Seon's Freedom: Found by the Dragon (Book 2)

by Lisa Daniels

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. It was stupid of me. Oh blasted moon.”

  “She fended for herself very well.”

  “This is Aria’s body,” a black veined male said, examining the head. “She doesn’t use weapons.”

  The people in the room took time to digest the news.

  “What happened, child?” The oldest member of the group, a wizened woman, old enough to be Faith’s, no, she couldn’t use the word grandmother without a deep sense of pain – old enough to be her elder.

  “I fought two of them,” Faith wheezed, struggling to keep herself conscious. Her body wanted to shut down, to remove her mind from the pain. Erlandur clasped her hand, and she found herself reaching out to him, soothing him of all people.

  She saw the terror in his eyes. He didn’t want to lose someone. He didn’t want to lose the woman who had seen the secrets under his armor, who understood a glint of that emptiness inside.

  “Blast! I think this is Grace’s blade. You know.”

  “Yeah,” Faith said. “My grandmother’s body.”

  Surprised mutterings broke out.

  “No wonder. Two Supremes, my word. You weren’t joking, Erlandur. You said you’d put together the best fighting force the north’s ever seen. You’d help us…”

  Faith almost screamed when she saw a Shadow walk in behind the babbling group. “S-Shadow…”

  The Shadow in question waited for the humans to step aside. “That I am.”

  Faith felt her whole world toppling upside down.

  A Shadow.

  Black veined humans.

  Erlandur, not reacting to the Shadow’s presence, even smiling at it.

  What in the moon…

  Why was no one reacting? Why smile at it?

  I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I just fought my grandmother. I found the secret under Erlandur’s skin. And there are humans near the Fractured City?

  “There’s a lot to explain,” Erlandur admitted. “I think we should save it for after the operating theatre.”

  Faith noted that all of the people in the room wore crescent necklaces. The same symbol Erlandur had told them to watch out for.

  Even the Shadow wore it. The Shadow with the face of a white-haired woman.

  “I’m not falling unconscious,” Faith said. “You’ll carry me, and you’ll be giving me some blasting answers. If you want me to trust you. If you want me to stay by your side.”

  “Of course,” Erlandur said, kissing her forehead, stroking her short hair. “Anything. And I’m so sorry. I should have waited. I didn’t think it through very well at all, did I?”

  “To be fair, I doubt you’d expect two Supremes to be walking around the chasms.”

  “Not a good sign,” the Shadow said. “They’re already aware something’s up. They’re trying to flush out the rats.”

  Faith squinted at the Shadow. “I need a name from you. Otherwise I will see you as nothing but as an enemy.”

  The Shadow nodded. “Helena. Or, at least – this is what this body used to be called.”

  Helena. Not a name I’ve heard. She is not anything significant to me or the legends I know. “I hate Shadows, Helena.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Helena’s peculiar silver eyes clouded over for a moment.

  “This was what the original scouting party was meant to do,” Erlandur said, carefully draping Faith in his arms. They began the walk, everyone quiet as they moved, the black veined humans, the Shadow known as Helena. “We needed to find the Fractured Ones – those who live near and within the city, resisting the absolute influence of the ruling council.”

  Ruling council? “Wait. The Shadows have a society?”

  “In a word,” Helena answered for Erlandur, her soft, melodic voice carrying over the darkness. “They also have a human population they subjugate to their demands. If you fail to satisfy them, they’ll turn you into a Tormented, and set you out into the wastelands. There’s millions of people here. The Fractured City is at least as large as your Lunar Wastes.”

  The information processed through Faith’s brain.

  All these years, she’d assumed the City was in ruins. The Shadows mindless entities. The north and south suffering the brunt of their evil for centuries.

  She winced as Erlandur took a particularly heavy step, and he winced with her.

  “Sorry.”

  “You keep saying that.” She buried her face into his chest, taking comfort in it. “When I get better, I’m gonna kick you into the sky.”

  He let out a half laugh, half scoff. “You can kick me around any time. Just get better. I need you. We need you,” he amended, but Faith most definitely caught the flush in his cheeks, the slip in his mind.

  For whatever reason, this knight of the Lunar Wastes wanted her.

  He didn’t act intimidated by her, afraid of her powers, afraid of who she was.

  That touched her somewhere. Deep inside, where an icy fortress encased her heart. It thawed the cold there like the hot springs under Ghost Lake’s Mirror of the Sky. It left her with something more than just the thought of living, fighting and dying.

  What if she could live for something? What if she could live for Erlandur? To see a smile upon his lips?

  The thought warmed her up inside, breaking apart the bonds of her mind as he continued carrying her, towards whatever base that belonged to the self-proclaimed Fractured Ones, with the Shadow called Helena, a new mystery in the vast jigsaw puzzle the Lunar Wastes offered.

  A new face to the war they fought.

  I believe him. Faith reached up absently to stroke Erlandur’s stubble cheeks.

  I really believe he’s not lying when he says there’s a way to end this once and for all.

