Starlight (The Dragonian Series Book 5) (69 page)

“Let’s see,” he said and I took out the fur and dropped the flesh of the squirrel on his counter.

“That is one hell of a kill, Katie.”

“So, what are you going to pay for him?”

“Ten for the fur and three for the meat.” It was seven coins less than what I’d hoped for.

“Marco, you know this fur is worth five more, and the meat, look at it.”

“I know Katie, but the taxman came yesterday and you know what they are like.”

“They raised the taxes again?” Mom hadn’t said anything about that.

“Aye, and it’s all I have to offer you at the moment.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. We would not survive this month if the taxmen raised their taxes again. “Fine, it’s better than nothing.” I gave Marco a smile. I knew he wouldn’t do me in if he had the money. This was just another thousand points down for the royals. If it went on like this, I might even consider shooting an arrow straight through their heads.

Get that out of your head, Catherine Squire
, Mother’s voice sniped inside my head.
No daughter of mine is a killer.

Yes Mom
, I replied.
Sorry
.

I took the money from Marco and walked back the way I’d came in. “So have you spoken to Seth yet?”

“No, Marco. I’m busy.” I smiled back at him and the bells chimed in my ears again.

“Aye, lass, you are almost fifteen, your time is running out to find a husband.”

“I don’t have time for stupid husbands,” I mumbled back so that Marco wouldn’t hear and made my way back to home again so I could pull a dress over my head and help mother at the store.

ALBERT

“Father, I don’t want to go to this time-waste of a ball,” I said. “This is your and mother’s affair, not mine.” I sighed. “Just let me be. I’m twenty years old, and soon, I’ll be marrying Drizelda. So I don’t see why I need to attend them anymore.”

“Albert, we do things as a family. Without you there….”

“You have to be there,” my mother said. “Drizelda will be there too.”

“Hiding behind a mask. What, you want me to find her now, and then what, mother? We will be soul mates forever,” I snickered.

“Don’t make fun of your mother’s beliefs, Albert.”

“It is silly father. Seriously, what if I find another, then the lass will become then my soul mate, right?” I humored her. “You will still make me marry Drizelda.”

“Yes, but you will be attending my silly ball and you will wear a silly mask,” she said back as if none of my words had made any mark on her at all.

“Fine, I’ll be there.” I threw the napkin on the table and stood up from the breakfast feast.

“And you’ll wear the mask?”

Now she asked?
The remark didn’t leave my mouth. “Yes, I’ll wear the mask.”

I could feel her grin as her eyes bored into my back. For the past twenty years I’d said no to many things. It was the easiest word to say. “No”: not so difficult, but for some reason I couldn’t say no to the queen. My sweet loving mother who had stood up for me so many times, protecting me from my father’s wrath. It was the only time her sweet loving side showed.

I was their only son, but I knew my father had loved another. She’s died a long time ago, which was so wrong. To think if my grandfather had spared the love of my father’s life, my mother could’ve been a dragon.

I’d grown up with the Metallic dragons. It was one thing King Louie ruled when Grandfather Alexander died. They signed a treaty with the Metallics as he knew they were not a danger to humans. My father had loved a Metallic.

My tutor and nanny were both Metallics, and so were most of the high staff in the royal Council. It was clear to everyone where my father’s love lay—with a dragon—but for me, his son from the womb of another he’d had to marry, he had little. He only showed love now and then, and it had started only recently too.

I was sure if I was the spawn of his dragon love, it would’ve been another story, but mother told me so many times not to take it personally, we would always be the king’s second choice.

What type of a father would put his family second just because things didn’t work out the way he wanted? No, I would love my children, no matter who their mother was, even if it was Drizelda Longbottom. I loathed that woman on so many levels, she was a cousin for Caleb’s royal family. Her father was King Normand’s brother and her mother one of the most sophisticated woman who ran a finishing school in Etan. She’d opened the second one in Tith and rumor had it that she was doing quite well for herself and the Longbottom family. The end result was Drizelda: a very well educated young lady with a cruelty for the poor. Not that I had any love for the poor either. They had so many children and yet they had no money or intelligence whatsoever to raise them. If I was poor… no, I couldn’t even imagine it.

