Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ripley Harper

  I have a vague memory of speaking to a man in a gray suit, but that’s all. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t remember meeting you.”

  “And who could blame you?” He smiles even wider, oozing such charm that I unwillingly return his smile. “I certainly don’t.”

  I look down at the table, trying to avoid his eyes. There’s something about this man that makes my hair stand on end, a coldblooded arrogance that’s vaguely reptilian.

  “Keeper,” he says, turning to Ingrid, “if you would allow me to move a few steps closer to your ward, I promise not to do anything rash.”

  She turns her head away from him, and as I meet her eyes I realize with shock what enormous strain she’s under. She looks haggard, exhausted, ready to collapse.

  “Ingrid, are you—?” Her fierce, warning look makes me swallow the rest of my sentence.

  She closes her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opens them again, she seems almost normal. “Don’t look into his eyes,” she warns me before lowering her hand and stepping back a bit.

  That small movement is enough for him. “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asks me as he moves into the study.

  I shrug.

  “You can sit at the desk,” Ingrid says. “And don’t try anything. I’m warning you.”

  Jack Pendragon walks to Ingrid’s huge wooden desk, pulls out a chair and sits down. We’re about six feet apart now, with Ingrid standing to one side in the space between us.

  “So, how are you feeling today?” he asks, his voice full of friendly concern. “I must admit I’m rather surprised to see you up and about, eating and drinking and having all kinds of interesting conversations.”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “No tremors, seizures, hallucinations?”

  I shake my head.

  “Remarkable.” He beams at me, immensely pleased, as if I’m a pet cat who just did something YouTube-worthy.

  “What do you want, Jack?” Ingrid asks impatiently. “I don’t have time for your games right now. It’s late and I’m tired.”

  “In that case,” he makes an elegant gesture with one hand, “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave the pleasantries until later.”

  “There’s not going to be a later.”

  “Oh, but you see, I think there is. We’ll have to rethink our whole little agreement now that the kitten has finally showed her true colors so spectacularly. Have you thought about how you’ll keep this little treasure safe without our assistance?”

  “The Blue Lord has promised—”

  “Please.” He doesn’t let her finish. “Just stop. We all know the Seakeepers would shield her, given the chance. But right now you’re a thousand miles from the ocean, in a place where the Blue Clan has almost no power.” He taps an impatient thumb against the desk. “What do you think would’ve happened last night if my men hadn’t been here? The Blue Lord was impressive, yes, but he could never have contained a full Skyguard on his own.”

  “Gunnar and I would have protected her to our last breath.”

  “Maybe.” He laughs. “But you had your hands full with this one,” he nods at me, “and that poor nephew of yours was so shine-struck I’m amazed he could pull himself away from her long enough to join the fight.” He makes a scornful tut-tut. “What an embarrassing lack of discipline. Didn’t you train your darling nephew at all?”

  “Gunnar has been fully trained, but he’s never been exposed to the shine before. He’ll do better next time. And from what I heard, it wasn’t as if your son fared much better—and he’s a Pendragon, for God’s sake.”

  “Touché.” He gives a humorless smile. “But my point still stands. If you want to keep the kitten safe, we will need to work together. The Blue Lord cannot stay much longer—already he weakens, and if it hadn’t been for my … hospitality, he wouldn’t have been able to come this far inland at all.”

  “The Skykeepers won’t risk an open attack. The Truce still means something.”

  “True. They might not go as far as openly breaking the Truce, but something tells me you don’t want the kitten to rot in a Skykeeper prison until the Order’s annual assembly.”

  I decide that I’ve been quiet for long enough. “Why would the Skykeepers want to throw me in prison?”

  Jack Pendragon smiles at me, and this time there’s real amusement in his eyes. “They seem to be a little sore about the fact that you’ve stolen so much skymagic. That was brilliantly done, by the way. Such boldness for one so young!”

  “I didn’t steal any skymagic.”

