Dragon Legends (Return of the Darkening Book 2)

by Ava Richardson

  It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. I imagined the look on my father’s face if he heard the news. He would be delighted, surely, that all his children had been chosen. It would make the Flamma House a force really to be reckoned with.

  And I just want to make my father proud of me. I realize this, running to the balcony and turning around, hearing the telltale caw of the giant lizards; not being able to see them yet.

  He wants me to get married, another part of my mind kept thinking. He wants me to ‘do the right thing’ and bring some respectability to our family.

  “I can’t do it,” I whisper, shutting my eyes tight against tears threatening to spill over my lashes.

  There was a breath of fresh air against my face and my hair lifted. A round of cheers and shouts rose up from the city below. I felt heartbroken. The last dragon must have made its choice—and it wasn’t me.

  Suddenly, it went dark. I opened my eyes—and almost fainted.

  A red wyrm slowly descended to our tower. It was young, its forehead horns barely as big as my hand at the moment, but in fine shape. And a red, too. I knew they were fierce and rare.

  The wyrm made a twittering noise in the back of its throat. I could see its throat expanding and contracting like a bellows as it raised its wings to catch the thermals and hang in the air. Its eyes were a brilliant green-gold, a color I had never seen before. It was holding me in its steady gaze. Now I could really understand why everyone thought they had the power to hypnotize.

  Its great head with an elongated snout was still, almost calm, as it lowered its claws to grab onto the side of the tower, splintering rock and the wooden windowsill as it did so. Half of its bulk was atop the tower and the other half gently lowered onto the wide, semi-circular balcony beside me.

  “Uh…h-hi?” I said, feeling a rush of panic as the beast slipped a forked tongue into the air, tasting its choice. All thought of the correct etiquette went out of my head as I stared into its great, golden-green eyes.

  I got the incredible sensation this young beast was smirking at me as it tasted the air again and huffed gently into the space above my head. Breath smelling like wood-smoke mixed with something aromatic, like basil or pepper.

  “Dear…dear dragon, my name is Agathea Flamma, of the H-House Flamma, and I th-thank you…” I tried to stammer through the traditional greeting that every child in Torvald learned by the time they were ten.

  The beast nudged its head forward, slowly inclining it until it was just a foot away from me. I stretched out my hand, feeling a curious heat radiating from its scales. It was so shiny and new. The only other dragons I had seen were the ones that my brothers or the prince rode; they were much older, with scales that had lost some of their luster or become cracked, scratched and broken with time.

  Incredibly, and I could hardly breathe, the creature bumped its head against my hand. Despite the heat radiating from its breath, the scales felt cool and smooth to my touch. Not cold, but not blistering hot either. Like a cool lake on a hot summer day.

  “I-I,” I tried to speak, finding myself unable to gather my thoughts or articulate just what I was feeling. Me. A Dragon Rider. I’ll be one of the very few women riders in the whole service.

  Before I could concentrate my thoughts, there was a buffet of strong air almost knocking me off of my feet and the dragon was in the air. Am I wrong? I thought for a moment the dragon must have made a mistake—maybe it had been sensing my older brothers and became confused.

  But then the tower dropped away. I was yanked upward with a wail. The dragon had lightly clasped me in its two, warm-and-cool talons and I was being carried through the air like a precious prize, back to Hammal and the dragon enclosure.

  Excerpt from Dragon Trials (Book One of the Return of the Darkening Series)