Wolfe cursed silently. If only Merlin had snuffed her out.
“But I knew Merlin’s secret,” she gloated. “My little pets who spied on him had told me. The dragon was smitten with a human woman.”
She laughed derisively.
“Uther’s concubine, no less. A woman who didn’t even notice him during the celebration dinner they both attended, her eyes too fond of a certain golden-haired warlord named Gorlois.”
Wolfe stiffened and froze at that, his heart beginning to pound more furiously than before.
Battle always made him calm. He was a warrior. But the secrets surrounding his mother…
Hissire…
The boy inside him who’d been left behind one too many times stopped to truly listen.
“So, I made the red dragon a bargain,” Guinevere said, her voice filled with malicious glee.
“I told him that I would acknowledge defeat and remove myself and my creatures from these hills if he would spare my life. I also sweetened the deal by offering him a parting gift—a love spell. As long as I lived, the spell would live, a guarantee for my safety in case he changed his mind. In return, I needed something to bind him to the spell. Something he had to give me of his own free will. His eye.”
“Clever,” Ere murmured.
Wolfe unfroze himself enough to move forward again, though he halted when her reptilian eye seemed to blink at him, a clear membrane shifting over the pupil.
“So enamored of the human whore was he that he carved out his own eye and gave it to me. I did what I promised, binding his eye with a spell.”
“But it was no love spell,” she revealed. “I do not have that sort of power. No one does, really. It was simply an illusion to make him take on the appearance of Gorlois when he wished to be with her. The stupid woman never knew what he really looked like, but I suppose she enjoyed his cock just the same.”
That eye flicked over Wolfe again, making him shudder with unpleasant goosebumps.
“He begot you, didn’t he, dragon spawn?” she chuckled evilly. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.The things men do when they are blinded by passion.”
She drew herself up with haughty condescension, reminding Wolfe of her queenly human form.
“What a fool. To be led around by his stupid cock and stupider heart. That woman never loved him. What human would love a dragon? A monster known for roasting children? How could she possibly trust such a creature? Let him willingly into her body? He should have taken my first offer while he still could. We would have ruled these isles together.”
Something about Guinevere’s words didn’t ring true. Wolfe couldn’t be sure which part.
But one thing was clear—the she-dragon hadwantedMerlin.
Obsessively.
He could hear the bitterness in her tone, the violence and vengeance of a lover spurned. Or, if not a lover in truth, then an unrequited admirer.
Perhaps none of what she said was true. What was clear was that she wanted Merlin to suffer.
And how he did.
That emaciated, broken creature chained to the rock had suffered greatly.
“Why do you want the other eye?” Ere asked, before Guinevere could focus again on ending them.
“Seems to me you have everything you want. The red dragon defeated and at your mercy. I assume you’re the one who put him in such a sad, pitiable state. Why not just take the other eye the same way you’ve gnawed off his wings? Why must you trick Wolfe here to do the job?”
Guinevere focused back on Ere, though one eye remained trained on Wolfe and Sorin.
“Taking any part of a dragon by force renders the magic within it useless. It is merely a dead appendage, then. I need him to either give it to me, or…”
“Someone of his bloodline to take it and give it to you,” Ere finished.