  He laughs. “Good for you, kitten! What a little firecracker you are.” Then he narrows his eyes. “Hmm—you know what? That’s actually not a bad strategy. A brash denial might be the best way to go. What do you say, keeper? Can you think of a better way to get her out of this mess?”

  “What I think is this is none of your business.”

  “Oh, don’t be so tiresome. You know very well we’ll need to work together if we don’t want to see this going to trial. I know exactly what you think about my family; God knows, you’ve made that abundantly clear. But what’s important now is that you need us, and your ridiculous denial of this simple truth is merely wasting everybody’s time.”

  A stony silence.

  His tone softens slightly. “You’re a good keeper, Ingrid Waymond; I’m sorry I doubted you. Your nephew might even be a good keeper too, once he’s learned to control himself around her. But the hard truth is that you’re the only Black keepers left.” He holds one hand up in the air, bending all but two fingers. “Count them. One. Two. You can’t do this without me, and you know it.”

  Ingrid stays silent for an uncomfortably long time. Then she sighs, the breath leaving her body in a rush. “Goddammit, Jack. I’ll work with you to get her out of this mess, this once. But if you even think of using your son against her, there will be war between us. Do you understand me?” She moves one step closer to him. “It’s true: I don’t have the full power of the Black Clan behind me anymore, but I’m not without friends or resources. I can hurt you badly, and I will.” She points a finger at him. “This is not a bluff, by the way. We do it my way or not at all.”

  Jack Pendragon nods, his face unusually serious and respectful, but before he looks down to hide it, I glimpse a flash of deep satisfaction in his eyes. “Agreed.”

  “Get me out of what mess?” I ask Ingrid. “Is this because of what happened with Daniel’s mom?”

  She nods, her face grim.

  “I’m not even sure what happened,” I say, feeling guilty and defensive and uncertain. “One moment we were talking, and then, I don’t know… It hurt at first, so badly, like splinters of glass slicing through my body, and the next moment it didn’t. Or it did, I mean, the pain didn’t go away but I didn’t mind it anymore. I began to like the feeling; I didn’t want it to stop. And then I fainted, or something, and when I woke up, I felt… different.”

  Ingrid rubs her temples as if she’s fighting a sudden headache.

  “But I don’t think I hurt her! She seemed much better afterwards, like normal, you know? She talked to Daniel and she knew where she was—she even thanked me! I remember that. So, I mean, was it really so bad…?”

  My voice peters out when I see that Jack Pendragon is staring at me in open-mouthed astonishment.

  “What?” I ask uncertainly.

  “Jesus Christ.” He turns to Ingrid. “Does she really know nothing?”

  “You know that’s what Bella wanted.”

  “Ah,” he sneers. “And what Bella wants, Bella gets. Even after her death she’s still calling the shots.”

  “She was right, Jack.”

  “The girl is a walking time bomb! You cannot combine such immense power with such sheer, bloody-minded ignorance! Have you no sense of the danger we’re in? And now that she’s sucked up so much skymagic…” He shakes his head in frustration. “How could you have allowed her to become so close to a Skykeeper family in the first place?”

 
“I tried to discourage the friendship, but Jess has a mind of her own. What did you want me to do, lock her up?”

  “That would’ve been a start. You know the Skykeepers want her dead, Ingrid. The only reason they haven’t acted yet is because of the Truce—the Order won’t survive another war.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say, my tired brain spinning. “Who are you talking about? What Skykeeper family…?” But I know, of course. “Daniel’s family are Skykeepers?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Jack Pendragon makes a frustrated, disbelieving gesture.

  Ingrid ignores him, turns to me. “Daniel’s mother was one of White’s most powerful keepers, before she was… damaged. And his brother showed immense promise before the accident.”

  “Letting her become so close to that boy was wildly irresponsible. I have no doubt that he purposefully tempted her with his mother’s magic, hoping to provoke exactly this kind of crisis.”

