Unwilling to Succumb (The Dragon Lorde #2)

Chapter Eighteen: I am Burned, Licked and Purified

Waking up to a splitting headache, that felt very much as if a herd of mammoths had squashed it repeatedly, was expected. Being pulled from a comatose land with an ice-cold drenching of water down my front, was not.

But there I sat, chained to a chair, spluttering up icy water, as it soaked through the collar of my shirt. Bloody hell!

Oh! And that wasn't all!

My generous assailants not only had me chained to a wet-sodden chair, no, they had placed this chair directly in the middle of a dark and primeval dungeon that had a hint of 'merde de rat' still lingering in the air. The dungeon was tightly crammed together by four barred walls, a rusty lock, and a lone wooden bucket in the corner, that smelled so foul, it burned the hair straight out of my nostrils.

"Ah, and she's awake! I told you the water would work, men." A familiar voice declared, in front of me.

Low and behold, there he stood, four feet of fatty roles, a crooked nose, and his ever so present bulging mole, that appeared to have grown another dark hair, since we've last spoken.

Mr. Quinton.

And he wasn't alone. No, because no one would be that utterly foolish to speak to a witchy temptress chained to a chair without two guards in tow.

"Awake indeed." I stated. "But was the water really that necessary? I mean if you just spoken like a normal angry dwarf, perhaps I would have- "

"Silence woman!" Mr. Quinton interrupted, with a wild gleam in his large amber-colored eyes.

I closed my mouth. Not because he demanded me too, but because I was genuinely curious on what the man had to say.

"What is your name?"

"Mori." I said, without a blink of an eye.

Mr. Quinton raised a brow in skepticism. "And your surname?"

"I don't have one."

All three men shifted uncertainly, with an itch of an ear, a hand vanishing into a pocket, and a nostril being attacked by a fat finger.

"Very well. Now as much as I delight over small talk, Miss Mori. I must cut straight to the chase!" Mr. Quinton handed an empty glass to one of the guards behind him, before pleasantly smiling down on me. "You three have landed yourselves in quite a mess. Threatening information out from my lips, murdering good men in this city, and disrupting a ceremonial hanging!"

I scoffed. "That was no ceremonial hanging! You were lynching him!

"Lynching? Oh, you mindless women!" Mr. Quinton laughed. "A man of color has no rights, not even the right to a trial. To set your mind on straight, beautiful. There was no lynching."

I shook my head. "A man of color is still a man created by Salvador! A man as equal and intelligent as you and I! And if you do not give a man a trial, then you are lynching!

The two guards at the door exchanged glances behind Quinton's head and from their frightened expressions I knew they overheard the most awful and vicious words about 'innocent little I.' Now presently, there were cautiously glancing down on me, as if truly believing every word to be true.

Mr. Quinton sighed impatiently, as if I was the one who foolishly didn't understand. "No matter, for there is something far more vital I must discuss with you."

"Is there really?"

"Yes! Yes...there is." Mr. Quinton rubbed the white skin of his belly peeking out from the hem of his shirt. "We seem to have a very unpredictable issue in our hands, that we, the ministries of Sobia, cannot seem to mend. Two times this man has escaped our grasps without a single trace!"