Plight of the Dragon (28 page)

Marcus roared and dropped Kyra to the frozen ground. Standing, he stumbled several steps back and yanked the blade from his chest.
 

On the ice, Kyra rolled to her hands and knees, attempted to push herself up, but her strength refused to respond. Beneath her, beneath the ice, something moved, and she peered down intently, ignoring Marcus. Down in the depths of the lake’s water, below the ice-covered surface, a monster stirred, and he had shown his face to Kyra.
 

She gasped.

“Do you think a tiny blade such as this would stop me?” Marcus said, dropping the weapon as one might discard a piece of trash. Then Queen Shui crashed into him, dragged him away, and he was gone.
 

Kyra knew she should care, should follow their conflict and try to finish what she’d started, but her mind was crammed with thoughts of ginormous lake monsters. The ice shook, and Kyra fell to her side. The impact had come from below.
 

In those moments of chaos, multiple things happened. Marcus and Kyra’s mother roared. Her father called her name. Ryhuu cried out in a blood-curdling scream, and a deafening screech came from the sky. Drakhögg and Keahi were inbound. She imagined the Reapers smiling from ear to ear at the mess she had created by saving Marcus from drowning that day. A memory she preferred to forget. Her heart raced with anger, anguish, and anxiety.
If only I’d let Marcus die that day
.
 

A feeble sob, Talia’s, came from somewhere behind Kyra. She couldn’t see the witch; her sight was abruptly blocked by the arrival of her parents. They got in her face like they had done far too often before she’d run away to the carnival.
 

“Quickly, Kyra. Make a choice,” her mother said, grabbing hold of Kyra’s hands.
 

“You’re freezing, girl. Choose fire,” her father said.

Kyra raised her gaze to them and shivered. The ground beneath them rocked unsteadily, and clinging to the ice only chilled her deeper to the bone. The surface shook again, this time cracking and breaking. Large sections shifted, lifted, and tipped at angles.
 

“I am dying.” She closed her eyes. “And I have no dragon within me for a choice to matter.” She sighed and laid her head upon her folded forearms. She wanted to fight. If only she could gather the strength.

“You are dying a Moorigad’s death.” Her father dropped beside her. “Make a choice, and you will live to see another day.”
 

Was it true? Had she finally reached the point of choose or die? She didn’t believe them. Dying was her fate for being dragonless, and nothing more. Even so, if it were true, she refused to choose.
 

“I am forever Moorigad.” She gazed at them groggily.
 

The ice cracked open, a wide hole sliced by the thump of a colossal hide cut with spurs and spikes. Glacier-like sheets skittered and flew in all directions, and the frozen surface of the lake spider-webbed with cracks, separating everything into shifting chunks—islands of floating ice. A tail swept up from the hole, and then disappeared below.

“Choose now!” Queen Shui yelled.

Kyra balanced on the wobbling ice and stared at the space where the giant tail had been. She’d thought she’d seen a person hanging on. Blinking the hallucination away, she glowered back at her mother and yelled, “No! Don’t you hear me? I am Moorigad!”

Above, the sky quickened into a maddening swirl. Orange and red and blue blending into one muddy mess, and then,
zap
, out of the sky, like a beam of light in the form of a diving dragon, the colors rocked toward the lake. Orange, bleeding with red, blending into blue; the wildly welcomed colors of Kalrapura—Kyra’s dragon half. Then the colors slammed her in the chest. A tiny yelp escaped her lips, the glacier chunk tipped, and Kyra slipped into the water.

35

DOMINANCE

Marcus

Bitch tried to
gut me.
Irritating. They’re all so irritating. I cannot be part of this family, be it through blood or marriage. It would be humiliating.
Winning control of Kyra had failed, but that was no longer his primary concern. Marcus’s mind struggled with the revelations Bolsvck had dropped upon him. He didn’t want to believe in twisted plots or the royal redemption. Sure, he hated Davies. The man was a relentless thorn in his side, always trying to kill Marcus. But what would that man have stood to gain from destroying Marcus’s family?
 

Prying his arm free from the cursed Water Queen’s clench, Marcus kicked her under the chin, then burst into the form of his mighty dragon. Claw swinging wide, he caught Bolsvck across the chest. Stupid bastard had come to the queen’s aid. He should have stayed away, stayed safe while he could.
 

