New Beginnings

by Jada Fisher

  Oh. So that was where all those initiates had met their new soulmates. Ukrah felt an uncharacteristic rush of jealousy. If she had just been a little earlier, she could have a connection like that too.

  “This way,” the man said, pulling Ukrah to the left toward a back wall.

  Eist made a strange sound before speaking. “This is the direction I went to find Fior.”

  “You remember that?”

  Ukrah wanted to pitch into the conversation, but she was just so exhausted.

  “Every second of it. You never forget when you first meet your dragon.”

  Was that true?

  Wait… Was that why they were there? But all the dragons were gone. Everyone had said so. The whole floor was empty, with not even broken shells remaining.

  And yet the grandfather kept walking, leading her deeper and deeper into the cave. Oddly enough, the supports and structures seemed newer as they went deeper, as if the part they were in had been rebuilt within the past decade or so.

  Finally, they stopped, and Ukrah wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a thicker and deeper layer of hay.

  “Grandfather, there’s nothing here.”

  “That’s what I thought at first too.” He let go of Ukrah and both of Eist’s arms wrapped around her shoulders to support the desert girl. The elderly man knelt, pushing hay aside until a very, very old piece of wood was revealed. “Until my toe caught the edge of this.”

  Eist shivered, and that certainly got Ukrah’s attention. “Is this…what I think it is?”

  “It is.”

  Ukrah looked at the board, trying to understand its significance. It looked to be normal at the edges, but the center had obviously been burned, the middle as black as night. The cracks running out from its middle, tiny and intricate, almost reminded her of lightning.

  “That can’t be.”

  “It is. I swear it. Now set her down in front of it and help me lift it for her.”

  Ukrah had never really heard someone tell Eist what to do, but the God-Woman hopped to it almost instantly. There was a bit of maneuvering, but eventually, Ukrah was seated on the hay in front of the debris, and the two were standing on either side of it.

  “On the count of three.”

  It was an awful lot of pomp and circumstance for just a board.

  “One.”

  Wouldn’t it be so silly if there turned out to be nothing under there? She’d heard so many stories about the intricate way the caretakers nurtured the next generation of dragons. How could they have missed an egg just because of a bit of wood?

  “Two.”

  That was as if someone lost a chest full of gold just by putting it under a blanket. It just wasn’t believable.

  “Three!”

  The two of them heaved, and with a groan, the board did indeed lift from the ground, sending dirt and bits of old, gray hay raining down. Ukrah watched, ready for only disappointment, but that feeling stopped dead in her stomach when her eyes landed on a scarlet, shining egg sitting in the middle of a crater.

  “I… I… I…” What were words? What was language, even? She didn’t know. The entire world narrowed down to just the resplendent, blood-red oval in front of her. Light shimmered across it, whispering of life, strong and vital and perfect in every way.

  “By the spirits, I knew it! I knew it!!”

  Eist was screaming, Ukrah was faintly aware of that, but it hardly mattered. No, only the egg mattered. It was her egg. She could feel it all the way down into her every bone, into her soul. It was stitched into the very fiber of her being.

  “Wait, what kind of egg is that? It’s much too red for—”

  Ukrah stopped listening. Their words didn’t matter anyway. Her body was filled with a new sort of energy, one she hadn’t felt since before she was speared through with a crossbow bolt. Her hand came up, reaching out toward the egg.

  She wanted to touch it. She was drawn to it in a way that made her feel like she would explode if she wasn’t touching it. And yet, there was also an uncertainty, a sort of fear of everything that could be.

  The moment seemed to be suspended in time, just like it had with the guards. So much energy flushed around and through her, connecting her to everything. It wound around her, into her, centering on the egg in front of her.

  Finally, her fingers touched it. It was surprisingly rough for how smooth it looked, hatched into a scaled sort of pattern. She dragged her palm across it, feeling it cut into her skin, but that seemed so right. A blood sacrifice to the thing that was reaching into her soul.

  Eist was right, there wasn’t a single moment of seeing her egg for the first time that she would ever forget. She could stare at it for all of eternity, never moving from her spot.

  “It… It isn’t hatching,” Eist said, her voice leeching back into Ukrah’s mind. “Shouldn’t it be hatching? Dragons always hatch when they touch their rider.”

  “It seems healthy enough. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with it.”

  “What if it’s a dead egg?”

