Notes From a Dragon Queen

Chapter 12

Zephrine woke with a start, cursing the knight that sent her unconscious, seeing Xavier just opposite her, strung up by about a foot off the ground, hanging by the chains and shackles on his arms. His head was bowed, making it hard to tell if he was awake or even alive. His bare chest was riddled with scars and a small frostbite had already settled in on his hip. A gash from when Vana's knights had shoved him to the ground had opened, dried blood reaching from his right bicep to his neck, a crust of pus forming over the open wound.

He was in such poor state that the chances of him being alive dwindled severely. Zephrine tried to get to him, but only found that she too was chained to the wall. Vana had been so kind as to leave Zephrine in a nightgown, at least some filter between bare skin and stone. Xavier wasn't so lucky. He was completely naked.

Xavier stirred, groaning quietly, then crying out in pain when his right arm twitched.

"Oppimere me ut conteram vincula. Adde me gratis. Ad metallum rubigo umidae potestasis vitiature." Zephrine panicked and began incanting, thanking Rhys for his timing with the spell book as she did so. "Oppimere me ut conteram vincula. Adde me gratis. Ad metallum rubigo umidae potestasis vitiature."

"It's no use, Zephrine." Xavier barely lifted his head. "Please don't resist. I don't want to see you hurt."

Zephrine ignored him and kept whispering the spell, tugging at the chains each time she finished. Eventually, after five minutes of nonstop incanting, the links snapped, dropping her to the floor. She then, noticing the shackles were still intact, began a different spell, freezing the metal until it turned white. Her skin burned from the intense cold, but, biting back the pain, she slammed her wrists onto the wall, metal breaking into shards.

"Okay, hold still." She ran to Xavier, wobbly from not moving in a week, grabbing his chains and performing the same freezing spell to break the shackles. As he fell, Xavier took great care to hide the left side of his face.

"We need to get out of here." Zephrine searched the solid metal door. "Can you walk?"

"I think so." Xavier nodded.

"Movebitur hoc!" Zephrine stepped back, thrusting her arms forward, flinging the door open. Her ankle gave out and she fell on top of Xavier, sending both of them to the ground. Her hand found a landing on Xavier's manhood. Embarrassed, she turned around to apologize, but when she saw his face, she fell speechless. His left eye was entirely white, no iris, no pupil, nothing except a blank white canvas.