by Martha Woods
The Dragon’s Redemption
Book 1 Of The Dragon Prince Series
Martha Woods
Contents
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1. Nol
2. Alicia
3. Nol
4. Alicia
5. Nol
6. Alicia
7. Nol
Epilogue
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PREVIEW:
The Vampire’s Desire
Chapter 1
© 2018 Martha Woods
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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1
Nol
I experienced a lightness I hadn't felt in years.
The ground receded beneath me, drifting further and further away. I beat my mighty wings, propelling myself further and further upward. Abuzz with a thrill I'd nearly forgotten. My veins pulsing with a level of power, of control, that had been denied me since my youth.
Youth... What a far off thing it had come to seem. Though I was hardly up there in years, I still felt as though a lifetime had been stolen from me. As though my oppression at the hands of my enemies had taken away the only chance I might have had to be young and free, and I could never get it back again.
Or, in any case, I normally felt that way.
Now, though. Now, everything was different. It was like some salve had been spread over me, eating away at the years, rejuvenating the young, hopeful self that had once been there beneath the surface of time and its effects on me. I was alive again. I knew an optimism that had been denied me, which I'd felt for so long I surely had no right to.
I threw myself up into the sky, not looking back for a moment, not daring to question how this could possibly be. How I might be knowing such freedom, such a beautiful escape from the chains that had bound me for so long.
I soared. I weaved across the clouds. I was magnificent.
My stomach rose and fell, and I kept thinking with every moment, every move that I made, that I would surely lose control. It had been too long. I was too out of practice. Too out of my depths.
And yet I remained aloft. I flew steadily, undeterred by any fear, any doubt I might have had.
I had lived for so long under the yoke of such negative forces, burdened beneath them, and I had no intention whatsoever of succumbing any longer.
I just kept soaring. Upward, and upward.
Indeed, rather than be drawn down, I exerted myself in the opposite direction. Climbing dangerously high, a reptilian Icarus, growing nearer and nearer to the sun with every great stroke of my wings. Ice crystals began to form on my wings as I veered above the cloud bank, bathing myself in a rich golden light. The air grew thinner. My muscles became tense, and each movement I made became more difficult to sustain, requiring more and more effort, an abundance of energy I didn't truly possess.
And yet the harder it got, the more intense the struggle, the more I found myself loving every blessed minute of it.
I let out a mighty roar, claiming dominion over all that lay before me. The sea of fluffy pinkish clouds. The tops of the trees, swaying beneath my feet. The birds of the air. The cities and fields down below. All of it was mine. My birthright, and that of my entire family. And I was letting the entire world know it, in a display of unmitigated pride- an emotion that had been in such short supply for so long among us, but which had been restored at last- by what means, I didn't truly know.
Feeling at the height of my abilities, wholly in control of myself and my destiny, I found that I could no longer contain the sense of radiance, glowing from within me, spreading rapidly throughout my entire body. It formed in my chest and it rapidly accumulated. It ran through my neck, tickling my throat, and at last I had no choice but to grant it such a long awaited release.
I opened my jaws wide. I closed my eyes. I breathed.
Golden fire billowed out from the depths of my soul, searing the air in front of me, distorting the vision of my surroundings in curtains of searing heat. Smoke billowed from my nostrils, and I felt the pressure relieving in my chest. A great relief flooded over me, as though this was something I had needed to do for a very long time, but I had never had the freedom to do so until now.
And yet I realized, as the flames continued to lick and to twist from my tongue, that it was a freedom I had had to earn. It was not a freedom anyone had given me, but one that I had had to seize. And now that I had done so, there was no turning back. No doubting myself any longer. No going back to the way things were.
And then, at last, the fire cleared away.
It took a moment for me to recover from the adrenaline of it. My chest still heaving. Ears ringing. My limbs seeming to burn with a fire of their own, all the way to the very tips of my powerful talons, as if my very soul was aflame.
And that was when I saw it.
My narrow, slitted pupils dilated. My scales stood on end. The rushing clouds all around me seemed to freeze in place, haphazardly in the sky.
A second dragon. Longer. Bulkier. Mighty and majestic.
It couldn't be– and yet I knew that it must be.
He shouldn't have looked as large as he was, given his age the last time I had seen him. He should have been scarcely larger than myself. And yet it was as if I was seeing him through the eyes of a child, as I had all those years ago. With total reverence. Total humility. The abundance of my own powers wholly dwarfed by those of the figure before me. Like some mythical figure, a god.
I simply hovered there, confounded, unable to believe my eyes. I stared and stared at the serpentine figure silhouetted against the sunlight, his features obscured by shadows, but his true identity unmistakable.
I opened my mouth. I tried to speak, but the words kept getting caught in my throat, coming to me with far more difficulty than the plumes of nuclear flame that I had just expelled.