  “It’s not a dead egg, Eist. It wouldn’t shine like that if it was. I tell you, there’s a living creature in there.”

  “Then why isn’t it hatching?”

  “Because he’s not ready,” Ukrah said, finally pulling her palm away from the egg. When she looked at her skin, there was a series of scratches in it, thin lines of blood bubbling up from the surface. But as she watched them, they scabbed instantly, then those scabs fell off, leaving long, white lines all across her skin.

  It should have been horrifying, but it was anything but. It was beautiful, a visual symbol that she was connected to the egg in front of her. A mark that reflected what she felt pressed into every bit of her body.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  She shrugged and got to her feet. The others jumped to help her, but she held out her hands. She didn’t need help to take care of her soulmate. She was once more drenched in those same feelings of needing to protect and nurture.

  It hurt to not be touching her egg, so she bent down and picked it up. It was quite heavy, but at the same time, it felt perfectly right. Strong and secure in her arms, warm against her chest. It was her whole future.

  “You shouldn’t be carrying that,” Eist said, coming forward and arms outstretched.

  Ukrah didn’t know what possessed her, but she took a step back and snarled at the God-Woman, teeth bared. The woman slowed, quickly raising her hands.

  “Okay, hold on, I’m not going to hurt you. Are you sure you’re okay to carry it on your own?” Ukrah nodded, her hackles fully raised. She knew that Eist definitely wasn’t going to hurt her, but she didn’t want the woman to touch it. She didn’t want anyone touching her…child? No, that wasn’t it. Her partner. Her soulmate.

  Her dragon.

  She had lied to herself when she had thought she didn’t care much if she got into the academy. That she was only doing it for Eist. She knew now, to the deepest core of her being, that she was meant for the little guy that was in her egg.

  She couldn’t wait to meet him.

  But first, she needed to take care of him. He couldn’t nest in the hatchery all alone anymore. That was too lonely, too cold. There was a reason he had laid so quietly under that piece of wood. He needed warmth. Love.

  Protection.

  Yes. That was it. She would go home. She would build him a nest. She would make sure that the world was warm and cozy and perfect the moment he hatched.

  Driven by that purpose, she took a shaky step toward the door. Then another. As she built momentum, she found it easier to go along, the hole in her middle hardly even throbbing.

  Eventually, she made it into the cabin. And then out of the cabin. There, Fior was waiting for them, pacing. But he wasn’t alone.

  “There you are!” Crispin said, taking a couple of quick steps toward her before he seemed to realize what she was holding.

  “Is that—” He let out a happy sound. “Did
you find your egg?” he yelped, rushing toward her. For some reason, he didn’t make her react like Eist did, and she only smiled softly as he joyously gripped her arms. “I can’t believe it! You have your own egg! And it’s so big! And shiny!”

  His happiness was infectious and although the need to protect was pulsing in her chest, she also let his mirth fill her. She was never going to be alone again. She had a best friend and companion who had been born just for her. How lucky was she? All that pain, all that fear from before softened, coated in the knowledge that somehow, someway, she was meant to get this far.

  “I do. I really do!”

  Crispin let out a hoot, which had to hurt his face, before he looked to Ukrah with such earnestness that her breath caught.

  “Can I touch it. Please?”

  That gave her pause. She hadn’t let Eist touch it. The thought of anybody daring to touch it made her want to punch and kick and tear. But as she looked Crispin over, she realized she didn’t feel any sort of reluctance at all.

  “Yeah, you can,” she said with a nod.

  The beaming smile on his face was truly brilliant, and gently—as if he was touching the finest of glass—he pressed his palms against the surface of her egg.

  Ukrah had no words for what happened next. One moment, the two of them were standing there, and the next, everything changed.

  The same energy that she had felt in the desert and both times with the guards in the forest erupted from her. But instead of being on the offensive, it was… It was celebrating.

  It wasn’t alone either. There was another type of energy right with it, rushing and surging and full of life. It soothed and cooled while at the same time being so bubbly and happy that it was almost impossible not to laugh.

  The two magics grew and stretched, wrapping around each other, bucking, sparking in their dance. Ukrah was surprised that her feet didn’t lift from the ground, the feeling was so full of levity. Of happiness.

  “What in the spirits’ name is going on here?”

  It was only the shocked voice of a grizzled old man that managed to interrupt the happy, intoxicating celebration, and suddenly, all of it vanished, leaving Ukrah staring into Crispin’s swollen eyes.

