by Sariah Skye
FATED SOULS
(The Fated Saga, book one)
by Sariah Skye
© 2016 Sariah Skye
Cover by Deranged Doctor Design
(www.derangeddoctordesign.com)
For Gramma Joan and Lizzie, and those who have left us way too soon.
You're loved, and missed daily. I hope somehow I've made you proud.
You'll never be forgotten. Ever.
Contents
FATED SOULS (The Fated Saga, book one) by Sariah Skye
© Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Fated Magic Chapter 1 preview
Acknowledgments
About the Author:
Chapter 1
I grumbled audibly, slamming my fist into the side panel of the espresso maker I was currently trying to "repair". I let loose a tirade of curse words under my breath as I fumbled with the nozzle and some random tool that I was trying to use to unclog the spout.
I heard laughter beside me and I jumped, startled to see my boss and friend Katrina Ryland—otherwise known as "Kit"—standing before me, covering her giggle with her palm. "What was that? German?"
"What was—oh." I grinned sheepishly; I hadn't realized I'd been swearing in my native tongue. It wasn’t really German, but she didn’t know that. "Sorry."
Kit shrugged. "No big deal, there's no one here besides—" she nodded off to her right to the two high school aged girls she had employed to work afternoons. We all work at Kit’s small coffee house, Morningstar Coffee. I am a supervisor, and the two girls are baristas.
Currently, the two girls are oblivious to us as they pretend to clean the lobby. In actuality, they were gossiping.
Kit turned back towards the espresso machine I was trying to unsuccessfully fix. "Damn thing. I hoped by getting a brand new one it would eliminate the need for complicated repairs. Guess not, huh?" Kit was a quirky woman in her early to mid-thirties, with long wavy blonde hair that was streaked with whatever color she fancied today, piercing blue eyes, colorful makeup and a statuesque, tall body. She reminded me a bit of the hippie women I’d see pictured in the Life magazines I would borrow from my grandfather over the years. She was bright and breezy and always carried an air of peace about her; I admired her unconventional style and easy-going beauty.
Kit smoothed the apron that hung over her gauzy blue blouse and wide-legged, gaucho navy pants and sighed at me, defeated. She tugged a stray bright colored lock of her hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear; this week’s fantasy color choice was a striking teal. "I should have known that thing would give us nothing but grief when it required two men to install it," she grumbled in dismay, eyeing it briefly. It was a monster; twice the size of its predecessor and three times as complicated. I missed the old one.
I snorted. "Well, it wouldn't be such a big deal but I couldn't fix a tire and make it round to save my life. I am no Tim Taylor."
Kit shook her head, with an amused chuckle. "Actually, you sort of are. He wasn’t very handy, you know."
I scoffed. "Okay, yeah I guess so."
She paused to give me a strange look. "Isn’t Home Improvement too old for you? You would have been like, what…two when it came out?"
"Nick at Nite," I said quickly, with an innocent smile.
"Ah, yes. Right. Well, it does help to read the manual." She reached underneath a counter nearby and pulled out a large paper book and handed it to me. "Try this. I'll go in back and fish the old one out of storage. Glad I didn't let the installers talk me out of keeping it, huh?"
I grunted a yes of approval and turned to look at the first page. It was a jumble of diagrams and words, written in five different languages; one of them with special characters that were totally unrecognizable to me. I groaned and dropped it on the counter with a loud plop and tried to make sense of the mumbo-jumbo before me. I didn't have any choice; if the old espresso machine wasn't working right, then we'd be in trouble. I mean...what's a coffee house without espresso? We wouldn't be able to serve anything but the pastries and regular, boring old coffee; which don't get me wrong—I loved and drank by the tankful but most customers came in for their snobby, complicated espresso mixed drinks that required more instruction to make then this damn manual before me. I wouldn't mind just serving plain old coffee but I don't think the customers would approve and thus, Kit wouldn't approve. And I probably wouldn't get paid and that was no damn good. No damn good at all.
I leaned over the counter, scanning the manual and flipping the pages in concentration, trying to find anything that would help me when I nearly jumped out of my black safety-soled clog shoes at a shriek from nearby.
It was my co-worker, Emily. "So did you get your dress?"
My other co-worker, Madison squealed. "I did! It's so awesome!"
Madison and Emily both squealed in unison. I tried very hard not to cringe. So much for quiet gossip. Their girly squealing was very hard on my sensitive hearing.
Thankfully I wasn't facing the two seventeen-year-old high school students, who were clearly excited for something called Homecoming. I didn't want to hurt their feelings or, even worse, be asked any opinions about it myself because of course I'd never been to one.
I tried to ignore their screams of delight as Madison described the dress in detail to her friend: pink sequined, spaghetti straps with cutouts on the bodice, and a long chiffon skirt. Whatever that meant.
"So did Landon do it? Did he rent the limo?" Emily asked.
This was met by a slight pause. "Yeah I guess. I was really hoping for the horse and carriage."
Horse and carriage? What is this, Cinderella? Who does that sort of thing? And where in the hell did someone even find that? Was this a normal occurrence; did people really rent out their horses and antique carriages for things like this?
