A new life had opened to her, but she didn’t even know what to do about it, or if anything could be done about it at all. She obviously couldn’t stay here with the humans. Even now they already seemed like bugs to her. But she couldn’t just walk to Duvarharia and demand to be allowed to live there either. After all, she was a complete stranger to the culture of dragon men. Did they even know who she was? Were her parents outcasts? Why was she living here with Dalton and not with the dragon men? Why would Dalton, a Duvarharian, be living with humans in the first place? A horrible thought raced through her mind. What if magic really was dead and she and Dalton were the last Duvarharians? Was everything over before it had even begun?
A knock softly vibrated through her door, jarring her from her thoughts.
“Come in.” Her voice was muffled by her knees. She shifted her weight uncomfortably.
The sound of the door opening and closing softly behind her seemed loud in the silence. She was acutely aware of his soft footsteps across the floor.
She didn’t turn around.
A pregnant silence ensued, and she could feel the awkward tension. Everything had been oddly heightened since she had become aware that she was Duvarharian. She could feel everything now; from the smallest sense of life in a bug, to the emotions of her horse, it was a constant assault. It was a wave of confusion. It was a clanging noise. She jumped at every sound, startled. Her head spun, clouded with sensory overload. She ground her teeth and dug her nails into her skin.
“May I speak?” he asked cautiously, as he sat beside her on the soft bed.
“Yes, but I can’t guarantee I’ll listen.” She scowled, but instantly regretted her rude response. A heavy sigh escaped her lips; she was surprised he hadn’t reprimanded her for her attitude. “I’m sorry, Dalton. I just don’t feel like it right now.” She scrunched her knees closer to her body as if she could shield herself from her feelings inside.
“I know, but sometimes the best time to talk is when we don’t want to at all.”
She could feel his intense gaze on her, but even now she didn’t look at him. If she looked at him, she thought surely all of the emotions would explode inside of her and she wouldn’t be able to control herself.
She nodded instead.
“What’s on your mind, Stephania?”
The red-haired girl rested her head on her knees, letting her soft, glossy hair fall over her legs. Perhaps, if she just sat here long enough and ignored him, he would simply disappear. Of course, he didn’t, and after a few minutes, she looked up, biting back the tears that filled her eyes.
“Who am I, Dalton? I mean, if I really am a Dragon Rider?” She paused and looked at her left hand. “Which I guess I am, then why am I here and not in Duvarharia where I belong? And why are you here with the humans? Who were my parents? Who am I?” She continued to stare miserably out of her window. Her chest ached. Her heart sank within her.
For a moment, silence permeated the room until Dalton shook his head and chuckled.
“All those assignments, and it still took you this long to figure it out. I thought you would be a little smarter than that.”
Stephania blushed. She did feel pretty ridiculous about it. After all, she had been drilled in Duvarharian characteristics all her life. Though she didn’t have many of the main features, she had been blind not to see herself as one.
“Yeah.” She let herself breathe out a soft laugh. “Guess you were wrong. But why don’t we have the main characteristics?” Her hand strayed to her ears. Her tongue ran over her dull teeth.
Dalton grunted, a sad smile passing over his face. “Because neither of us is bonded with dragons.”
“Oh.”
They smiled awkwardly at each other before quickly looking away. The air was heavy around them.
Dalton shifted his weight and followed her gaze out of the window and across the land, which lay peacefully under the light of the late afternoon suns.
“You are the Farloon, or Chosen Protector, of the Centaurs.”
“What’s that?” Her hand strayed to the pendant around her neck. She had always wondered what the word “Farloon”, which was engraved on it, meant.
“It is a sacred position, one that puts you as high in the Centaurs’ tribal order as Igentis, the leader of all Centaurs. It is an oath made between the Dragon Riders and the Centaurs that binds their two Kinds together.”
She shook her head. “But what if I don’t want to be? I don’t even remember swearing an oath. How does that count? That’s not fair.”
