Cin d'Rella and the Golden Apple : Circle of the Rose Chronicles, Book 2

by S. J. West

  “All of you are my brothers?” Gretel asks, looking around at the other six dragons in amazement.

  “Yes,” he replies, finding her wonderment a bit amusing.

  “Do you know if this is Faloria?” Gretel asks.

  I realize I never got the chance to tell the others that Coltan figured out we’re still on our world by the distinctive crater shapes on the moon.

  “Yes, this is Faloria,” her brother confirms. “Where have you been all this time, Gretel?”

  “In another part of Faloria called Briardale,” she tells him.

  “Are the lands of Briardale separated from the rest of Faloria by a curse too?” he asks.

  With that one question, my fears are confirmed. We haven’t found a way to reconnect with the rest of the world, only a small part of it, and it appears the people who live here are facing the same problems we are.

  “Yes, we’re cursed too,” Gretel tells him. “Do you have a name?” she asks, presumably changing the subject because she’s not sure if we can trust this man yet. Sure, he claims that he and the others are her brothers. Gretel might even feel a connection to them that I don’t know about yet, but we need to gather more information before we tell him everything about our city.

  “We have the names that the Huntsmen gave us,” he tells her.

  “Who are the Huntsmen?”

  “They are Snow White’s protectors.”

  “Is Snow White under a sleeping spell?” I ask as my heart beats furiously inside my chest because I have a feeling I know exactly who she’ll turn out to be.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable giving the answer to that question to a total stranger,” he says as he tilts his head to the side as he considers me. “Who are you?”

  “This is one of my best friends. Her name is Cin,” Gretel tells her brother. “And this woman is named Scarlet,” she says, looking in our friend’s direction. “We’re known as Thorns in Briardale, and we protect someone named Briar Rose.”

  “The Huntsmen call me Red because of my color,” he says with a sheepish smile at his simple name. “It’s not the most original name in the world, but I suppose it was an easy one for them to remember.”

  “Are the others named by their color too?” Gretel asks.

  “If you touch them, they can tell you their names themselves,” Red suggests to her in a soft voice.

  The remaining dragons stand at the exact same time. Their synchronized movement causes the ground to tremble slightly beneath our feet. As if they are in a procession line, the orange dragon to the right approaches Gretel next and lies down in front of her with his neck stretched out, waiting for her to lay her hand on his head. The same bright white light erupts from the contact, and a man with red-orange hair appears kneeling before Gretel. Since he also has the same color skin as my friend, I assume the rest of her brothers will too.

  When he stands to face his sister, the first thing I notice about him is his bright, luminous smile as he gazes at Gretel with human eyes for the first time. His happiness is infectious, and I end up smiling in spite of myself.

  “Hello, Sister,” he says to her. “I’m called Oran. I believe the Huntsmen chose it because it was easier for them to say than orange.”

  Gretel extends her hand to shake his, but Oran isn’t having any of that. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and leans in to hug her.

  “We’re so happy to have you back home,” he tells her sincerely.

  Gretel stiffens a bit from the unexpected embrace at first, but she quickly recovers and hugs her brother back. Oran then steps to the side to let his next brother approach her.

  This dragon is yellow, so I’m interested in learning if that’s what the Huntsmen have named him or if they’ve shortened it to Yel. This brother has blonde hair.

  “The Huntsmen call me Bash,” her brother says after he transforms and stands before her.

  “Bash?” Gretel asks with a raised brow. “What does that have to do with the color yellow?”

  “Nothing,” Red answers for his brother. “They named him that because he acts so bashful when he’s around people.”

  Bash casts his eyes down as if he’s embarrassed by his name.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being shy,” Gretel tells him. This time she initiates the hug, and he gives her a small, but grateful, smile in return.

  The next brother is the green dragon. Even though he isn’t human yet, I get a taste of his personality as he huffs before flopping down in front of Gretel. I expect him to have green hair, but I end up being completely wrong. His hair is as black as the night sky.

  “They call me G,” he tells her with a sneer.

  “G,” Red says with a warning in his voice. “Be nice.”

  “Well, it took her long enough to get back here,” G grouses while crossing his arms over his chest as he looks at Gretel reproachfully. “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”

  “I didn’t know this place existed or that I came from it until today,” Gretel tells him more calmly than I expected her to. “So I suggest you stop frowning at me and be happy that I came at all, because if I hadn’t, you would be stuck in your dragon form for the rest of your life.”

  G ducks his head, looking ashamed at how he spoke to Gretel, which tells me he does indeed have a soft spot beneath his cranky exterior.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I wished for your return for so long that I gave up hope that you would come back to us. I realize it’s not your fault. If that man hadn’t taken you away from here, we wouldn’t have been stuck in our dragon forms for so long.”

  “I wish I had known so I could come sooner,” Gretel says as she extends a hand and rests it on G’s still crossed arms.

  Finally, G uncrosses his arms and holds the one Gretel placed on his arm.

  “I’m simply glad you’re home,” he tells her before squeezing her hand and stepping to the side with his other brothers.

