Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2)

by Ripley Harper

  I could see she was dead serious, so I told her what I’d seen, careful not to leave anything out. When I finished my tale, she smiled, very faintly.

  “Jack Pendragon is wrong about you. Your magic isn’t broken; we simply haven’t found the key to unlock the power inside you. But you’re filled with it. You have more magic in you than anyone I’ve ever met, including your mother.”

  She said this to me in a voice that was hardly louder than a whisper, her eyes closed. For the first time I began to suspect that something might be seriously wrong with her, but I firmly put that knowledge aside, telling myself that Ingrid was indestructible.

  “The living human world,” she continued, “the one you experience as ‘here and now,’ is but one plane of existence. What you saw earlier took place on a mysterious and rarely experienced level of being called the dragonplane. It is usually only a master of magic that can fully access that dimension, which proves that you are far stronger than anyone realizes. Even you.”

  But I didn’t want to talk about the strength of my magic then. It didn’t interest me anymore, apart from what it said about me: about what I was or wasn’t. What I mostly wanted to know, I guess, was what I really looked like, or would look like someday.

  Whether I would be a woman or a monster.

  “Will I turn into one of those things one day?” I asked again.

  “The Pendragons have polluted the dragonline by inbreeding,” Ingrid said tiredly. “They are half-dragons, caught somewhere in between their human and dragon nature. A pure-blooded dragon is not shaped anything like the ones you saw earlier. Those poor creatures have been horribly deformed by their rash experiment.”

  But I wasn’t interested in the Pendragons any longer.

  “So what does a pure-blooded dragon look like?”

  She opened her eyes to give me a weak smile. “Oh, Jess. A real dragon is one of the rarest and most beautiful things on the planet, and nobody who sees one can remain unchanged afterward.”

  I still didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t. “Okay, I said, clinging to the last bit of hope I had, “but is it, like, human-shaped? Or has it got a tail and claws and wings and a big head on a long neck?” I laughed a little, as if the idea was totally ridiculous. Impossible.

  “A dragon is shaped like a dragon, little one.”

  My mouth went so dry I had to swallow before I could speak. “Are you saying I’m going to turn into an actual fucking dragon?”

  She shook her head, her eyes kind. “You’re not going to turn into one. Don’t you understand? You’re one already.”

  “What?”

  “When you used your dragonvoice on the Order’s court last year, some saw you in your true form. Those without a great deal of power were blinded by your dragonshine, but the strongest keepers there, the ones who could see glimpses of reality beyond this plane of existence, saw you change. I was too weak to witness it myself, but apparently you’re magnificent. The most glorious dragon anyone has ever seen.”

  “The most glorious…” I was almost struck dumb. “What?”

  “I was told that you’re larger than any dragon on record in the entire history of the Order of Keepers. And your scales are like jewels—diamonds and pearls and emeralds and rubies—and your eyes shine with the purest gold. Apparently, you’re so luminous you haunt the dreams of those who witnessed your true form.”

  “Are you. Fucking. Kidding. Me.”

  “You know I dislike it when you swear, Jess.”

  That might have been the moment when I finally lost it. When I became unmoored from my bearings and finally gave up all hope that anything could ever be the same again.

  “Because that’s the issue here? My swearing?” I heard my voice rising in pitch but I didn’t care. “You sit here and you tell me I’m a FUCKING DRAGON and I’m just supposed to nod my head and smile? Because my FUCKING SCALES shine like FUCKING DIAMONDS? Are you FUCKING INSANE?”

  She ignored my hysterics. “I realize it might be difficult to accept, at such a late age. If I had my way, you would have grown up knowing what you are. But your mother had other ideas.”

  My world was spinning. Literally. I felt nauseous and strange, as if I was sitting on a speeding rollercoaster instead of a sofa.

  “Did my mother turn into a dragon too?”

