Page 37 of The Dragon’s Captive

She had not been feeling well since her return from the dragon realm. Every day her stomach seemed to churn more than the last. She could barely eat, and she was exhausted all the time. She put it down to stress and perhaps some lingering effects from switching time streams. Her body must be confused by the different laws governing the relative realms.

“I’ll let you know when we’re done here,” the man snapped. He seemed to find her reluctance to incriminate herself on serious charges particularly galling. Almost as galling as the complete lack of evidence against her. Her book was still back in the dragon realm. There was no proof that she knew how to open a portal—and even the idea that she could was regarded as particularly farfetched. And that was before they took the radiation situation into account. Nobody knew how to survive in the dragon realm as far as the authorities were concerned.

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m telling you now, I can’t control this tummy bug.”

“Do your best,” he smirked.

“Okay, well… blleeuuuurrrgggggggggggghh!”

The interview came to a particularly ignominious end as Kate lost the battle of the bug and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the man’s shoes. Nothing she’d said seemed to convince them as much as a few dozen ccs of bile and chicken soup seemed to.

She apologized frantically and tried to help clean up, but the investigators weren’t having it. They left in an annoyed rush, their faces contorted with disgust.

“I hope it’s not too contagious,” she called as she waved them down the hall.

When she was sure they were gone, she shut the door and leaned against it, lifting her eyes heavenward. “You better damn well be there when I get back to you,” she muttered to the air. “I am going through some serious shit here.”

CHAPTER 18

The cry of the leviathan tore through the air as Vilka flew on battered, torn wings toward it. His heart was heavy, his body heavier. The battle had drawn on long past the time he thought he could stand it, and the toll it had taken was terrible. The earth below was scorched, the fortress crumbling. It was a dead world, and only he was left flying above it, doing battle with the world eater. Avastias breathed a pure flame that eroded everything in its path, turning creatures to skeletons and then to dust.

He had battled Avastias a thousand times over a thousand nights and every time it ended the same way, his burning body plummeting toward the ashes of everything he had loved. It would never end. Every night when he closed his eyes he was forced to once more do battle with the creature that had taken the one thing he loved most, the woman who animated his world—Kate.

When morning came he would wake covered in sweat, his heart pounding as he shouted his fear to the dawn. Morning had not yet come and Vilka was once more locked in teeth-clenching battle, his blankets twisting about his limbs as he tossed and turned in the bed that was now so very lonely…

“Hello?”

A high-pitched, soft voice intruded on Vilka’s nightmare. The world eater arched its neck and roared, a terrible sound that usually drowned out all others. On this occasion, it did not.

“Hellooooo!” The voice chimed again with an innocence that did not belong in the world eater’s domain. Vilka looked about for the source of it, but he could not see anyone. There were heavy clouds obscuring much of the terrain, and he did not recognize the voice. It did sound familiar somehow, and evoked a strong instinct to protect.

His body racked with pain, he circled down from the sky, turning his back on the beast to search for the voice. The motion was not real, but the pain was.

Since defeating Avastias he had been in a kind of agony he had not known existed. The physical wounds had mostly healed, but without Kate by his side, the world was not as it once had been. He was no longer a pariah. Instead he had become a hero, but what use was hero status when he remained alone in his heart?

Thirty years. Thirty. Long. Years. It had been so long since he had seen her that sometimes he could not recall her face, but his body still remembered what she felt like, and how it was to sink himself inside her and feel the clasp of her warm embrace.

At first he had held out hope. After all, time passed differently in the Earth realm. One Earth year was ten dragon years. He had known from the beginning that he would need to be patient, but as the decades passed, hope had waned. It became clear to him that it was as she had always said: she had wanted to escape. He had set her free and she had chosen her path.

He could have raged against her decision, gone into her world and claimed her against her will, but that was not how he wanted to have her. A man’s mastery could go no further than a woman’s desire. And so he slept, much like Avastias, the two of them slumbering, one until it was time for a world to end, the other for a life to begin.

“Hello!!”

Something soft and fluffy banged against his chest repeatedly, making the clouds of the dream dissipate and causing the rays of morning to enter his eyes as he opened them slowly.

“Wake up now, please!”

The speaker wasn’t immediately visible, owning to the fact that the small, very insistent voice was coming from quite near the floor. He turned his head and inquisitive eyes peered into his, bright blue orbs with a golden center.

A small female human was standing next to his bed, wearing what looked to him very much like a little dragon costume. She was holding a stuffed creature of some kind and continued to bang it on the bed with as much force as her arm could muster.

He blinked, thinking this was some new dream, or perhaps he was now seeing things. But no matter how many times he blinked, the girl was still standing there, a head full of bright red hair and a curious grin on her face.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” the girl said.

“Hiya,” a much more familiar voice added. Vilka felt a bolt of adrenaline rush through his body. He sat up swiftly and looked in the direction of the voice he had longed to hear so much it seemed to him that it was seared on his soul.