Dragonrider Academy: Episode 5

by A. J. Flowers

  Ivar nodded at him. “Oh, you’re going, as am I. I fully intend to make sure this business is taken out of my realm.” He glared at his brother for good measure. “And we still have a duel to schedule.”

  “Duel by beer pong?” I offered with a chuckle while Killian gave me a questioning look.

  The prospect sounded hilarious, even if it was going to be at another one of Max’s parties.

  Hopefully no one would try to kill me this time.

  The rest of the week dragged on and I found myself counting down the days until Max’s event. While I wasn’t looking forward to reliving the worst night of my life, I knew this time would be different. I had Killian. Solstice. Lily and all of my friends who would rather take a beating than let anything bad happen to me.

  Plus, I had faced literal dragons and survived. Dealing with Max was good for me—an exercise to face my old fears.

  We fell into a strange sort of routine, one spent joking in the evenings, eating lots of pizza, followed by classes as if nothing had ever changed.

  Except everything had changed, and maybe it was for the best. I liked this new life, one with laughter and friends.

  Before I knew it, Friday caught up to us and Max’s party stared me straight in the face.

  My heart thundered in my chest as we walked up the polished hill, the mansion a place I’d seen like it was a distant postcard, but I’d never been there myself.

  Until today.

  “Okay, maybe I’m not ready for this,” I admitted.

  Killian kissed the crown of my head. “I’ve got your back.”

  I squeezed his hand in return.

  “Zelda is here, just so you all know,” Lily said from beside me. “Evie told me she will be attending the party.”

  “Great. Just what we need. More dragons.” Killian rolled his eyes and shook his head, gripping me tighter.

  “She will probably be pretty focused on Max,” Lily reassured us. “We’re all working together at this point, so she shouldn’t cause too many problems.”

  I huffed a laugh. “So you’re just going to ignore the fact she tried to kill you?”

  Her eyes slit before returning to normal. “Most definitely not, but I’ll deal with her later.”

  Noted. Don’t get on Lily’s bad side.

  Techno music rolled down the hill as we immersed ourselves into the thrum of dancing life. It felt like the entire school had been invited, but I didn’t recognize all of the faces. The Resorties tended to attract families who vacationed on the lake for the summer, so there was no telling who was in attendance tonight.

  Then I noticed the shadows around the perimeter. Guards suited up for Resort Security kept a watchful eye on the event, surprisingly seeming to be here to help, not to report the underage drinking.

  “I’m not sure how we missed them,” Killian remarked, noticing the heavy security the same time I had.

  “It is strange,” I agreed. A group of Dragonriders and our wyverns had missed the guards, which rang my supernatural alarm bells and enforced the theory that Max and his family might not be entirely human.

  Music blared as someone shoved a drink in my face, interrupting my musings. Killian swatted it away and threatened the partier’s life.

  “It’s not worth it,” I told him. “We have a mission. Stay focused.”

  Killian growled, but nodded before we worked our way up the steps and into the house.

  Max’s parents clearly weren’t here. They were most likely off on business, as usual, buying up more resorts or doing something otherwise nefarious. Silver Lake Resort was only one of the many resorts they owned and managed. Human nor not, they had to keep up their wealth somehow.

  We walked through the foyer; the loud music almost deafening. I scanned the room, clutching Killian’s hand so I didn’t lose him in the crowd of drunken people. I spotted Evie in all her gorgeously glamoured glory, surrounded by her Hovakim and several of the jocks as well. She smirked at them all, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

  I leaned up to Killian’s ear, cupping my hand around my mouth so he could hear me. “Let’s save those poor humans from falling completely in love with Evie.”

  He followed my gaze and then grinned. “They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, but we have work to do. They’ll figure it out.”

  As we made our way into the extravagant living room littered with expensive sculptures, a female stepped into our path. I recognized Zelda immediately.

  My heart stuttered, and then picked up pace as I thought of the last time I had seen this particular pureblood. She smiled at me, though, her grin more feral than friendly.

  I noticed, then, that she was flanked by Julie Emmerson and the rest of the cheerleaders.

  Of course they would be friends.

  “What’s taking so long? Don’t you want to save Mommy?” Zelda leaned in close, her face twisted into a sadistic smirk.

  Fury filled me and I couldn’t help balling my hands into fists, mistakenly squeezing the life out of Killian’s fingers.

  “We’re working on it,” I bit out, gritting my teeth at the effort it took not to lose it.

  Her smirk widened. “Well, don’t take too much longer, or your mother….” She trailed off at the end and drew her clawed finger over her neck, making sure I understood the stakes. “Two days, Vivi.” She drew out my name with cruel intention.

  Zelda threw her head back in laughter. The cheerleaders likely hadn’t been able to hear her, either through the music or through the dragon glamour, but they still all followed suit even though there was no way for them to know what they were laughing at. It was a blatant display of power, a show of how charming dragons could be. She could turn the entire school against me if she wanted.

  Point made, Zelda winked at me, and then turned on her heel and walked away with Julie and the cheerleaders trailing behind her.

  I stared after them for a moment before Killian gently tugged my hand, making me realize I was still squeezing the life out of him. I eased my grip and he bumped my shoulder with his.