  “By the time she had you, she could change into both a waterdragon and a skindragon at will. But she only allowed herself that freedom on the dragonplane. On this plane of reality, she resisted transformation in order to raise you free of all magic.”

  I couldn’t take it in. It was simply too strange. The words themselves seemed ridiculous. Waterdragon. Skindragon. Dragonplane. Mulling over this last word, I sensed a faint glimmer of hope at last.

  “So are you saying I’ll only be a dragon when I’m, like, in another dimension? In the normal world, the one we’re in now, I’ll stay a human being?”

  “It depends on the strength of your magic. For centuries now, most of your kind have kept their human shapes throughout their lives. But for someone with as much power as your mother had, retaining their human form becomes increasingly difficult. It claimed her life in the end, as you know.”

  “I don’t know!” I clutched my hair in distress. “I don’t know anything of the sort! You told me she died because she stayed away from magic for too long! Not because she didn’t change into a dragon.”

  “It came down to the same thing, in the end.”

  I put both hands to my mouth but could not stop a distressed little moan from escaping my lips. “So are you telling me that I’ll either turn into a dragon one day—a real dragon, living on earth, in the normal world—or else I’ll die like my mom did? Those are my options?”

  “According to keeper lore, juveniles with great power usually need to transform into dragons by the time they reach their early twenties. The magic becomes too much for their human bodies to handle, and they have to change into a form that’s more suited to wielding magic.”

  Her words were too impossible to be true.

  “But… I can change back again, right? I only have to be a… a dragon… while I’m using my magic? For the rest of the time I’ll be normal? Like a, I don’t know… a shapeshifter?” My thoughts spun wildly as I desperately tried to grasp at any straw I can think of. “Or, you know, a werewolf that only changes shape during full moon?”

  “The transformation is permanent, I’m afraid.”

  I started laughing, a screechy, humorless sound. “So I have, what, maybe three years left before I change into a monster? Four? Are you fucking serious?!”

  “Dragons aren’t monsters, little one. An airdragon in flight is one of the most fantastic sights this world can offer. Waterdragons are graceful beyond belief, cavedragons are mysterious and delicate, and skindragons are so beautiful that humans cannot look upon them without weeping.”

  I stopped laughing. I was beyond hysterics now. “You’re totally serious, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “So what kind of dragon will I turn into?”

  “It depends on what kind of magic manifests most strongly in you one day.”

  “Oh my God.” I clutched my stomach, suddenly sick with desperation. “Oh my God.”

  “Your mother’s dearest wish, however, was that you would turn out to be the one the seaprophets talk about: the True Dragon, the one who will be all dragons, and none. According to the seaprophets, the birth of the True Dragon is the reason for the existence of the dragonline on this planet, and its coming will herald both the beginning and the end for all that comes afterward.”

  Her words stung me like a slap.

  This was real. All of it.

  There was no escaping my fate; no way out of this.

  Apparently, even my mom had wanted me to become a dragon.

  Later, when Jack Pendragon joined us again, it didn’t take much for him to convince me to wipe the entire night, and everything I’d learned about myself, from my mind.
I could clearly feel him using his bloodmagic to persuade me, but I didn’t care.

  I couldn’t have continued with my life, knowing what I did.

  And so I ignored Ingrid’s softly spoken pleas, and I allowed him and the half-dragons—those beautiful dead-eyed women who only changed into dragons in the world of dreams—to Enthrall me. Because all of them did it. To fog my mind, Jack Pendragon had to draw on the strength of his entire family, and I allowed it.

  I just wanted it all to go away.

  On that terrible night, I didn’t care that I was so obviously sabotaging myself, running away from the truth like a small child deluded enough to think that nobody could see me if I myself could not. I would live with any illusion, accept any lie or deception, if only I could believe, for a little while longer, that my life was not my life.

  It was one thing to have magic. To belong to a secret society of people with unusual powers and be destined for strange and important things.

