B00CGOH3US EBOK Page 7

  He willed the tension in his body to ease and stepped back into the cave. Behind him, he heard Lady Jill's heavy sigh of relief. He cursed himself, knowing he needed to maintain better control over his dragon impulses or he would fail them both.

  She walked past him and resumed her seat by the fire, eating in silence until he joined her. She considered him as she took a sip of wine from her cup.

  "Okay, so let's figure this thing out. You said a girl from the village is required to break this curse of yours."

  "Aye."

  "So, since I happen to be the maiden by default, what exactly do I have to do to break the curse and return you to Normal-ville?"

  "You must pass three challenges before the rise of the next full moon to free me."

  "I see. And these challenges are?"

  "That I do not know."

  She raised her brow at him. "You don't know what they are? That makes it a little difficult, doesn't it?"

  "I only know they involve the knightly virtues."

  "What are the knightly virtues?"

  "Honor, courage, bravery, just—"

  "Whoa." Lady Jill held up her hand. "You mean the maid—I—have to do something knight-worthy to break the curse?"

  "Aye."

  She shook her head and chuckled. "Well, I certainly hope I'm not expected to go out and win a joust or rescue a damsel in distress because then we're going to be in big trouble. I don't think I have the job skills for something like that."

  "I pray it will not require anything so trying on your part."

  Jill took a bite of bread and chewed thoughtfully as she gazed into the dying fire. She was silent for so long, it startled him when she spoke again.

  "So I take it since you're still the lizard king, none of the others have succeeded in breaking this curse of yours."

  "Nay."

  She frowned. "Did any of them ever try?"

  "Only one or two. Most hid in fear in the back of the cave, not venturing out until their time with me was over."

  "And the ones who did?"

  "Obviously they failed."

  He watched her visibly swallow. "Did they ever come close?"

  For a brief instant, Baelin considered not telling her the truth. What if, in doing so, she changed her mind? But his honor would not allow him to deceive her.

  "Nay. None have ever been able to pass even one of the tests."

  "Well, that doesn't bode well for my chances, now does it?" she sighed. "So what happens if the challenges are not met?"

  "If the curse is not broken, I return to my dragon form with the rise of the next full moon."

  "I see. And what happens to the girls?"

  "I release them."

  She picked up a bowl of pottage and sniffed it. She made an odd face and set it back on the platter. "At least it's good to know you don't gobble them up for dinner when they fail your tests."

  Baelin flinched as if she'd struck him. Did she actually think he would eat the maidens? If the possibility crossed her mind, then she must truly believe him more beast than man.

  "I allow no harm to befall the maidens while they are under my protection," he replied through gritted teeth. "The challenges are not of my making. If it were within my power, I would not involve another to break the curse."

  "But you do involve them. You kidnap innocent women and force them to come here against their will. Not very chivalrous, if you ask me."

  He looked away, shamed by the truth in her words. "They are rewarded well for their time spent with me. When I release them, I give them enough gold to live without want for the rest of their days."

  "Gee, thirty days in a damp cave with komodo man in exchange for a lifetime of luxury. That actually doesn't sound like such a bad deal." Lady Jill cast a pitying glance his way. "Well, for the girls, anyway."

  "Perhaps." He sighed, knowing he had to tell her the whole truth. "But for some, the wealth they receive is not enough for all that they lose."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Once the maidens are sacrificed to me, they can never return to the village. To do so would be their death."

  Her brow puckered. "Why?"

  "After living in the company of the beast, they are deemed soiled." He poked the hot embers with a stick before tossing it into the flames. "The maiden would be burned at the stake for bringing back the evil of the dragon with them."

  Her wide eyes followed the dancing sparks as they rose above the fire, only to extinguish and fade. "Oh, my God. That's horrible."

  "'Twas a mistake made only once. Since then, the maidens have heeded my advice, taken their coin and fled, never to return."

  "Can't say I blame them."

  Lady Jill wrapped her arms around her knees and stared into the fire. What thoughts occupied her mind, he could not tell. He waited in silence, anticipating the moment she would refuse him as all the others had before her.

  She stood abruptly and rubbed her hands together. "Okay, so let's get started."

  He spoke softly, not quite certain he'd heard her correctly. "You intend to aid me?"

  "I don't seem to have much choice, do I?"

  "There are always choices, at least for most."

  "Well, that doesn't seem to be true for me at the moment. No offense, but if I had a choice, I'd rather be surrounded by a dozen sugared-up, shrieking six-year-old girls at a Chuck E Cheese birthday party instead of where I am right now. But since I appear to be an unwilling star in this real live Excalibur, I figure I'm going to have to play my part out to the end."

  He watched her glance around the cave, as if seeing it for the first time. When she shook her head and sighed, he wondered if she'd changed her mind. Yet, when her gaze returned to him, it was one of resolved determination.

  "I don't understand the hows or whys of it, but for some reason, my fate seems to be tied to this curse just as much as yours is, otherwise I wouldn't be standing here right now. And if I'm guessing right, breaking the curse is somehow the key to getting me back to my time. So that means until we figure this thing out, consider me your new best friend."

  Friend.

