Blessed by Night

As mentioned before, Nadine had been a relatively thoughtless girl who didn't place very much of an importance on studying.

Not much at all...

So in that regard, it was relatively unsurprising that she didn't know a single lick of magic- and she didn't possess a vast wellspring of magical power either.

On the other hand, Cyrulle was a natural magical prodigy on account of her heritage.

For that reason, one was given substandard restrictions while the other was given much more stringent ones.

Cyrulle couldn't even move with all of the locks and barriers placed on her. She wouldn't be able to speak either if it weren't for her gift of telepathy.

As Nadine began to harbor more and more of a plan to escape, she consistently kept Cyrulle calm and told her not to panic.

Perhaps that was when the dragon started to take more of a liking to her.

It was Cyrulle's idea to teach Nadine one single low-level spell that would help them in their circumstances.

It took hours for Nadine to actually get the hang of it because magical know-how was not exactly her forte...

Eventually, she was able to master the elementary-level spell and pop open her shackles.

She was lucky she had the bare minimum magical capacity required, or she very likely never would have gotten out of there.

Once she was free, she set to opening Cyrulle's cage.

But her shackles were much more heavily enchanted than Nadine's were, and she could not break her free.

Nadine had no choice but to carry the infant dragon shackles and all until she could take it back home where her parents could free her.

But Nadine had been in captivity for one full week already.

Meaning today was officially auction day.

As she was poking around for an exit, her captor came back with a handful of guards and some attendants to get her cleaned up and ready to be sold off.

Nadine had to make a run for it when they spotted her.

She maneuvered her way out of the underground basement and made a beeline for the outside world.

Nadine wasn't confident in many things, but she was a good runner. She'd always been quick and light on her feet ever since she was a child. Even for a vampire.

Even with all of its additional limbs, the scorpion-man was no better at catching her than his men were.

He was a shrewd, calculating businessman.

He knew Nadine was royalty. He couldn't allow her to just run off and alert the duchy to what he was doing here.

So, instead of trying to get back merchandise, he switched his tactics to the destruction of evidence.

As Nadine made her daring escape, she was nearly home free. Her eyes could already make out the outdoor sky from her position.

And then an arrow whizzed past her ear.

She went from running a straight race to performing a zig-zag line dance with awkward, jerky movements.

The guards concentrated fire toward the door more heavily to keep Nadine as far away from it as possible.

With her inability to reach the door, she had to resort to other means.

As an arrow hit her leg and shoulder, she cried out in pain and hurled herself out the nearest window.

She gave herself no more than a few seconds to feel the pain before she crawled to her knees and sprouted her wings.

Just as she was about to take off into the sky, she realized a terrible outcome.

Cyrulle had been hit.

The wound was non-fatal, but that was far from the problem.

The blood. There was already so much blood.

Nadine was a young royal vampire who'd never had a difficult day in her life before she got kidnapped.

She had little experience with tenacity—and far too little impulse control.

For a vampire, no experience compares to drinking dragon blood.

It is better than sex. A harder high than fentanyl.

She didn't feel herself begin.

Waves of sanguine, orgasmic satisfaction coursed through her entire body like an electric current.

Nadine didn't know where it had come from, she just rode the wave until she inevitably crashed down from her high.

And when she did, she was mortified.

In her arms, she held the limp body of a dragon child. Its body was so thoroughly massacred on one side that it was nearly unidentifiable.

Nadine was… broken.

She sobbed in a way she never had before. A guttural, heart-wrenching cry that could have inspired tears from stone.

Nadine felt her captors grabbing at her- trying to pull her back into captivity.

She didn't fight them so much as she did throw a tantrum that resulted in grievous bodily harm for her captors.

When she came to, she was surrounded by a sea of blue flame and burned blood.

Her throat was practically ruined, and she could no longer even cry out in agony.

She didn't even know how long she sat in the middle of that raging firestorm.

Ash weaseled its way into her lungs with every breath she took. Her emotional state was nearly beyond repair.

Nadine didn't remember much after that.

Not when she got up, or how she got home, and... not even what she did with the body.

Her mind only snapped back to normal around seven days later. When her mother was introducing her to the man who was supposed to be her first husband.

She didn't complain about anything. Nor did she try to argue for her freedom.

She just... gave up.

What was the point in being free to do what you wanted if you knew that you didn't trust yourself with all of that responsibility?

Nadine was sometimes thoughtless, but she wasn't a fool. And she wasn't a sociopath.

While in recovery, she never wasted time trying to delude herself into thinking that it wasn't her fault or that she had no responsibility.

She was a monster. Plain and simple.

Monsters deserve to live in cages. That way, they can never hurt anyone else again.