Dragon's Honor by Mina Carter Page B

recognize black magic incantations when she heard them. Her ears tried to recoil at the sound, as though trying not to hear. The words were wrong, an evil sound that sent tentacles of ice to wrap around her spine and reach inward toward her heart.
    “Crap.” She wriggled and tried to turn over to see what was going on, but found herself bound by the wrists and the ankles. Even worse, as soon as she moved, blood rushed back into the arm she was lying on. Pain danced along the limb like a caterpillar in running spikes doing the polka. She had no clue if a caterpillar could do the polka with all those legs, but this freaking felt like it.
    “I think our guest of…Honor is awake. Bring her over here.”
    Honor froze at the familiar voice, her breath catching in her throat. Lambert. He was behind all this? Hard hands grabbed her by the upper arms and hauled her upright. The fetid stink of redcap breath washed over her and she shuddered. Their leering faces, not to mention the glitter of light along the lethal edges of their pikes, ensured the little struggle she had in her died altogether as they pushed and yanked her over the roof. Her lips moved in a silent prayer that none of them had been in the house when she’d pokered their friend.
    “Glad you could make it, my dear.”
    The redcaps shoved her to the floor at Lambert's feet. He’d changed into robes that looked like they’d been stolen from some fantasy film set. Grey velvet, they were embroidered with symbols that made her eyes ache if she tried to look at them for too long. Like they were wrong, against nature somehow. She bit back the bile rising in her throat and avoided looking at them, looking at Lambert instead. Another shiver wound down her spine. There was something wrong with his eyes.
    “My pleasure,” she replied, refusing to be cowed. “But you could have sent me a meeting notification instead of your pets.”
    She tried to struggle to her feet, but the shaft of a pike slammed into the back of her knees, spilling her to the concrete again. Shooting a look of hatred at the redcap responsible, she wished she had a poker on her. Sure, she’d been upset about killing one last night, but now…she had a feeling that it was kill or be killed and she wasn’t ready to head for the pearly gates. Not yet.
    “Ahh, but that would have meant bringing those pathetic dragons your father had guard you.”
    Lambert grabbed her shirt at her throat and shoved his face into hers. She gasped. His eyes weren’t human. Instead of the brown eyes she remembered him having, now vertical pupils bisected a pure gold eye with no iris. Like a reptile…or a dragon.
    “Dragons? Don’t be….”
    She didn’t finish the sentence. All the facts, everything she’d seen and heard were churning in her brain until she reached the inevitable conclusion. Lambert smirked as he saw the penny drop.
    “Clever man, your father.” His eyes weren’t the only thing affected by his new nature. A forked tongue slid out and flickered across his lips. “He knew or guessed what you are and got in some outside muscle. Not that it helped any. It was pathetically easy to swipe you out from under their noses.”
    Honor lifted her chin and glared at him. How could she not have seen what a snake in the grass he was? How had he hidden all…this from her father? Dude had snake eyes and a freaking forked tongue, that had to have come from somewhere.
    “Then I hope it’s pathetically easy for you to run, because Baron will be coming for you.” She frowned, picking up on something he’d said. “What do you mean, my father guessed what I am? That’s not difficult. I’m human.”
    Lambert threw back his head and laughed, the sound chilling and inhuman. When he looked back at her, his gaze was unsettling, making her shiver and feel dirty, as though just him looking at her contaminated her with something. Perhaps the same sort of crazy as he was.
    “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what he said. Tell me,