here.”

“You don’t think I’ve been grilling those two relentlessly for the past six hours?” Tytus asks, clearly offended. “You’re safe here, Roz. I would never make you stay anywhere you weren’t safe. Even if this place is surrounded by Leander’s bodyguards, they aren’t here to keep us in. They’re here to—"

“I’ve been out for six hours?” I interrupt, shocked.

“You’ve been out for longer than that. But I wasn’t going to start interrogating anyone until I was sure you were out of harm’s way.”

“Why did they let you live?” I ask. “We were already outnumbered, but when I ran away, you were all alone…”

A strike of guilt cuts through my aching chest.

“It didn’t matter. If they had tried to stop me from going after you, I would have killed them all,” Tytus snarls. But his anger doesn’t last; it slowly turns into something far less energetic. “If I had gone down that path, you might not be alive.”

“You came after me,” I realize. “You pulled me out of the water. You saved me.”

“Not just you,” Tytus mumbles, shaking his head.

My brows tent and a painful flash tears through my skull.

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.

“I didn’t think the old man had it in him,” Tytus shakes his head. “And I guess, in the end, he didn’t. But you should have seen Drago, Roz. It’s like he knew you were in trouble. None of us moved when you ran out of the cave. Not at first. We were in a showdown, after all. But then something in the old dragon snapped. He raced by me like a shadow. At that point, I didn’t even care about Leander’s security. I went chasing after him. By the time I got to where you’d fallen, he’d already jumped into the water and dragged you up from the seabed. But he couldn’t get you out any further than that. He was too weak. And both of you were about to fall back beneath the waves when I jumped in.”

Those waves crash against the inside of my skull as I try to remember any of that. But all I see are stars and darkness.

“Drago saved me?” I gulp, still tasting the frigid seawater.

“That’s right.”

“And you saved the both of us?”