Only silence answered.
Taking a deep breath, Dalton continued, his voice quiet and meek. “You are the only child of Lord Drox and Lady Andromeda Lavoisier. And you are the chosen and prophesied protector of Duvarharia—a warrior called to rid Ventronovia of Thaddeus, his dragon Kyrell, and Veltrix once and for all. You are the Shelesuujao of the Duvarharians, the child of the Dragon Prophecy.” His tenor voice echoed in the quiet room, his last words barely audible, emotion thick in his voice.
Who is Thaddeus? she wanted to ask. She opened her mouth. The words fell silent on her lips. Something felt so wrong about that name. A memory of piercing purple eyes surfaced, gleaming back at her. A wave of conflicting emotions ran through her, and she shivered, a confusing lump rising in her throat. Later. I’ll ask him later. She tried to shove away the nauseous feeling, but it lingered, along with a dread of something creeping up on her. Chosen prophesied protector. A warrior. Such foreign words. All words I don’t want to describe me. She chose to ignore those last words, too confused and too overwhelmed to want to think about them at the moment. “A Lord and Lady.” Her eyes widened in awe and a small smile once more bloomed on her youthful face. “Drox and Andromeda Lavoisier. I suppose that makes me Stephania Lavoisier, doesn’t it?”
She turned her head back slightly to him. For the first time in nearly four days, their eyes met. She saw tears in his.
He nodded, his eyes quickly straying from hers.
“You aren’t in Duvarharia because you are the protector chosen by the Great Lord himself to save Ventronovia; it was foretold in a prophecy long ago. For a long time, Thaddeus didn’t make any major attacks on the Dragon Palace, save for a skirmish here or there. They were doing quite well, the riders and dragons, I mean. But something happened after you were born. It was like …” His eyes grew distant. “It was like something woke up. The attacks were suddenly frequent and on larger scales. It became too dangerous for you to live in Duvarharia, so your mother and father decided it would be best to send you away for a few years until either the Dragon Palace became a more suitable place to raise you or you would be able to handle war.” He paused, his hands clenched into fists, and his teeth grinding against each other.
So how did my parents really die? Her brow furrowed. She began to ask but stopped when she saw how upset he was. Her heart twisted within her. She had a right to know, but she also didn’t want to upset him. Perhaps it would hurt him more than her to tell the truth. Her nails dug into her palms. She resisted the urge to comfort him.
“Your parents and their dragons, um—” He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “When your parents tried to bring you here, they were, uh …” He bit his lip. His eyes lifted to the ceiling, tears sparkling in the brown irises. “They were ambushed. By Thaddeus, Kyrell, and Veltrix’s army. The Centaurs tried to fight off the Etas, but there were too many of them.” The tears rolled down his face. His mouth opened and closed several times before he barked a wet laugh. “They didn’t stand a chance.” His eyes clenched shut. She slid her hand over his. They sat still like that for a few minutes before she pulled away.
He took a deep breath, and his tears cleared. “It’s called the Battle of the Dragon Prophecy, to those who believe in magic anyways. They all died protecting you. You were all they cared about.” He turned his face to her. She saw a bitterness in his eyes. “You were everything to them. Everything.”
Her heart lurched. A new wave of nausea swept o
ver her. Her parents had died for her, to save her. She wondered if she should feel happy, grateful that she was alive, but an empty, aching hole opened inside her. Her parents were dead. They were really, truly gone. She had hoped that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t dead. That they were out there waiting for her. But they weren’t. She was never going to meet them. Tears rose in her eyes, but she didn’t let Dalton see them. It was just one destructive piece of information after another. Maybe she didn’t want to know the truth.
“This, of course, was not in your parents’ plans. No one really knows how, but Artigal, the old white Centaur in the legends—”
She cut him off abruptly, “Yes, I know of him. Continue.” She hated that Centaur. Everything she read about him, she hated. The name gave rise to such fury and pain in her, even when she was younger, that Dalton forced himself to cut any mention of the Centaurs’ leader from all of the texts he let her read.