  “Daniel had nothing to do with this,” I say. “He knows even less about all this stuff than I do.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack Pendragon dismisses me with a flick of his hand. “The Skykeeper boy will need to be dealt with.”

  “I won’t have you hurting children,” Ingrid says tiredly.

  “This is not the time for squeamishness.”

  “I’ll only act against him once I have clear proof of his guilt.”

  “Your scruples make you weak. But that’s beside the point now; this isn’t your decision to make. I’ll get rid of both the boy and his mother tonight. The father’s not a problem.”

  “NO.”

  As the strangely hollow sound of my voice echoes around the room, Ingrid and Jack Pendragon swing around to face me, stunned. I am suddenly aware that I still have a great deal of power inside me. I feel strong and clearheaded and absolutely certain of one thing: nobody is going to hurt Daniel or his family.

  “NO,” I repeat, my voice resonating beautifully as I pour my will into my words to bind them with my power: “YOU WILL NOT TOUCH THE YOUNG SKYKEEPER.”

  In the silence that follows, I focus my will on Jack Pendragon because I clearly understand, in this strange, white moment of stillness, that Ingrid is not my enemy in this.

  Jack Pendragon, on the other hand, is determined to stand against me. I need to break his will, to bind him with my words so he will not hurt the people I love.

  “DANIEL RODRIGUEZ AND HIS FAMILY ARE NOT TO BE HARMED.”

  Even as I force my will into my words, I can feel how greatly Jack Pendragon is resisting me. His whole being is bent on fighting back, and he is strong. Immensely strong.

  But not strong enough to stand against me.

  I stare straight into his face, compelling him to heed me. After a while my ears begin to ring, my head starts throbbing and my whole body feels achy and sore.

  I do not let him see it.

  “THEY ARE UNDER MY PROTECTION.”

  He is fighting me with everything he has inside him, which is more, I now realize, than the eye can see.

  Jack Pendragon is not what he seems.

  There is something terrible and powerful hidden beneath the mask of his face, a strange, dark force that he’s drawing on in order to fight me. He is not about to back down.

  Neither am I.

  I watch, determined, as his bright green eyes slowly begin to lose their sparkle.

  I do not back down.

  I wait him out. He will break before I do.

  As the minutes drag out, his green eyes dull to a dark, muddy gray, and then they seem to splinter into a thousand thin black needles that pierce through my eyes into my skull. The pain is mind-blowing, a fire burning through the softest, most vulnerable parts of my brain.

  I do not allow myself to feel it.

  I disengage from the pain, coldly and meticulously, as if I’ve been doing it all my life.

  “THEIR BLOOD IS MY BLOOD.”

  I do not know where these words come from. They sound strangely formal and somehow… ancient, and yet they also feel completely natural on my tongue, as if I’ve said these words many times before.

  He does not bend.

  Neither will I.

  I ignore the pain, drawing on every reserve of power I have, and I stare him down.

  Time passes.

  I feel sweat dripping down the back of my neck.

  I do not look away.

  When I eventually feel Jack Pendragon’s capitulation, it’s like a wall crumbling, a dam bursting. As all resistance leaves his body, he collapses against the table, his face gray.

  I, however, use every ounce of my remaining strength to remain upright, unmoving.

  I will not show weakness before this one.

  After an endless, agonizing pause, Jack Pendragon lets out a low whistle. “So the little kitten has claws after all.”

  “I am not a kitten.”

  “No. Indeed not. I have never met a less kittenish girl in my life.” Some color has returned to his face and he’s now half-smiling at me, his expression too complicated to read. “You’re Bella’s daughter alright.”

  I’m taking slow, deep breaths, trying to keep the pain at bay. But my head is hurting so much, I have to ball my hands into fists not to clutch at it.

  “I think you need to leave now, Jack,” Ingrid says. “We can continue this discussion in the morning.”

  “Yes,” he says. “I can see that she’s suffering. But what astonishing power! She has bound me, fully and completely.” He raises his hands, holding them together as if they’re tied with invisible ropes, his eyes glittering with a sick fascination. “I have no idea how she did it. Christ, what power! I would never have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself.”

