Shards (Dragon Reign Book 2)

by Kit Bladegrave

  After she fell into the breach that turned into the Burnt World, she hadn’t died, not completely.

  Allis was kind enough to finish her off though.

  She’d been too weak to fight back, and I grimaced as I saw those claws coming at my neck again, the blade left behind in the other world. She’d been killed so brutally, and I waved for the flask back, hoping a drink would numb the echo of pain coursing through my body. It didn’t help, except to make me cough harder.

  “Slow down,” Craig warned. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  “Don’t care, not after what we saw.”

  “What I don’t understand is why no one remembers this battle,” Forrest whispered. “Malcolm and Broden, they both said they would send word of what happened. How is it all of this was erased from our history?”

  “Maybe the same person who erased those memories stopped us from remembering how closely connected demons and dragons used to be,” Craig added. “After the breach was closed, it seemed someone was still working at deceiving us all.”

  “Us?” I repeated.

  “Them,” he corrected with a frown. “It was so real, all of it. I still feel like Broden and when I look at the two of you… I don’t just see you anymore.”

  He didn’t have to explain. I had the same sensations since we landed in a heap on the floor. What happened to Celandine, to Broden and Malcolm, it happened to us, too and I would never get her death out of my head.

  “Why don’t we focus on what we know?” Forrest dug around in the pack and pulled out a pad of paper and pen that I’d thrown in there at some point. “What we just saw, how far in the past do you think that was?”

  “Well, Craig said the Burnt World didn’t exist until over a thousand years ago so say… fifteen hundred years to be safe?” I guessed. “Give or take a few hundred years?”

  He jotted down a note. “Alright, and this was when the shield was destroyed, the realms were split, and the world forgot what happened to the Darrahs.” He sounded almost sad as he said it, and I couldn’t decide if it was Forrest feeling those emotions, or leftover from what Malcolm went through, losing his love and his son. “Then what?”

  “When did the feud between the demons and dragons actually start?”

  Craig and Forrest shrugged at each other.

  “Five hundred years ago?” Craig replied. “There were disputes on trading with the humans and some deaths on both sides. Guess that was what sparked it.”

  “And then came the assassinations.” Forrest jotted the notes down. “After that, nothing happened until eighteen years ago when the remaining Darrahs came after my clan.” He wrote down another few words. “Then they were banished.”

  “Until my father showed up,” I chimed in. “Then my mom was killed, he was killed, and I was left alone for ten years.”

  Forrest held up the notepad. “We have nearly a thousand years here unaccounted for. No records of any kind pertaining to the plague, or what the Darrahs sacrificed, and I’ve never read anything on them being the reason why the realms were split.” He tossed the notepad and pen down annoyed. “How sure are we that what we saw was real?”

  My mouth dropped open, and Craig growled as his head fell back. “Seriously? You were just there with us, back in time, watching all of this happen? How can you sit there and keep acting like this isn’t real? This is what happened!”

  “But who has that much power to not only split the realms, but make everyone forget what really happened?” he argued. “Who? I know of no one who could just wave their hand and make everyone simply forget that great battles took place here to save the races. That this plague, whatever it is, wasn’t what everyone was worried about!”

  I looked to Craig for help, but he seemed more inclined to glower at Forrest than help.

  “I’m sorry,” Forrest went on, “but as I said before, how do we know we’re not being manipulated by simply being here?”

  “You can’t just trust your instincts? Or trust me?”

  He sighed, tapping the pen on the paper. “I can’t make anything logically fit, but I do trust you.”

  I was running out of arguments. I thought seeing what happened back then, he would understand the truth, and would finally accept it, and yet for some reason he was still holding onto the hope that none of this was really happening. I wanted to understand the connection between the three of us since that seemed to be an important piece to this puzzle.

  “It doesn’t need to be logical. You were there, and you saw it yourself, felt it,” I stated firmly. “It’s why the three of us found each other now.”

  “No, it’s not.” Forrest slammed his fist into his hand.

  I groaned in annoyance at him.

  He continued, “I found you both because of Craig, not some mystical past life guiding me to my true path or whatever you want to call this maddening situation!”

  “He’s just pissed because he was once a Darrah,” Craig mused with a grin.

  “I fail to see what’s amusing about this.”

  “Quite a few things.”

  As they started bickering, again, I reflected back to when I realized that Celandine had very close relationships with both Broden and Malcolm. It ran deeper than simple attraction. They were meant to be together, their souls bound around each other.

  In those few moments of the past, I felt how tied to one another they truly were. It was love, but a different kind of love. Even now it made tears burn in my eyes, which I quickly wiped away before the other two noticed.

  All three of them gave their lives, and somehow a traitor remained behind to ruin everything. No one even remembered them.

  Until now.

  Whatever happened next, I was not going to let their deaths be lost to time. We had to do something, and that was going to start, right now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I finally said, loud enough to be heard over them both. “You’re not a Darrah now. We should try and figure out who they were, these three people.”

  “I’ve never heard of them.” Forrest held out his hand, and Craig handed him the grog.