I jumped at a sullen cry from down in the dungeons. It was the second one this month, and what I couldn’t understand was why on earth father did that.

He loved dragons so much but he had no love for the Chromatics.

The ones that were slightly different than his beloved Metallics. They didn’t like their human form and they were not as gentle as their counterparts.

The Chromatics were fierce, they all had extra abilities and for some reason, they couldn’t be tamed. But they were wrong. I’d tamed a Night Villain, a name I’d come up with as his dragon was the color of the night and his demeanor that of a villain.

He’d only started to get used to his human form, a handsome devil if I might say, something father refused to believe, even though the rumors told him otherwise. My dragon’s name was Robert. He was feisty at first, but he had a gentle side to him after the punches flew between us. It was as if those punches beat the good back into him. I’d started to hate that, as it happened once a month now.

I was busy teaching him how to speak English. I could speak fluent Latin. It was a must as, all the Metallics and Chromatics only conversed in Latin. The only thing I had to fear was the acid he breathed. My shield was made of a special armor, one that no fire or acid could penetrate. It had saved my life a couple of times when Robert’s dragon form got too feisty and wanted to incinerate my ass. And he was ride-able too.

The entire court had found a way to ride on the Metallics. Father himself had a Copper-Horn. He loved his theories, which made me crazy, but I had to admit, the man was always on to something.

I went past the courtiers that had raised me. She was a Fire-Tail and she’d even once showed me her fire. It was something I’d wished so many times I could’ve done myself and she laughed on so many occasions when I tried to light a fire the way she did. Goran could do it and so could Helmut. They were twins, and the spitting image of one another, so much so that you couldn’t tell the difference, except the abilities they wielded.

Helmut was born first, and he was the crown Prince of Tith, but Goran, he was the troublemaker. He couldn’t just speak Latin, but Wyvic too. His father believed that it was a sign that he was rotten, with a dark soul, and had him beaten plenty times as a lad. Helmut had taken a couple of his brother’s punches, pretending to be him, but Goran was nothing like that. He would help you dig a grave while Helmut would watch for cover.

Goran could play with snow, any form of snow. He could free a flower in the heat of spring. It was amazing to watch, and he even had an endurance for cold weather. The change came to him after we all thought that he was going to die of a lung disease. He was so sick. But he pulled through that winter and since then, no cold ever harmed him again. In fact, it became a part of him.

Helmut had more or less the same kind of fire that my nanny had. But his flame was blue. What was strange was that he’d too gotten ill just a couple of month after Goran, a different sickness that no Swallow Annex could heal. His fever was so high that it was a miracle he was still breathing today.

My nanny, she was old now, but father still gave her a place in the palace.

I decided that she would be there for my children as well, as she’d told me once how old she was. She was almost fourteen thousand years old.

I knocked on the door and opened it. She smiled just like any mother would watching their favorite son enter the room. Her arms opened wide from her rocking chair by the window just after she put her knitting down.

I crouched down by her chair and just lay my head on her lap. She stroked my hair softly.

“The queen would slay me for this if she knew you favored me above her.”

“My mother will never know,” I looked up at her. “Besides, she never had a problem with you when I was younger, when I soiled my pants or scraped an elbow, or even when I was running a fever.”

“You hold your tongue, Albert.”

I laughed. “She is my mother only by blood, but you are my real mother.”

The woman smiled down at me again and I kindly repaid it. “So let me guess, you didn’t find a way out of her ball?”

“No, after all these years, I still try to please her.”

“She loves you, Albert, more than you know.”

“Yeah, I do.” I sighed. “Just promise me you will outlive her please. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

She smiled again. “I’ve still got a lot of spark in me, young prince.”

I laughed.

“Do you have a mask?” she asked.

“No, but I’m sure she will have someone bring me one. I will stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Then let me make you one that nobody will recognize. And you can hide from all for one night.”

I laughed. I loved this old woman so much. She always had a trick up her sleeve and always found a way to not play mother’s silly little games.

