by Jada Fisher
“What family? Are you guys going after them or is there some kind of dragon court?”
“Well…” He winced, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what was about to come out of his mouth. “The family isn’t from our city.”
“So?”
“Like I said previously, dragon politics are complicated at best and annoyingly archaic the rest of the time. Sure, everyone knows the other family is allied with our opposing faction, but we have to prove it and even then, there’s a whole trial that has to happen to decide if anyone gets punished.”
“Really? So, someone tries to kill you, a prince, and there are no repercussions?!”
“Technically, they weren’t trying to kill me. Just to take you and either distract or incapacitate me in the process. Not exactly something that I’m pleased with, but not the most heinous of crimes in our culture.”
“Well, your culture sucks!” I crossed my arms and fumed. “So, after all the pain I went through, after literally breaking my skull, you’re saying that nothing will happen?”
“Not necessarily,” he continued. “There will be a trial and both my grandfather and his court expect to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to the rest of the dragon nobility that the faction in this city that would cling to the old ways has gone too far. We just have to wait for all of our leaders to arrive or send emissaries in their stead.”
“Oh, is that all?” The idea did appease me a bit. I liked the idea of those that had hurt me facing justice. “Do you think any of these royals have my sister?”
“It’s hard to say. Part of me hopes that they are just in hiding and the men I sent are surprisingly skilled at evading magical detection.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not a very logical part of you then.”
“I know, but a little hope never hurt anyone. We will find your sister, I promise.”
“You had better. Otherwise, I will make you sorry you ever dragged me into this world. I don’t know what comes with being a seer, but I will dedicate all of it to making you sorry.”
He nodded gravely. “I understand and I wouldn’t expect any less. My word is my bond. We will get her back to you.”
I heaved a breath and felt myself settle. I was still upset, still torn apart at the thought that I didn’t know where Mickey was or if she was okay, but there wasn’t much I could do while I was injured and in bed.
“I think I’d like that walk now.”
“Of course.” Bron smiled brightly and offered his arms to help me up. Instead, I turned to Mallory and let her aid me in getting to my feet. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to touch the dragon, but I couldn’t help but be wary of him. So much had happened since we had met that I didn’t really have time to figure out what I actually thought of him.
He didn’t seem to take the slight to heart, however, and proceeded to lead us along, explaining different rooms and halls and architecture as we went along.
It was…nice. After the maelstrom I had been through, it was nice to do something as casual as strolling along with my weight supported by my friend.
Eventually, we reached some sort of balcony that hung out over the front drive, beautiful flowers winding around the railings.
“Does this thing actually have a purpose?” I asked. “Or is this more rich people foolishness?”
“It’s a balcony!” he countered, sounding like he was holding back a laugh. “It’s for having tea when the weather is lovely.”
“Or being outside without having to touch the actual ground like us peasants,” Mallory muttered under her breath.
I snickered to myself and looked out at the view.
It actually was quite beautiful. I could see the alabaster walls of the mansion far ahead, and the meticulously polished cobblestones of the drive as it led up to the landing. The fountains, the sprawling green lawn, the workers busy doing whatever it was they were supposed to do. I could even make out midnight black limo roaring closer to the sprawling mansion.
“That one of the royals?” I asked, gaze narrowing.
“Probably,” Bron admitted. Hopefully, it was one of the friendlier ones.
I watched, waiting for whoever it was to make their grand reveal. Even with them chugging along at a good pace, it still took them nearly five minutes to pull up, park, have the chauffer get out, and cross around to open the door.
At first, I saw only a designer shoe exit, polished to a high shine and more expensive than all of my belongings combined. A leg followed it, then another foot, until the visitor finally stood outside of his car.
He was tall, I couldn’t exactly tell how tall considering I was so far away, but I guessed he was around Bron’s height. He also looked to be close to our age. He had jet black hair that was brushed back into wild and messy braids, with colored beads dotting them. His head tilted, and lavender eyes met mine, cutting through the distance between us like it wasn’t there.
It felt like lightning had struck me, making every single cell in my body charge with electricity. Suddenly, my visions started to replay themselves. Bron fighting on that open field, an unknown figure pummeling him. Both of us in the dungeon, that same figure holding my shoulder and threatening us. Except that form—the shapeless, shadowy face that I hadn’t known—wasn’t so impossible to discern anymore. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the man standing below me was the tormenter in my visions.
“Who is that?” I gasped, voice refusing to come out of my throat.
“Oh! That’s Baelfyre,” Bron said, sending me a casual grin. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. “He’s my cousin, very far removed. I think you’ll like him.”
As I looked down into that cold, cold gaze, I knew I absolutely wouldn’t. The only question was, how was I going to tell Bron that one of his family was plotting to kill him?
New Reality
Dragon Oracle, Book 2
1
Things Can Only Go Up from Here
I walked along the street leading up to my work, humming a slow melody to myself. The sun was still on the rise, making it a lovely gradient from coral all the way to bright robin’s egg blue.
Everything seemed normal. The occasional bird chirped, the occasional car honked, and everything was as it should be.