  “We are going to free her, Vivi. Don’t worry,” he said, leaning down so I could hear him. I met his eyes, and the confidence in his words and expression calmed me enough to get my mind back on our objective for the night.

  I gave him a jerky nod, took a deep breath, then refocused. Solstice clung like a heavy weight on my shoulder, offering her own support as she nibbled on my ear. I didn’t care if it looked odd if i had a finch on my shoulder, I needed her strength right now.

  I nodded once jerkily, took a deep breath and then got down to business.

  “We need to find Max,” I decided as I took the lead.

  We walked through several rooms before I finally spotted him in front of a beer pong table filled with red cups. I studied the scene for a moment and then turned to Killian.

  “Do you think you can distract him for long enough for me to snoop around for some kind of information on why the dragons want him?” I asked.

  “Distract him how?” he asked.

  I glanced at the jock, knowing that only two things would occupy him. Boobs, or a fight.

  I couldn’t stick around, and I wasn’t about to subject Lily to such torment, so a fight it was.

  “Rile him or something,” I said, then pointed a finger. “But don’t go too crazy, okay? This is just a diversion.”

  Killian’s lips twisted into a wicked grin. “You got it, babe.”

  I rolled my eyes, about to tell him not to call me that before he released my hand and stormed his way to Max, definitely thrilled to have been given permission to indulge in his need for violence against the male.

  He reached him and grabbed his shoulder, jerking Max around to face him. Killian started gesturing wildly, and then jabbed Max in his chest with his finger. Max’s expression was the picture of confusion at first, and then he got angry. The change was so quick, it was almost as if a switch had been flipped. Max took a swing at Killian, and Killian ducked un
derneath it before slamming his fist into Max’s face. I slapped my hand to my forehead and shook my head at my mate’s ‘distraction.’

  I guess I should have seen that one coming…

  Like most drunken fights at a party, the violence spread. Soon there was a full-on brawl, with people forming a circle around the fighting and chanting. I backed out of the room and made my way up the stairs, looking around to be sure that no one was paying attention to me. Though, by that time, most people were too preoccupied either participating in, or watching, the brawl.

  I walked through the hallway, peeking into each door I passed. After walking for a while, I finally found what seemed to be a master bedroom.

  Hmm, maybe this belongs to his parents?

  I walked in slowly, closing the door behind me and locking it to make sure no one walked in on my snooping.

  I made my way to their closet first, shuffling through clothes and boxes, looking for anything suspicious. I worked through the rest of the room as fast as I could, conscious that I probably didn’t have much time. Fights were good distractions, but they didn’t generally last very long. At least, I imagined that would be the case with Killian at the helm.

  Frustration filled me as I closed the bedside drawer and ran my fingers through my hair. Nothing.

  A chirp from behind me got my attention and I turned to where Solstice was fluttering in her golden finch form. She hovered near the base of the bookshelf, chirping incessantly.

  “Did you find something?” I asked, rushing over to her and kneeling beside the bookshelf. She bounced over the floor and I followed the trail with my fingers, finding a groove in the wood.

  The bookshelf opens!

  “Solstice, you wonderful little wyvern genius!” I exclaimed, beginning to pull books from the shelves. She chirped at me happily, swirling around my head. I felt a click as I pulled a red book back and it stuck in an angled position.

  The bookshelf groaned and then began to swing toward me, the bottom scraping against the floor in the same place as the groove. When I glimpsed the secret room, my jaw went slack.

  An obscene number of weapons glittered on the wall. Guns, knives, swords, bows—and… was that a grenade launcher?

  “What the heck?” I murmured as I stepped into the weapons closet.

  After my shock at the weapons faded, I noticed the safe built low into the center wall. Excitement rushed through me as I realized we might have found what we were looking for.

  I knelt in front of it and stared at the lock for a moment. My shoulders slumped in disappointment as I remembered I was not, in fact, a master safe cracker. With as much money as the Greens had, this safe was guaranteed to be high quality.

  Solstice chirped from my shoulder and flew over to the lock. A gold light burst into life at his beak, and then the molten energy slipped into the safe. A moment passed in silence, and then the safe swung open.

  “Go Solstice!” I said, patting her before checking out the contents.

  While I expected more weapons, or maybe jewels, I raised my brow at a simple filing cabinet. I thumbed the tabs until I came across one that took my breath away.

  Reid, my last name.

  I grabbed the folder and slowly opened it, not quite sure what I would find. The first document in the folder was dated over a decade ago. Anger rose like a tidal wave as I read the page. My dad’s death had been no accident, and Silver Lake Resort had covered it up. Specifically, Max’s parents had covered it up.

  “Bastards,” I growled.

  I stared at the page stunned, re-reading the words. Then I saw the letterhead.

  Knights of the Silver Order.

  Max’s dad was a Knight of the Silver Order, and he had covered up my dad’s death.

  The next document told me why.

  Me.

  As an undercover Knight, Mr. Green had felt my connection to dragonian magic and proceeded to make a deal with the water dragons to drown me before I could grow into it. My dad had died saving me from his treachery, so of course he had to cover it up.