  Something strange turned in the dragon heart beating within his chest. It had been so long since someone had called themselves such. All friends he'd known from his mortal life before were long dead. Dare he hope she might grow to care for him enough to consider him a true friend? Or perhaps, in time, something even more?

  "Okay, so what's the plan?"

  Her simple question caught him off guard. "The plan?"

  "Yes, the plan."

  Baelin didn't know what to say. None of the maids had ever wanted to help him. The two who tried had been reluctant at best. With the others, he never progressed much farther than alleviating their fears enough to allow them to speak a word or two to him from the shadows.

  "Well?" Lady Jill prodded, indicating with a wave of her hand for him to continue. "You've had over two hundred years to think about this. How do we find out what the challenges are?"

  "We wait and when the challenges present themselves, I will aid you to overcome them."

  She stared at him in silence before she clucked her tongue and walked to the chest containing the maiden's clothing. "Right. How's this for Plan B? Let's get packed up and go."

  "Go?"

  "As in get out of this cave and go find these challenges." The hinges on the chest creaked as she lifted the lid. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back home. And since you've chosen to live in a hole a mile up a sheer cliff, I don't think whatever tests I'm supposed to face are going to come knocking at your door. Logic tells me we're going to have to go out there and find them and that means leaving the cave."

  "Leave the cave?"

  She stopped pulling gowns from the chest and rested her hands on her hips as she glanced about the cavern. "There seems to be an echo in here." She ended her inspection of the cave ceiling and focused her gaze back on him. "Yes, we leave. Is there a problem?"

  Baelin glan
ced to the mouth of the cave and the dawning horizon beyond it, his pulse quickening. He'd never left except for quick excursions to replenish supplies or to retrieve the maidens. This was his home—his lair—and every dragon impulse in him demanded he stay to protect it.

  Taking his silence for acquiescence, Lady Jill resumed her search through the chest. "So, seeing as we'll probably be gone for a while, we need to pack some supplies. Warm clothes, food. Oh, and some of that gold you have stashed away wouldn't be a bad idea to take along, either."

  His gold? Baelin had to restrain the urge to snatch up his treasure and hide it from her. He cursed the greedy nature of the dragon that made him hoard his riches.

  She turned from her task of sorting the gowns into piles at her feet. Her expression was one of innocent expectation, not that of greedy desire to steal his gold.

  "Do you have any backpacks around here?"

  "Backpacks?"

  "Here we go with the echoing again," she muttered. "Yeah, you know, something to carry this stuff in. If it takes us the whole month to find these challenges, we're going to need to take along a lot of supplies." Glancing behind the chest, she spotted a large sack. "Aha! This should do."

  She dragged it out and upended it, dumping pewter plates and silver goblets on the cave floor. Baelin cringed as the clanging cacophony rang against the stone walls, adding to the pounding in his head. Oblivious to his discomfort and apparently having no regard for his treasures, she began stuffing the clothing she deemed acceptable into the now empty sack.

  "I do not believe 'tis wise to leave the cave. What if the challenges are meant to happen here?"

  Lady Jill snorted. "I don't think it works that way. Usually people have to take a hand in their own fate."

  "What if you are wrong?"

  She stopped packing and looked at him. "What if I'm right? Do you really want to waste the thirty days you have to be human hiding in this dark, dreary cave?"

  "I do not hide."

  "Then what's the problem?"

  He felt the blood pound in his ears. How could he explain it to her when he didn't truly understand it himself? Each year, the pull of the dragon became more powerful than the last. As century blurred into century, the beast's urges became harder to resist, sometimes to the point where he felt more dragon than man, even in his human form.

  Lady Jill straightened, her brow creased in question. "Baelin, why are you so against the idea of leaving?"

  "I have never left the cave for long periods of time. It has never seemed necessary." When she continued to stare at him, he found himself unable to hold her gaze. "This is my home," he added, his voice barely above a whisper. "This is all I have left."

  "Are you worried someone might steal your things?" Her words were spoken with understanding, not the condemnation he expected.

  Guilt for giving into the dragon—for not having the strength to deny the beast's nature, if even for one moment—nearly choked him. Shame kept him from answering her.

  "Look, I may have only gotten a brief glimpse when we first landed here, but to my recollection, this cave is three thousand feet up a sheer, rock wall. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe rappelling is a big pastime in the Middle Ages. The only people who are insane enough to even consider scaling a vertical cliff like this one won't be born for centuries. I think your treasure will be safe here until you get back."

  He knew she was right, but that didn't make leaving any easier. He looked at her standing there, this strange maid determined to go out and face a world unknown to her, ready to fight for herself and for him. If she could do it, then so could he. He beat down the beast within, refusing to allow the dragon to rule over him any longer.

  "Very well. Pack only what is necessary. You will want your satchel to be no heaver than need be."

  She laughed. "Oh, don't worry. Without the usual necessities of makeup and a blow dryer, my bag will be light as a feather."

  Less than an hour later, two satchels sat ready at the cave entrance. Baelin stood dressed in his best mail with his sword strapped to his side and his shield slung over his back, secured between his dragon wings. He glanced back once more into the darkened cave, the only home he'd know for over two hundred years.

