Then it hit me like a punch to the stomach, and bile surged up my throat, burning the inside of my mouth. I was frozen, unable to look away, unable to do anything but stare at what lay through the door.
On the wall above the desk, spanning nearly corner to corner, hung the hide of a small red dragon. I could see the long elegant neck, the lighter belly scales, the curved black talons still attached to the feet. Its scales were a darker red than mine, almost rust colored, and it had thin stripes down its back and tail. From its size, it had been a hatchling at the time of its death, my age or younger. At one time, this lifeless skin had been a dragon, just like me. And now…now it was a trophy decorating someone’s office.
I think I made a choked, strangled noise, because Riley was suddenly at my side, pulling me away. “Shit,” I heard him growl, almost yanking me from the door. “Don’t look, Firebrand. Don’t look at it. Come here.”
I was shaking. Riley dragged me into the hall and pulled me to him, holding me close. I buried my face in his shirt and squeezed my eyes shut, but I couldn’t forget the horrible image seared into my brain. I could still see that limp, empty skin hanging on the wall, and I knew it would probably show up in my dreams.
Riley’s arms were around me, a shield between me and the rest of the world, a world that slaughtered teen dragons and nailed their hides to the wall. “You okay?” he whispered, his head bent close to mine. I wasn’t, but I nodded without looking up, and he blew out a breath. “Damn St. George,” he muttered, and his voice was slightly choked, too. “Murdering bastards. Damn them all.”
“I’m…okay,” I whispered, though I really, really wasn’t. It was like something out of a horror movie, seeing someone’s skin nailed to the killer’s wall. I wondered what they’d done with the rest of the dragon once they’d peeled its hide away, then immediately wished I hadn’t. “It’s all right,” I managed, drawing back, though his grip didn’t loosen. “Riley, I’m fine. It’s…”
A door squeaked somewhere in the mazelike hallway. We tensed as footsteps echoed down the corridor, growing louder every second. Riley jerked up with a whispered curse. As the steps drew closer, we gazed frantically around for a hiding place, but, other than the open door behind us, there was nothing.
Sorry, Firebrand, Riley mouthed, and yanked me into the room with the dead dragon. I bit my cheek, feeling tainted, as if the ghost of the murdered dragon lurked in the room with us, and I might glance up to see a pale, bloody figure watching accusingly from the wall.
Pressing into the corner beside the file cabinets, we held our breath as the footsteps came toward the room. I turned my face into Riley’s arm and clenched my jaw, trying not to look at the grisly symbol of death on the wall in front of us.
The footsteps passed the room without slowing down and continued down the corridor. Riley waited a long moment after they had faded away and silence fell once more, before finally leading us from the room. I kept my face down and my eyes half closed until we were out of the office, but I could still feel the dead dragon’s presence at my back.
“Damn St. George,” Riley hissed again, sounding almost as sick as I felt. “Depraved, murdering… Ugh. I’m sorry you had to see that, Firebrand.” He put a hand on my arm, steady and comforting. “Sure you want to keep going?” he asked. “It’s not too late to turn around. Do we keep looking for the human, or get the hell out of here?”
Frowning, I pulled back to look at him. He gazed back grimly. “This is the true face of St. George, Ember,” he said, and his voice was almost a challenge. “This is what they do. What they all do.” He nodded to the room behind us. “How many times do you think your soldier saw that hide hanging on the wall and thought nothing of it? It was just a skin, a trophy, not a living creature with thoughts and fears and dreams, like everyone else.” His eyes narrowed. “We’re not people to them, Firebrand. They don’t see us as anything but monsters. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but your human was raised to think exactly like them. He saw you in the same way he did that hide on the wall.”
I shuddered, remembering the skin, tacked onto the wall in plain sight, and for a moment, my resolve wavered. Was I making a mistake? Was it really possible for someone to change his entire perspective? Garret had grown up in St. George, where these awful tokens of death and murder were considered trophies. Decorations to hang in someone’s office, like a stag head or a tiger pelt. Because to St. George, we were monsters. Animals. What if Garret still thought like that?
What if he doesn’t?
I swallowed hard. Regardless of what Garret believed, I couldn’t leave him. If I didn’t get him out tonight, he would die. Even if he saw me as a monster, I wouldn’t abandon him now.
“No,” I told Riley, turning from the office door and the horrible trophy hanging within. “We don’t stop. We keep looking. I’m not leaving him to die.”
Riley shook his head. “Stubborn idiot hatchling,” he muttered, though one corner of his mouth curled up. “All right, we keep going. Wes, you there?” A pause, and Riley rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she did. Of course not, have you met her? How far are we from the stairs?”
We crept through several more hallways, passing more darkened rooms and offices that I was careful not to peek into, until we came to a door that opened onto a stairwell. Here, Riley stopped us, saying there was a camera on the other side, and we had to wait until Wes shut it down. Once he did, I darted through the frame and started down the cement stairs, feeling Riley close at my back. The steps didn’t take us far; just one loop around to an identical metal door, which we pushed through and stepped into yet another hallway.
At the end of the hall stood a door, lonely and unguarded. There were no cameras or humans around, but Riley grabbed my arm when I started forward, pulling us to a stop a few feet from the end of the corridor.
“Got it,” he muttered, speaking to Wes, I figured, and turned to me, his face grave.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Is Garret not here?”
“Oh, he’s here, Firebrand,” Riley said, his voice matching the look on his face. “Wes confirmed it on the security feed. But he’s not the only one.” He nodded to the door. “That’s a guard room. You need to pass through it to get to the jail block beyond. One problem, though. Guard rooms tend to be guarded.”