  “We’re tired. It’s time for you to go.”

  “But to do that without any training! Imagine what she could do once we start the drills!”

  “She will not be drilled. I absolutely forbid it.”

  He all but rolls his eyes. “Let me guess. Bella didn’t want it for her precious little poppet.”

  “And she was right.”

  “The training works, keeper.”

  “Are you sure? Or is it a too-vigorous pruning, a way to crop their wild, unpredictable magic into a manageable, bonsai-sized problem their keepers can deal with? That’s what Bella believed, and she was right, Jack. Can’t you see it?”

  The pain. The pain. The white hot, scorching fire in my head. I cannot breathe. I cannot focus. Everything is awash with agony.

  “That was Bella’s theory?”

  “It was.”

  “And this one has had no training?”

  “Nor has she ever been exposed to any source of power.”

  “Well, well, well.” He rubs his chin, thinking. Then he smiles widely. “Who’d have thought? That dumb bitch might have been right about one thing in her short, miserable life.”

  The last thing I see before I pass out is Ingrid slapping Jack Pendragon’s face with such force that he’s hurled from his chair to sprawl all over the floor.

  Chapter 19

  But in the trespasse onto or pilfering of another’s magick, which is in law overall where one may purloine, thieve, filch or misappropriate the power of another to replenish one’s own, or partake without license, permission or will in the magick of such persons, the prescribed sentence shall be Death by Fire.

  Wherefore in former times ideots, madmen, infants under fourteen or such as was deafe and dumbe were excluded from this law for a want of reason or understanding, at this day the law’s protection faileth not such unfortunates, and any trespasse or pilfering of their magick shall certainly and without doubte carry equal punishment.

  Extract from Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of the Order of Keepers by Lord Henry Shawcross (1716)

  I wake up when a strong hand closes over my face, firmly shutting my mouth so I can’t scream.

  “Shh.” His voice is warm and soft in my ear. “Don’t say a
nything. Don’t even breathe.”

  I nod, letting Gunn know I’ve heard him, that I understand.

  “Come,” he whispers, his voice hardly more than a breath. “Don’t make a sound.”

  I roll off the bed, careful to be quiet, and allow him to lead me through my dark room. When we get to the window, he pulls me to him so close that I can feel the length of his massive, warm body against mine before he leans down and, in one smooth movement, lifts me over the chest-high balustrade and onto the rusted iron balcony outside.

  A surprised little yelp escapes my lips. I’ve never been on this balcony before: it’s old and rickety and—I always thought—mainly for decorative purposes.

  When Gunn joins me on the balcony a second later, he puts a warm finger to my lips. “Shh. I don’t think they can hear us out here, but we can’t be too careful.”

  “What’s going on?” I whisper.

  “We need to talk, and the whole house is bugged,” he says softly, bending so that his face is close to my ear. “By tomorrow your car will be bugged too. And your classrooms, and your friends’cars, and their houses… Soon there’ll be nowhere we can have this conversation. I’m sorry, but it couldn’t wait.”

  My stomach twists in fear. “What’s happening?”

  “You’ve been asleep for two days,” he whispers. “Don’t freak out: it’s normal after burning through so much power.”

  I bite my lip, trying to take this in.

  “This morning it was decided that you must stand trial for stealing Skykeeper power. I’m sorry. We tried to stop it, but there was nothing we could do.”

  “I didn’t mean to steal anything.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t matter; that’s not the story we’re going with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Order is sending five judges to town. Lords and ladies all, leaders of their clans. They’ll be arriving soon; we expect the trial will take place within the next couple of days.”

  Beneath our feet, the balcony makes a low, creaking sound. I instinctively grab on to Gunn and for once he doesn’t immediately move away. Instead he smooths a quick hand over my hair, soothingly, as if to reassure me that we’re safe. Then he bends down to continue whispering in my ear.