Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2)

by Ripley Harper

  “So how is she?”

  “Who?”

  “I swear, I am going to kill you.”

  I laugh. “She’s okay, I guess. Jonathan’s been acting like a real dick towards her, but you know what she’s like—tough as nails.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “Oh, the usual petty crap. Dating all her friends, excluding her from stuff, blanking her in the halls—that kind of thing. And you know what that school’s like. If Jonathan Pendragon decides that someone is untouchable…”

  “Poor Chloe.” He sounds genuinely upset. “Did you at least try to reach out to her?”

  I give him a look.

  “Everyone needs friends.”

  “Great white sharks don’t need friends.”

  “She’s not a shark.”

  “Snakes don’t need friends.”

  “She’s not a snake!”

  “Black widow spiders don’t need friends.”

  “Dude.”

  “Okay, okay.” I laugh. “But seriously, we did reach out to her, especially Ty. But she always just sniffed and flipped her hair in that way she has. You know.”

  He smiles dreamily. “I do know.”

  “Trust me, there’s no reason to feel sorry for her. And anyway, Maggie and Eve saw her and Jonathan secretly making out the other day, so the Prince and the Princess might be getting together again after all.”

  Daniel looks so devastated by the news that I’m almost sorry I told him. Then again, there’s nothing quite as poisonous as false hope. And I should know.

  “She’s not for you, dude.”

  He sighs. “I know.”

  I make myself more comfortable on the blanket and let my body relax into the morning heat, which is now becoming more pronounced even in the shade.

  “Wait a minute. Rewind.” He gives me a puzzled look. “Did you just say Ty reached out to Chloe?”

  “Yeah. Turns out I was wrong about him. He’s actually a pretty decent guy.”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Am I hallucinating this conversation?”

  “Look, we’re not BFFs or anything, but he’s not as bad as I thought. He’s just got a really dumb sense of humor.” I watch as he takes a deep drag before blowing a perfect smoke ring. “Do your parents know you smoke?”

  A slight shrug. “It’s not like I can hide it from them. Supplies are flown in once every month—if it’s not on the list, it’s not in the house.”

  “And they’re okay with that?”

  “I’m not allowed to smoke in the house. My mother can’t stand the smell.”

  “She wants her home to smell fresh, but she’s okay with you getting cancer?”

  “I can’t get cancer.”

  “Dude. Everybody thinks that.”

  “No. I mean really. I can’t get cancer. Genetically speaking I’m a full-blooded Skykeeper. My dad comes from a Skykeeper family, even if he never pledged himself to White. And you know about my mom.”

  “What does being a Skykeeper have to do with anything?”

  “Keepers can’t get cancer, Jess.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Since when?”

  “How much can I tell you before you start clutching your head and screaming?”

  “I don’t know. But go ahead anyway; it sounds like the kind of thing I probably need to know.”

  He gives me an awkward little pat on the shoulder, but he knows better than to say anything. Cancer has thrown a large, dark shadow over most of my life because for years I thought my mom had died of it. Horribly.

  “Okay. So, keepers don’t get any of the normal human diseases. This has always been accepted as just another part of our magic, but over the past decade or so genetic testing has proved that there are small but considerable genetic mutations in the DNA of children from keeper families.” He gives me a concerned look. “You following this?”

  I nod. “I’m fine.”

  “All keepers have those mutations, to a greater or lesser extent. And one of the main

  bloodlines trueborn

  the most

  “Stop!” I clutch my head, moaning.

  Daniel waits until I’m okay again. “Those Pendragons really did a number on you.”

  “I asked for it.”

  “Trust me. They played you well and good.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  I sit up on one elbow so I can look him in the eye. “Do you know everything about me?”

  “Nobody knows everything about you.” He smiles at the look I give him. “But yeah. I know what most people know.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Nah. But it’s kind of…”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah.” An apologetic smile. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s pretty weird.”

  I feel myself releasing a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I guess I can live with weird.”

  “I know you can. Which is why I’m convinced the Pendragons messed with your mind somehow.”

  “You don’t think I’m a monster?”

  “Define monster.”

  “No, really. I’m serious.”

  He sobers when he sees my face. “Dude. Of course not. Why would you even think that?”

  I lie back again, gaze up at the sky. “I don’t know. Things have been... hard.”

  This is the time to tell him about the drills, of course. But when I open my mouth no words come out. Somehow, I’m just not ready to speak about it yet.

  I clear my throat; take the easier route. “It’s been kind of lonely. With you and Gunn both gone, I haven’t really had anyone to talk to. And I haven’t felt, you know, normal, in a long time. Not to mention that Zig kept going on and on about it.”

  “Zig, the creepy evil Pendragon bodyguard?”

  “That’s the one. He called me a monster, like, all the time.”

  “Way harsh.”