  She scowled at Helena’s back, where black energies unfurled out of her skin.

  Answers lay within Erlandur. With this creature. And in the way that somehow, a Shadow had managed to procure the body of her long dead grandmother, who should have been buried under the snows.

  Her grave had been desecrated without their knowing.

  How many other witches had suffered the same fate, knowing no rest in death?

  The implications of that thought terrified her.

  They made it at last to an odd slit within the chasm, and a new network of caves, barely visible to the human eye.

  “You’ll be treated soon,” Erlandur crooned to Faith.

  “We’ll set up search parties for your missing scouting party as well,” Helena assured Erlandur. “Then we’ll try and figure out just where we can hide your army.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Erlandur said dryly.

  Faith grinned. She felt woozy, light headed, and more than a little nauseous, but she also felt confident. Hopeful.

  Purposeful.

  She breathed in Erlandur’s natural earth scent, her mind full of thoughts for the future that awaited.

  Just as soon as she got patched up, of course.

  That would help.

  The End

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  Taja’s Dragon

  By: Lisa Daniels

  Chapter 1

  Nothing out of the Ordinary

  Taja pulled the bundled-up items to her chest and tried to speed up, despite the crowd around her. The market was always impossibly busy at this time of day, and the acting stable master knew it. Still, he had told her not to be late after giving her all of the chores. Hating that the real stable master had been needed at the noble’s country mansion for a few months to deliver two new foals and take care of them, Taja took comfort in the fact that it wouldn’t be much longer before he returned. She ju
st had to hold out for another week or two and then everything would go back to normal.

  Her blonde hair shone like sunshine, a few stray strands dangling beside her face as the young woman pressed forward. It would be her twenty-first birthday soon, but she had no expectations. The stable master was the only person in her life that actually seemed to care about what happened to her, and he would not be back in time. Not that she wanted to celebrate. The stable master had been like the father she had never known, so she just wanted him to come back so the nightmare that had been her job without him would end. One of the other stable hands had taken to harassing her in the stable master’s absence, and the acting master wasn’t about to do anything to stop the boy. Taja had plenty of experience keeping boys like that away, but it was wearing on her. That and her mother’s steady decline into the bottle. Taja didn’t feel sorry for herself. She just needed that one ray of sunshine back that had made life worth living.

  Taja was not a tall woman, just barely over five feet tall. The first impression people had of her was that she resembled a large doll. Despite working outside, her skin was pale and soft. Her large brown eyes were surrounded by thick lashes that combined with her unnaturally yellow hair, hinting that she was perhaps not fully human. The perfect symmetry of her dainty features was striking, and it had gotten her into plenty of trouble when she was young. It was only after she met the stable master that Taja had calmed down and started trying to make a better life for herself. That had been three years ago. Until that point, she had been a complete mess, sleeping with any boy who would give her gifts and expensive items. Her mother had used her daughter as much as possible, turning expensive gifts into high debts with many of the taverns. The stable master had given the young woman something worth living for outside of her different types of abuse.

  It was times like these as she was darting through the crowds that Taja was really thankful for being so small. She was able to more easily slip through spaces between people.

  Still not fast enough. I’m going to be late. Her mind was already calculating her distance and current rate of speed. Moving her legs a little faster, she shifted to the outside of the crowd. It was risky, particularly since she would be moving so close to the carriages and horses, but it was the only way she was going to get through the crowd in time.

  As soon as she reached the outside of the crowd, Taja’s speed more than doubled. With a grin on her face, the young woman hurried past the throng.

  Without warning, one of the people moving in the opposite direction stepped into her. He had been trying to step out of the way of a noble lady, and did not notice the young woman trying to get by on the other side.

  Taja lost her balance, and fell. Instinctively, her arms tightened around the things she had brought, trying to keep them from spilling all over the road. Scrambling to get up without dropping anything, Taja looked up. A horse was making its way quickly right toward her.

  With a little gasp, the stable hand tried to crawl out of the way without getting the things dirty.

  “Seriously? Is that stuff more important than your life?” The voice was unfamiliar, but warm. The accent was light, but it was obvious that the owner of that voice was not from the area. And he was clearly male. Taja felt a pair of hands on her waist and she was suddenly lifted off of the ground. Clutching the items to her chest, she couldn’t believe that someone had stopped to help her. Her mind registered the miracle as a warm and firm body pressed against hers. The sound of the horse’s hoofs rumbled past her as she tried to fully comprehend what had just happened.

  As soon as the horse was past, she heard the rider calling it to stop. The warmth moved away from her body as she tried to get a hold of herself.

  An angry voice was so close to her, and Taja knew it was the rider. “Do you know what you almost did to my horse?”

  Taja turned to look, to apologize, but someone else spoke first. “Are you a fool or an idiot? Oh, yes, I see, you are one of the noble. A bit of both, then.”

  Taja’s eyes went wide as she turned to look at the man who had pulled her from the ground. Her gaze went back to the noble, and his expression read the way she felt. Neither of them had heard a noble insulted so publically before. Her head turned and she saw the people in the crowd starting to watch them.

