Captive of the Dragon Lord

Evie's POV:

I opened my eyes to sunlight so bright and warm that I thought the whole world had been washed clean while I slept. Blue sky sharpened above me, white clouds drifted apart, and soft grass pressed cool beneath my palms. Somewhere ahead, carried on a lazy breeze, came the smell of cinnamon, butter, and baked apples.

Grandma Martha's apple pie.

The thought filled me with such sudden happiness that I sat up too fast, already imagining the cracked wooden table in her kitchen, the flour on her apron, the way she would pretend to scold me for stealing a slice before it cooled.

I pushed myself to my feet and ran toward the scent, my heart lifting with every step, because if I could smell her pie, then I was home, and if I was home, then all I had to do was throw my arms around her thin shoulders and tell her I was sorry for being gone so long.

But the grass vanished under my feet.

One moment I was running across a sunny field, and the next I stood at the edge of a black abyss so deep that my stomach dropped before my body did. The sky turned bruised and gray, and far below there was nothing but darkness, wind, and a distant, hungry roar.

I dug my heels in, skidding to a stop with my toes inches from empty air, but when I tried to stumble backward, something unseen seized me from behind.

It pulled hard.

My scream tore through my throat as I fell into the dark, my mind cracking open with terror sharp enough to snap me awake.

The dream was gone.

For a few seconds, I lay completely still, waiting for my bedroom ceiling to appear. It did not. There was no pale wallpaper, no crooked fan, no quilt Grandma had patched three winters ago. There was only darkness, thick and airless, and beneath my back was not a mattress but rough wood that dug into my spine.

I tried to roll onto my side, thinking I had only traded one nightmare for another, but my knees struck something hard before I could straighten my legs. I stretched my hands outward, and my fingers hit wooden boards on both sides, close enough that I could not fully extend my arms.

Metal clinked.

I froze, then jerked my wrists up. Chains scraped against the wood. More metal dragged at my ankles when I kicked.

This was not a dream, and I was not in my room. I was awake, locked inside a wooden crate, my hands and feet shackled.

"No," I whispered, my voice dry and broken. "No, no, no."

I slammed my palms against the boards, first carefully and then with all the strength I had left. I drove my shoulder into one side, kicked until pain burst up my shins, and beat at the lid until splinters bit into my skin.

Nothing gave way. All I did was reopen bruises and make the chains cut deeper into my wrists.

When the first sob broke out of me, it hurt worse than the wood, because now I was fully awake, and I remembered everything.

It had been almost two months since the letter arrived from Daniel Holloway, the father who had never wanted me enough to stay.

He wrote as if years of silence were a small misunderstanding, as if a few polite sentences could step over my mother's misery and every empty chair he had left behind. He said he knew Grandma was sick. He said he could help with the surgery. He said if I came to visit for a few days, we could talk like family.

I had not trusted him. But Grandma's medical bills were stacked beside the phone, and every time she coughed into a napkin and smiled like she was fine, something inside me cracked.

So I went. I packed one bag, kissed her goodbye, lied that I would call the second I arrived, and carried the temporary Sanctuary Pass Daniel had arranged for me like it was a lifeline.

Now I did not even know if Grandma thought I had abandoned her.

My throat closed as I folded against my knees, tears slipping hot over my cheeks. She had raised me with chicken money, garden vegetables, and stubborn love, while my mother drifted in and out of my life like a storm.

Grandma was the only home I had ever really had, and I had left her sick and waiting for a call that never came.

"I'm sorry," I breathed into the dark. "Grandma, I'm so sorry."

Light suddenly slipped through the cracks between the boards, making me flinch away. Someone had yanked away the cloth covering the crate. A rough male voice barked in a language I still could not understand, thick, guttural, and irritated.

It was not English or any language I had ever studied. It was one of Draconia's beast-tongues, and every time I failed to answer it, I felt less like a person.

I pressed closer to the crack and tried to look out.

Two months ago, I had still believed borders meant guards, laws, and people who would help if you screamed loudly enough. Then I crossed into the Arcanum Veil with Daniel's temporary pass, and at the border checkpoint, someone slammed into me, snatched my bag, and sent it spinning into the crowd.

My phone, my Sanctuary Pass, my proof that I had permission to exist here—all of it disappeared. Before I could chase after it, something struck the back of my head, and the human world ended.

Since then, the Feral Sector had taught me what being unprotected meant.

The male who bought me at that underground auction did not treat me like a kidnapped girl. He treated me like a stubborn animal he had overpaid for. He shoved raw insects and gray strips of meat through bars, beat me when I gagged, beat me when I cried, beat me hardest when I failed to understand whatever command he growled at me.

Sometimes he forced me to stand, kneel, crawl, and bow, as if he planned to train me for a street performance. When I got it wrong, which was almost always, pain followed.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, he had finally lost patience. The beating had been worse than the others, so bad that my memory broke into flashes: his boot, the floor, blood in my mouth, the ceiling spinning.

I must have passed out, because when I woke, I was in this crate.

The crate lurched.