Dragon Tame - Ophelia Silk Page 0,3

am Katla, daughter of Haakon and Freyja. I have a name.”

“You are Katla, idiot of all idiots, if you think you can fight Blain with an axe.”

Blain. So the false god has a name too. I take another step towards the fur-cloaked tunnel. Another step toward my retribution. My destiny. “My axe is Sharp Edge the Back Biter and it will sever the head of Blain the False One from his body like a—fuck.”

My valiant speech is cut short as Blain himself pushes the fur to the side and steps through. His entrance seems to take the very light from the room as though his presence emanates darkness. Robes of browns and blacks cover him, and his auburn hair is a frizz of curls and braids that join into his full beard. Brittle runes mark his cheeks, indecipherable to me, but I know what they are: blood magic. It clashes with the fiery residue still lingering in my veins from my earlier stunt.

As Blain moves toward me, his magic penetrates my meager defenses, as though ripping a physical hole into my chest. His darkness grows. I find myself stepping back, as though my legs have decided to become cowards suddenly. My heel hits the dragon’s frozen tail.

The sound of the false god’s beast pack grows so loud they seem to exist within my head alongside the dragon’s voice: “Katla the idiot—run.”

Blain’s gaze moves to the dragon. He freezes. His voice comes in a rasp, like his throat is made of raw embers and grating icicles. “What have you…? No.”

“Oh, yes.” It’s the only viable response I can think of. A trail of blood drips down my spine beneath my armor as I clamp one hand to the dragon’s back and hope the wild magic returns.

It does.

My heat bursts through the dragon’s ice covering, melting it in one fell swoop. He lurches to his feet, baring rows of perfectly sharp teeth as he shakes out his wings. I really, really hope I can take him out once he’s finished off Blain’s beasts for me.

Blain stares. A tiny version of his wolfish beasts springs through the fur behind him, but a thick leather collar stops it from attacking. Blain seems far more focused on me though. “Daughter of Haakon…” he mutters.

I hold my axe high. “You killed my mother when she came to talk, but I come for your blood, and you will not kill me.” Then, I charge.

The dragon’s tail sweeps around me, cutting my assault short and lurching me backwards. I have to clutch the flat of my axe to my chest with both hands to keep it from flying from my grip or slicing into me by accident. The dragon grabs Blain’s small beast between his claws, overturning the sacrificial table in the process, and whips toward the gap in the wall I’d entered through.

With the first mega-wolves streaming from the side tunnels and Blain shouting dark words from his sacrifice chamber, the dragon plows straight through the wall, leaving a dragon-sized hole in it. And taking me with him.

Still coiled in his tail, I shout, “What are you doing? You have to kill them!”

“I actually don’t.” As if to prove his point, he speeds through the tunnels, breaking out into the sunlight.

The whoosh of air off his heavy wings rattles the nearby foliage, and he takes off, up the cliffside, into the settling fog, his tail wrapping tighter around my body until it pins my axe in place. I struggle, but his grip is fierce. The ache of the wound in my shoulder slips back into my mind. A red stain blooms from beneath my furs, seeping ever closer to the dragon’s silver coat.

I should never have released him. Katla, idiot of all idiots, will regret this. I just hope that regret won’t be from the afterlife.

The dragon flies us through the fog, winding over ledges and around ice-cloaked rocks, trailing so near to the ground that we almost hit it a few times. The air turns from cold to freezing as he ascends the mountainside and moves north through a series of valleys and peaks—I feel the changing temperature in the prickles along my skin and the slight tingle in my chest, but it has no effect on me. Harsh winter weather never has. It’s a warrior thing.

As we rise up another, shorter cliff face, the fog clears to a crystalline evening sky of purples and deep blues. The last of the light gleams off the side