Free The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey Page B

Drakharin orphans, eager to prove his mettle the way only the young and disposable could. Battle, he’d thought, would be a marvelous affair. He’d imagined that he would earn glory and honor, but all he’d gotten was a knife in the eye. Lying on a rocky shore, so like the one he stood on now, in the middle of a godforsaken, abandoned spit of land in Greenland, Dorian had found a place beyond pain. His entire being had been reduced to the throbbing absence where his eye had been. Strands of silver hair had clung to his forehead, tacky with his own blood. He could barely see anything past the veil of red obscuring his remaining eye. The river by which he lay had gone pink and frothy with the blood of the fallen. The water was cold andit stung where it licked at his wounds, but he didn’t have the strength or the will to move.
    The Avicen who had taken Dorian’s eye—a beast of a man with the piercing gaze of an eagle and white and brown feathers speckled scarlet with blood—had left him there to die, surrounded by bodies. Some were still writhing in agony, moaning out their last tortured prayers. They would die soon, as Dorian would. Cold and alone. Just as Dorian’s own parents had. He could barely remember what they looked like. His mother had silver hair, so like his own, but the memory of her was a phantom, fuzzy around the edges. He knew, in that moment, that he would see her soon enough.
    And that was when Dorian saw him.
    A solitary figure picking his way through the dead and dying, turning over bodies with his boot. Looking for feathers or scales. Deciding who to kill and who to save. He was a lonely spark of life in a killing field. Dorian had opened his mouth to plead for rescue or death. He hadn’t quite decided which. All he got for his trouble, though, was a mouthful of blood. He managed to croak out a single word.
    “Help.”
    The figure’s dark-haired head snapped around. When their eyes met, Dorian could have wept. Green eyes—rare among the Drakharin—shone through a layer of sweat and dirt that just barely covered a smattering of scales high on his cheekbones. The soldier made his way to where Dorian lay, gingerly stepping over broken bodies and shattered shields. It was strange to think that it would all be gone come morning. Mages, both Avicen and Drakharin, would sweep the battleground like maids after an unruly party. It was the onething both sides agreed on. They fought. They died. They left no trace for human eyes.
    By the time the soldier reached him, Dorian was convinced he was already dead. No one could look that good after a long and brutal fight, but there the stranger knelt, breeches stained by the pool of blood that surrounded Dorian’s head like a halo. A gentle hand brushed Dorian’s bangs off his forehead. He tried to turn away, to hide the ruin of his face, but the stranger didn’t allow it.
    “What’s your name?”
    Dorian had been taken aback. Who asked for names at a time like this?
    The thought must have shown on his face, because the stranger managed a weak smile and added, “I’m Caius.”
    The more Caius spoke, the more Dorian’s awareness returned. He noticed the insignia on Caius’s armor and the green and bronze dragon pin that held his cloak around his shoulders. The mark of the Dragon Prince. Dorian had one foot through death’s door, and he was face to face with a prince. Through some wild magic, he was able to mumble his own name.
    Caius gave a terse nod. “Can you stand?”
    Dorian shook his head.
    “Take my hand.”
    Dorian took his hand.
    Caius’s smile was weak, but it was the grandest thing Dorian had ever seen. “Do you trust me?”
    It was the most ludicrous question Dorian had ever heard. Caius was his prince, and so long as there was blood in Dorian’s veins, he would follow him anywhere. Doriananswered with a shallow nod. With Dorian’s hand gripped tight, Caius closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The familiar tug of the in-between