I was on fire. My shoulder was burning, exploding in pain, and I wanted to die.

The only thing I could do at first was scream in shock and agony. My whole existence centered around the torture I was going through, all centered in my right shoulder.

“Stop it!” I screamed, beating at the dark figure who hovered above me with my good hand.

It was like hitting solid rock.

He didn’t give—there was no softness to his body. He didn’t flinch, either.

“Please! You’re killing me! Please, stop!” I gritted my teeth as a shriek raced up my throat.

I could hear my voice doubling, tripling, filling the shadows with the sound of my agony.

He moved, finally, to pick up a candle and hold it close to my face.

I recoiled in fear, thinking he was doing it to burn me someplace else, on some other part of my body that he hadn’t already destroyed.

“Stop it!” he ordered in a sharp voice, and I turned my face toward his.

Dark eyes probing mine, looking for answers. Dark hair, smooth, tanned skin. A strong face. A handsome one. The face of a demon because he was torturing me and it would kill me because ohmigod, it hurt more than anything I had ever been through or could ever imagine.

“Please… please, help me. I’m dying…” I couldn’t control my whimpers of pain and panic.

I forced myself to look down at my shoulder and bit back another scream as the sight of my sizzling flesh greeted my eyes.

“I can’t understand you. You’re talking gibberish.”

Of course.

I wasn’t speaking English. He expected me to. And just like that, it all became clear. Every bit of it.

I hadn’t imagined the flight on the dragon’s back. He was the dragon, and he had dragged me to his cave or lair or whatever it was. And he thought his magical blood could heal my wounds.

It would have, if I were human.

All this went through my fevered brain in a flash before I made the deliberate switch to English.

“Please, make it stop,” I whispered, staring up at him through the tears filling my eyes.

I couldn’t stop them any more than I could stop the sizzling of my flesh where his blood had touched me.

“What’s happening?” he asked, grimacing in horror as he watched the effect his blood had on me. “I’ve never seen this before! I thought it would help you. I thought you might die if you became infected.”

“I wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t done this,” I gasped, turning my head back and forth as a fresh wave of pain tore my brain to pieces.

I would go insane before his toxic blood killed me. How could I hope to keep sane while being tortured?

“What do you mean?”

I barely managed to gasp out my answer. “I’m fae, you stupid jackass!”

His eyes flew open wide. “You’re what?”

“Fae. Not human.” I writhed in pain, which sent a fresh, stronger wave of fire running through me. “Your blood… it’s going to kill me. It’s poison to me.”

Sweat broke out on my forehead, along the back of my neck. I felt it soaking into my hair along with the tears which ran freely down my face.

“How can I save you?”

I shook my head, unable to think through the haze surrounding me.

The burning was starting to spread from my shoulder down to my elbow.

It would eventually spread throughout my body as the effect of his blood had time to work its way through me. It would rot my flesh and shut down my organs.

The thought of waiting to die while I rotted from the inside out was enough to make me consider asking him to kill me straight out. I would beg him to kill me before I’d let death take its time.

Alina.

Alina could save me.

Only I didn’t know where I was. I would have to go to her.

“Please, help me get home. I have to get home to my kind. We have a healer. She’ll know what to do.”

“That’s not possible.”

I was sure I must’ve heard him wrong.

There was no way he would do what he’d done to me, then deny me the chance to live.

“What do you mean, not possible? They live right outside Roanoke. It’s easy to get there—I think, anyway. I don’t know where we are exactly.”

“And there’s a reason for that,” he replied with a scowl. “You’re not supposed to know where we are, and nobody else can know we’re here.”

Because he was a dragon.

“Look. I understand. You’re who you are, and I’m who I am. Neither of us lives in a safe world. We have to watch out for humans who would put an end to us. I get it.”

I would’ve said anything to get him to let me go. I would’ve promised anything in the world. So long as the pain ended.

“You don’t understand. There’s much more to it than that for me, for my family.”

“Family?”

“Yes. My brothers and cousins. They all live here with me, and none of them will let you go, either.”

It was a nightmare.

I was here, and they wouldn’t let me go, and I was living in a nightmare. It was the only reason. Or I died in the car, and I was in hell. Was there such a place? There had to be, because that’s where I was just then.

