21. Bella

Months passed, and we fell into a steady rhythm, with Lore training me with a sword and basic self-defense. Alysha kept me company as I helped her with the nightly dinner, and Billy walked the wall with me daily as if some new hole would appear.

Each day, I noticed things were changing, as if the curse was growing in response to these changes. The thorns around the castle looked like they were dying on the outside edges. I wanted to think that was a good sign, but I suspected it was the opposite. I felt it on the wind, a staleness that stank of death. Something was coming.

Soon, I realized I”d lost track of time, unsure what the date was outside this frozen world. Time began to make little sense.

One day, as Billy and I sat on the wall again and stared at the castle, our feet dangling over the edge, an odd feeling skated across my neck. It was a feeling that something terrible was going to happen. A knowing that went deep into my bones. I looked over at Billy, who had a goofy smile stretched across his face. He”d just finished telling me that yet another animal had found its way inside the castle when something happened that made him blush, and his eyes widened. His voice broke.

I snapped my gaze to him. ”Has that ever happened before?” I asked, curious. I wondered why I felt like things here were changing but that the change wasn”t necessarily a good thing.

Billy looked mortified and shook his head. ”Never.”

I stared at him for a long moment, studying his face, and that”s when I noticed he had a new freckle.

I threw my half-eaten apple over the wall into the thorns and then climbed off the wall. I brushed my legs off. ”I have an idea. Billy, will you come with me?”

We went back to the kitchen, where Alastair and Alysha were peeling potatoes for dinner. ”Are you hungry already?” she asked as we filtered through the door.

I shook my head. I remembered my Nan had a wall she marked each time I grew. I wondered if Alysha had one for Billy.

”Alysha, did you ever mark Billy”s height as he grew as a child? Maybe somewhere in the castle?” I asked.

Alysha stared at me and blinked, then her gaze shifted to Billy as if she was seeing him for the first time in a long time. ”Billy, my love, come here.” She stood up, abandoning her potatoes and wiping her hands on her apron. She took her son”s face in her gentle hands as she studied him. Her eyebrows drew closer together to form a line between them.

”You do seem a wee bit different, don”t you?” She pushed his hair away from his face and then stepped back. ”Stand tall. You are almost about… to my shoulder.” Billy stood tall, his back erect, and a gasp fell from Alysha”s lips.

”You”ve grown a full inch!” Her eyes snapped to mine, the joy on her face evident, but something didn”t sit right with me. If Billy was growing and changing, why weren”t the other people freed, and why was the curse still in place? What was changing? I had a feeling it wasn”t something good.

I left them to find joy in that moment, refusing to be the one to ruin it. My mind kept returning to the dying thorns, the fact that Lore”s dragon could enter his day body. Lately, at night, I”d heard him in the skies patrolling as he did every night. Maybe tonight, I needed to talk to the dragon, not the man.

As night fell, I slipped outside, my nerves thrumming with anticipation. The dragon had been distant lately, patrolling the skies but never engaging. I needed to know what was happening to him.

It wasn”t until later in the night that I finally found him.

The moon hung low and hazy, a ring of crimson encircling it like a warning. Unease twisted my gut, but I pressed on through the gloomy castle grounds. I found the castle wall and looked out toward freedom for only a moment. The thorns loomed, jagged and foreboding. Many vines lay withered, trailing limply along the ground. Disease festered in this place, the curse rotting from the outside in.

From my vantage point, I searched for the dragon that had claimed me because I felt something that made me know he was hurting. There was a twisting feeling in my gut as a prickling sensation on the back of my neck every time I thought of him, just as I had the same sensation as I watched him now.

There was something wrong. It felt like I was stuck in a fog and couldn”t find my way out. My dragon needed help. I could feel it as if it was instinct.

I found the dragon perched on a crumbling parapet, his massive claws gouging furrows in the ancient stone. Luminescent eyes gleamed in the darkness, feral and devoid of reason. No spark of recognition lit their crimson depths when they fixed upon me.

”It”s me,” I pleaded, even as icy fingers of dread clutched my heart. The beast blinked, reptilian membranes sliding sideways over empty scarlet orbs.

A guttural snarl vibrated from his throat as smoke curled from flared nostrils. I backed away slowly, pulse thundering in my ears.

”Please, you have to remember...” My voice cracked with sorrow and fear. If the curse had consumed his consciousness, what chance did any of us have? We were damned, our fates sealed by bitter vengeance centuries before I was born.

With a bone-chilling shriek, the dragon unfurled its leathery wings and launched itself at me, all vestige of humanity erased. I flung myself aside just as deadly talons rent the earth where I had stood. The force of its passing knocked me sprawling, and my injured shoulder wrenched painfully.

”Fuck,” I groaned, convinced that arm was damned to the seven levels of hell.

I scrambled to my feet, sprinting in blind panic as the enraged beast wheeled back around. Its fiery breath scorched the ground, the inferno licking at my heels. At the last second, I dove behind a crumbling wall, cowering as flames engulfed the structure above me.

When I finally risked peering out, the night sky was empty. The dragon had vanished as quickly as it had turned on me. With staggering steps, I limped back inside, despair threatening to swallow me whole.

As I collapsed into bed, the significance of the reddened moon mocked me. The curse was building toward its brutal end. And this time, I feared none of us would survive the coming storm.