Rizzaget walked over to my sister and trailed a finger down her neckline as he spoke, “Anixae was always my contingency plan, Dryad. It’s a good thing you girls come in threes. But no, since you’re wondering, I was assured by a Seer that at the end of the day, you would doubtlessly come to me, broken enough to extract the price of a life-bond that I so desired. I just didn’t realise that the trade would be with someone else. The Seer conveniently left that piece of her vision out. Tricky little things, aren’t they? Always speaking in circles. Yes, I could have healed you and then asked you, but we both know you wouldn’t have committed to a life-bond. And upon waking up, your sister would have immediately been warned away from me, destroying any chance of concreting a transaction.”

"And where does Balthazar fit into all of this?" Anixae chimed in, shoving Rizzaget away in discerning disgust.

“Aside from being another pawn in Rizzaget’s game?” I threw in.

Balthazar, having made himself comfortable over by a wall, leaned against a gilded bookshelf with his arms folded.

He seemed mildly enthusiastic about connecting the dots for us imbeciles and with a brow lifted, stated for Anixae and I, "So pathetic, all of you. Why must I be the one to explain it all? Very well. I have no loyalties to anyone. Or anything, really. Nothing motivates me. I cannot be driven to do anything that doesn't suit my interests. I suppose in some cases, there are exceptions..."

Rizzaget smirked. "What he's trying to say is that I've managed to secure his alliance. For now. Isn't that right, your highness?" He asked Balthazar.

The King of Adalantra narrowed his eyes at Rizzaget, the golden rings of them glowing in a way that always boded ill for the man on the receiving end of it.

The cold, hissing shadows lapping at Balthazar's tight form were abuzz and they rattled like furious snakes the longer he considered Rizzaget. It was as if he'd taken pieces of the night and harnessed it into strips, and then allowed it to roam free – the result of which were his shadows that acted like armour, his sentient fog of magic.

"The baby Dryad is your insurance policy for Doralis... And Doralis is your insurance policy for me. Clever little Sorcerer." Balthazar grunted out, his hands dropping to his side, clenching and unclenching repeatedly.

Anixae and I swapped looks of confusion as the men continued to stare meaningfully at one another, an awkward aura filling the room.

"Me? How am I– Wait, what does that mean, Rizzaget? Balthazar, don't just look at him, explain yourself! Can somebody, anybody with a cock, please explain what this conversation is about?!" I roared.

Rizzaget walked over to me, his green clothes all torn and shredded from broken glass, and his exposed chest was evidently on display, but I averted my eyes, moving backwards as he careened into my space, pushing me into a wall. I was about to ask what he was doing, when suddenly his lips were a whisper away from my own and he said, "You'll find out very shortly, Dryad, that when you catch the attention of a Dragon, it doesn't go away very easily. In fact, they find it very hard to share their mating preferences."

Mating preferences? What was he implying exactly?

I blinked up at him, his mouth a tempting pout by most standards, his stifling arrogance and assurance of being coveted by females – even if he was physically attractive – barely registering. But my thoughts didn't get to evolve further than that, because I'd somehow gotten entangled with Balthazar's shadows, or maybe they'd wrapped themselves around me while I'd looked into Rizzaget's eyes for so long... and with a single tug, my feet were pulled out from under me.

Legs over my head, I was dragged from one end of the room, all the way to the Dragon Faerie standing over by the bookshelf. He was smiling, leaning on one broad shoulder, looking positively bright and cheery. I wasn't fooled, though.

Something had bothered him. His left eye was twitching, and he was biting the inside of his cheek. Those black, scaly wings of his were flaring slightly against his back, as if he longed to put those talons into a person's body. Mine?

I tried to sit up, but his loyal shadows kept me pinned to the floor. I looked up at him and growled, "My lord, this is most unseemly. What happened to being on friendly terms?"

"Oh, yes. You and the Sorcerer looked very friendly indeed. Wherever did you two meet, Dryad? You’ve yet to disclose your relationship with the Sorcerer, which I find very, very… unethical in this ‘partnership’ of ours."

"Anixae! I've had enough of this jiving bedlam. We're leaving." I tried to roll onto my stomach, but no matter how hard I tried, the shadows wouldn't budge.

My sister floated in my direction, but Rizzaget appeared in front of her in a flash of swirling, green mist, both of his arms outstretched to catch her.