Before I could reach work and go about my normal business, however, I felt a rumbling in the earth below my feet. Something deep, deep down. It sent an ink-black bolt of foreboding down my spine.
I took a step back, the edges of my mind going dark as if it wanted me to concentrate on only what was below me. Time slowed as the rattling intensified, until the street cracked and black smoke poured out. I tried to shout, tried to warn people of what was coming, but I couldn’t move. Before I could shake myself of the spell binding me, the black smoke gushed out like an explosion, coating everything and anything until I couldn’t see at all.
All of existence was just the roiling pitch black, and as it swallowed me up I was sure that it was my end. It drenched my entire being like oil yet scoured my skin like sandpaper, getting into my pores, my nose, my mouth to fill my senses with its acrid malevolence.
Then, just as soon as it had come, it disappeared with an almost audible snap, leaving me breathless and confused.
I was alive…or at least it seemed so, and I appeared to have all my limbs. That was good, but as I raised my head to look at my surroundings, I realized I was the only thing left unscathed.
Where there had been buildings now only stood the crumbling shells of infrastructure, still smoldering with black smoke. The road could barely be called that anymore, looking more like asphalt rubble than anything else.
The street lamps were gone, with only faint echoes of melted metal to remember them by, and even the sidewalks were nonexistent. It was a world in ruin, a devastated shell of what used to be.
I took a single step forward, and ash rose from my foot. It was eerily silent, all the busy sounds of the city long gone, making it almost seem like a graveyard.
Maybe it wa
s a graveyard.
I kept walking, not knowing what else I could do, but as I progressed, I was faced with more and more nothingness. It was like all those documentaries I had watched in school about the devastation after a nuclear bomb, but without all the crumbling bodies. Desolation in panorama, depression given material form.
Up ahead, I saw a patch of sunlight streaming through the gray smog that covered the once-picturesque sky. Picking up my pace, I ran toward it, hoping for some measure of warmth in the sea of starkness surrounding me.
It didn’t take me long to reach it, and the moment I stepped into the light, I felt more at ease, like maybe the world hadn’t been completely destroyed and turned inside out. I breathed deeply, but I should have known better than to expect it to last for long.
There was a shriek from above me, so loud and piercing that even clapping my hands over my ears did nothing to lessen it. I tried to run away from the noise, but I found myself rooted in place while my brain tried to figure out why it was being subjected to such a heinous clamor.
I managed to get enough control of myself to look up, and I saw the gray blanket of clouds roiling like stew. Once more, foreboding filled me, and I knew nothing good could come from the seizing heavens.
I watched, practically in a stupor, as the smog parted, allowing what I now recognized as a dragon to descend. Except it wasn’t like any of the drakes, wyverns or dragons I had seen in my limited exposure to them. Its hide was a mix of black, brown, and red, as if it had once been solid obsidian, but time and wickedness had worn it down and rotted it in places, leaving uneven holes in its wing and skin hanging from its form. It spoke of disease and pestilence, and everything in my body told me that I needed to get away as quickly as possible.
I was rooted in place. Even as it landed in front of me, even as its jaws opened barely an inch from my face and I almost gagged at the smell of decay and blood, even as the back of its throat lit, and a plume of fire came rocketing toward me I remained stuck.
I closed my eyes, cringing against my death, but it never came. I stood there for goodness knew how long before slowly opening my eyes and looking down. I was alive, but that didn’t seem to be a good thing. My skin, instead of a pale olive, was the same mix of rust and rot as the great dragon staring me down. It spread up my arms like an infection, eating more and more of me.
I screamed—how could I not?—but that didn’t stop it. It reached my elbows, then my shoulders, and then I could feel it scoring up my neck. I gave one final desperate look to the dragon so calmly watching my demise, and then it finally swallowed me.
“Davie! Davie! Wake up!”
I gasped, and my eyes flew open, revealing that I was sitting in an ornate bed, absolutely drenched in sweat.
Ew.
“Hey, you’re alive. You scared me there, girl. Here, drink some water.”
I looked gratefully to Mallory, who was kneeling on the bed with a concerned expression. I could see Bron standing in the corner, looking concerned but keeping his distance. I had no doubt that my friend had banished him to the corner of the room. She obviously still didn’t trust him.
Then again, I wasn’t sure I did either.
“Are you feeling alright?” Bron asked quietly.
“What do you think?” Mallory snapped. “Girl’s got a concussion and you dragon-folk want to sprinkle her with some blessed water and old herbs and call it a day.”
Ouch. It’d been a while since I heard my small friend speak with such vehemence, but clearly, she was still just as protective of me as ever.
Even after two days of mostly sleeping and resting, I was still wrapping my mind around the fact that she was a dwarf. An actual, mythical, honest-to-goodness dwarf. Well, half-dwarf. And I was a seer, which was basically some sort of magicky gobbledy-gook for oracle. Or fortune teller. Or lost little girl who just wanted to know where her sister was.
Speaking of Mickey… “Any word?” I asked, looking to Bron hopefully, but he just shook his head and I crumbled. Where was she?
