Dragonbound(46)

I ignore her. “There has to be another way. We can cut the bars—”
“Cut the bars?” Amelrik raises an eyebrow at me. “And how are we supposed to do that?”
“Okay, something else then! But we can’t just—”
“Someone’s coming.” He keeps his voice low and motions for me to be quiet. He tilts his head, listening to something in the hallway.
My heart pounds as I glance around, looking for a place to hide. But there isn’t one.
Amelrik’s shoulders relax. “Never mind. I guess I was—”
There’s a roar, and a flash of purple scales and claws. It happens so fast, I can’t process what I’m seeing at first. And then Amelrik’s on the floor, blood spreading out from a gash that runs along his side and across his stomach.A purple dragon looms over him. Over us.
Lothar.
He laughs, his booming voice echoing through the chamber. “Did you think I wouldn’t be watching?! That I wouldn’t have instructed the guards to send word the moment they saw you?” He snorts, puffing smoke out of his nostrils. The key to Celeste’s cell glints from a string around his neck, too high up for me to reach, even if I could get close to him. “I expected you to sneak in, coward that you are. But I thought it was my father you’d be going to see. Going behind my back and tattling to him, like you always did. But this? Trying to steal our St. George? That’s grounds for war.” He grins, showing off his teeth.
“Whatever your problem with me is,” Amelrik says, wincing as he sits up, “it’s gone on long enough.” Wings rip through the back of his shirt as he transforms. The bleeding stops at the same time as his eyes turn yellow and black scales spread along his forearms and down the sides of his neck.
Celeste gasps in horror. A weird half-yelp, half-croaking sound escapes her throat.
Amelrik stands, keeping his focus on Lothar. “Let’s settle this.”
“You should have stayed dead the first time,” Lothar says, “because unlike my father, I won’t show you any mercy.”
“No!” I step in front of Amelrik, holding up my hands. This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but I can’t just let this happen. “Don’t move! I’m a St. George—I’ll bind you if you don’t leave him alone!”
Lothar peers at me, like he hadn’t recognized me before. “If you were going to bind me, you would have done it by now.” Then he lunges.
“Virginia!” Amelrik grabs me, pushing me out of the way. Lothar’s claw clips his arm but only hits scale. Amelrik ducks as Lothar snaps at him with his jaws.
I turn to Celeste. “Do something!”
Her mouth opens and closes silently. Then she says, “I can’t.”
Lothar slams Amelrik with his tail. There’s a crunching sound as he hits the wall.
Tears fill my eyes. “Because he’s a dragon? You’d let him die because he’s—”
“Vee, I can’t!” She grips the bars of her cell. “I’ve tried, but there’s iron here for a reason! It absorbs my magic, just like a dragon ring. They knew what they were doing when they put me here.”
Amelrik cries out as Lothar hits him again, this time propelling him into the opposite wall. Lothar’s playing with him—torturing him—like a cat with a mouse.
My eyes meet Amelrik’s. His face is distorted in pain, but he mouths something at me: Run. 
It’s like the night we met all over again, except this time my paladin sister isn’t going to save the day.
And I can’t run. I won’t. Because there’s no way I’m leaving him here to die.
“What are you doing?” Celeste says. “Get out of here! He’s buying you time, and you’re just standing there, wasting it!”
One of Amelrik’s wings hangs funny, obviously injured, maybe broken, and the thought of that happening to him again makes me sick. His yellow eyes plead with me, begging me to run while I still can.
It’s because he’s looking at me that he’s off guard when Lothar slashes at him. Amelrik puts a hand to his chest as more blood soaks his clothes. Then Lothar knocks his legs out from under him with a sweep of his tail.
“Go!” Celeste shouts. “There’s nothing you can do! You can’t save him!”
“Yes, I can.” I take a step forward, holding up my hands, which are shaking. I was bluffing before, when I threatened Lothar. But not this time.
“What are you doing?! You don’t have magic!” There’s desperation in Celeste’s voice, like she thinks I’ve gone crazy and that it’s going to get me killed. “You don’t know what you’re—”
“Doing? I’m so sick of hearing that. If you don’t believe in me, then fine, but shut up about it!”