Nodding slowly, breathing out a heavy sigh, he continued, “Yes, somehow, he saved you from Thaddeus and found you after the battle with a magic burn on your chest, something which was obviously done by Thaddeus. Then they brought you here, and I have raised you since.”
Her head was spinning. She had been attacked with magic? Why hadn’t she died? Who were “they”? By the gods, then that meant Artigal really could be thousands of years old! How was that even possible? She rubbed her head, unable to process any of this. It was all so sudden. She couldn’t help but notice how much detail Dalton had left out. She was just about to press him for information, to pelt him with questions, when she realized that this was hurting him as much as it did her. She felt the overwhelming sensation that he had wanted to tell her all of this a long, long time ago, but had been forced to keep it bottled up. Her heart skipped within her. Why had he needed to keep it a secret? What was he hiding from her?
“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” he chuckled lightly.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“One day, you feel like nobody. Like the whole world hates you for no reason, like you are nothing but scum, dirt, a freak. And then the next day, you’re suddenly special. Still a freak, still the world hates you, but now you are special and above it all.”
Stephania grunted, looking up from her knees. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” She glanced at him. “How did you know?”
“I too felt that way once, only under much different circumstances than you now.”
She frowned, unable to think how Dalton, the famous and loved storyteller of the village and the so called “child whisperer”, could be considered a freak like she had been and was.
“I know that you may think that’s hard to believe, Stephania, but there was a time when all the city of New-Fars was leery of me. They knew I was different. It took a long time for me to gain their trust.”
Her black eyebrows furrowed, nasty thoughts racing through her mind. “Why would you want to earn their trust?”
He didn’t offer an answer for a long time. Unsettled by his lack of response, she chanced a look at him.
His face was completely emotionless, as if he were thinking of something unwanted. It was the same expression he had about a week ago after she had fought Jackson.
“Dalton?” Her honeyed voice gently shook him back to the present.
“What? Oh, yes. Well, at the time, I just really needed someone’s trust.” He smiled uncertainly before becoming occupied with something on his thumb.
She didn’t press the topic.
Embarrassed to ask her question, Stephania shifted her weight a couple of times, her mouth opening, then closing, then opening again. “So, Dalton …”
“Hmm?”
“How, um. How did you find me after I, uh …” Her hand ran through her hair, and she chuckled nervously. “After I controlled Grey?”
He scratched his head and shrugged, a sheepish smile spreading across his face. “Well, it’s not hard to follow a magic trace. Especially yours.”
“A what?”
“Magic trace. It’s what’s left behind after magic is used.”
Her eyebrows shot upwards. “So I really did use magic?”
“Yeah.”
“Incredible.” She couldn’t help but glance at her hand. The markings were glowing bright red. She imagined they were smiling back at her innocently.
He laughed at her amazement. “Pretty incredible, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Silence once more reigned for a few minutes before something Dalton mentioned flashed back through her mind. “So, what about this prophecy you mentioned?”
Dalton frowned. “I don’t actually know a lot about it. I was never into such spiritual things. Never really had an interest in the Duvarharians’ Great Lord.”
“How come?”
He shrugged, folding his hands in his lap. “Just never really believed in Him, I guess.”
She too frowned. “But what about the prophecy? I mean, you said that I was some sort of protector. And, obviously, my parents believed in it or they wouldn’t have died for it.”
The corners of his lips rose. “Yeah, so I guess it might be more true than I had thought. Even so, not many really know what the prophecy was originally about, only that you are to banish evil from the land.”
“What evil?”
“Thaddeus and Kyrell, of course, and Veltrix the Eta King. At least, that’s what they always said, the Duvarharians, I mean.”