  “Malcolm Darrah seemed to be the clan leader. How could you have never heard of him at least?” I could understand Broden and Celandine, but a clan leader seemed like a name that would’ve been recorded somewhere along the way.

  I watched as he took a long swallow of the grog and his eyes bulged before he spluttered, put the stopper in, and set it aside.

  “We weren’t taught anything of the Darrah clan once they fell out of power. There were so few of them left, it didn’t seem important I guess. I was a child when they tried to kill my family. After that point, everyone was too afraid to even mention their names. Many of the texts that held any records of them were removed and destroyed for all I know.”

  Of course, they were. “And Broden?” I glanced to Craig. “Any idea?”

  He started to shake his head, then stopped.

  “Craig?”

  “Sorry, I just… but it can’t be the same, Broden.”

  “What are you talking about?” I sat up straighter.

  He licked his lips before answering. “The blade, the Executioner, it was forged by a demon named Broden, but since I thought the sword had only been forged recently, it may not be the same demon. I’m trying to think back to what I saw when I was in his mind, but I don’t see him forging a blade.”

  If he was the demon who created the blade, it would certainly tie him to Celandine even more. “The three of us… them… seemed to draw power and strength from one another.”

  ‘Yet another instance I have never seen or heard of before,” Forrest muttered under his breath.

  “You’re not helping,” I snapped, and pushed to my feet, making for the other doors in the hall.

  “Where are you going? Kate!” Forrest yelled, but I ignored him, tugging on the first set of doors. “You don’t know what’s behind them. They’re probably caved in.”

  I tugged on the handles harder, an
d the doors groaned in protest. Not wanting to wait around and listen to Forrest to continue to deny the truth, I bashed into the doors with my shoulder. It hurt, but I did it again and again until finally, they burst open, and I staggered through the doorway.

  I felt around the inside and found a torch in another metal bracket. With a puff of dragon breath, I lit it with a crackling blue flame.

  “She’s getting good at that,” I heard Craig say behind me. “Might want to watch yourself.”

  “She can’t burn me,” Forrest uttered, but I heard the uncertainty in his voice.

  I lifted the torch higher, peering through the darkness. It was another short corridor, and with the guys following behind, I moved down the length of it until we reached another set of doors.

  These put up no resistance, and when they swung inward before me, I grinned in triumph. “Would something in here be able to convince you of the truth?”

  Unlike the war room and the hall, this room was filled from one end to the other with stacks of books, rolls of parchment, shelves, and shelves of more books and scraps of papers.

  A few maps hung on the walls, one of which showed the new separation of the realms as well as the Burnt World.

  I walked deeper into the room, lighting torches as I went.

  “You think we might find some answers in here?” Craig asked, shuffling through a stack on a table in the center of the room.

  I heard Forrest say something in reply, but my ears filled with a strange buzzing sound.

  I stuck my finger in my ear, wiggling it to try and get the sound to stop, but it only got worse until it hummed through my jaw. I shook my head, but the buzzing turned to a high-pitched ringing.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in deep—

  My eyes shot open, and I turned slowly, staring intently across the room.

  “Kate?” Craig stood beside me now, grabbing my arm, but I shrugged him off. “What’s wrong?”

  I said nothing, but sniffed the air again.

  That scent, I knew it well. It was the same scent that surrounded Craig the first time we meant.

  There was a shard here somewhere, maybe even a few.

  I sniffed again and turned, so I faced the right wall.

  Another tapestry hung, a smaller version of the one in the hall, depicting three figures near the bottom.

  A quick glance told me it was Celandine, Broden, and Malcolm, and the words described their sacrifice. But it wasn’t the tapestry I wanted.

  “What is she doing?” Forrest demanded.

  “Just wait,” Craig snapped.

  I reached out and grabbed the tapestry in my fist. With a hard yank, I tore it from the wall, waving my hand at the dust and dirt that came down with it, covering my air.

  The guys coughed, and Forrest cursed, but what I wanted was right before me.

  There, carved into the wall, was a circular type lock and in the center, a place for the key.

  I ran my fingers over the missing piece of stone.

  “Not a key,” I whispered, and without another word, raced from the room.

  The dagger Mama Lucy gave to me, I sensed at some point it would have another purpose, and now I knew exactly what it was for.

  Craig and Forrest sprinted to keep up with me as I grabbed the dagger off the sheath where we’d moved our things by the hearth.

  The second I had it in hand, I turned around and raced passed them back to the room. Before either had a chance to realize what I was doing so they could think of an excuse to stop me, I set the golden dagger into the wall.

  A loud grinding sound filled the room just as Forrest and Craig came up beside me.

  Together, we watched the dagger sink deeper into the wall as the circular lock turned counter clockwise, before it too was pulled back into the stones. Another loud grinding sound issued and with a puff of dust, a seam appeared, and the wall split open before us.

  “I didn’t see that one coming,” Craig mumbled, but when the walls stopped moving, and we peered inside, he whistled. “Shards of the shield. How did you know?”