The green mist looked vaguely familiar, as though I'd seen the likes of it in passing somewhere before...

"My dear, you are not going anywhere." The Sorcerer told my sister.

Her temper rose like a thunderstorm; deadly and striking, so quick to roll out... Both of her eyes glimmered as those long, glorious, mossy curls grew, tumbling down her shoulder blades like spilt ink, her claws tearing straight through her fingertips - sharp and virulent weapons.

I saw the instant she leaked poison from the tips of her claws, my skin trembling with a fearful knowing before she stuck them into Rizzaget's throat. Uncaring of the consequences to her own mortality.

Together, as one, they staggered back, clutching at their throats. My sister and Rizzaget. Staring at one another, both bleeding.

"What have you done, Anixae..." I breathed.

No, no, no.

The shadows peeled themselves away from me. I raced to her body, catching her before she fell.

Vines ripped through the floorboards, summoned by my anguish. I'd called them here and they wrapped themselves around my sister, cradling her as I screamed senselessly like a Banshee, the glass shelving around the room all splintering from the high vibrations of my pitch.

Breathless, I'd turned glowing, death-filled eyes upon Balthazar, keen for a resolution.

Looking stoic as ever, he dragged a barely conscious Rizzaget by the collar and laid him next to Anixae's gurgling form. "Your sister has the anti-venom. Get her to heal them both."

"No. Not until he releases us."

"He won't. He needs you both too much."

"He can make the life-bond with me, then. Not her." I slammed my fist into the floor and glared at the redhead lying next to my sister.

Dryads weren't supposed to be creatures of death – no, not just death, but creatures that meted out vengeance and destruction. But how could a Magic Blood do so much wrong and get away with so much? I shook my head, trembling.

"You are running out of time, Doralis." Balthazar reasoned, kneeling at my side.

He was so close to me, his cool presence a wash of mountain air that hurtled down my lungs. I didn't want to breathe him in, but I had no choice. Balthazar was all around me, his passionless words a low whisper that drifted down my nape, and even in these excruciating circumstances, I hated that he was more familiar to me than half the empires in the world.

I also loathed that he was sounding so... rational. Why was he so inclined to be the voice of logic, whereas I was not? Meanwhile, I was beside myself in dread and anxiety, floundering in a trench of panic.

"He can have me. He can use me, Balthazar. Me. Not Anixae!" I yelled.

Balthazar's deep-purple tunic entered my vision once more and I felt a strong hand grasp my chin. It was always like this between us – him, a force of unbending will against me, an exalted King that sought to squeeze self-satisfaction from his peons.

I tried to turn my head away, but he wouldn't let me, wouldn't allow a scant inch between us as he moved unnervingly closer, laying one hand next to my leg, trapping it.

A guttural sound emanated from the man leaning over me, his lips scalding the tip of my cheekbone as he hissed, "There is no man on this earth who can have you. That's a surety that I breathe, my pigpen princess. And the day I find out a man tries to own you or use you... he dies. Simple as that."

The hand on my face was gently gone after a moment, and the unnaturally quiet Dragon Faerie dragged himself back, those membranous wings of his sweeping glass and countless fallen items that littered the floor around us away – whilst blowing tiny dust fragments across the room.

I hung my head, ignoring how deep Balthazar's words had reached. In all our centuries of ferocious quips and quarrels, we'd never seen fit to question our tightly wound existences. It would mean contemplating why we argued in the first place... or why we couldn't quite make the killing blow after all these years.

During the very first wars between Magic Bloods and humans, Balthazar and I had both been there to watch and bicker in the shadows, our kindred souls magnetised to the chaos of bloodshed. And as an uncounselled youth, I’d once sought out the Dragon Faerie because I knew that he wouldn’t flinch away from combat with a Dryad like many others would. It was the typical stance of any Magic Blood that unless one happened to be well met with a Dryad’s abilities in battle, then they would initially go easy on them – after all, we lacked the impenetrable scales of a dragon, and we didn’t have resplendent wings in which to escape the timid plains of the land, nor could we lull our victims to sleep. To put it mildly, we were always looked down upon.

However, whenever it came down to the Warlord and I, our disputatious natures could hardly be concealed any more than the moon could disappear from the sky forever, and as more time progressed, and we'd turned our swords on each other in a more serious manner, every collision of blades became a dialogue of enmity between us.

