“Welcome to your new home,” Sebastian said. His voice dripped venom more poisonous than whatever was on the fang, but that wasn’t what Iz noticed most.
He sounded all full of pleased anticipation, like he was leading her to a surprise party.
Then she saw it.
The bars on the cage were the peculiar shimmering gray that you only got with a shiftsilver alloy. She didn’t know what the other metal in it could be, but the shiftsilver was the important part. If he got her in there and closed the door behind her, she couldn’t shift. She wouldn’t have any of the resources of her dragon form at all.
She wasn’t meant to be locked into one form.
Her dragon thrashed around inside her head, and she planted her feet.
“No,” she said, without meaning to.
She hated hearing him laugh at her.
“Oh, yes,” Sebastian said. He pushed her again, and once more, the fang cut into her, sending ripples of helplessness through her body. “In you go, my dear.”
She did everything she could to resist, but there was no chance of her winning. With that fang at her spine, he could kill her in one slash if he really wanted to.
He shoved her through the door of the cage—
—and shechanged.
It was a horrible sensation: something familiar and natural turned artificial and sickening, like force-feeding. Somehow, he wasmakingher shift. Her body was transforming, and her mind couldn’t do anything about it.
Shifting had never felt wrong before. But now, it was like she was in a horror movie, with her skin toughening into dragon scales and wings bursting out of her shoulders in slow motion. Claws tipped her hands. She fell to the ground, briefly coughing out flames before she got control of herself again.
The cage door had already slammed and locked behind her.
“Shiftsilver prevents a change,” Sebastian said, almost dreamily, “and there are other elements that can force one. When they’re combined, well .... As long as you’re in this cage, you’re a dragon—mute, bloodthirsty, and primitive. Believe me, soon enough, your human mind won’t stand a chance against the beast inside you. And it could have been so different—if only you’d had better manners.”
She knew it was pointless, but she roared a fiery blast at him anyway.
Passing through the enchanted shiftsilver robbed her breath of almost all its heat, as she’d known it would. But even if it wasn’t effective, it was still satisfying. The hellhound, apparently following the same strategy, lunged at the door of his cage, banging into it with incredible force. It was clear that if he broke it off its hinges, the first thing he would do was tear Sebastian apart.
Of course, Sebastian only smiled. He ignored the hellhound completely, speaking only to her. “You’ll have good meals and a luxurious enough pen. You should be quite comfortable here, once you get used to it.”
There was no such thing as a comfortable cage, not for a person.
But she couldn’t say that to him because she couldn’t say anything, and that was the point: that was why he’d built the cage in the first place.
Mute, bloodthirsty, primitive. He thought this would take away her humanity, like putting her in a cage for long enough would make her belong in one.
Now he smiled at her, like he knew exactly what she was thinking. She could see the smug laughter in his eyes.
He’s the kind of person who only laughs at his own jokes.
Iz could tell Sebastian thought this was an especially good joke, too. He was savoring her frustration like it was a fine wine.
He wasn’t just hoarding mythical creatures down here. He was hoarding misery.
“I’m sure in time, you’ll feel like you belong here,” Sebastian said lightly.
Without another word, he turned his back to her and strode out of the cavern, back through his winding underground labyrinth. He was just leaving her here, caged and buried alive.
Iz had never hyperventilated as a humanora dragon, but she could feel herself coming close now. She was breathing in and out in fast, shallow pants, and she had to force herself to calm down. She flexed her claws against the stone floor, letting the shrill nails-on-a-chalkboard sound it made pierce through the panic in her head.
Her team would find her.