  The noble had found his voice. “How dare you insult me!”

  “Ah, you make it all too easy. A woman is knocked into the street, and you yell at her for what, exactly? Being in danger? Blaming the victim is easy, but it is also very clear who the villain is in these cases.” He tilted his head to the side. Taja couldn’t see his features very well, but his stance suggested that the man was accustomed to power. He was not tall for a man, but standing this close to him she could tell he was about 5 foot 8 or 5 foot 9. His body was not bulky, but remembering what he had felt like as he held her, she knew that the man was muscular. Sinewy, her mind supplied.

  The man’s clothing was very nice, which meant that he was at least upper class, if not something higher. His hair was an inch or two long, a style that she had never seen before. Though it was a dark brown color, it shone, highlighting the fact that he was clearly more than just a commoner.

  The noble moved his hand like he was about to strike when the young man held something up at him. Taja couldn’t see what it was, but from the look on the noble’s face, the man who had rescued her was far above the noble’s level.

  With her concern growing about who the man was, as well as knowing that she was again at risk of being late no matter how quickly she moved, Taja slipped into the crowd and continued toward work.

  The rest of the trip back to the stables went much smoother, and Taja made it back with a little time to spare. The acting stable master frowned down at her, eyeing her muddy clothing, but there was nothing he could say since she had returned with everything before the items were needed.

  Knowing that smiling at him would only anger the man, Taja lowered her head and inquired, “What would you like me to do next, sir?”

  Apparently she had struck the right tone and posture because the man had no insults for her. When she risked looking up at him, she saw his beady eyes looking around. Unlike the stable master, this man was clearly out of shape. His stomach hung over his pants in a way that suggested his body was trying to escape the confines of clothing. His hair was long and greasy. This was pretty normal for stable hands given what they did, but it generally took a full day’s work to look as bad as the man did early in the morning. It was clear from the man’s features that he was once handsome. Time and his ego had led to his decline, a fact that had not improved his personality. He couldn’t have been older than early forties, yet he acted like an old man with a grudge against life.

  “Damaris, sir,” the simpering voice of the boy who had been harassing her grated on Taja’s ears. The look of annoyance on the acting stable master’s face nearly matched the way she felt.

  Damaris turned to the stable hand, his expression one of barely contained rage at being interrupted. The stable hand saw his mistake and immediately started to bow to the man. His hair was a dirty blond color that might have been nice if he tried to keep it clean.

  Taja doubted the boy cleaned more than once a month, a fact that had often helped her as she could smell him coming. The boy was 17 years old and very self-assured, although Taja had no idea why. His face was always covered in pimples and scabs. His nose was nice, but the way he grinned made him look very unattractive. The boy also had a very uncommon name – Semaj – as if his parents were trying to force a better future on him than he was ever likely to have. Semaj’s personality alone would keep him down his entire life.

  The boy was bowing lower. “Damaris, sir,” he simpered, “I was wondering if you would like for the two of us to work together.”

  Damaris looked down at the stable hand, then turned his gaze to Taja. “I bet you would like that, wouldn’t you?” His question was directed at Taja.

  Fighting the urge t
o violently shake her head, Taja tried to keep her voice level. “I only want to complete my work today to your satisfaction, sir. If you wish for me to work with others, I will make sure to be more efficient.” If she had flat out denied wanting to work with Semaj, Damaris would have put them to work together just out of spite. If she had said she wanted to work with the boy, Damaris would have some very nasty words, and probably some physical punishment for showing interest in the boy. As it was, all Taja did was hint that she didn’t mind, but the choice was entirely up to Damaris.

  He gave a huff, then looked between them. “Semaj, I dare say you are trying to get someone else to do your work. Panding duty for you for your hubris.”

  Semaj’s face fell as he realized that he would not be able to see Taja again for at least a day, perhaps more. It was clear that he wanted to argue, but there were worse things than panding. “Yes, sir. I will make sure it is done well.” He tried to use the same flattering words that Taja used, but there was bitterness in them. Damaris missed the boy’s expression and had already lost interest in the whole affair. He wiped his grimy hand on his nose as he looked down at Taja, who still stood in readiness to do as he said.

  “Go home, Taja.” She had to fight to keep her eyes trained on the ground. His words were a shock, but she knew that he could easily change the orders. “You look like a pig who escaped the slaughter house and found a river of mud.” He laughed at his own words and walked away. Taja grinned. Damaris wanted to make sure she knew that he wasn’t doing it out of any satisfaction derived from what she had done, but because of the way she looked. Considering she would usually look much worse than she did after falling in the road, Taja knew the real reason he was sending her home – he was too lazy to figure out what she should do.

  It doesn’t matter, her thoughts were very clear. The acting stable master didn’t care if she was there or not, but it gave her the time she needed to finally recover from being overworked for months on end. Her heart was light as she turned toward the door to leave.