The Royal Wizard

by Alianne Donnelly

  She laughed and said, “I love you too.”

  So now I am stuck with a pair of royal dragonborn twins who can’t seem to get their magics under control, a kingdom in shambles with Others roaming in plain sight, and, oh yeah, there is the little matter of an Aegiran assassin come to kill Saeran and Nia because he blames them for the death of his sister and the plights his tribe suffers as a result.

  Whatever else may come, this one is going to be one hell of a ride. I hope you’re ready!

  Keep turning the page for a sneak peek at Dragonborn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alianne is an avid lover of stories of all kinds. Having grown up with fairy tales in a place where it almost seemed they were real, it was no surprise when she began making up her own stories. She loves books, hiking, archery, and won’t shy away from travel and zip lining Alianne graduated with a business degree and when she’s not off in the land of fantasy, she lives in California.

  DRAGONBORN

  WHEN DEMONS FLY, THE WORLD WILL BURN…

  PROLOGUE

  She was aseti. Outcast. She, who had never caused harm to another, who’d shown her tribe nothing but love, given them all she had. Disowned by her family, stripped of her name, forced to live on the outskirts of their camp, and all because she’d been born with something that ought never have belonged to a woman. Magic.

  They called her witch, shunned her from their midst. They feared her, and they should. While the Magi relied on their spells and rituals, the witch’s power came from within her, not from the gods. When she called on her magic, it poured out of her heart along with her emotions. An outcast could not work, wed, or bear children. They could only beg and pray the tribesmen showed them kindness. A witch was a blight, a curse upon the tribe, and as such was not allowed near others at all. She could not beg or even show herself to the tribe, and no one would look upon her for fear the curse would infect their eyes and be reborn in their children.

  In all her life, there’d been only one who would dare brave such perils and secretly bring an old woman food and water. The shansher’s beloved youngest daughter, Mari. For her kindness, the witch had loved her like her own flesh and blood, and she’d cursed the shansher the day he’d sent Mari to the northern king. The witch had known then the girl was riding to her doom; she had warned the shansher not to do this, to send another in his daughter’s place. He had not listened. No one had, pretending she was not there because in the eyes of the Imarah tribe she did not exist.

  Almost a year now since the riders returned with Mari’s ashes. The rains have come and gone three times while the witch waited for the shansher to do something, to ride on the north, to avenge his daughter. And in all that time no one had stood up for her. No one.

  How dare they let one of their own disappear this way! A princess, no less! Forgotten as if she were an outcast herself.

  The witch knew now they would never right this wrong. Princess she may have been, but she’d still been only a woman. Hatred for every man in the tribe consumed her. She could not bear to look at any of them, lest she let loose a terrible wave of magic and destroy them all where they stood. It would not be a good enough end for them. For what they’d done, the witch would make them all suffer.

  When the sky turned dark and the sands had cooled, the witch stole a torch and ran into the desert. Countless stars shone above her, but the moon was dark tonight, averting its face so her deeds might go unwitnessed.

  The witch looked around to make certain she had not been followed. She hadn’t been. No one cared about the witch. If she went missing, they would rejoice to be rid of her. For that, too, the Imarah tribe would pay.

  She traced a large circle in the sand with her toes, deep enough to create a channel. The black powder came next, sprinkled into the channel evenly all around. It would blaze bright green when fire touched it, an irresistible lure to the djinn. And once she had it trapped in the circle, she would make it do her bidding. It would be the vessel of her wrath.

  The witch stepped out of the circle she created and raised her torch high, calling on her magic. She’d seen the Magi perform their rituals, summoning the gods’ good will. The witch mimicked their movements but spoke her own words. Three steps along the left side of the circle, four back to the right. Five to the left, six to the right. She whispered the words at first, then spoke them, and as she rounded the circle at last, she shouted them into the night, forcing her will into the air, making it congeal as black smoke. When she slammed the torch into the black powder, green fire flared as high as she was tall and she stumbled back from the heat of it.

  Gasping for breath, she returned, squinting through the fiery veil into the circle. She saw a figure within, heard rasping breaths on the night breeze. Harsh, foreign words hissed all around her, dark groans made her shudder and trace the sign against evil over her chest.

  When at last the fire died down, she beheld the creature she had summoned. It was tall and thin, with wide shoulders and gangly limbs, long black hair plaited back into a thick rope that reached the sands and coiled around its feet. Or rather, where its feet ought to be. It wore shadows as clothes and every time the breeze blew, the creature briefly turned to smoke, as if it would blow away in the wind.

  “I am—”

  “No one,” the creature said. “How dare you summon me, no one?”

  “I…” She could not find her voice. The creature’s red eyes glowed, following her every move, staring through her, into her, and the witch hugged herself for fear of having her soul ripped out of her chest.