“Something tells me that this ball is going to be a lot of fun.”

DARKBEAM

The Rubicon’s story

Darkness or Light,

The Rubicon will fight,

He will succeed,

But a rider he needs.

Rider be brave and fierce,

strongest bond in all these years,

of Royal blood they be born

Fate of Paegeia is forewarned.

Then light seeped through.

That happened sixteen years ago. Why I’d thought about this today, I didn’t know. They were the words that were spoken when my egg hatched. But what was said never came to life. Why the words were still black inside the Book of Shadows, none of us knew, but it had given me hope, hope that maybe, just maybe my true rider existed, somewhere. It was all I was holding onto now, it was what my mother and father were holding onto, and Irene.

I remembered her words, as if they were spoken yesterday. I remembered them just like I could remember the temperature of my egg when my mother lay on it. Why she didn’t trample on it, I would never know. She knew what I was a Rubicon. There was only one born a thousand years after the previous one died. If there was more than one, we would annihilate this world, as we craved dominance.

We were so different from the other dragon races, all ten dragons combined, or so they told me.

I had ten abilities, but I only knew about five, or let’s say five had shown themselves. Five that would fight later today against the person that used to be my best friend since I’d shed my first scales and he was in diapers.

It all change three summer ago, when the darkness started speaking to me. Well, it didn’t use words like humans were used to, it had no language, it was a darkness that stirred, and boiled inside my core. It had wants I never needed, it woke up a monstrous beast that wanted to kill, thoughts, dark thoughts erupted in my mind. It would carry on driving me insane, until I did its deeds. Then the beast would go quiet for a short while, and I could breathe again, fight again, but those dark deeds would later haunt my soul.

No one could pull me from this. The beast that had awoken three summers ago was now too strong. Too strong for anyone but one. A dark sorcerer trapped behind deadly snatchers. He was the only one that would be able to control me, to make me do things that would make every living soul fear him, and I would rejoice doing that as I knew by every second, the beast grew stronger.

Lucian told me so many times to fight it. That I was stronger than this. That I was good, but that was a long time ago.

A note landed on my table. I looked up and saw the Snow Dragon from a few tables away sitting next to the Green-Vapor giving me her dashing smile. What did she want from me now? I thought my actions from a few weeks back would make her back off, but some girls were just pathetic, and it was a known fact that Snow Dragons fell in that department. Still, she had a beauty lingering around her that turned her cowardly streak into something I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t even lust. I was longer capable of any of those things.

I opened the note.

Her handwriting was seriously unreadable but for some reason it was not the department I struggled in.

“Tell you what, meet me in the coliseum’s changing room before your claim, and you can show me how sorry you are?”

How sorry I am?
I wasn’t sorry about anything, but my lips softly curled. Some girls would do anything not to be ignored.

Fine, whatever. It was going to fulfill one of the beast’s needs and maybe, just maybe, Lucian wouldn’t die today.

Not many knew that the Prince of Tith and the Rubicon used to be such good friends, except for my younger sister, Samantha Leaf, a Fire-Tail and the biggest pain in the ass one could meet. She would come to the Academy three years from now. She was also a Metallic, meaning one of the good dragons that didn’t have to get beatings on a monthly basis to stay good. Those stung like hell, and I felt sorry for my father as there would come a time he wouldn’t be able to tame the beast.

It was one of the things I feared, killing my loved ones. I knew when the time came, I wouldn’t care anymore as this part of me would be completely dark too, but I feared for him now. Just like I feared for this afternoon when I was going to face my first claim with the Prince of Tith.

I’d had many claims, ever since I’d turned sixteen. Others tried to claim me, but they’d failed miserably. One had actually died.

The Prince of Tith, well he’d just come of age, and was keeping the promise he’d made two years ago.

I remembered it like yesterday.

It was right after a beating. We were both sitting on the stone wall back at the castle in Tith. It overlooked parts of Tith, and you could see the Creepers in the distance.

The beating was horrible. I remembered the fatigue that came with it, the two weeks of silence from me. The beast inside me was raving mad, but he was in control.