She goes silent, and just for a moment, I wonder if I’ve gone too far. Then I realize I don’t care.
My whole life, I’ve tried to do things Celeste’s way. I tried to learn magic, to be like her. To kill dragons like her, even if that’s not what I wanted. But it never worked, and in the end, it wasn’t Celeste who taught me magic. It was Amelrik, the dragon she told me to stay away from. The dragon I fell in love with.
The last time I tried to cast the binding spell, just the attempt was enough to scare off Amelrik’s mother. But there’s no way that will work on Lothar—it has to be the real thing.
And maybe I lied just now, because I’m not sure that I can cast this, that I can save him. But I have to.
Lothar presses a claw to Amelrik’s throat. “Killing you is going to be even easier than killing Raban.”
A shocked look spreads across Amelrik’s face. He starts to speak, nearly cutting himself on Lothar’s claw, and then stays silent.
I think about the binding spell, focusing all of my energy into it. I picture Lothar turning human.
There’s a flash of red light, followed by the smell of sulfur. But those things have both happened before without it meaning anything. And Lothar’s still in dragon form.
“At least he put up a struggle,” Lothar says, and then slices his claw across Amelrik’s throat.
Right as the binding spell works—it actually works—and there’s the sound of flesh ripping and tearing as he’s forced into human form.
Amelrik has his hands pressed to his throat. When he pulls them away, his hands are bloody, but his throat is intact, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relieved in my life.
Lothar looks like he did the night I first met him—brown hair, blue eyes—except now he’s naked. The string with the key on it lies sprawled on the floor. Amelrik moves to grab it, but Lothar tackles him.
They fall to the ground, and then everything happens really fast. Amelrik might be worn out and injured, but he’s still stronger in dragon form. Lothar tries to hit him while he still has the upper hand, but Amelrik kicks him and twists out of reach. He punches Lothar in the face and then pins him down, and now it’s Amelrik who has his claws to Lothar’s throat.
“You murdered your own cousin.” Amelrik’s seething and out of breath from the fight.“I had to! It was the only way to make sure that you didn’t—” He stops himself from whatever he was going to say.
I grab the key off the floor and hurry to unlock Celeste’s cell. As soon as she’s free, I hug her as hard as I can.
“Didn’t what?!” Amelrik shouts. He’s shaking now, though I can’t tell if it’s from anger or from his injuries.
Lothar’s face twists up in disgust. “I heard what my father had planned for you. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. And whatever it was, it doesn’t justify what you did to Raban, and what you tried to do to me!”
“He was going to bring Signy home and marry her off to you.”
“What?”
“She’s older than me. He could have picked one of my younger sisters—they’re almost of age—but he didn’t, and you know what that means.”
“It doesn’t mean anything! I didn’t even know about it, and I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to it!”
“Yes, you would have. Anything my father says, you jump up and do it, like some lapdog. And don’t act like you wouldn’t have loved for him to make you his heir.”
“He wouldn’t have! My own father doesn’t want me to be his heir—yours definitely doesn’t!”
“If not his heir, then at least his son! He liked you better than me. You, disgusting and half-formed and not even a real dragon!”
Amelrik glares at him and brings his claws in closer, his hand poised over Lothar’s throat, clenched in anger. And there’s a second where I think he’s going to do it. Judging by the look on Lothar’s face, I’m pretty sure he thinks so, too. But then . . . Amelrik hesitates. He pulls his hand away.
Another purple dragon rushes in from the hallway shouting, “No, don’t!”
Amelrik backs off, unpinning Lothar and getting to his feet.
Lothar gets up, too. “Did you see that, Father? He attacked me—he and that St. George he brought!”
The Elder king looks from his son, who hardly has a scratch on him, to Amelrik, who’s clearly injured. And I’m still not great at reading dragons’ expressions, but I don’t think he’s buying it. He snaps something at Lothar in Vairlin, and Lothar scowls at the ground.