I had to turn around and face them then. Madison was visibly miffed, her petite features downturned in a disappointed frown. "What's so bad about a limo?" I asked, looking expectantly at the two girls, both of them avoiding my eye sheepishly. I smirked to myself, as the realization dawned on them that I had overheard their banter. They both pretended to be really into dusting the same table they'd been pretending to clean for several minutes already. Not that I cared, considering how quiet things were.
When the two girls didn't answer about the limo, I continued, helping to ensure them I was mostly just interested and I wasn't mad or going to tattle on them to our boss. "I've seen them on TV; they look pretty cool. So what's so bad about it?"
"Well, nothing." Madison finally answered, then paused. "I was just really hoping for a fairy tale kinda day." Her lower lip puffed out.
"Aw," I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my tone, "I'm sure it will still be wonderful." I had to really fight the urge to roll my eyes into the back of my head. If I did, I'd surely give away that I thought they were absurd. My eyes would roll all the way back in their sockets and snap straight off my head and go rolling into the lobby. I didn't think that was a good idea. If they screamed like that over a dress—imagine how they'd scream to a pair of stray eyeballs rolling around the floor. I couldn’t take that.
Madison grinned. "You bet it wi
ll!" I knew she was dying to say more and looked at me expectantly.
Clearly, I was supposed to go away and stop listening. I wasn’t "cool" enough to be a part of their conversation. Fine with me. "I'll just be...over here. Not paying attention. Talk amongst yourselves. As long as you actually clean this time."
"Sorry," Emily replied with a chuckle. And she genuinely did start rubbing down the table tops with the rag she was carrying, after dunking it into the bucket of hot, soapy water that was on the chair in between them.
I smiled at them, shaking my head. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to dream only of fairy tale things back then when I was their age. Instead, I had fantasized about living in a place where no one knew who I was just so that I could escape the agony of constant ridicule from my family and their friends and—well, everyone really—about who I was, what I was, what I couldn't do compared to everyone else. Living under constant scrutiny was hard. I could do no right. I was an embarrassment. I was a freak. Here in Pineville, Minnesota I was still technically a freak too but, what people didn’t know about me didn’t hurt them. I appeared human. Although, I am not. At any moment if I truly desired, though, I could turn into my real self. My real dragon self.
Yes, that's right. Dragon. I am a dragon. We live in another realm, not unlike your own. Except the primary species in our realm are dragon-shifters.
Everything you’ve heard about dragons is probably true. We fly, breathe fire, are loud and a bit scaly. What you don’t know is that we have magic both in our human and dragon forms. All dragons are capable of different kinds of magic; the type of magic you wield relates to the color of your dragon skin, and we exist in every color of the rainbow right down to silver and gold. My grandfather, an Elder in our home kingdom of Anarach because of his age, is silver. In his dragon form, his skin gleams like a pocketful of coins in a fountain, and he can use light magic which is beneficial in healing. Golden dragons also heal, but can harness the wind as well. My brother is a red dragon, and he is a fire user; my parents are black and yellow and wield powerful arcane magic and air magic respectively. A dragon for every color and a place for their magic in our society. Well, everyone except me.
All because I share my color with Cyril the Mad, a powerful dragon who was greatly respected until he lost his mind and was exiled by the King and Queen of the Court in that time. No one knows what drove him to madness, but he committed grievous crimes with his power against dragons in a nearby village. Deeds rumored to be so terrible that law forbade talk of Cyril and his kind. Over the centuries, stories of Cyril and his powers faded into myth and legend. Until another of his kind was born. Another pink dragon. Me.
Pink dragons? I know. I mean…really, it's ridiculous sounding. It’s a color mutation, apparently. It doesn’t exactly sound scary or intimidating as one expects a dragon should be. But Cyril was a pink dragon and the commonly held opinion is that something about the gene gifted him with immense power while cursing him with insanity. So it is assumed that any others of his kind will be the same: batshit crazy. And that’s what they expect of me- the last remaining pink dragon, the only one of my kind. Rare, ridiculed and despised. But unlike Cyril, I have no magic, I cannot fly, and I don’t even breathe fire. So how can I be a threat to anyone? Nobody seemed to care about that, though. There wasn’t a day back home that I didn’t face disdain and torment. Other drakes—our term for adolescent dragons—wanted nothing to do with me. My parents wanted nothing to do with me; I was a hindrance to their reputations. They were utterly convinced they’d be ruling Anarach and be King and Queen by now had it not been for the taint of shame my birth had left on their standing.
The only two souls that had shown me love and kindness were my brother, Braeden, and my grandfather. A few years ago, on my legal adult birthday back home in Anarach, I took the nearest portal I could find on the outskirts of our village, Green Knoll, and it took me here, to Pineville, Minnesota. With the help of a rogue orange dragon I obtained a last name, documentation and everything else that would be essential for me to live as a typical human in the United States. Coming to the realm of humans, I found it ironic that pink was stereotypically a color signifying weakness and girlish fantasy. You know, princesses, frilly dresses, that sort of thing. Perhaps it was a twist on the stigma that had carried over somehow from the dragon world. Of course, humans like Kit, and heroines in movies, proved to me time and time again that femininity wasn’t weak and pink could equal strength. Pity the same didn’t ring true for this pink dragon.