Stephania rested her chin on her knees and took a deep breath. None of this seemed real at all. It just seemed like Dalton was once more teaching her about all of the old legends. She couldn’t even begin to feel the weight of her part in all of this.
She was still too uneasy about Thaddeus to ask, but the question slipped out of her lips before she could stop it. “Who are they?” She couldn’t hide the fear in her voice, and Dalton smiled sadly at her. She was relieved when he dodged the question.
“You will learn in time. I think that that would be too much for you to understand right now. Besides, you don’t have to worry about it. At least, not right now.”
She was going to worry about it though. She didn’t want to save the world. She had just found out that she wasn’t human and that the world was nothing like she had always thought it to be. She felt so pressured into all of this, like she was being forced into someone else’s life.
“You don’t have to do it alone, though, Stephania.” His reassuring hand rested across her shoulders, and she leaned into his fatherly touch. “Of course I will be with you for as long as I can be, and there are others that want to help you.”
She looked up at him, a smile on her face.
“You aren’t the only person the prophecy talked about.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “It also promised you a helper, or as the Duvarharians call him, the Kvaźajo.”
Her eyes widened. “A helper?” She tried to repeat the foreign name but was unable to, making Dalton laugh.
“Mm-hm. Something like that.” He squinted as if trying to look into the past or maybe the future. “It wasn’t as clear who this helper is to be as it was about who you are, but it did promise one, so perhaps, he is at the Dragon Palace, waiting for you to return.”
“We get to go to the Dragon Palace?” She bounced childishly in excitement. She could have only dreamed of going to the famous home of the greatest Dragon Riders, and its beauty lived only in her imagination.
“Well, yes, of course you get to go. It’s your home, and you are the heir to the throne.”
“Heir to the throne!” She uncurled herself, her face soft with awe. She turned to him, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open.
He nodded, grinning at her amazement. “It’ll be a long, hard journey, but, yes. You get to go.”
“I don’t even know what to say!” A lopsided grin swept across her face. This was all such a shock. It was just like what Dalton said. A freak one day but part of the village, and then the next day, she was an exotic heir to
a magical Kind’s throne. Incredible.
“I know this is a lot for you to take in, but due to your growing magic trace—” he started, but she interrupted.
“What exactly is a magic trace?”
He merely shook his head. “I’m not sure how safe it is for you to learn about magic. I’ll tell you about it later. But, anyhow, your magic trace is putting you and this town in danger, and the sooner we leave, the better.”
“Leave for the Dragon Palace.” She nodded, her mind flying through all this new information. It made her head swim and birth new questions. Now she had to abruptly leave the only home she had known since she was just a little girl. How do I feel about this? She wasn’t really sure. Excited? Mournful? Angry? Sad? Maybe a little bit of everything? Maybe she was just in denial.
“Uncle Dalton?”
“Hm?”
“Why don’t I remember any of this? Surely I would remember something.” Her eyes flamed, and her hands balled into fists. She felt so helpless. She didn’t remember the last time everything felt so out of control. If only she could remember, Dalton wouldn’t have to tell her any of this and they wouldn’t have to struggle with any secrets or misunderstandings.
Another deep sigh left his lips. “Because.” His teeth dug into his lip. Something like anger crept into his voice. “Artigal decided it would be best if you didn’t remember any of it.”
The world went quiet around her. Her body felt cold. The room grew stale. “What? What do you mean?”
His eyes grew soft with empathy. “He took them away, Stephania. Your memories. Being with the Centaurs, using magic, fighting Etas, it awoke the magic within you too soon. It’s dangerous for a child to awaken to their magic so young. And besides that, Thaddeus would have found you.”
Disbelief, shock, and dread crashed down around her. This couldn’t be true. “No. No.”
“I’m sorry, Stephania. It was the only way. Even your family agreed it would have to be done to keep you safe. There didn’t seem to be any way around it. It worked, Stephania. It really did. It has kept you safe this long. It was necessary.”
Child of the Dragon Prophecy Page 25
