Dragon Sword (The Dragon Lord’s Bride #2)

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Will’s eyebrows crashed down. “Step aside, Rose. I know what I’m doing.”

“And so do is which is why I can’t let you do it,” I insisted as I stretched my arms out even higher. “You’ll have to set me on fire, too.”

“Step aside, Rose,” he repeated as his fire burned brighter and hotter in his hand.

I shook my head. “I’m not going to do that.”

Will stared hard at me and I glared back at him. The tension between us was thick enough to be cut by a knife and amidst it all was the rattling of the gates. I didn’t dare take a breath until Will pursed his lips and lowered his hand. His flame vanished and he grasped his hand into a fist.

“Then we are at an impasse,” he pointed out as he lifted his gaze to the sky. “We have no way to find them other than to search the whole of the forest.”

I let out a long breath and relaxed my stiff body. “If that’s what we have to do then that’s-hey!” I found myself shoved forward as the gates opened of their own accord. Will caught me in his arms and I glared at them over my shoulder. “What was that for? I just helped you!”

The gates replied by swinging to and fro, though still keeping open. Now that they were open, I could see they led into a wall of pitch-black darkness. Whatever lay on the other side would have to be found out by traveling through the shadows.

Will lifted an eyebrow. “It appears they wish to reward you by letting you through.”

“Through to where they went?” I asked the gates. The thick slabs of wood swung again and I took that to be their way of nodding. My face lit up with a smile. I broke out of Will’s arms and raced over where I embraced one of the doors in a tight hug. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” The door stiffened before it wiggled a little. I laughed and stepped back. “No need to be shy. You’re a good pair of doors.” I half-turned to Will. “Shall we?”

Will moved forward but the moment he did the gates swung partially closed. My heart sank as I watched them tremble again, not from fear but from anger.

I clasped my hands together in front of me and looked between the pair of doors. “Please let him come with me. I can’t do this alone. I’ll get eaten, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

The doors seemed to deliberate between one another before they grudgingly opened. I grabbed Will’s hand and dragged him through the opening. “Thank you!”

We stepped from shadow into complete darkness and a slight chill fell over me. I was glad when Will wrapped his other hand around our joined ones and took the lead. Whatever magic the elves had used, the way was at least short as we soon stepped out of the shadows and into the gloom of the thick forest. The scent of decay permeated the air and the oppressive silence of night wrapped around us.

I jumped when something slammed behind us, and I spun around to find myself staring at a huge hunk of moss-covered rock some thirty feet wide and ten feet wide. The last remnants of the doors vanished before my eyes, leaving only a rough surface of stone where they had stood. Something about having our escape vanish made me nervous.

Will, however, was more relaxed than ever as he looped an arm around my waist and drew me against his side. I looked up to find him smiling down at me. His amusement only angered me and I pressed my hands against his chest. I pushed myself out of his hold and stepped back to glare at his bemused face.

“How could you do that to them?” I scolded him as I stabbed a finger at the stone face. “How could you threaten the lives of something just so you could follow a bunch of stupid elves into their stupid forest?”

Will’s teasing eyes studied me. “Do you really believe I would have harmed them?”

My mouth fell open. “Harm them? You were going to light them on fire and walk through their corpses! How could you be such a bloodthirsty monster to threaten them like that?”

He folded his arms over his chest and lifted his eyebrows in a playful manner. “Did I truly intend to harm them?”

I was thoroughly confused until the truth slowly dawned on me. I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you plan this from the start?”

“Plan what?” he asked me.

I kept my sharp look on him as I waved my hand at the spot where the doors had been. “To get me to save them from you so they’d return the favor by letting us through.”

Will looped his arm around my waist and pulled me against his side again. His eyes danced with mischief as he pressed a light kiss against my forehead. “My brilliant mate.”

I pressed my palms against his chest and glared at him. “You could have told me that’s what you planned to do!”

He chuckled. “Would you have given that sincere a performance if I had?”

I turned my face away and stuck my lips out in a pout. “Maybe. . .”

“Then you believe me when I saw I’m not a bloodthirsty monster?”

I winced at the reminder of my words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

He laughed and kissed my forehead again. “Of course you did and I admire you for your conviction. Had I truly been intent on destroying them then that would be a very apt description of me. Now then-” He looked about himself and his expression turned more serious, “-those we pursue have a half-hour head start on us.”

My face drooped and I looked around us at the thick foliage. “So we still have to search the whole forest because they could have gone in any direction.”

Will shook his head. “I know this part of the forest. There’s only one reason they would come here.”

He grasped my hand and pulled me along with him. I hurried to his side and together we dove into the brush, only it wasn’t brush. My untrained eyes hadn’t seen the almost imperceptible path that wound its way through the woods. The further we traveled, the more I felt that something was deeply wrong. There wasn’t anything visible per se to set off any alarms but something struck my soul in a way that made me uneasy.

“These woods don’t feel the same as the other side,” I commented.

Will shook his head. “Because they’re not. These are far older.”

“Then they’re supposed to feel like this?” I asked him.

His expression was grim as he stared at the path ahead of us. “No.”

We hurried along under cover of darkness until my ears picked up on a noise further ahead. Will slowed our pace and pressed a finger to his lips. We crept forward and as low to the ground as we could manage. I beheld some soft flickering lights ahead and Will stopped us behind a large tree.

We peeked around the far side and I saw that the path opened into a large clearing some thirty feet ahead of us. The meadow was some two acres wide and long and was ringed by huge trees even larger than the one behind which we hid. The trunks of those specimens were some ten feet in diameter and their bodies rose some five hundred feet. Their branches stretched out and mingled with one another, creating a canopy that blocked out the starry night sky.

The deep shadows would have hidden what lay in the clearing had it not been for the dozens of standing torches that dotted the area at regular intervals. The dancing flames illuminated a pile of boulders big and small, with the largest being the one in the center. That rock was not nearly as big as the one through which we’d traveled, but it was free-standing with a flat base and a peaked tip that seemed to pierce the air. The other rocks were jumbled about its base like limbs broken off.

An artificial stone platform stood in front of the large boulder and a long, narrow pedestal some three feet high sat in the middle. A torch stood at each corner and cast its flickering light over a cloak-covered body that lay on the pedestal. Two thick leather straps kept them pinned to their ‘bed.’ Two dozen elf guards were lined up military style in front of the pedestal and all of them bore spears and a short sword.

General Terve stood at the head of the contingent with a grim expression on his face as he watched the proceedings. He wore black as the others did and one hand lay on the hilt of his sword. The elf commander looked and acted as if he were about to attend a funeral.