  Lady Jill touched his shoulder. "Don't worry. With any luck, you'll be back before you know it, hopefully as a full-blooded man instead of a dragon." Her hand brushed down the long cloak covering his folded dragon wings before she stepped away. "Of course, without your wings, you may have a harder time getting back up here."

  She picked up her satchel and peered over the ledge. "Speaking of which, how the heck do we get down?"

  For the first time since she suggested they leave the cave, excitement and anticipation pumped through his veins instead of gut-churning apprehension. Baelin grinned wickedly at her, and then swept her up in his arms.

  "We fly."

  CHAPTER 7

  "Ow!"

  Jill sat down and pulled yet another rock out of what was supposed to pass for shoes in this godforsaken place. For Pete's sake, they didn't even come in a left and a right. And forget about arch support. She was going to be paying for it big time later on.

  "It would be much easier to fly."

  "No! I'll keep my feet safely planted on terra firma, thank you very much. If people were meant to fly, they'd have wings."

  Baelin cleared his throat and she glanced at the barely discernible twin lumps under his cloak. "Okay, so most normal people. You fly. I'll catch up to you later."

  "That would be unwise. 'Tis unsafe for a woman to travel alone."

  "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself." She stood and dusted off the back of her gown. "Besides, you can't carry me and all the stuff we're lugging along at the same time."

  In addition to the over-stuffed satchels of clothing and food they each carried, Baelin had deemed it necessary to bring along a small arsenal of various-sized swords and daggers, a crossbow and arrows, plus a shield the size of a satellite dish. It had taken him three air-borne trips back and forth to the cave to cart it all down after he'd deposited her safely on the ground—shaken, but not stirred—and now she was forced to carry half of it like a pack mule.

  "Don't you have a horse we could be riding to make this trip a little easier?"

  He stared out over the field to some point far in the distance. "Nay."

  "You're kidding. I thought all knights were supposed to have a big, white charger to go galloping around the countryside on, saving damsels in distress."

  He began walking again, leaving her to follow, but not before she saw a dark shadow pass over his face.

  "What? What did I say? I may be a little rusty on my history lessons, but isn't riding a horse the preferred mode of transportation in this century?"

  "A horse is not possible. If you refuse to fly, we must walk."

  "Why? If it's because you think I can't ride one, you're wrong. I spent two weeks every summer at horse camp when I was a kid."

  "We cannot ride."

  Jill had to do double-time to keep up with his long strides. When she caught up to him again, she chuckled. "Don't tell me the big, brave knight is afraid of horses?"

  "I do not fear horses." His voice was muffled, as if he spoke the words through clenched teeth.

  She made a mental note not to joke with him anymore. Apparently, he'd left his sense of humor back at the bat cave. That is, if he had one to begin with, which she was seriously beginning to doubt.

  "Then what is it?"

  "Horses fear me."

  "Oh, come on. Horses are afraid of you? Get real. You must be imagining it."

  Baelin stopped so suddenly, she nearly ran into him. He turned and glared at her. "Horses fear me because as a dragon I eat them."

  "You do?"

  Was he the one trying to be funny now? Was this some strange kind of medieval humor?

  "I do. I have also been known to consume deer, cattle, sheep, and the occasional stray dog or two when I was partic
ularly hungry."

  Nope, he wasn't joking. His expression was as serious as they come.

  "Even in my human form, animals can sense the predator in me. All creatures can. And they fear me for it."

  She shivered at the golden blaze that flared in his eyes. She was surprised she hadn't noticed it before, but this close his eyes resembled those of a snake or crocodile, the pupil a dark slit against an amber iris. Just as quickly, the glow faded and his eyes returned to a normal shade of brown, the pupil a perfect black circle within them. Shaking herself mentally, she told herself it must've been a trick of the light.

  "Oh. Well, I guess that explains it." She tried to swallow around the lump wedged in her throat. "So we'll walk. Walking is good."

  The tension left his face, and then he surprised her with a cocky smirk. "Flying would be faster."

  "No!"

  He nodded to her in that annoyingly patronizing way of his. "As my lady wishes."

  Jill was the one to walk ahead this time, but he was soon by her side, the thump of his booted feet drumming out a steady rhythm.

  "Look, I'm sorry, but I don't like flying in the twenty-first century either, and compared to the dragon method, that's relatively safe considering you're strapped inside a metal tube with explosive fuel tanks hurtling you through the sky. With you, it's like hanging onto the wing of a barnstormer with no parachute as a backup if you drop me. You'll have to humor me—I've never been the daredevil type."

  "Dare devil? What sort of demon is that?"

  Jill shook her head. It never ceased to amaze her how words so common to her could have such a different meaning to Baelin. She felt like she was becoming a walking dictionary.

  "It's not a real demon. It means someone who's adventurous, willing to take dangerous, death-defying risks with their life on a daily basis, which definitely doesn't describe me."

  "You are brave enough to walk with a dragon."

  She glanced at his profile. In another time and place, she might consider him hot if she weren't constantly aware of the dragon part of him hidden beneath his cloak. "You're not so bad, in a warped fairy tale kind of way."