“F- father?” I finally managed to whisper, with a voice I scarcely recognized.
The figure continued to hover slowly. It hardly needed to fan its wings to remain stationary, as though suspended in air by invisible strings, or else simply such an impressive mass of being that it possessed its own unique gravitational forces.
At last, though, it stirred. The thin, black, snakelike head turned. A single, golden eye glowed brilliantly at me, staring back, with some quality I couldn't quite define. Pride, perhaps, or the opposite. Deep shame in my failure. Or maybe neither. Perhaps a look of defiance. What are you waiting for? it seemed to ask. Take back what is yours.
Whatever it might have meant, I couldn't stand to peer into it any longer. There was no longer any doubt in my mind, and I knew that I could no longer restrain myself.
“Father!” I shouted, th
is time certain of myself, and unable to fight against the urge to go to him.
I beat my wings, and launched myself in his direction, my heart racing faster than ever.
I soared through the clouds with the swiftness of a paper airplane, pockets of air rushing past me, stinging my eyes, causing tears to stream back across my face as I went. I flew and I flew, and yet I found, as the moments ticked on, I didn't seem to come any closer. The clouds were indeed rushing past. I should have been making steady progress. Yet the more and more I flew, the dragon in the distance seemed to remain stationary. It was like flying toward the sun itself, or the moon.
I began to panic.
“Father! Father, please! I'm coming for you! I'm coming father!”
But no matter how desperately I flew to him, still he drew no closer.
Horrified, I watched him turn his head slowly back, the golden eye disappearing from view once more. All the hope, all the pride I had felt just moments ago turned to shame. To defeat. The clouds became ray. They growled, and they roared. Lightning fractured the turbulent sky, and rain hacked violently down, painful as it belted my thick hide, which seemed not to protect me in the least from the force of its falling.
“No! No!” I shouted, unwilling to give up, unwilling to surrender, after I had at last come so, so close.
And that was when I saw it.
I massive burst of chain lightning, strobing across the sky. The clouds themselves seemed to open up, like a black hole in reverse. Pushing out a shadowy, serpentine figure from its center. Dwarfing any of my kind, or indeed, any living creature I had ever seen. The monster’s jaws opened as it emerged from the chasm. Its powerful teeth ripped open like stitches, reaching like an open hand around the dragon in the distance, whose own impressive size now seemed like nothing in comparison.
“Father! FATHER!” I cried desperately, straining with all my might to reach him in time, beating my wings so hard that they might snap from my body.
But none of it was of any use.
The powerful jaws cut through the air. The beast's mouth closed like a fist, engulfing the figure completely. My father was no more.
I wept. I screamed. I roared. I pushed toward the monster with all my might, certain that I was little more than a gnat to the likes of such a beast, yet determined to have my vengeance. To destroy him. To obliterate him to his smallest components, or else to die in the attempt.
And then the blackness engulfed me.
I tumbled, spiraling dizzily out of control.
I awoke, screaming. Eyes wide. My naked body drenched in sweat. The jet-black tattoos of serpents, twisting over the plains of my muscle, glowing a brilliant white with perspiration. I threw back the covers, feeling as though I would surely catch fire beneath them for a moment longer. I rose from the bed, and began anxiously pacing the length of the bedroom, trying to outrun the violent beating of my own heart.
“Damn it... Damn it! God, dammit!!” I kept whispering to myself, unable to get my nerves under control. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't real. That it was only a dream, and that I should know better than to conflate it with reality. And yet I found it impossible to be able to do so, for deep down I knew the truth.
Though only a dream, it was as much my reality as the very room that surrounded me. And it would continue to be, until I finally sacked up and found the balls to make the changes that I knew so well needed to be made.
My temples were still pounding, when suddenly there was a knock on the door. It took me a moment to think how to respond to this, but in the end, it proved not to matter. The door opened before I arrived at any response whatsoever, and in stepped Fri, his brow furrowed, a concerned expression across his bearded face.
“Are you alright, brother?” he asked me, although it must have been clear from the glance I gave him in return that I was far from alright. “You were shouting terribly in your sleep, it woke me.”
In a more alert state, I would have restrained myself from responding to him in the way that I did. But I was still terrified, still furious, and although I knew Fri cared about me, more than anyone else in the world, he was still the nearest available target at that moment, upon whom I could project my own serious failings.
“No, Fri, I'm not alright!” I barked at him. “Nothing about our entire goddamn lives is alright, in case you hadn't noticed!”
Fri studied me for a moment, then sighed, and shook his head.
“Oh, God... Not this again...”