  The next dragon to approach is the blue one. He saunters up to Gretel and lies down in front of her. His eyelids slide over his eyes slowly as if he’s either sleepy or doped up on something. After he transforms, I notice his hair is so black it appears to have blue highlights, and his expression doesn’t look any more alert than when he was in his dragon form.

  “I am named after my color, Sister,” he tells her. “But when the Huntsmen spell it out on something, they leave off the ‘e’ at the end to make it more unique.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Blu,” Gretel says, giving him a brief hug in greeting.

  The next dragon is indigo colored, and his name was shortened to Indi.

  “I truly hope your reappearance here will bring us all a newfound sense of peace and harmony, Sister.” Indi kisses her lightly on the right cheek and then the left.

  “Me too,” Gretel replies as he steps off to the side to let the seventh brother approach.

  Last, but not least, is the violet-colored dragon. After the bright burst of light, the first thing this brother does is sneeze.

  “I’m so sorry,” he tells her as he stands to his feet and sneezes off to the side for a second time. “Please, excuse me, Sister. My name is IO. The Huntsmen originally started calling me Violet, but they shortened it to IO as a nickname.” Again, IO turns his head to sneeze. When he looks back at Gretel, he seems embarrassed and offers up an explanation for all the sneezing. “I have the worst time with allergies during this season.”

  “You mean every month of the year,” G complains with a roll of his eyes. “One time he sneezed so hard that the Huntsmen thought IO was going to blow the White Castle down.”

  “Is the White Castle where Snow White lives?” I ask Gretel’s brothers.

  None of them answer me, and I can’t say that I blame them. It sounds like Gretel’s brothers help the Huntsmen keep Snow White safe, and if I were in their position, I wouldn’t provide a complete stranger with any answers either.

  “Maybe if we told you what’s happening in our par
t of the world, you’ll understand why Cin is so curious about Snow White,” Gretel says to her brothers.

  “Cin . . .” Coltan calls out to me weakly as he squeezes the hand I’ve had resting on his chest to reassure myself that he was still breathing.

  When I look down at him, I smile in relief because he’s able to turn his head to look at me.

  “Could you help me sit up?” he asks.

  “Here, Cin, I’ll do it,” Kalder volunteers as he bends down to grab Coltan underneath his arms to pull his torso off the ground.

  “Thanks,” Coltan tells him.

  “No problem, Prince.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Oran says. “Why don’t we take them back to the White Castle and introduce them to the Huntsmen? That way they won’t have to tell their story to us and then again to them.”

  “Do the Huntsmen have a leader?” Gretel asks them. “We have a woman named Commander Ford who leads us.”

  “Yes,” Red says. “His name is Hunter Rin.”

  “Do you think he’ll listen to what we have to say?” Gretel asks.

  “I suspect he will be curious once he sees that we can change forms now,” Red replies. “It would probably be a good idea if one of us went back there first to tell him what’s going on.”

  “I’ll do it,” Blu volunteers. “He’s more likely to listen to me.”

  “Why is that?” Gretel asks.

  “He and I are friends,” Blu replies. “Of course, up until now, the conversations have been rather one sided, but that also gives me an advantage. I know all of his secrets, so if he doesn’t believe that I’m still his favorite dragon, I can repeat back to him some of the things he’s said to me that no one else could possibly know.”

  “Good idea,” IO says before sneezing again.

  “And what are the rest of us supposed to do?” G asks as he flips his hair out of his face. “Stand here and look at one another?”

  “I suggest we change back into our dragon forms and take our sister and her friends closer to the wall,” Red says. “Once Blu has spoken to Rin and explained what’s happened, he can tell us when it’s safe to enter.”

  “Are you going to fly us there?” Gretel asks with an apprehensive glance in Red’s direction.

  “The Huntsmen fly on our backs all the time. It’s perfectly safe,” Red reassures us all.

  “I’ll head over there now,” Blu says as he walks away to give himself enough room to change back into his dragon form.

  We watch him to see what happens during the transformation, but Blu ends up standing twenty feet away talking to himself.

  “Performance anxiety?” Kalder suggests to me.

  I shrug my shoulders because I have no idea what the holdup is.

  Red walks over to Blu and has a brief talk with him. There’s a lot of nodding, and then Red places his hands on Blu’s shoulders as if he’s pumping up his courage to give the transformation another try.

  Once Red walks back to us, another flash of bright white light emanates from where Blu stood, and before we know it, he’s in his dragon form again as he takes to the sky.

  “Give us a moment to get our things together,” Gretel tells her brothers as she and the others gather the few belongings we laid out on the ground.

  I turn my attention back to Coltan and smile when I see him stand up.

  “So this Snow White,” he whispers to me. “Do you believe she’s the sister we’re looking for?”

  I nod my head. “She has to be, but we won’t be sure of that until we get them to tell us more about her.”

  “Red,” Gretel says as they roll up her sleeping bag together, “if you’re all dragon shifters, does that mean I’m one too?”

  He gives her an odd look. “You haven’t transformed yet?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Gretel replies, looking slightly worried. “Should I have by now?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” he says. “What we know about ourselves comes from an ancient text the Huntsmen have in their possession. Are there any of our kind where you come from?”