  “You have no idea. He also kept muttering this weird old poem whenever he was near me, and making these weird signs, like he had to ward off the evil eye before he could even look at me. I guess it kind of got to me in the end.”

  Daniel puts out his cigarette in the sand. “Yeah, I’ve heard about that lot. They’re a religious sect; I think they call themselves ‘the Disciples of the Old Words’ or something equally dumb.”

  “Ugh. Those Old Words are so freaky.”

  “Don’t stress about it. My mom says half of it is complete nonsense, and the rest is just a clumsy plagiarism of the more lurid parts of the King James Bible. Basically, it predicts that –” He rolls his eyes. “Look, there’s no sense in telling you what they believe because you’ll only start groaning and crying all over again. Sufficed to say, it’s incredibly lame.”

  “Really?” I find myself grinning.

  He takes another cigarette out of the packet. “To use a handy analogy: your evil bodyguard believes in the keeper version of Scientology.”

  “Seriously? Zig is a Scientologist?”

  “No, you moron.” He slaps a palm against his forehead. “That’s not how analogies work—try to keep up. I’m comparing one religion to the other because there are certain similarities in how they operate, not because they’re exactly the same.”

  “Jeez. Were you always this big a nerd?”

  He beams. “And proud of it.”

  It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “So how’s what Zig believes like Scientology?”

  “You know. Everybody knows it’s a recently made-up, bullshit religion, but people feel too sorry and too creeped out by those gullible, stupid-ass believers to openly laugh at them.”

  I smile at him. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “Although not half as much as some people I could mention.”

  It takes me a second or two to realize who he’s talking about.

  “I don’t want to talk about
Gunn.”

  “Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear you say.”

  I turn around on my stomach, start tracing patterns in the sand.

  “You mustn’t be too hard on him.”

  “Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear you say.”

  “I changed my mind about him.”

  “I noticed.”

  “He’s a really good guy, you know.”

  I sigh. “I know. It’s just…”

  “You’re still angry at him for abandoning you.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “But you know he had to do it for his own sanity, so you feel it’s unreasonable to be so mad at him.”

  I notice that I’m tracing a heart in the sand, rub it out immediately.

  “So now you still feel angry, but you also feel guilty for feeling angry, which makes you even angrier.”

  I flick a small stone in his direction. “You think you’re so clever.”

  “I’m right though, aren’t I?”

  I sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s just not the same anymore. I don’t know why.”

  “You still hot for him?”

  I give a helpless shrug. “I have eyes.”

  “But you’re not still in love with him?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not.” I turn on my back again to watch the thin white clouds against the bright blue sky. “I’m not sure I even know what that means anymore.”

  “It’s probably for the best.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not for you, dude.” He repeats my words with a sympathetic smile.

  “Touché.”

  “I wasn’t trying to score a point.”

  “I know.”

  We listen to the faraway sound of the generator kicking in.

  “Thing is,” I say, “that whole shine-struck thing really freaked me out too.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’m not talking about the magic. I’m talking about Gunn.”

  “Yeah?”

  I pause for a while, searching for the right words to explain how I feel. “Gunn has never been in love with me, right? You know that, and I know that. But he’s always seen me. For exactly who I am. And he’s always been really good to me, and he’s always liked me and looked out for me. In a way that was even better than him being in love with me, because I knew it would last. It was real.”

  “For a pretty young girl, you’re very cynical.”

  “You think I’m pretty?” I twirl a strand of hair around my finger, flutter my eyelashes.

  He laughs. “You’re okay.”

  But my smile quickly disappears; I’m not really in the mood for playing. “I wasn’t trying to sound cynical or anything. I meant it. I could always count on Gunn being there for me. He was the safest place I knew. And now, to find out that he went all creeper obsessive on me—it makes me feel weird. Like I’m not even sure I can trust him to see me for who I am anymore.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on him.” Daniel taps an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Sure, the poor guy might’ve suffered from a mild dose of creeper obsession, but it had nothing to do with you. It was shine-sickness, pure and simple. Being shine-struck is all about the magic, not the person: what he felt for you as you—as Jess—never changed. Your magic just messed with his head, is all.”

  I snort. “Who died and made you the expert on shine-sickness?”

  He rounds his eye at me, just a little.

  “No.” The idea is too horrible to contemplate. “Tell me it ain’t so!”

  “Oh, get over yourself.” He lights his cigarette. “Does it look like I’m wasting away, obsessing over you?”

  I can’t help smiling. “Not exactly.”

  “It’s not like that, okay?”

  “I’m unspeakably relieved to hear you say that.”

  “Plus, you have no right to judge us, seeing that it was all your fault in the first place. You hit us with so much magic, it was like being run over by a truck.”

  “Seriously?” I raise my brows. “I ran you over with my magic truck?”