It was twilight. I gazed at the most beautiful sunset, colors of a red, pink, orange even a glow of purple. It was so peaceful.

My back stung.

“If I was a dragon, I would give you my oath,” Lucian said.

“Oath for what, to stop my father whenever I needed a beating?”

“No, to find a way to claim you.”

I stared at him. Was he deranged?

“So, I guess my promise will do?”

“Lucian, you don’t know what you are saying. Nobody can take part in a claim before their sixteenth birthday.”

“Then I’ll wait.”

“You have no idea what I will be like three years from now.”

“Doesn’t matter. I know who you are now, and that is enough. I’m not going to lose you to darkness, Blake.”

He wrapped his one arm around me. “You are like my brother, and brothers don’t give up on one another.”

That was then. We were tight like brothers, but that was before the light came. His light.

I had no choice but to push him away. That pure goodness inside of him clashed horribly with my darkness, a darkness that was slightly stronger than his light, and it made me sick.

The best way to explain it is when someone eats too much salty and sweet at the same time. Or eating rotten fish, or a sick deer. It was like that. A nauseated feeling that I couldn’t handle.

I had no choice but to stay as far as I could away from him, and today I was going to face that inside the coliseum. It was going to rile up the beast while I had to deal with this nauseated feeling and try my utmost to not let the beast kill him.

He had no idea what he was putting me through, and for what? A promise he’d made me that summer when that first glimpse of darkness had showed itself. That he would find a way to claim me?

He was going to die inside that ring. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be this afternoon.

The crowds were already cheering in the coliseum as I was busy feeding the beast. The Snow Dragon kept to her word and I found her only wearing her robe in the changing room of my room where I would exit into the ring.

It happened so fast. I wanted to fill a need, one of his needs and I kissed her fiercely. Her back connected hard with the wall as her legs curled around my waist.

Her body was sculpted to perfection and her white skin made me think she was some sort of an ice queen.

She reminded me of winter, calmed my yearning, and her cold touch calmed my own stirring flame deep inside of me.

Her complaints filled my ears, it pleased the beast and when she begged for more, I gave her what she wanted.

The lust and satisfaction started to numb both the beast inside and myself and when we reached the peak, it felt amazing.

Her laughter filled my ears, tired laughter, and I could hear my voice being called outside. How many times they called me I didn’t know, but it was time to go.

“Give him hell, and make him regret that he ever decided to try and claim you.” She touched my lips. The beast was calm, he was at peace. “You are untamable,” she said softly and my lips curved.

I kissed her quickly on the lips and left the room.

Everyone in the crowd was going insane. The Dragonians, and the dragons. I just stared at Lucian.
Why the hell are you doing this, you stupid fool? You haven’t even ascended yet.
I didn’t speak it out loud, though; I thought it.

His light streamed out of him as he just stared at me with so much compassion that it made me want to throw up. The beast was starting to wake up again, the Snow Dragon hadn’t been enough.

I transformed, which made him back away a bit.

I knew that I’d grown since the last time he’d seen me, and I knew he was contemplating things for a bit. It disappeared after a few short minutes, just like everything about my new self would disappear when I revealed some darkness to him. He always remembered what I was like. Well today I was going to change that for real.

He put his shield in front of him. “Let’s show them a claiming they will never forget!” he yelled in Latin and I started to chuckle. The beast was going to take over and I knew that nothing I did would protect Lucian from the beast.

“There will never be a claiming, you are not the royal the Viden spoke about.”

I changed the scenery to a swamp. I loved swamps: you could be so many things and they wouldn’t even see it coming. The beast was already clouding my mind.
Remember who that is, no killing him.
I roared inside my mind. But the beast roared back, it sent shivers down my spine and straight into my soul. He was in charge and today was going to be a fight I had never fought before. The one inside me

I could tell he saw the swamp, the daze of everything, the look on his face, the fear in his eyes.

I stayed still, appeared to be a boulder right in front of him, then the beast took over completely. I was in way over my head.
Don’t kill him, please. I’ll give you what you want, just don’t kill him.