Dragon Child Read online

  His second set of membranous eyelids rose, shielding his vision from the harsh glint of the sun on the snow. Inching forward, he peeked past a tangle of tree roots to stare into a shallow gully. A cloaked figure tiptoed through the jungle below. Her hood was up, veiling her face. Two Galantrian soldiers trailed her, serving as her guard. Iron-worked breastplates, pauldrons, and gauntlets covered their blue military garments.

  Thorion hid a smile. She thought she was clever, thought she could catch him unawares, but all the stars in the heavens would burn out and die before there was born a human who could match a dragon’s cunning. She drew level with his hiding spot and paused.

  He pounced. Leaping over the knotted roots, he spread his wings and glided down the hill. She let out a cry when he landed behind her, grabbing the hem of her cloak in his jaws. No sooner had his talons touched the ground than he sprang again, pulling the cloak over her head. The fabric twisted and she fell to her knees as Thorion landed.

  With a growl, he tugged on the cloak. She flailed, trying to free her arms from the mess he’d created, before she managed to grab the fabric and tug back.

  “Thorion!” She rolled onto her side, revealing a pale face and hair as white as the surrounding snow, pulled into long ponytails on either side of her head.

  Thorion let go of the cloth and danced out of her reach. He jumped around while she struggled to her feet, dusting off the front of her brown wool dress.

  “Come here,” she said, grinning.

  He barked a dragon laugh, tossing his head like a proud warhorse, and fled uphill. “You’ve yet to win this game,” he told her glibly. “Do you think today will be any different?”

  “Only if you stop cheating!” Her booted feet slipped and slid as she started after him.

  “Lady Soulstar!”

  Keriya froze in her tracks. Together, she and Thorion trained their red-violet eyes on the Galantrians.

  “You’re not to stray too far from town,” said the taller of the two. Thorion, who’d been studying the Allentrian language during his last three weeks in the city of Irongarde, understood him perfectly.

  Keriya waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll be fine. There’s nothing to worry about anymore.”

  The soldiers scowled, but made no protest as she ran into the woods.

  Thorion and Keriya alternately frolicked through snowbanks and sat still to soak up what little warmth the sun provided. Winter was tough for cold-blooded creatures, but Thorion’s wing membranes were excellent at absorbing solar energy. Besides, his size kept him warm, and his magic fueled him in a way that food and sunlight never could.

  He found a patch of frostberries, which turned Keriya’s tongue blue when she ate them. They hiked up a small rocky path and admired the view, and spoke of happy, simple things. Eventually, as was almost always the case, their conversation turned to magic. Though Keriya continued to assert that she didn’t have magic, Thorion knew this was impossible.

  “If you are alive, you have magic—it’s that simple,” he told her for what felt like the hundredth time. “And I can teach you how to wield it.”

  “Erasmus tried teaching me for fourteen years and that got me nowhere.”

  Erasmus, who had served as her childhood guardian, was the only person from her old life who Keriya remembered warmly. Though she admired him for his intelligence and stoicism, he had been disappointed by her inability to wield—and that disappointment had hurt Keriya more than she would ever admit. Thorion knew better than to speak ill of someone she respected, but he had become fiercely protective of his bondmate, and disliked anyone who made her feel lesser.

  Keriya sighed, but it wasn’t a sigh of malcontent. While her lack of power would always be a touchy issue, at least she was no longer in an environment where people mistreated her because of it. “I’ll never wield again.”

  thought Thorion, sending his words directly to her mind.

 

 

 

  “The summoning was absolutely special,” Thorion said aloud, stopping to stare down at her. He had grown at a remarkable rate since they’d reached Irongarde, and now the top of his head stood a hand above Keriya’s. “You called me out of the Etherworld that day.”

  She shook her head. “That’s impossible. Shivnath and Lady Aldelphia knew you were in Allentria long before I summoned you. Necrovar did, too.”

  Thorion frowned. Something about that didn’t add up.

  “I think your crossing from the Etherworld confused you,” said Keriya. “You admitted it yourself when we met. Maybe you don’t remember what really happened.”

  “I suppose,” he conceded, though he didn’t suppose that at all. He abandoned the topic as they wandered north, toward the town.

  Keriya’s two best friends joined them in the early afternoon. Fletcher Earengale had also grown and fleshed out—a month of fine treatment in the city had done wonders for him. Currently he had a patchwork appearance: he was bundled in a gray coat with a red scarf and purple gloves. A green hat covered his scruffy brown hair. The clothes were gifts from Keriya, who had received them in turn from the people of Irongarde.

  Roxanne Fleuridae was tall, lithe, and limber like a woodland deer. She always had a smile for Thorion, and there was something fascinating about her honey-hazel eyes. Of all the humans he’d met, Thorion liked Fletcher and Roxanne best, apart from Keriya.

  “Should you be out of the infirmary?” Keriya asked Roxanne.

  “It’s fine. Besides, I’ll go crazy if I lie in bed all day again,” the taller girl retorted, brushing a strand of silky, dark hair away from her brown cheek.