  “Call it what you will. A hammer. A club. A baseball bat. Fact is, you almost bludgeoned us to death with your magic, so you can’t blame us for being a bit… unsettled afterward.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know.”

  We sit in silence for a while, watching the blue sky, the reddish-gray sand, the thin white clouds.

  “So how did it feel?”

  “Being shine-struck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s difficult to explain.” He scrunches his nose, tilting his head to the side. “In the moment, when it first happened, it was like… Like you were the sun, and I was an ancient savage type who worshipped the sun. It was pretty intense. I wanted to, I don’t know, throw myself under your feet and let you trample me to death. I wanted to worship you and obey you and just… give myself to you.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I know. And then afterward, it was like I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment, about losing myself like that. Not in a bad way, you understand. I longed for that feeling. I wanted it again; I craved it. It was difficult to think about anything else.”

  I slap both hands over my mouth.

  “Fortunately, my mom knew how to deal with it, and she did –” He sighs. “All kinds of things which I probably can’t tell you about while you’re under that spell. Point is, it worked. The feeling faded, every day a little bit more, and after a couple of months the whole thing felt like a dream.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “What I’m trying to say is it that it wasn’t really about you. It was about a certain feeling inside of me, a feeling I couldn’t forget and didn’t want to let go of —the strangeness, the sheer thrill of being so close to something so powerful, something so much bigger than me. It was a rush, like being on drugs. An addiction, maybe. You—my friend, Jess—didn’t really feature much in what I felt. It was all about me, not you.”

  I take a few moments to absorb this. “So it didn’t change how you felt about me?”

  He wiggles one hand from side to side.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, obviously when I was still shine-struck I couldn’t see you quite as clearly as I do now. And later, when the sickness faded, I was still a bit…” He wiggles his hand again.

  “A bit what?”

  “I’m trying to think of an analogy.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re all about the analogies today.”

  “Dude. We’re talking about magic. It’s not that easy to explain.”

  I wave a hand. “Please. Analogize away.”

  “Okay. Let me think. You remember what Amanda Roberts was like about Justin Bieber in our freshman year?”

  “Oh no.” I glare at him. “Don’t you dare.”

  He grins. “Let’s just say that, for a mercifully brief period of time, you became the Justin Bieber to my pure and innocent little Belieber heart.”

  “Take that back.”

  “It’s a damn good analogy.”

  “Take that back or I’ll stuff that cigarette down your throat.”

  He laughs.

  *

  My sisters return to me clothed only in the radiance of their magic.

  The shifting, slow altering shapes of their glittering

  bodies remind me of the many lives we have lived together.

  Of the people we have been, and those we have not been.

  My sisters look at me with ancient, hooded eyes,

  and I look back at them, remembering.

  I remember

  how we dreamt the world’s beginning when we came out of the void

  towering above creation.

  I remember

  how we found comfort in the dark places of this world,

  and the deep, and the wild.

  I remember

  the long seasons of waiting as the world
grew colder

  and warmer

  and the great masses shifted

  and the oceans were remade.

  I remember

  that our faith was not in vain.

  That we finally found what we had come here to seek.

  Oh, my sisters!

  I remember

  how it felt to be cleaved in two by the strange magic of this world.

  To lose ourselves, piece by piece

  with every birth and every death.

  Always, always,

  a little bit less,

  a little bit more.

  *

  I wake up in the sunshine, crying, my entire body filled with the pain of loss. So many losses.

  We could never have imagined such pain. Would we have chosen differently, if we had known?

  It was such

  unthinkable

  And then I’m really awake, kicking the sheets off my sweaty body, struggling to break free of the gloomy cobwebs my strange dream has spun around my mind.

  It’s dark outside.

  I reach for my phone, then remember I don’t have one anymore. I look up at the ceiling fan, slowly turning in the darkness.

  I try to remember why I’m feeling so sad.

  Chapter 13

  Some say that the shallow skills afford power over natural elements, while the deep skills afford insight and control over the human aspects of each kind of magic. But this is a fallacy. There are no differences between the deep and shallow skills: it is all one.

  To situate oneself too deeply within one specific skill – whether deep or shallow – is to force the magic out of balance, and this will, without fail, lead to mishap and tragedy in time.

  From Orations of Aelius (1st Century CE);

  translated from the original Latin by Sofia Rodriguez (1999)

  My training in firemagic begins the next day.

  We don’t exactly get off to a good start. For one, Gunn, Ingrid and Sofia can’t seem to agree on anything. They spend most of the morning arguing in the study, after asking me to wait outside so they can discuss the relevant issues without inducing my horrible Enthrallment headache.

  I pass the time by exploring the house (it’s nice, comfortable and homey), the yard (sand with a few shrubs), and the inner patio (at least it has a small pool). Then I go to find Daniel who, to my utter amazement, seems to be studying some old manuscript.