  “I smelled it,” I replied. “Like I did at the diner.”

  Inside the wall was a small room with only one thing inside: a pedestal with a black cushion and resting on it, three shards of the shield. One was rather large, but the other two were small. So many pieces still to find, and the weight of this impossible task hit me again.

  But on the bright side, we found three more shards. I reached in and picked up one of the smaller ones as Craig and Forrest moved in beside me.

  Craig took the bigger piece and Forrest the last one.

  “We can go look at the tapestry, maybe see where these line up,” Craig suggested.

  I closed my hand around the shard in my hand, gasping when I felt the jagged edge of glass and metal cut into my palm.

  I winced and opened my hand, but the second I saw the blood, everything changed.

  A heaviness fell over me, and I heard a harsh voice whispering my name.

  Katherine… Katherine… you will not succeed…

  “Kate?” Craig nudged me, but I pulled away from his arm and turned slowly around to see the impossible standing in the doorway to the room.

  There, in full demon spawn appearance, was Allis.

  “No… no, it’s not possible!”

  “Oh, Katherine,” he growled, then it turned into a laugh. “The breach is open, and I have returned to finish what my master started.”

  Fury boiled through my veins, and before I could think of controlling my dragon, my rage, and that something that was still within me from being a part of Celandine burst forth in a vicious snarl from my mouth.

  My tone was grim.“Not if I finish you first.”

  18

  Forrest

  “Kate? Who are you talking to?”

  I peered out of the room we found, but there was nothing there.

  Kate snarled again, and she clutched the glass shard even harder in her fist.

  Blood seeped out the ends, but then she was speaking again, in a voice that was not hers, and in a tongue, I did not understand. She took a step out of the room, then another, and before either one of us could grab her, she took off.

  At first, there was nothing there, and she looked like she was chasing nothing, but we lost sight of her until we entered the hall again.

  And what we saw then had Craig and I skidding to a sudden stop.

  “Allis,” I whispered. “It’s not possible.”

  Kate squared off with Allis, the dragon spawn from the memories we witnessed—Malcolm’s son.

  She rolled her shoulders, and I saw the shift start to take over her body. The Executioner blade was by the hearth, and I spotted Craig slowly moving towards it, his eyes glued on Allis.

  I told myself this wasn’t real, but when Allis threw his head back and let out a screech of rage, a shiver shot down my spine and I knew this was real.

  Those few horrifying moments we’d seen of our past lives was real.

  I blinked, and it was as if everything flew into fast forward.

  Allis lunged for Craig, but Kate moved to intervene, tackling him into the table.

  It shattered beneath their weight, and the roar that ripped from her was pure dragon.

  She grabbed Allis by the throat and threw him across the room, towards the other set of doors leading to the war room.

  Craig scooped up the blade, but as he charged for Allis, the spawn took off, taunting us with his cackle.

  Kate snapped her jaws, and when I tried to yell her name, the look she gave me was pure dragon and pure darkness.

  She was going after Allis, and she was going to kill him.

  In another blink, she was gone, and Craig and I were left standing there dumfounded.

  “What the hell just happened?” Craig snapped. “Where did Allis come from!”

  I shook my head, unsure myself, until I felt the other shard still gripped in my hand. I held it up, studying the glass, and immediately droppe
d it. “It’s the plague.”

  Craig held up his piece, narrowing his eyes at it closely. “There’s nothing in this piece.”

  We bent down and saw the tiniest specks of dark sludge moving through the glass before they slipped out the edge and evaporated.

  Kate cut her hand. The plague affected her, but that did little to explain how Allis was physically here.

  A thunderous roar shook the fortress, and any worry about the plague being in the shards disappeared.

  Kate was out there fighting Allis, alone.

  We took off together in time to see Kate shift completely into her dragon form.

  She snatched Allis in her claws and with a few strong pumps of her wings, shot out of the old wooden ceiling and into the sky.

  We needed to get up there and made for the rope. Craig held it out for me along with the sword before he turned back towards the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The shards! I’m not letting them out of my sight! Go after her!”

  Climbing the rope with the sword wasn’t easy, but somehow, I managed to do it without cutting off a limb.

  Overhead, Kate’s dragon form wasn’t the only one soaring through the sky. She chased another dragon, blackened in color.

  Allis shifted himself, and their fight raged in the clouds. Her crackling blue fire shot out aiming for the plagued dragon, but he rolled and dodged it, whipping around faster than should’ve been possible, to attack her from behind. He slashed at her right wing, and her snarl of pain and rage hit me hard.

  I needed to get up there and help somehow, but I barely went ten steps when I realized our situation was about to get worse.

  The shield had fallen, and our dome of protection, the one thing keeping our presence here a secret, was gone. Whether it fell from Kate being overwhelmed with her power or from something Allis did, we were fully exposed, and Kate was flying high, far too high not to be spotted by now.

  I spun around, horrified the skeletal dragons would appear out of the ruins to attack, but the pounding sound of horse hooves was all I heard, and my heart pounded in my chest.