  “It’s not fine,” said Fletcher, whose fallow skin was three shades paler from the cold. “You had four cracked ribs and pneumonia.”

  “So? Keriya had a concussion, and she’s allowed to do whatever she wants.”

  “Not without babysitters,” Keriya muttered, jerking her thumb at the guards who watched them in stony silence.

  “Why don’t we ditch them and go exploring?” Roxanne suggested. “One healer mentioned there’s a cliff with waterfalls east of the city.”

  Fletcher argued that they shouldn’t be running from the soldiers, but Keriya ignored him, dashing into the jungle. “Last one there owes me their dessert tonight,” she called.

  Thorion bared his fangs in a smile. “Shall we follow?” he asked in slightly accented Allentrian.

  Fletcher rolled his chestnut eyes, but a small smile was also tugging at his lips. He, Roxanne, and Thorion pelted after Keriya, leaving the Galantrians far behind.

  Thorion sped up as the guards’ angry shouts echoed after him. He outpaced the humans, his nimble feet with their five dexterous, clawed toes whisking him through the undergrowth. He burst from the trees and slowed to a walk on the open green before the gates of Irongarde.

  The city sat on the edge of a great mesa. A solid iron wall peaked with sawtoothed spires encircled the artfully designed settlement. Just inside the wall was a settlement where the poorer folk and laborers lived, separated from the inner city by a stretch of bamboo. The towering buildings beyond were built almost entirely from the iron mined in the mountains. A fortress perched at the cliff’s northernmost limits, its turrets scraping against the clouds.

  Something whizzed past Thorion’s ear, jolting him from his admiration of the human metropolis. His friends had caught up to him, and one of them had thr
own a snowball his way.

  They engaged in a brief fight. Thorion evaded their attacks with ease. Sometimes he would leap into the air and catch a snowball in his mouth, crunching through the icy sphere, making everyone laugh. Of all the mortal phenomena he’d observed, laughter was the most intriguing and pleasant.

  A buoyant sensation filled his gut—no longer a borrowed feeling from Keriya, but a natural response of his own. He was happy here. True, he’d only just learned what happiness was, but that didn’t diminish his ability to enjoy it. It felt good to be surrounded by creatures who cared for him. It felt right.

  “Keriya Soulstar?”

  Their game ground to a halt when a sharp voice rang across the green. Thorion turned and saw an envoy trotting from the steep jungle path on horseback. The lead rider, bedecked in a heavy white cloak with black fur trim, carried an Imperial standard. His entourage wore the distinctive gray tunics of the Imperial Guard, elite soldiers of the Empire of Allentria.

  Thorion and Keriya glanced at each other, then moved forward as one. Not long ago she would have fled from the Imperials, but her recent experiences had emboldened her.

  Thorion tilted his head, examining the newcomers. The standard-bearer was built like a reed, tall and thin. He had a short-cropped black beard and narrow, steely blue eyes that swept over Keriya as he reined in his horse before her. The stallion snorted and pawed at the ground when he caught Thorion’s scent, spooked by the smell of dragon.

  “The rheenar herself,” said the man. “And Lord Thorion. It is an honor to be in your presence.” He dipped his head to Thorion, who did not return the nicety.

  Fletcher and Roxanne flanked Keriya in a protective manner. Out of the corner of his eye, Thorion saw Roxanne ball her hands into fists, a sure sign that she was ready to wield.

  “Can I help you?” said Keriya.

  “I am Inquisitor Akiron. I come on orders from her Imperial Highness, Premier of the Union of the States, Head of the Council of Nine, Protector of the Threads, Leader of the First Free Nation, Empress Aldelphia.”

  With his free hand, Akiron reached inside the folds of his cloak. A snarl curled Thorion’s lip, but the reedy man only withdrew a scroll of parchment sealed with a dab of golden wax and offered it to Keriya.

  She took it warily, scraping off the seal and unrolling the paper. It was written in Allentrian runes, which she couldn’t read. “What is this?”

  “You are being summoned to stand trial before a judge and jury in the High Court of the Galantasa,” he said.

  “On what grounds?” Roxanne asked aggressively. Akiron’s frigid eyes flicked to her.

  “First, for multiple counts of contempt against the King of the Galantasa, Mertos Wavewalker; second, for the count of slander against the Commander-General of the Imperial Guard, Gohrbryn Tanthflame; third, for the count of treason against the empire for disobeying direct orders from the Council of Nine; and,” he added, his voice growing less harsh but more calculating, “we are requesting a formal account of your alleged defeat of Necrovar.”

  Thorion didn’t know enough of the human tongue to understand everything the man said, but he followed the conversation by sifting through Keriya’s mind and using it to translate.

  “‘Alleged’?” Roxanne repeated. “Why would we lie about something like that?”

  Keriya stared at the summons, a blank expression on her face. Finally, she looked at Akiron. “Am I in trouble?”

  “That is yet to be decided,” he told her. “Your trial will take place in the inner city court on the twenty-second day of this month. I suggest you gather your witnesses and prepare your statements to present your case in an orderly fashion.”