“Yes, this!” I spat contemptuously at him, as though he had been the one in the dream opening up his mouth, and swallowing up our father alive. “And what do you mean, again? When in our lives has any one of us done a damn thing to fight for what was ours? When have we done anything but whisper under our breaths about the unfairness of it all, but then go on living as nothing more than indentured servants on our own family's land? I'm sick of doing nothing, Fri! I feel like I'm losing my mind, and it gets worse every day! The Dark Ones think they can keep taking and taking from us! Pushing us onto smaller and smaller fragments of what's ours... And do you know why they think that, Fri? Because we let them! Because we refuse to fight! We have refused, since the very beginning, to tell them no!”
Fri, far more calmly, far more level-headed than myself, held his gaze steadily on my own, and the sight of his amber irises sent a chill along my spine– putting me in direct mind of the eye I had just seen in my dreams, snuffed out like a candle in the dead of night.
“We refuse to fight,” he responded, just as calmly, though with clear tension in his voice, “Because it would be the end of us, Nol. Of everything. The Dark Ones outnumber us a thousand to one. The moment we raised even our little finger in resistance against them, they would crush us like insects. You know that. I know that. Ynder knows that...”
I scoffed at this, my blood boiling somewhat at the mention of the brother who'd abandoned us.
“So there it is,” I snarled, giving him an exaggerated nod. “Here's what this entire conversation is really about! Ynder. The one who gave up the ship. The one who told you it was hopeless, that nothing could be done, and said it so often that he hoodwinked you into believing it!”
“Look, Nol, I'm sorry,” said Fri, still more patient with me than I likely deserved in that moment. “But you were very young. You cannot remember clearly what it was like, or how lucky we truly are that the Dark Ones didn't obliterate us at the outset. And as for Ynder, you must know that he has truly lost more than any of us. Would not he, of all people, be of some authority on the costs and benefits of going to war with these sons of bitches? Say what you will about him, but our eldest brother is no fool. I understand your frustration, brother. I share it too, but– “
“But nothing,” I interrupted him, and stormed past him, slamming into his shoulder as I went. “If you truly understood, you would not be lying down as a sheep, awaiting it’s time to be slaughtered.”
“And just what do you plan on doing about it? Nol? Where the hell are you going at this hour?”
“Out.”
“The hell you are! Get back here! Nol, I know you're frustrated, but if you're about to do what I think you're about to do, you're going to get us all killed!”
I had every intention of doing exactly what he thought I was going to do. I marched out down the steps of our rickety little shotgun shack, and marched into the clearing, eyes up at the full moon. The air was ice cold against my naked body as I stood there in the crisp grass, particularly with the abundance of sweat still coating the planes of my muscle, but I didn't care.
“You know that shifting is off limits!” Fri barked at me, his voice laced with desperation now that it was clear I was serious, and that he would almost certainly fail to deter me. “You could be seen! Either by the humans, or by the Dark Ones themselves! And in either case, the results would be disastrous!”
“To hell with the Dark Ones,” I said, trying to suppress either possibility in my mind. “I'm tired of this, Fri. I refus
e to hide who I truly am any longer. These lands once belonged to us, to our kind, and I will not be ashamed of that fact a day more. And if the Dark Ones have a problem with that, just let them try and stop me.”
“Nol! Nol, come on! Be reasonable!” Fri pleaded with me, and I admit I had to suppress a surge of pity toward him at the tone in his voice.
“I'm sorry Fri,” I said, more determined than ever as I gazed up at the night. “Living reasonably for so long has backed us into the corner in which we now find ourselves. I much prefer to live fearlessly...”
And with this, I refused to hear any further arguments.
Mustering up my strength, and only partially sure that I would be successful up until the moment of truth, I closed my eyes. I held my breath. The power I had experienced in my dreams coursed through me, and my body began to grow.
It was, truly, like waking up from a very long sleep.
My frame expanded. My bones settled into new positions. My knuckles cracked, and my nails curled into vicious talons. My teeth sharpened, hooking down from my gums. A protrusion formed at the very base of my tailbone, and pushed out along the undergrowth, spikes erupting along the spines of my powerful new limb, as it swished back and forth through the surrounding leaves. I felt the fire erupting in my chest, in my very veins. And then at last, I felt the jutting bones through the scale coated flesh of my back. Stretching out, waving like twin flags on either side of my body. The webbing between each phalange pulled taut, and I beat them slowly through the air, the wings feeling stiff after having remained out of use for so very long. Quickly, though, they limbered up, and once again I angled my face toward the sky, determined to reclaim dominion over the heavens themselves.
I didn't even bother to look down again, wholly uninterested as I was in seeing the look of disapproval on my brother's face. Instead, I beat my wings as hard as I could and, with a brief running start, shot up off of the ground. I circled around, like a maple seed in reverse, and crested the tops of the trees, feeling giddy as I grew further and further airborne.
