Chapter 5: Betrayed for 100 Lumen
“Julien…?” Elena’s voice whispered through the dark, damp air of the cellar.
He wouldn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed firmly on the dirt floor, his fists clenched tightly at his sides.
“I’m sorry, Elena,” Julien mumbled, his voice devoid of the warmth he had promised her for a lifetime. “It’s one hundred lumen. My family… we could buy a piece of farming land. You would have been caught eventually anyway.”
The betrayal was a physical blow. It felt like a blade plunging directly into her chest, twisting until she couldn’t breathe. The man she loved, the man she was going to marry, had sold her life for a pouch of silver.
“Drag her out,” the captain of the guard barked.
Elena didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. The emotional break inside her was too clean, too deep. As the soldiers dragged her up into the light and threw her into an iron carriage, her sadness hardened into a cold, glittering anger.
The journey to the dragon territory was a nightmare of dust and quiet weeping. Elena was thrown into a caravan with four other young women. Across the entire kingdom, only five candidates had perfectly matched the Dragon King’s oddly specific requirements.
The other girls wept constantly, passing around horrifying rumors of how the previous brides had been eaten alive, tortured, or torn to pieces by the monster king. Elena remained silent, staring out the barred window as the human lands faded and the jagged, volcanic mountains of the Dragon Domain filled the horizon.
When they arrived, they were led into the breathtaking, terrifying expanse of the Dragon King’s Hall. The palace was built of black stone, grand and intimidating. The five brides were told to wait in an antechamber before their presentation to the king. The other girls huddled together, paralyzed by fear.
But Elena refused to sit and wait for her execution. Seeing a guard turn his back to talk to a servant, Elena slipped through a side arched doorway. She ran down a long, echoing corridor, desperate to find an exit. She ended up bursting through a set of glass doors and into a massive, sprawling labyrinth park filled with strange, glowing night-flora.
She ran through the twisting hedges, her breath coming in short gasps, trying to find a way over the high perimeter walls. Turning a sharp corner in the dark, she ran headfirst into a solid wall of muscle.
She collides with a man in the shadows… and recognizes him.