Pia Saves the Day Read Online Free PDF

dragon looked at the rich array of offerings spread on the ground. He could tell by the bulk of her pack that it wasn’t empty, but what she had offered him was more than enough. Gold, diamonds and sapphires, all of which he loved. She had brought his favorite things.
    When at last he looked up, his gaze had turned cold and deadly. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
    At one side of her tense mouth, a delicate muscle flexed. Taking a deep breath, she said with quiet deliberation, “My name is Pia Cuelebre. What’s yours?”
    Cuelebre.
    He knew that name. It meant winged serpent.
    As soon as she said it, hot agony flared in his head again. There was a well of knowledge that lay just on the other side of that wall of fiery pain, something vital to his existence, but he couldn’t access it.
    He could access her, though.
    Shock flared across her face as he lunged at her and pinned her to the ground underneath one outspread forepaw. She was so fragile he could crush her with a shrug.
    So fragile.
    She had climbed all this way to confront him, and she lay without weaponry or defenses of any kind. Not even her cool mysterious Power had flared to strike back at him. He held the bulk of his body tense, as he stared down at her in confusion. Gripping his talons on either side of her slender neck, she stared back unwaveringly at him, her body trembling.
    He hissed, “You are no winged serpent.”
    “No, I’m not,” she whispered. “But that’s still my name. What’s your name—or do you have one?”
    The dragon had a name. He had chosen it for himself. He reached for it and ran into that wall of fiery pain again.
    The female’s gaze darkened and filled with moisture. One droplet slipped out the corner of her eye and streaked down her temple. “You don’t know, do you?”
    “Be silent,” he ordered. Serpentine coils of thought writhing, he struggled to reach past the fiery wall in his head.
    Agony drove him back, defeating him.
    A hint of calculation flashed across her expression. She said, “I have another gift for you.”
    He bared his teeth. He didn’t trust her gifts. “What?”
    “Knowledge,” she told him.
    Carefully, he dug the tips of his talons into the ground around her prone body. Carefully, so that his threat was clear while he didn’t hurt her. Not yet. He reserved that possibility for later.
    “Why do you think your knowledge is of any use to me?” He let the possibility of her death darken his voice.
    She swallowed. “Answer two questions, and I’ll try to show you.”
    He paused suspiciously, suspecting a trick, but she could only trick him if he chose to answer. In the meantime, he might learn something valuable in the nature of her questions. “Ask.”
    The breath shook audibly in her throat. She whispered, “How many nights have you spent on this mountain?”
    His gaze narrowed. If there was some kind of trick in such a simple question, he couldn’t see what it was. “One. And your next question?”
    “Where were you yesterday morning?”
    Even as he tried to think back to the answer, he slammed into the fiery wall. His vision glazed. Rearing away from her, the dragon released his frustration and pain in a bellow of rage aimed at the sky.
    When he could focus again, he discovered she had scrambled to the tree line at the edge of the clearing and crouched with her back pressed against the trunk of a tree.
    Frankly, he was astonished she hadn’t taken off running down the mountain, and he glanced back down at the array of gold and jewels at his feet. “What do you want from me in return for all of this, along with your precious knowledge?”
    She scrubbed her face with the back of one hand, leaving a smear of dirt behind. Her voice shook as she told him, “You’re the only one who can help me find my mate again.”
    Drawing in a deep breath, the dragon let her scent fill his lungs, and he realized something that had lain in the back of his mind for some time.
    Like, but unlike.
    He