Staring up at a gorgeous, but evil, dragon shifter.

“But… I won’t tell!” I whispered.

I felt myself slipping over the edge of sanity into sheer panic as I reached for him with my good hand, the one whose arm didn’t yet feel like it was I flames.

My hand closed around his wrist, clamping down hard when another wave of pain burned through me. “I swear it. When one of us makes a promise, it’s a solemn oath. It means our very lives. I’m bound to my word. You must believe me.”

His eyes were hard, but there was a spark of something behind them.

Sympathy?

That had to be it. He had gone so far as to share his blood with me in the hopes that he’d save my life. There had to be goodness inside him. I had to play on that, plain and simple.

“I’m dying,” I whispered, and a tear rolled down my cheek and collected in my hair along with the others.

“I want to help you,” he admitted.

It sounded like saying the words out loud gave him pain—but that pain was nothing compared to what I was going through, so it meant little to me.

“So, please, do. I’ll die here. I’m dying now. I can feel it. The burning… it’s already spreading through my arm.”

His handsome features contorted in a grimace as he fought with himself. Something was still holding him back.

“What do I have to say to convince you?” I asked.

The candle didn’t provide much light, so most of his face was cast in shadow when he looked away.

“There’s nothing you can say,” he muttered. “You have no idea what’s at stake for me.”

“More than my life?” I asked before I winced, grinding my teeth.

I had to control my breathing. I just had to. The more panicked I became, the faster my heart raced and the faster the toxic blood would spread through me.

“That might be how they see it, yes.”

“But it’s not how you see it?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you worked hard to get me out of that car—and you could’ve died, too. The last thing I remember was the mud sweeping the car up and pushing it toward the edge of the road. I was close to the edge. And I bet the car’s somewhere on the forest floor, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”

“No. You flew me here. I remember a little bit of that, too.”

“What’s the point of reminding me of these things?”

I would’ve shrugged if I could’ve moved without screaming. As it was, I needed to stay perfectly still if I wanted to speak clearly. I couldn’t move and speak at the same time.

“Because you’ve tried so hard to keep me alive. You can’t let me die like this.”

“There’s nothing I can do. I can’t run the risk of somebody finding out where you are.”

“And I just told you I wouldn’t tell.”

“And I’m telling you if it means nothing to me that you’ve promised this, it’ll mean even less to my family. They already hate me for bringing you here, or they will.”

I couldn’t leave. Asking to leave was a waste of time. If he was tough, the rest of the would be tougher.

I wondered how many there were. With my luck, a hundred. All dragons.

His eyes lit up. “I could bring your healer here. Just tell me where to find her, and I can use a blindfold. She won’t ever have to see where we’re going.”

I wanted to jump at the suggestion—but it was no use. I could see why he didn’t want to let me leave when it put it that way.

I wasn’t about to let any strangers, especially a bunch of dragons, know where my kind lived. We kept ourselves secret for a reason. My heart sank.

“It’s useless,” I whispered before squeezing my eyes shut.

Two more tears trickled out when I did. At the rate I was crying, I’d die of dehydration before I rotted.

“That’s no good, either?” he asked.

I could hear the disappointment and frustration in his voice.

“No. I can’t tell you where they live.”

“But you would lie there and heap guilt on me for not wanting you to leave. What if I make all the same promises you did? I’ll never tell anybody where your people live. I’ll never breathe a word.”

“You don’t have to be nasty. Not now. Not after what you did to me.” I turned my head away with a groan. “You should’ve let me die.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if you might be right, after all.” He shot up suddenly and walked out of what I realized was a cell, complete with iron bars.

I would’ve called out to him, begged him not to leave me alone there, scared and in pain and worried that things would get a lot worse, if I could’ve called out to him without the pain only getting worse.

I stared up at the ceiling, which looked like it had been carved from solid rock. I needed to distract myself. If I thought about the poison, I’d start to panic again. Panic meant pain.

Who created the cell?

The tunnel I heard the dragon’s footsteps fading down was a long one.

How much more were there?

Did he say that was where they lived?

I couldn’t remember—everything was a blur.

I was going to die there.

That much was clear.