  It was something completely different to be the monster out of a storybook. An honest-to-god dragon, with scales and a tail and fangs and heaven knows what else.

  I looked at my future, at the stark truth of it.

  And I chose a lie.

  *

  When I take off my blindfold, Jack Pendragon is standing in front of me, surrounded by all six of the Pendragon women. They look exactly like they did the first time I saw them. Beautiful. Passive. Chained.

  But this time I know them for what they are: half-dragons.

  I look at Zig and his family: the dragonslayers holding the half-dragons’ chains. I look at Ingrid and Gunn: the Dragonkeepers sitting on both sides of me. I look at my Skykeepers: forever bound to a dragonqueen.

  I have no idea what to say to any of them.

  In the end I break the silence anyway. “So Amber survived.”

  “You were the one who saved her,” Jonathan says, giving me a look I can’t quite read. “On the same night you helped Principal Sweeney to Heal my father. I’ve been meaning to thank you; it’s something I won’t forget.”

  “Why can’t I remember it?”

  “We have lifted the primary spell from your mind,” Jack Pendragon says. “The secondary illusions were placed there by your own consciousness to keep the primary spell in place, and we cannot lift it for you.”

  “I’ll never remember what happened?”

  He gives me that creepy too-wide smile, perhaps trying to be reassuring. “In my experience, secondary illusions usually wear off in time. You should have all your memories back within the next couple of months.”

  Oh. Okay then.

  I sit there for a while, just staring at the women and trying to understand what this means for my future. What this says about my past.

  In the end I look at Gunn. “Have you always known I would turn into a dragon someday?”

  His dark blue gaze is calm and steady. “I come from a line of Dragonkeepers that can trace it’s ancestry back to the time of the first Crusades. I knew I would serve a dragon almost from the day I was born, although none of us were sure you’d have the power to fully transform one day.”

  I think back on that night, so long ago now, when I offered myself to him, body and soul. I remember sitting on his bed in his robe, which he’d immediately put around my naked body, and listening to him tell me that he did not love me. That he could never love me. It is only now that I understand why, and the shame of it is enough to make me wish I was dead.

  I look at Ingrid. “Did my mom know that she would have to change into a dragon one day? And that I would too?”

  “Your mother knew what she was right from the start. So yes, she fully understood the choices she made. It was her dearest wish, however, that you be raised as an ordinary girl. She wanted you to remain untouched by your dragon nature for as long as possible.”

  I think about my mother. With a sharp pang, I remember the easy bond we always shared: a natural kind of intimacy where nothing was hidden and everything understood.

  All of it a lie.

  “Please don’t judge your mother too harshly for her decision. She only wanted what was best for you, little one.”

  I narrow my eyes at her, that old nickname suddenly making a different kind of sense. “When you call me ‘little one’, do you mean that I am a little dragon? Is that why you’ve always called me that? Is that how you see me?”

  She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. I know exactly how Ingrid sees me. It all makes sense now. If she’d thought of me as a girl, as a human being, she would never have allowed those monsters to torture me. Ingrid is a good person; there’s no way she would ever let a young woman in her care be starved and beaten and drowned and injured.

  But she could certainly do it to a dragon.

  I turn to my Skykeepers. “When you swore your loyalty to me, were you making your promises to me or to a dragon?”

  The sisters glance at each other, clearly confused. “There is surely no difference between you and dragon?” Iryna says eventually, her voice uncertain.

  “Last year at trial, only Iryna was strong enough to see your true dragonform,” Dasha says when the silence stretches out too long, trying to smooth things over. “But after we bonded together for your protection, we all have small glimpses of deeper dimensions, and we are highly impressed by your unmatched beauty.”

  “A firedragon is a figure out of myth and legend,” Michael adds, his face completely serious. “And yet we have seen one with our own eyes. We are deeply honored.” He bows his head respectfully.

  Oh my God.

  A firedragon.