  Gretel shakes her head. “The only shifters we have are humans who can turn into werewolves. Do you have those here?”

  This time it is Red’s turn to shake his head.

  “We only have things like that,” he answers, nodding his head toward my prisoner.

  “Why are there humans out here . . . What did you call this place? The wildlands?”

  Red nods. “The ferals attack the city whenever they feel brave, but the Huntsmen usually take them out fairly quickly. They’ve only breached the wall once in the past thousand years.”

  All of us stop moving and stare at Red for a few silent moments.

  “Did you say ‘thousand years’?” I ask him to make sure we didn’t hear him wrong.

  “Yes,” he replies slowly due to our reaction to his statement. “The people here haven’t had contact with the rest of Faloria for a thousand years. Why do you all look surprised by that fact? Hasn’t it been the same for you?”

  “Not quite,” I say as my mind whirls with more questions that I’m sure Red doesn’t know the answers to. “Listen, I realize you didn’t want to answer this question before, but I have to know. Is Snow White under a curse that she can’t wake up from?”

  Red hesitates as he considers me. Finally, he says, “She’s been asleep for the last thousand years. We don’t know how to wake her up. Do you?”

  “I might,” I tell him as I realize the world has just become a lot more complicated and a lot stranger than I ever thought it could.

  Chapter 14

  Riding bareback on a dragon sounds like fun until you actually do it and find yourself holding on for dear life. Is it as bad for me as being stuck in a confined space? No, but it’s quickly taking second place to that anxiety-inducing, traumatic experience. I try closing my eyes so I don’t have to deal with the fact that I’m probably closer to the moon at this point than the ground, but that makes me feel dizzy and out of sorts. Kalder is whooping and hollering as he has a grand ole time flying on Oran’s back. I even hear Coltan laughing and urging G to go faster so they can beat Kalder and Oran to the predesignated meeting spot by the city’s wall. I chose Bash as my escort because he seems like the calmest and most reliable brother out of the bunch. When I look over at Gus, he seems to be in the same boat as me as he holds onto one of IO’s spines as if his life depends on it, which it probably does. An image of Marlene flashes through my mind, and I wonder if she would consider her husband riding on the back of a humongous dragon me keeping true to my word to keep him safe. Both Scarlet and Gretel ride their dragons like they were born to do it, which forces me to pluck up my courage and at least pretend that I don’t mind being hurtled through the air a thousand feet off the ground.

  As we approach the city, its firelight flickers against the night like a beacon of welcome. It’s quite smaller than Briardale and doesn’t seem to have electricity since torches are scattered around the outsides of the structures. The massive, thirty-foot-high, stone wall surrounding it is rather imposing and makes me wonder if the ferals are the only creatures it’s meant to keep out. Strangely enough, the buildings within the city don’t share the same architectural style, but I suppose my own city is divided when it comes to that aspect as well. The most prominent feature within the wall is what I presume to be the White Castle that Red mentioned to us earlier.

  It doesn’t reach above the clouds like Shadowspire, but it’s impressive nonetheless. From what I can see, it stands ten stories tall with the widest level at its base and each additional one slightly smaller than the one underneath it. I remember seeing pictures of such buildings in our history books at the academy. They were predominately constructed by people of oriental descent, which explains the time difference in this part of Faloria since those countries were located on the opposite side of the world from Briardale. The castle’s outer façade is made of a smooth white material that is either plaster or stucco, and each of it
s levels has a section of black tiled roofing jutting out like the wings of a bird on all four corners. On the top level, a veranda overlooks a small grove of blossoming apples trees, just like in my dream on graduation night. It’s all the confirmation I need to verify that Snow White is indeed Briar Rose’s sister. The structure is majestic in its simplicity and worthy of the angel who resides within its walls.

  When we finally land near the large iron gate of the wall, I want to hug the ground and kiss the sweet-smelling grass beneath my feet, but I refrain from doing such a thing so I don’t embarrass myself in front of the others. After I thank Bash for the ride, I walk over to Gus, intending to help him climb off of IO’s back. As I approach him, I notice Gus still has his eyes squeezed shut and is hugging the large black spine in front of him as if he’s still flying through the air.

  I lightly tap his booted foot when I reach him to gain his attention before speaking.

  “Gus, we’re on the ground,” I tell him. “You can open your eyes now.”

  Gus opens one eye and looks down at me as if he doesn’t quite trust my words and needs the added reassurance of checking it out for himself.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” he says as he scrambles off of IO’s back and onto the ground.

  “I am never doing that again,” he declares as he crosses his forearms and brings them down to his sides emphatically to stress his point. “It’s absolutely nothing like flying in a helicopter.”

  “Everything all right over here?” Coltan asks as he comes to stand by my side while combing his fingers through his thick, wind-tossed hair to smooth it down.

  “We’re all alive, so I think that counts,” I reply jokingly. Coltan’s cheeks are still flushed from the exhilaration he must have felt while flying on G’s back. “I take it you enjoyed the ride.”

  “I loved it,” he proclaims like a school boy who has found his new favorite hobby.

  “I would have rather run naked through the woods and fought off a horde of cannibals than do that,” Gus says in all seriousness. The image makes me giggle.