To put it simply, we found it impossible to speak in another language. All we knew was that our lives depended on it. I understood his sentiments to a certain degree... because what we had was a yearning to live in mutual destruction, to watch the world live in caustic colours while we faded into non-descript grey; and that plan of ours permitted nothing and no-one to mess up that equation – especially a Sorcerer like Rizzaget La'Barrier.

I shoved all our tumultuous memories to the back of my mind, where they belonged in a locked chest.

"Anixae. Please. We... I can't do this without you." I laid my head on her torso, feeling her slow exhalations.

She wasn't moving. I sensed her disagreement, her refusal to give Rizzaget the anti-venom.

Desperate, I flexed my ivory claws and dragged the tip of one against my wrist, cutting my skin open. I'd seen some Magic Bloods do this ritual to create intimate, psychic connections. I just hoped that by transferring my lifeblood to Rizzaget, it would at least be the same as a life-bond; especially since I didn't know how to cast the spell that he'd used on Anixae.

I'd moved forward to place my dripping wound over Rizzaget's mouth, my blood gathering on the underside of my wrist, but then a shadow fell over me... and I felt a focused, spiral of air plummet into my chest at an impossible speed, knocking me flat onto my back.

Disoriented, I let out a squeak of surprise as I stared over the Sorcerer's body at Balthazar; pure shock developing on my face in increments.

He had that defiant look about him, the one he'd honed from years of staring death in the face as he spread his scarred fingers out along the wooden slats of the floor. Saying nothing at all about what he’d just done, his nostrils were flared, and his mouth was a pale line of grimness, the small space in between both hands his sole point of focus.

The veins along his arms were corded; I could tell he was in a state of repressed rage as he whispered tightly, "Convince your sister to heal the Sorcerer. That's the only option you have."

"My only option is life-bonding, you daft creature! Now get out of my way, before I blow this place apart."

He shook his head and stood up, the resolve on his face getting stronger with every brush of his gaze along my mouth, my neck and my hands. I'd never seen him consider me so quietly, in a way that urged me to turn around or hide like this.

The shadows around him gathered at his shoulders and he looked ready to fight, or at the very least subdue me.

But I got the sense that his intention was something else entirely... and I hadn't quite caught onto it yet.

"Not today, Balthazar. Not today." I seethed, warning him as I got to my feet, the vines on the floor rising with me, "If you stop me from life-bonding to the Sorcerer, I swear on my family name that Adalantra will see ruin from this day forward! Do not test me, Dragon!"

I’d never sworn on my family name before. I’d spoken it once and I’d seen the damage that names alone could inflict. “Names have power,” Galadryn had said to me straight after a certain incident. After that, I never spoke my family name aloud again.

Never for anyone to use against me.

"If you could only see how your threats entice me to do the opposite of your bidding. Dryad, to be an enemy of yours until the end of time would be a sacred pleasure in itself, but even the stars know that you and I are meant for something greater. Surely you know this as well?" He said, taking a casual step towards me.

Everything about him was muted – his grave eyes, even that snarky growl he effortlessly slipped into his words. All his defining nuances were gone, all of them buried. Or perhaps, for centuries, due to my own assertions of his immoral character, I'd wholeheartedly believed that Balthazar was incapable of exhibiting anything other than warped and wicked qualities; in which case the representation in front of me was yet another caricature that I couldn't trust.

But he'd reinforced this impression, over and over. He'd fought with me, bled with me, tumbled from excruciating heights because of me. His steel sword had rung with cruel emotions when it had struck mine in ages past, and no matter how long we'd spent putting our grievances aside and reinventing more slights on a whim, it didn't matter for fate had shackled us together.

Fate had promised bloody perpetuity between the two of us. A matrimony of ferity and ruthlessness that only we'd understood. Infinite. Inescapable.

To be entwined with this Dragon Faerie until the end of time, it was a vow I'd carved into my immortal soul without knowing.

But now the man in front of me was a stranger, I determined, prim with rage, the air tightening around me.

"What are you talking about?" I shifted towards the Sorcerer; and he moved with me, mirroring my steps.

Teeming with an undiluted purpose that he wouldn't disclose, he drawled, "I think we've played games for long enough."