  The document detailed his original deal with the water dragons and also his complicity in the actual ordeal, as it appeared, he was the one who had restrained the Lady of the Lake so that she couldn’t help—at least, not that night.

  Document after document cemented the fact that Max’s parents were unhinged. They were Traditionalists who, after the ordeal with James and Lily and the destruction of her high school by dragonfire, thought Ivar had become too soft. They were planning a coup, ironically with the help of the dragon magic they so despised, something Ivar himself was unwilling to do.

  When the initial attempt had failed, they began work to frame my mother for tax fraud, hoping to work the system against her to put me into the foster system. Then, if something happened to me, it would have been covered up as a run-away, another missing child cold case for the books.

  A devious plan, all because of what I was. A girl with a dragon for a soul.

  Ironically for them, killing my father was what had awakened me. I had created Solstice’s finch form, called her soul to me to seek justice.

  Justice I still intended to get.

  As I was putting the folders back, I saw a black file I had missed. When I opened it, the hairs on my neck raised.

  It contained photographs of me and my mother. In our home, at school, at work. Anywhere we had been in the last decade, there was a photo for it. They especially liked to photograph me with Solstice in her finch form. On one of the pictures with her golden form, there was a giant question mark.

  They’d known.

  And they’d tried to end it.

  Cold fury ran through my veins, and I worked at calming myself before realizing that Killian’s distraction wouldn’t last forever. I put everything back how I had found it and shut the shelf behind me. I put all the books back in their places, to the best of my memory at least.

  As I made my way back down the stairs, I passed framed photos that I hadn’t noticed before. They stuck out to me this time though, and my fury grew every time I saw a photo of the Greens looking like a happy family when they had torn mine apart.

  I walked into the room where the fight had been to see that it had been calmed, with Max on one side of the room held back by his jock buddies and Killian on the other held back by Evie’s Hovakim.

  Police sirens sounded from down the road making the whole room full of underaged drinkers scramble to run. I pushed myself through the chaos towards Killian and grabbed his arm. I ran for the kitchen, dragging him out the back door and around the property to the main road, for once glad that I grew up here and knew my way around.

  “I’m not done with him,” Killian growled.

  “You’re done,” I said, my words an order.

  We couldn’t afford to get locked up in jail or we wouldn’t get anywhere before it was too late and my mother got hurt. Or worse.

  Killian stopped in place as we turned left onto the main road. “Where are we going? Your house is that way, isn’t it?”

  We’d lost everyone else in the chaos, but my mind was spinning too hard to care.

  “We aren’t going to my house,” I sputtered, my brain screaming at me to hurry before Max’s parents found out I was back in town. They weren’t human, and I didn’t know if Max was in on their plans or just a pawn. Either way, I had to get to the bottom of this—fast.

  “We’re going to Silver Lake Resort. Max’s dad is behind this. All of it,” I bit out between clenched teeth. “If we are going to find any more information about what’s really going on here, that’s where it will be.”

  Killian questioned me about what I’d found, and I told him everything I’d seen.

  “We should go to James with this,” he said, his words a low, murderous whisper. If he’d been angry before, now he was pissed.

  “No.” I wasn’t going to let anyone else deal with my problems. Max’s parents had taken my father away from me. They were the reason I’d suffered and now I wo
uld deal with them myself. I couldn’t risk Knight politics getting in the way of justice—as ironic as that sounded.

  Plus, the Wild Dragons wanted Max. I still didn’t know why, but somehow, this was all connected.

  It had to be.

  Killian stopped in his tracks, his eyes growing wide as a new revelation seemed to hit him. “That’s what she meant.”

  I paused. “Who?”

  He glanced at me, his eyes nearly glowing in the diminishing light. “The Lady of the Lake. She told me that her hands were tied, that the war between Knights had gone too far. I thought she meant the war between the Knights and the dragons, but she was referring to an internal battle—one between the Loyalists and the Traditionalists.”

  “The Greens are Traditionalists,” I said, frowning. “According to their beliefs, anything remotely related to dragonian magic needs to die, by any means necessary, and I was harboring a Dragon Queen’s spirit right in their backyard.”

  They wanted me dead because of who I was, because my soul had bonded with Solstice.

  She keened in my ear. I reached up and scratched her head. “It’s okay, girl. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Killian scoffed. “And they were willing to work with the Wild Queen to take you out, a harmless child?”

  I ground my fingers into fists. “Not so harmless anymore.” They had pictures of my mother, too. I suspected they knew what she was, which meant they knew what I could become.

  To them, mixing dragonian magic with goddess blood—the same blood that created Excalibur—would be blasphemy.

  “Come on,” I said, my decision made. “Let’s find what other secrets they’re hiding.”

  Because Max was still a question mark, one I intended to figure out.

  We walked the rest of the way to the resort in silence. When we reached the grounds, I cut left and led us through the forest, this time keeping an eye out for security, although it felt like we were very much alone.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Killian asked.

  I knew this forest like the back of my hand. “I grew up here,” I explained. “Solstice and I would play through these woods, finding secret paths.” Including a backdoor into the resort to visit my mom before she’d started working from home.