Back in my birth realm, I am known as Leorah e’na Miradoste. Loosely translated it means "Leorah, daughter of Miradoste," although it would sound very different in the dragon tongue; rough and guttural to human ears. Amongst humans, I’m Leorah James. It’s the name I prefer. Leorah James; an ordinary human girl with long, strawberry blonde hair, and green eyes. I am small as a dragon and whereas most dragons are tall and lithe in their human form; I am short and curvy with a larger than average chest, wide hips and a slightly soft stomach. No washboard abs for me—but I didn’t desire them. I can shift at a moment’s notice into my dragon form, but I can also live comfortably as a human. On the surface, I smelled, sounded and functioned the same as the people around me, set apart only by my mark.
Every dragon has a mark, resembling a tattoo, somewhere on their body. That mark is individual to them. Dragons in Anarach typically had Celtic symbols, dragon outlines with knotwork on them, in the color of their dragons. Mine was a round dragon, outlined in Celtic weaving with more intricate work in the middle and it was of course, pink. I knew the likelihood of anyone recognizing it as anything other than a tattoo or a birthmark even, was slim but just in case I wore my long hair down in a thick braid down my back. Paranoia wasn’t a typical dragon trait but given my upbringing I had acquired it as a necessary skill along with sarcasm, bitterness and a penchant for all things geeky.
"Excuse me?"
I jumped again, shaking my head out of its haze. Crap, for a dragon with sensitive hearing everyone was sure having an easy time sneaking up on me today.
I had been ignoring the register for probably about ten minutes now, my back to the entrance pretending to look through some manual when someone stepped up to the line.
"I’m so sorry; I was spacing out and—" I set the unread manual under the counter and looked up to see a customer who’d visited us several times this week and a handful of times a couple of weeks before. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties. Average height, with broad shoulders underneath an array of hooded sweatshirts. Today, it was navy blue. So far since he had started coming to get coffee from us, this man had seen me space out, spill and swear several times already and never even flinched. I wasn’t sure whether he had noticed my regularly embarrassing behavior but he made a good show of politely ignoring it if he did.
"Oh, hello again," I greeted pleasantly, trying to hide my surprise.
The man grinned, his smile bright and friendly was made more striking by the contrast from his dark stubble that lined his jaw and chin. He adjusted the black rimmed glasses on his face; a nervous habit perhaps. I'd seen him do this no less than a dozen times since he'd started frequenting Morningstar. Not sure why I noticed it, but I did. "Oh, a decaf mocha latte today, please."
I looked back at the defunct espresso machine behind me and gave him a half smile. "I'm afraid our machine is on the fritz. We're working on it but it might be a while before we get it working. I'm afraid I'm not very good at fixing things," I chuckled awkwardly.
"Really? Did you try smacking it around a bit?" He appeared serious except for an impish glint in his brown eyes.
I chuckled. "Yes and I believe it's planning to file a restraining order against me now; we'll see."
He threw his head back and let out a loud laugh. "I hate when that happens!"
I chuckled again. "I know, right? So can I get you a—" I raised a brow slightly, noticing he was intently staring at the machine. "You familiar with these?"
I scowled back at it. "Doubt it. It's brand new and has given us—" I was interrupted by the unmistakable hissing of the machine as it began sputtering and out dripped a steady stream of espresso. "What the—" I began, dashing quickly to the machine. I grabbed for the nearest container I could find. Puzzled I spotted a single clean white coffee mug sitting conveniently on the counter that I was sure I had already cleared of all dishes. I shoved it under the nozzle to catch the black liquid. "Well then, what a moody piece of crap!" It hissed a bit more and sputtered violently, splashing my face and upper body with hot liquid. I let out a little yelp and stepped back, wiping the coffee off my cheek with the back of my hand. "Sorry!" the customer called out, and I swiveled around to shrug at him.
"Sorry? Not your fault this machine is cranky," I said.
"Oh I mean—" he stopped mid-sentence and just smiled. He reached for a stack of napkins that was on the counter and handed me a couple. "You got a little...um..."
I took them from him and used the napkins to wipe off the rest of my face and dab at my green t-shirt which was now stained. Thankfully, the black apron I was wearing caught most of it; I could just change that out. "Well, I guess it's working now. You still want that drink?"
He nodded with a cheerful smile. "Yes, please."
I gave him a nod and turned back to the machine, gathering cups and things nearby to help concoct his drink. I always felt like some sort of wizard concocting potions whenever I made these drinks. "Foam?" I asked and I heard him open his mouth and I finished for him, suddenly remembering his last two late night orders, "Extra."
He chuckled. "Yeah. I guess I’ve been coming here too much, huh?"
"Not at all, we like regulars here," I said. I pulled the lever on the machine, slowly as it let out a loud hissing sound again; this time on purpose. "Hot damn, it does work!" I said to myself under my breath. I poured the liquid into a metal cup for mixing and set it under the spout, and ducked down below to the small refrigerators near the ground that held the milk and creams we used to make the drinks.
