Sanych drew her fingers through Geret’s hair on the sunlit bench. “Me, a Scion. It still feels strange. To me, Meena is the woman who risked all to save the world, and gave her life for everyone else in the end. The woman who gave me life and purpose, and then a wide open future to make my own way. I can’t hate her for using me. Despite how guilty she felt about that, it was the only way she knew, and the only way she could succeed. I’m proud to be her scion.”
“I know I’m excited to be part of your wide open future.” Geret sat up and turned to her, straddling the stone bench. The pink-tinged shade of the monandia flowers danced across them both. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her long and well, a warm melding of souls. “As a first step, how about we make our own way toward the palace for dinner?”
Sanych agreed. They rose and walked through the sun-splashed, fragrant Temple gardens, their fingers intertwining, their shadows merging into one.
“Do you miss it yet?” Geret asked.
“Miss what?”
“Your magic.” They both smiled; they’d had this exchange every week since sailing from Shanal.
Sanych paused on the walk. As she turned to face him, sunlight outlined the bronze Shanallese dragons on her torc. A wicked grin creased the corners of her eyes.
“What magic?”
Epilogue
This morning
The archery instructor dressed quickly; class was due to start in half an hour, and she still needed to eat breakfast in the commons. Sleeping in was not the best way to make a first impression on the new batch of students at the Shanal Academy Martial. She belted on a green leather overshirt, bearing the queen’s coat of arms, and strapped a sleek leather bracer onto her left arm.
Just before she stepped from her modest home at the edge of the academy campus, she caught sight of herself in her small wall mirror, squinted, and looked more closely. A curious hand made its way to her hair, where she touched several bright silver strands that quickly lost themselves in her dark braid.
Rather than pluck them out, the woman took a moment to gaze at them as if they were the most wonderful thing she had ever seen. A memory arose in her mind.
She had awakened, shivering, and found herself flat on her back within a gemstone circle embedded in the black stone floor. Green torches flickered over her skin, and she realized her clothes had gone missing. She sat up with a cry, looking for an assailant, but found none. The room was empty. When her echoes died, the silence was thick, ancient.
She’d been lying on a sharp piece of stone, gouged out of the wall by a shard of Ahm’s exploded metal cube, no doubt. She rubbed at the sore spot and stood up. Her teeth chattered, likely because her hair had gone missing as well. She ran a cold hand across her bare scalp.
“Now what?” she muttered, having become more used to waking in unfamiliar situations than she liked.
She fetched one of the green torches from its sconce and padded out of the ritual chamber. On the stairs at the end of the hallway, she found a pair of dead cultists. They were already stiff. She struggled to remove a black robe from one of them, then wrapped it around herself, shuddering as warmth seeped into her pebbled flesh.
That spot on her back twinged again, and she frowned, rubbing at it a bit longer inside her stolen robe. The wound stung, and her fingers came away sticky with fresh blood. She stared at them.
And stared some more.
And then she began to laugh.
“Clever dragon,” she murmured, smiling at her morning reflection. “I asked for death, and you gave me mortality. I’ll treasure your gift—” she ran her fingers along the silver strands once more, “—until my dying day.”
She gave the mirror one more brilliant smile, then slipped out into the autumn morning.
About the Author
Jasmine Giacomo lives in Washington State with her husband and two children. She has lived on the West Coast of the United States all her life. She graduated last millennium with a B.A. in English Literature from a college built atop a volcano, and has since held such fascinating jobs as hay baler, fluff supervisor, and office float.
Naturally, the skills they provided, along with earning a black belt in jujitsu and giving birth to over twenty pounds’ worth of babies, have prepared her for the serious world of fantasy novel-writing, in which there is no funny business whatsoever.
Her current writing projects include Elements of Allegiance, the first book in the YA fantasy series Seals of the Duelists, and First to Find, the first murder mystery novel in the Margarita Williams Geocaching series. Visit her Facebook Pages for updates and more information: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorJasmineGiacomo and http://www.facebook.com/MargaritaWilliamsGeocachingMysteries
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