  I think of the way Daniel fell to the ground earlier, clutching at his eyes when I lit up with the shine. A couple of hours ago I imagined he saw me burning like a fire, or perhaps that, to him, I looked like a life-sized version of the Oscar statuette lit up from within, beautiful and luminous.

  And all the time he was seeing a dragon. A firedragon.

  No wonder he’s still so sick.

  I look at Zig where he’s standing, silent and brooding as always, still holding the chains of two of the Pendragon women.

  “That’s what you meant when you said I was a monster. You knew I was going to turn into a dragon all along. You knew I’d only stay a girl for a short while longer.” My words are a statement rather than a question. Another piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place.

  “That’s why you said you’d kill me later—you’ll only do it once I’ve changed into a dragon.” I put a hand to my head, trying to stop the dizzying insights from overwhelming me. “Oh, my God. You’ll slay me, once I change into a dragon. You’ll strike at me with your sword of light and you’ll…” My words dry up when I look into his eyes.

  I expected to see him gloating over my pain, or sneering at me, or mumbling his old poem. But instead he remains silent, tightening his hold on Amber’s chains, and the only emotion I can read in his eyes is the one that’s the most difficult to bear, coming from an enemy.

  Pity.

  “I will only slay a dragon once it becomes a danger to the innocent,” he says quietly.

  I swallow the sudden bile at the back of my throat. “Does that happen often?”

  Zig looks down at the chains in his hands. “When dragons become too powerful, they almost always devour those around them.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “When you say ‘devour’—do you mean that they eat them?”

  He hesitates for a second, then gives a reluctant nod. “Sometimes, yes.”

  Oh God. I hug myself, trying to stop shivering. But I can’t. The room is spinning and my whole body is shaking and I’m making a high, keening sound that I don’t know how to stop.

  “See what you have done in your pride and your arrogance,” Zig tells Ingrid, his silver eyes gleaming with anger.

  “She will get used to the idea in time.”

  “She’ll love it, in the end,” Jack Pendragon adds confidently.

  But I’ve heard enou
gh.

  I get up. I run.

  *

  Later, when I’m lost in dreams, my sisters come to me.

  I remember, now, that they have often visited me in this way before.

  They beg me to forgive them. They were bound to the Alpha and had to heed him. They never realized they were deceiving me. They did not know they would cause me pain.

  I look at their glittering scales, their powerful tails, their long, sharp claws, their deep red eyes, their enormous gleaming wings.

  Then I look away again.

  Epilogue

  A couple of years ago, for Art class, I did a presentation on the twentieth-century surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

  Basically, he was this outrageous, totally crazy Spanish artist who did everything from sculpture to filmmaking, but he’s best remembered today for his paintings of melting clocks, his weird little moustache, and his eccentric lifestyle.

  The story goes that once, during some exhibition in London, Dali turned up wearing an old-fashioned deep-sea diving suit with a glass bowl helmet covering his face to express his belief that he operated “at the bottom of the sea of consciousness.” He was supposed to give a lecture, but nobody minded that he couldn’t speak. His audience loved his exaggerated gestures, his outrageous costume and his flamboyant disregard of what was expected. What they didn’t understand, however, was that he couldn’t breathe inside the soundproof glass bowl he was wearing over his head. The audience clapped and laughed as his movements became increasingly desperate. Nobody realized he was slowly suffocating.

  In the end, Salvador Dali was saved by a guy in the audience who used a spanner to unscrew the glass bowl from the artist’s head, leaving him gasping. So the story has a happy ending, at least.

  My own story, on the other hand, does not end well.

  After learning the truth about myself, all the joy I’d finally found in my magic and the new confidence I gained during my time in the desert disappeared overnight. Being a firemaster didn’t seem worthwhile or exciting anymore; I couldn’t enjoy the power it gave me or the insights it offered. Instead I knew it meant the beginning of the end for me: a juvenile dragon with so much power will have to transform one day, and soon.