  They were both breathing hard and both still touching the egg. They stood there, panting, until Eist whistled.

  “I realize that this should be very alarming, but it’s hard not to think that it’s kind of beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?” Ukrah asked.

  Ukrah tore her eyes away from Crispin and went to object, but the words died on her tongue. That was mostly because, spread out in a circle around them, was a thick burst of flowers, shrubbery, and plants that had most definitely not been there before.

  “We didn’t do that, did we?” Ukrah asked only to have a vine crawl forward and up her foot, almost like a child reaching for its mother. Once it touched her, it burst into a beautiful length of flowers.

  “I am almost certain you did,” Eist said, shaking her head. “Alright. So, this has been quite the day. Why don’t I have Grandfather and Fior get you back to the healers while I go talk to the council about how you’re both going to join them next year.”

  “But I’m not magic!” Crispin objected. “I’m not a witch, or a legend, or anything like you guys.”

  “Well,” Eist said with a shrug that most definitely didn’t make sense in the situation. “The evidence points to otherwise. If I were you, I’d get ready for a lot of changes coming up.”

  “I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this!” her grandfather objected, his eyes darting around like he was trying to catch up with the situation. Ukrah didn’t blame him, because honestly, she felt a bit like that too. Suddenly, she had gone from recovering from a strange wound that she thought she healed to having a dragon and also some sort of strange, magical reaction to Crispin.

  It was all a bit much, and she just wanted to get her egg to safety.

  “Well, I did once have to pretend to be the All-Mother to talk to my own mother before she had me, and also myself, so let’s say this isn’t nearly the strangest surprise I’ve had. Anyway, once I’m done with the council, I’ll talk to the healers about taking you back home tomorrow. I’m sure you want to build a nice little nest for your egg.”

  Ukrah nodded, and that was that. They all went about fulfilling Eist’s orders, even though it certainly did take a good chunk of time to get Ukrah up and into her cot. The healers were all fairly upset that she had been gone so long, but each of them fell silent when they saw what she carted in with her.

  They were actually pretty nice about it. They brought over a basket that was normally used for linens and filled it with hay and soft scraps of cloth. It would do for overnight, but Eist was right: Ukrah would want better for her dragon, whenever the little guy was ready to come out.

  In the end, Crispin also ended up pulling up a cot on the other side of her egg, claiming he was too exhausted to make the journey back to Eist’s estate. Ukrah believed him, but she was also sure that he was at least a little influenced by both the egg and whatever had happened between them. She couldn’t quite tell if he was scared or hopeful, but that was probably because her mind felt like it was coated in a thick layer of sleepy syrup, brought on by the sheer exhaustion within her.

  The last things she remembered before she drifted off, hand on her egg, was a little desert finch flying in and landing on her chest.

  I see you’ve found another one. Who would have known that it was hiding under our noses the whole time?

  “What?” She was relieved to see Tayir. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she had missed the little guy and his grousing. She felt like what he was saying probably made sense, but she was too bleary and overwhelmed from everything that had happened.

  Your world is being reborn, Ukrah. There are powers to be wrought and taken. Just make sure that you guard it carefully, because there’s so many people who would wrest it from you.

  She tried to answer, but her eyelids were already so heavy. She felt herself slipping under, but she still caught Tayir’s words as he spoke.

  You have to protect them, Ukrah, or we all die.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you so much for reading New Beginnings, the second book in the Rise of the Black Dragon series. Ukrah has just begun to glimpse her destiny, and it now involves a dragon, or at least a dragon egg. Either way, she knows her future holds big things, she just has no idea how big yet.

  The next story in the Rise of the Black Dragon series will be available soon, so keep an eye out for it on Amazon.

  While you’re waiting for the next story, you should check out the Brindle Dragon series which set the stage for the Rise of the Black Dragon series. The first book in that series is called Chosen and features the beginning of Eist’s quest to become a dragon rider.

  Get Chosen here:

  amazon.com/dp/B07LCT7ZCN

  I really enjoy hearing what readers think so if you could leave a review for me on Amazon, that would be really cool.

  And lastly, if you want to be the first to hear about new releases and special offers, be sure to sign up our Fantasy Reads Newsletter. We have a lot of fantastic stories planned and can’t wait to share those with you. All the information is on the next page.

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