“So, you wanna tell me what you were dreaming about?” Mallory asked, looking at me with eyes full of concern.
“It’s not important. Not really,” I said, not wanting to relive the moments that I had seen behind my closed eyes.
“Um, you have the ability to literally see the future in your dreams and visions,” Mallory countered. “I think it’s pretty darn important.”
Ugh, I supposed she had a point, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. So much of me just wanted to go back to my normal routine and pretend that everything was alright, instead of feeling like I could sense doomsday right around the corner.
“It wasn’t anything particular. I was in the city, and then it was like a bomb went off below the ground, but instead of fire going everywhere, there was this inky sort of blackness. When it cleared, it was like the apocalypse had happened.” I took another sip of water, decidedly uncomfortable. “Oh, and there was this big, rotten dragon too.”
Bron instantly perked up. “Rotten dragon? Can you elaborate?”
I opened my mouth, but there was a knock at the door. The only people I knew in the strange dragon world I had stumbled into were already in front of me, so who could possibly want to be let in?
Bron went to the door and opened it, letting a maid in. I could only watch with wide eyes as she approached my bed with a massive tray filled with tons of food. Whoa! Was that steak?! I was getting steak for breakfast!?
She set the platter in front of me and I saw eggs, sausage, steak, roasted vegetables, and several pieces of toast. Already my mouth was salivating, and I wondered where this had been the past two days
Oh, right. I was unconscious for most of it. Apparently running from dragons with a full-on concussion wasn’t good for my long-term health. The last thing I remembered was being out on the balcony and—
The balcony!
“Your cousin!” I cried, startling both myself and the maid.
“Um, I have many cousins,” Bron said softly, nodding to the maid that it was alright to leave. She seemed grateful to do so, and I wondered just how badly I had made her jump.
“The dark-haired one!” I continued. “Balthazar, or Bael…Balsomething?”
“Baelfyre?” Bron supplied.
“Yes! Baelfyre!” I clapped my hands. “That guy. Who showed up when we were on the balcony.”
“What about him?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, to say how I had seen that same man beating him to a pulp, but before I could, time did a weird freeze sort of thing and suddenly, no one was moving.
I tried to ask them what was going on, but then a scene played over our bodies like holograms, but without sound.
Hologram-me spoke, although I couldn’t hear what I said, but Bron looked uncomfortable, and then outright angry. A frown just didn’t look right on his handsome features.
It only proceeded to get worse until he politely bowed and dismissed himself, a dark expression on his face. Hologram-Mallory came and sat on my bed, holding my hands and looking like she was asking something in concern.
Just as abruptly as it started, time snapped back to normal and both of my friends were staring at me with concern.
“You okay there?” Mallory asked.
It was then that I realized that I’d had my first waking vision. I quickly decided that I much preferred the dream ones and promptly started to throw up right next to the delicious food that had just been served to me.
Thankfully, Bron was definitely on top of his game. In a flash, he was in front of me with a wastebasket.
It lasted for an embarrassingly long time, considering that I hadn’t eaten in days, and when I finally sat up, Mallory was pressing a cup of water to my mouth again.
“Rinse out and spit first,” she urged gently, gesturing to the garbage pail that Bron still held. Of course the hottest man I had ever interacted with had to see me toss my cookies. “You don’t want all that acid hurting your throat or stomach. Then
you can take a nice, slow gulp.”
I did as she said, and I found exhaustion flowing over me even though I had just woken up. It seemed that I needed to rest again, and to figure out how I was supposed to broach the subject of Bron’s possibly evil cousin with him.
But that could all wait until tomorrow. I was sure that more dreams awaited me.
2
Unwelcome Escort
For a clan about to be thrown into a heated war with a dark faction of dragons, Bron and his family seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves. After I woke up again, Mallory deemed me well enough to take a shower. Apparently, I smelled pretty rank, but I felt like I had a reasonable excuse considering that since I last washed myself, I had been kidnapped, escaped, gotten a concussion, fled through a forest, and ridden on the back of a dragon. While I wore the toughest deodorant there was—at least according to their advertisements—I figured there was a limit to what I could reasonably expect.
Little did I know that the closest bathroom wasn’t just a toilet, tub, and sink with counter. No, it was practically its own event. My jaw dropped as the maid led Mallory and I to it. The room was massive, bigger than my own bedroom at home, with what looked like a large hot tub set into the floor, and the biggest shower I had ever seen with about a dozen different heads to spray water from. Who needed that many heads? How many different parts of you could require a water jet at once?
The room’s décor was a combination of white and gold, reminding me of a mashup of Greek and Rococo architecture, somehow without being tacky. I didn’t think that was physically possible, but up until a week or so ago, I had thought that dragons were a mythological species, so what did I know?
The only thing missing—between the large, monogrammed towels hanging over golden racks and the baskets of toiletries—was an actual toilet.
…what if dragons didn’t go to the bathroom? Or at least not in the traditional sense. I looked to the maid in confusion, trying to figure out how to phrase my question as delicately as possible.