Breath of Flame and Shadow Read Online Free Page A

stood above him, arms crossed as he stared down at her. Though “older” wasn’t precisely the word. He looked wiser, with sad eyes, and was slightly bulkier than his lithe, silent companion. Both men were stark naked with shaved heads.
    It was their eyes that caused her heart to pound harder in her chest. The older man’s eyes blazed with orange light, not unlike how her own had appeared in the mirror when Rafe had urged her into a passionate frenzy. The other man’s eyes smoldered with a pale, yellow glow reminding her of the gas lamps in the historic district of San Diego.
    “Because it isn’t safe for you. If you belonged here, you’d have landed in the field like the others.”
    “You know what I am?” Rowan immediately felt like a fool for asking the question.
    The man only smiled gently and dropped his arms. “Yes. And more than that, we can help you, but not if you take another step down this mountain.”
    “Where am I, exactly?” Rowan said. She moved toward the direction he indicated and found worn footholds in the side of the rock that allowed her to climb up. The man who had spoken reached out a hand to her and hoisted her up effortlessly. She stumbled at the top and he wrapped strong arms around her, steadying her.
    The second man spoke. “This is the Monastery. The Council lives here, along with a few free dragons, but mostly it’s either bonded humans or dragons like us. Unbound dragons shackled by the Council. We’d die if we lived anywhere else.”
    “I remember hearing about you. A dragon named Kol told me—do you know who he is?”
    The two men grinned at each other. “Yes. Kol is a good dragon. He’s on our side.”
    “I don’t even know what most of all this means, to be honest,” Rowan said, giving them an apologetic look.
    The older of the two men pursed his lips and nodded. “Sit and we can talk. First, tell me your name.”
    She shared her name, and the pair introduced themselves as Darius and Zak.
    “We’re what dragons call ‘Unbound.’ Our parents broke dragon law by breeding within the race,” Darius explained. “So we were taken from them as infants, our magic shackled. There’s no end to our indenture here. If you were to be found, you would end up like us.”
    “Was that what Kol meant when he said that freedom was all you wanted? That I can help make a stand against the Council?”
    “Yes. But it seems like you have other ideas.”
    Rowan grimaced. Her gut roiled with guilt over the urge to run yet again even knowing she might be the key to these two men finding freedom. Rafe’s lack of conviction still stung, but if she kept running she may be condemning other dragons to slavery, and would likely have to keep running, herself.
    “It isn’t about that,” she said quietly. “I fell for someone who it turned out didn’t return the feelings. I just need more time to decide what to do.”
    Darius shifted closer to her, his eyes cutting through the darkness. He rested a hand on her cheek. His touch was gentle and lingered for a moment. “You’re depleted, aren’t you?”
    “Yes. It seems like it takes more effort for me to get full each time I stop. I keep adding more and more to…to my plate but it never feels like enough.” She laughed softly at the analogy, but it truly did feel like she was going hungry and no amount of food could fill her empty belly.
    “This is what it’s like for us daily,” Darius said. “We have access to just enough magic to sustain each other, to maintain these human forms we’re bound in. We’re allowed no more than that.”
    “What would happen if you didn’t have that?”
    Zack snorted derisively, earning him an admonishing look from Darius. He shrugged. “We’d die.”
    “Oh God.”
    “We will give you what we can, but you’ll have to find another source soon. There are coastal resorts only a few islands away—the kind that cater to particular human tastes.”
    “What Darius means to say is that you can find