  The djinn laughed, a terrible sound in the night. “No one wishes to be someone. To be seen and feared.”

  “N-no. I wish…”

  “I know what you wish. I can taste your soul, no one.” It licked its lips with a long, pointed tongue and hummed. “It is as bitter as firedust. You wish to see your mistress avenged. But where to begin? With her father who gave her away? Or her mother who gave her such a miserable life?” It floated closer, touching the blackened circle which would not permit it to go farther. “Would you like to see the man who took that miserable life, no one?”

  The creature held its bony hand out and with a harsh command summoned a blaze into its palm. It swirled like a mad thing, twisting and stretching every which way to escape, but the djinn’s magic held it in place. “Look upon the face of your enemy. See how happy he is.”

  The witch looked into the flame and gasped.

  There, the castle in the north. There, the fair haired king sat on the bed, gazing down at a pair of babies swaddled in blankets. He looked up at the woman who had birth them and smiled at her with such love the witch felt tears slide down her wrinkled cheeks. She shook with hate. That love should have been Mari’s. Those children should have been hers.

  “What will we name them?” the king asked.

  “My daughter’s name is Liadan,” the woman said. “Your son waits for you to name him.”

  The king gazed down at the child and at length said, “Fal. His name is Fal.”

  The woman smiled. “Liadan and Fal.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  Suddenly a dark haired man was there. “They are too much human,” he said.

  The king and his woman looked at each other and grave understanding passed between them. “They are only just born,” the woman said, her eyes pleading.

  “Yes,” the dark haired one said.

  “What demon is this?” the witch gasped.

  “He is a dragon,” the djinn answered. “He has lived long before your gods birthed your tribe. The king is his grandson and he is mighty with the dragonblood coursing in his veins. Do you think he will be so easy to defeat?”

  “Yes,” the witch answered at once. “Because you will strike at him where he is most vulnerable.”

  “Ahh,” the djinn breathed. “Wrath. Sweeter than a newborn’s blood.”

  “I want you to strike them down.”

  “A dangerous task and not without a
price.”

  “I will pay it,” the witch said.

  “You do not wish to know what I will demand of you?”

  She could not hear what else the northerners said, but she did see the dark haired one bring forth two small cups. When the king and his woman nodded, clutching each other’s hand, the man gave one cup to each. They, in turn each took a child and fed them from the cups.

  “Now, creature, strike now!”

  The djinn crushed the flame between his palms and it exploded in every direction, knocking the witch down. From the ground, she looked up into the smoke left behind at what the djinn had wrought. The children screamed and one of them burst into flames. Their parents and the dragon rushed to save them, but the witch knew it was too late.

  Shaking, she touched a hand to her heart, then her lips, and finally her forehead. “For you, my sweet Mari. I do this for you.”

  “You did this for yourself,” the djinn said, and then hard hands curled around her arms and yanked her up off the ground. The witch screamed. “And now I take my reward.”

  The witch struggled against the djinn’s hold in vain. No, not a djinn. A true fire spirit never would have been able to leave its circle prison. As the wind rushed them both, the creature’s face wavered and changed into something grotesque and terrible. Eyes slanted crooked in its face, its nose flattened into almost nothing and its mouth stretched halfway around its head, opening on several rows of sharp teeth.

  A daeva, a demon!

  The witch screamed again, her own mouth forced wide open as the daeva blew noxious smoke into it. She breathed it in; she had no choice. The smoke was a living thing inside her, stretching her, pushing her aside to make room for itself. It hurt in unimaginable ways as the daeva cast her out.

  Then the pain was gone and she opened her eyes. She saw everything, the entire night in every direction at once. She looked down at her body and saw it move. It rose from the sands and looked back at her, and its black eyes turned red as the daeva smiled from her own face. “Do not fear, no one,” it said with her voice. “You may be nothing now, but a deal is a deal. I will give you the vengeance you so desired. The Imarah will pay for what they’d done, just as you wished. You simply won’t be around to see it.”

  “What do we do?” the voice of a weeping woman whispered, turning her attention to the dissipating smoke of the daeva’s spell.

  “I will take the girl,” the dragon said.

  “No!” the king cried.

  “Be easy, Saeran. She cannot remain here. It is too dangerous. I will keep her safe and you have only to think of her to be there with her. You must trust me. She is dragonborn, more powerful than any one of us, and until she can control it, she will need to be in a place where her fire will harm no one.”

  “And my son?”

  A sigh. “He is a creature of water, not fire. I cannot help him.”

  “Then I will,” the woman said fiercely.

  It was only when she heard the power in her voice that the witch realized what she’d done. No human woman had a voice like that, one which could command the earth and heavens to move to her tune. I have failed. I never stood a chance. And she had paid a terrible price for the attempt.

  It was the last thought she had before the northern wind scattered her across the desert sky.

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