  “But that’s only three days away,” she protested.

  “Then I suggest you prepare quickly.” He heeled his horse, and he and his guards trotted toward the gates of Irongarde, which swung open to admit them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Just because you know a thing to be true, that does not mean there are no other true things.”

  ~ Shivnath Valestar, Twelfth Age

  “It pleases the court to call Keriya Soulstar to the stand,” Inquisitor Akiron said from the ornate pulpit at the head of the iron courtroom.

  Keriya stood from her seat. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and glanced at Thorion, who lay nearby on the tiled floor. While he was outwardly calm, a sharp glint in his gaze betrayed his feelings about the trial.

  As Keriya walked to the witness stand between rows of benches, she passed Fletcher and Roxanne. Fletcher gave her a reassuring smile. She returned it despite the bubble of anxiety in her gut, which felt ready to pop and explode into full-blown panic. In her hometown of Aeria, the Elders had often held hearings for her more serious transgressions. Those hearings had always ended in some form of physical punishment or public humiliation.

  A hunchbacked Zumarran priest shuffled forward as Keriya assumed her place in the stand. He wore a flowing blue vestment worked with silver thread, and sapphire rings adorned his gnarled fingers. Keriya offered her hand to him, as the previous witnesses had done, and he held it in a vise-like grip.

  “In the name of the goddess of the Galantasa, guardian of our watermagic, Zumarra the Merciful, do you, Keriya Soulstar, vow to speak only the truth to this court of law?” he asked in a wheezy voice.

  “I do—”

  “Excuse me, Lord Inquisitor.” A voice rose from the back of the room, and people shifted in their seats to see who had spoken. An Imperial Guard stood there. He and three other gray-robed soldiers had taken stations on either side of the courtroom doors. He saluted Akiron and stepped forward. “I move to place a binding on Lady Soulstar. Given her accusations against Commander-General Tanthflame, we want to ensure she can speak no malicious untruths that will be placed in official record books while providing testimony.”

  Akiron turned to Keriya. “Will you consent to a binding?”

  Keriya thought to Thorion. She didn’t want to ask the Inquisitor and risk sounding obstinate or stupid.

  the dragon returned.

  Keriya bit her lip. She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.

  “Lady Soulstar?” Akiron prompted. His voice held a snap of impatience.

  “I consent,” she sighed. She couldn’t say no without sounding guilty; she knew how these things worked.

  The priest’s grip on her hand tightened. A strange sensation trickled through Keriya’s arm, like ice water was flowing through her veins. The sensation crept through her chest, up her neck, and into her head. Her head throbbed as if she’d eaten something unbearably cold. She shivered and pulled her hand away from the priest.

  “It is done,” he said, retreating to his seat.

  The guardsman who’d suggested the binding smiled. Keriya shot him a glare before scanning the rest of the room. She spotted Maxton Windharte, prince of the Erastate, near a window. His blond head stood out amongst the ranks of dark-haired Galantrians. He beamed at her, and her spirits lifted.

  “Now,” said Akiron, shuffling the papers on his desk, “this court has heard many testimonies on your behalf to support the story you told upon your arrival to Irongarde. We request that you provide a full account of the events leading to your confrontation with Necrovar, starting with the day you and Lord Thorion left the Galantrian Palace.”

  “Um,” said Keriya. She fiddled with the sleeves of her ratty old dress, the only remnant of her past life as a nameless peasant. Her other clothes had been replaced by fine garments, gifts from enamored townsfolk. “Thorion and I . . . didn’t leave at the same time.”

  A pang of unease shot through her. She hadn’t wanted to admit that. It had popped out of her mouth unbidden.

 
Thorion thought quickly.

  “Uh, that is, Thorion left the palace before I did,” she stammered. That was the truth—she’d sent him away days before she herself had fled. “We left separately for reasons of personal safety, since I didn’t want him to go to Noryk with the Imperial Guard. This was because we’d previously been captured by Commander-General Tanthflame, at which time we discovered he was working for Necrovar.”

  Murmurs rippled through the room, and Keriya was suddenly glad she had agreed to the binding. People glanced at the four Imperials who watched the proceedings.

  A wave of amusement rippled from Thorion.

  “With Tanthflame working for Necrovar, it was impossible to know who we could trust,” she continued, bolstered by Thorion’s approval and the reactions of the audience. “That’s why we left the palace. It wasn’t an act of treason, but one of self-preservation. I left with Maxton Windharte, who was acting as my guide, and Roxanne Fleuridae and Effrax Emberwill, who were acting as my bodyguards.”

  “Where were you intending to go?” Inquisitor Akiron asked shrewdly.

  Keriya opened her mouth to say something untruthful, but the words abandoned her when she tried to force them through her lips, leaving her speechless.

  Thorion told her.

  Keriya proceeded slowly, testing the limits of what her brain would allow her to say. Any slip-up would condemn not only her, but her friends, who’d been complicit in her escape. “I wanted to complete the quest I’d been given. Shivnath, the dragon god and guardian of the Smarlands, had asked me to kill Necrovar—and that’s what I planned to do.”