Page 50 of Crown of Flame
“Serena,” I reply. “If you hurt her, you will regret it. That’s all I am willing to say to you.”
“Oh, don’t bother with that. There’s no use threatening me,” Aldris replies, making a gesture with his hand. “I’m afraid you’re far outside your element. And we’ll make sure to treat your woman real nice. Make her the breeder she was always destined to be.”
Another jet of flame collides with his armor and bounces off, doing absolutely nothing except dislodging several rocks from the mountain.
If I keep doing this, I’m going to burn up all my energy and ravage the landscape.
“Why aren’t my attacks doing anything,” I ask him, having given up on understanding. “What is that armor?”
A grin appears on his elven face. Then, he lets out a dry laugh as he closes his eyes and shakes his head. He lets out a long, drawn out sigh before continuing.
“That’s something you don’t need to know,” he says. “No. I’m not giving you vital information. But I’m going to do you a favor.”
I survey his face, trying to discern his intentions.
“What?”
“You were an accident, really,” Aldris says. “Can you believe we were just trying to acquire a perpetual source of heat from your plane so that we could heat our houses and make colonization easier? But that girl’s stupid amulet…”
He clutches the golden relic around his neck.
“Anyway, I’d be happy to send you home where you belong,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve been just miserable here.”
“But… but what about…”
“Your human?” Aldris asks, smiling wide. “Oh, don’t worry about her. We’ll take good care of her. Before long, she won’t even remember you existed.”
A deep ache materializes within my body, something that I can’t explain nor control. It blooms within my chest at hearing those words, expanding throughout my body until I’m incapacitated once more.
What is happening to me?
“Please just let me go after her,” I say. “I’ll leave your soldiers alone. You don’t need her.”
“Oh, I beg to disagree,” he replies, rubbing the amulet around his neck. “You see, the humans on Prazh have been allowed to roam free for far too long. It’s time we reign them in and allow them to realize their true purpose.”
I fling myself forward at him in a final fruitless effort.
“As breeders.”
I crash into his armor, doing absolutely nothing.
“I think it’s about time you go home, where you’re not a problem to our mission,” Aldris says. “Don’t you agree?”
Light radiates from the amulet, matching the color of the snow. As Aldris whispers an incantation, the light stretches toward me in wispy strands, enveloping me and obscuring my vision.
Soon enough, it feels like I’m falling through the ground. I have no direction, no purpose, and nowhere to go. Only white light envelops me and holds me close.
I can feel the cool air of Protheka dissipating, heat surrounding me instead.
And I can only think of Serena.
18
SERENA
Sweat trickles down the sides of my face. Dried blood rests on my bottom lip, evoking a metallic taste every time my tongue swipes across the broken skin. My body feels sore and I wake up tied against a chair.
I make the mistake of believing I’m alone, so I don’t fight the urge to call out for Cinis. I miss his protection, I miss his presence. But for some reason, he couldn’t fight back against the dark elves that came to take me away.