Balthazar didn’t want his hope to die. He had spent years scouring every inch of the peninsula with his brother’s help after his fight with Ti, with no luck. And years had turned into decades since his dreadful loss. Layers of dirt, rock, mud and salt had built up over the Peninsula. It would take an enormous amount of work to dig through and sift through the debris. And all with no guarantee of finding the piece of him that would make his body whole.
Balthazar clenched his teeth as another bolt of searing pain flashed through him. He gripped the bars with knuckle-white fists as his body convulsed around his dragon’s justified anger. Heat raged through his veins and his skin flushed red as his blood boiled beneath his skin. Sweat poured off his head and stung his eyes, but he refused to let go to wipe it away. The dragon fought and clawed against Balthazar’s mental barrier and demanded release.
This episode of transformation felt worse than normal, and he hung on as his dragon roared and spouted another intense bout of almost unbearable heat. The skin on his arms turned brown, then blackened as searing flames tried to fight their way through. He screamed in agony as the relentless fire cracked his skin open in several places. There was no blood, but a dull orange glow seeped through his body and brightened the room.
Balthazar struggled with the mental barrier, and his heart raced. His dragon soul had created a slight crack in the wall. He fought against Bal as he tried to mend the tear. “You have to stop!” he shouted. “We will die if you continue this madness!”
In his mind, he watched the dragon approach him until he felt the familiar melding of their minds. He shivered as his dragon settled, like molten lava over rock. It was logic versus instinct, reasoning versus uncontrollable anger. “You have denied me for too long,” Bal said in his deep, raspy voice. “You will contain me no longer. Before the Equinox has passed, I will emerge.”
Despite their similar conversations of past decades, Balthazar felt his heart sink in despair. His dragon soul was determined. “I beg you,” he whispered. “Please don’t do this. There may yet be an opportunity…”
“You have promised many times to find our scale, and you have not done so. I would rather die than to live another one hundred years of this half-life.”
“No, wait…” But Balthazar didn’t finish as another scream tore out of his throat. Bal pounded his mental barrier and cracked it in several places. If Balthazar didn’t get both of them under control, Thorsson would find a dead body in the morning, and Ti would return to claim the hoard as rightfully his. He refused to allow that to happen.
Balthazar fixated his consciousness on the barrier and mentally hammered it back into place. Each time Balthazar repaired a crack, Bal found a way to smash through another part.
The next collision was so bad that Balthazar was thrown to the back of the cage. He grabbed his head as he felt a portion of his mental barrier slip. “You have to stop!” he shouted, shaking his head. He gasped for air and watched in horror as his chest and stomach turned black. His dragon charred his flesh, and the smell of burnt hair and skin, along with the unbearable agony of seared nerves, was too much. Balthazar felt his body slowly slump to the floor and he laid there, eyes open, hoping the end would come quickly.
***
Balthazar heard the door bolt being pulled back, but he didn’t care. Footsteps descended to the basement floor and stopped. He couldn’t see who it was—the person remained hidden in the darkness, but he could smell her. The pleasant scent of her skin rose above even the smell of burnt skin and hair. Eva. “Go away,” he whispered.
She approached slowly and finally halted a few feet away. Balthazar saw a pair of dark brown feet, with toenails painted red. Balthazar found the strength to crawl to the back of the cage. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Thankfully, his dragon remained quiet, and he could guess as to why. “Leave me alone.”
“Balthazar.” Her voice washed over him, a cool relief, and he inhaled her scent until it filled him.
He risked a glance over his shoulder, and his heart thundered in his chest—she stood beside the cage. “Eva,” he rasped, and coughed to clear his throat. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.”
She grasped the bars. “You thought I would just stay in my room and ignore the fact that you were down here, alone and in pain? I couldn’t get into the basement, so I went outside and found the boarded windows.” Her hands shook, but otherwise Eva remained calm. “I saw you. I saw what happened to you.”
Balthazar cringed. He remembered the excruciating pain, his unrestrained screams, the fire licking across his naked flesh. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest, and watched as Eva’s expression changed to fear. He looked down and swallowed the disgust that rose in his throat. His body was covered in first-degree burns. His shoulder had taken the brunt of his injuries, as usual—the deep gash still oozed blood. He knew the wounds would heal quickly, but to a human, it would be nauseating.