Free Fire & Ice by Alice Brown, Lady V Page B

for a moment, not quite ready to deal with the real world, she thought back to the dream she had earlier.
    In this dream, she had been laying on a bed in a strange room, surrounded by four enormous men. Two of which she knew, the twins, Aiden and Adrian. Of the other two, one claimed to be a doctor and she remembered him putting medicine in her IV line. The other man, who was also the largest of them all, had introduced himself to her not only as the father of the twins, but also as King Thoran. Whatever type of medication they were giving her, she decided right then and there not to take any more. Her dreams were more like hallucinations as she watched in her mind’s eye Adrian gently stroke her cheek and Aiden holding her small hand within his much larger one, lightly running his thumb over her pulse.
    She mentally shook her head. She didn’t feel too drugged at the moment, so she thought she could try to take baby steps. First, sit up and take in her surroundings. Opening her eyes, she was surprised at her new environment. She was no longer in the room she remembered waking up in earlier. It must have been a hospital room of sorts, although it didn’t resemble any she had ever seen before. No, the bed had been much more comfortable than what she remembered standard hospital beds to be. And the bed she was in now felt like pure heaven. She quickly inventoried her surroundings. The room itself reminded her of what you would see in some kind of medieval style castle. The walls were of stone, with candles mounted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. An overly large fireplace sat straight across from the bed with what looked to be a hand painted portrait hung above it. The picture captured her attention, and she swung her feet over the side of the bed, intending to get up and get a better look. She paused as she noticed her legs were bare. She was wearing a rather short gown she had never seen before, and had no idea how she ended up wearing it. She ran her hand down the extremely soft cloth of the gown. This was no standard hospital gown, and she was not in a hospital room. The gown had a line of closures going down the back, which allowed the garment to stay shut, but if it was for medical purposes, she supposed it would still allow access for medical treatment to be given. The print and color on it were absolutely gorgeous, a light rusted red color with golden native designs swirling about.
    She looked around once more before standing, keeping one hand on the bed to help brace herself until her legs felt like they could hold her. On bare feet, she silently and carefully made her way over to the portrait, taking in the remainder of the room as she passed by. It was a full-out bedroom all right, to the max. Two plush velvety high back chairs and a stained-glass table sat before the fireplace. Ah, now she was close enough, she could finally make out all the small details of the painting.
    The painting’s background was a blooming, slightly breezy, spring afternoon with the sun high and bright in the sky. A two-headed dragon with a charcoal colored body was in the center of the painting. One head was a searing ice-blue and the other head a burning fiery-orange. Sitting tall and proud behind this dragon was a single-headed deep crimson red dragon. The creatures in the painting were breathtaking, but she found it a bit odd for someone to display a painting like this of supernatural creatures that didn’t exist. For some unknown reason, this portrait made her want to smile, and she found herself chuckling as she felt an unexplained closeness to the dragons in the painting.
    Clearly, whoever owned this portrait had a deep love for the large winged creatures, yet she felt no fear about this. It almost seemed surreal.
    “Hey, beautiful, it’s good to see you up and about.”
    Evangelina gasped, startled that someone had entered the room so silently, and was relieved when she spun around to see that it was Aiden. He was