The ground quaked. Marcus’s wings flattened to maintain balance. The Water Dragon Queen slipped and slithered across the changing landscape like it was second nature. Wrapping around Bolsvck, she pulled him a safe distance from Marcus and the fracturing ice. A crater the size of a small coaster appeared beside Marcus, and the ‘berg beneath his feet hissed and moaned, dropping with the massive dragon’s weight. He lurched for the royal pair, but Bolsvck and Queen Shui were a claw-length out of reach. And then Leila was there, standing in front of him, manifested as dark and hallow as ever.

“I shall finish what she started.” She tipped her head back, and it was like the world around her was being sucked into a void. An ever-expanding void. Horror, depression, and anxiety assaulted him. His chest tightened, heart accelerated, and desire and strength plummeted. Nightmare upon nightmare melted into his every thought and feeling.

And just a quick as she had appeared, she was gone. He was him again, angry and irritated as ever.
Why did she leave?
 

A sound drew his gaze upward.
 

From out of the sky, in the timespan of a wing’s flap, two dragons dropped upon him, turning his battle for balance and struggle for sanity into a wing-flapping fight for dominance.

36

BLEEDING

Kyra

Biting harder than
ice, scorching deeper than fire; agony, anger, sorrow, and fever raged through Kyra’s veins, moving like an unchecked dragonling. She slipped beneath the water, welcoming Death into her embrace.
 

But Death did not come.
I can’t feel my toes.
Her dress dragged at her, pulling her like a weight. Not what she’d expected; dark, turbulent, and scratchy was the water. Frigid temperatures fought to squeeze the life from her body. Only, life did not depart. It lingered, struggling in a constant state of flux, causing her muscles to ache and her belly to churn with nausea.

Folds of fabric wrapped around her, confining her movements, and deeper into the lake she sank. And although she struggled for the surface, she discovered a water-free supply of oxygen she never craved. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew the lack of need held significance, but her mind was far too consumed with reflection. Maybe it was her life flashing before her. Or maybe it was nothing more than obsession, her eternal desire to succeed. She had failed to defeat Marcus. The outcome nagged at her, yet she was ready, eager even, to hesitate no longer and join Sebastian in death. If only her body would comply. What had that bolt of light done to her?

The current spun her in a circle, and something hard and rough cut across her side.
Mother
, she thought, peering after a large tail swinging around her. Except she knew better. This creature was different, larger, and far more battle-scarred. And then the voice began. A subtle vibration in the water, the whisper crowded everything else from her mind.
 

“Child of water and fire, why do you drift to your death?”
 

Drained by her internal change, Kyra did not answer, and so the voice continued.
 

“Death is a coward’s resignation. You are above such action. You are Moorigad. Choose life, and put an end to our persecution.”

The word
our
rang out above the rest. Was this creature calling himself a Moorigad? His scales were old, visibly worn, and his eyes spoke of years beyond reason.
Ancient
was the term Kyra would attribute to him, millions of leap-years older than any dragon she’d ever met. If he was indeed a Moorigad, that meant everyone she knew had lied. A choice was not required, merely
desired
. Heat exploded across her skin at a heart-stopping raw fever, and Kalrapura roared. Understanding filled Kyra and sent her blood soaring. She was on fire, internally on fire, and she love it. Craved it, even. Scales shifted across Kyra’s skin and then disappeared again. Her heart thrummed double-time and sudden, sharp awareness had her logging everything within her perimeter.
 

She had her dragon back. Kyra and Kalrapura were finally complete. And not only that, the change was still ongoing, fire and water bleeding into each other. Bleeding into one, becoming something different, something whole, something truly Moorigad. All the pain and suffering no longer felt important; it was the end result that held significance.
 

“You feel it now, don’t you?” the old dragon asked.
 

Before Kyra could answer, her mother appeared, and then both dragons disappeared in a mirage of bubbles and sediment.
 

A scream lodged in Kyra’s throat and exploded in a growl. Her body was shifting and transforming, leaving the girl behind and becoming the dragon. This time, the change was unlike any she had previously endured. Blood boiling, skin and scales shivering. The lake water around her bore the reflection and glow of the magical bleed.
 

Grumbles and growls in the water around her stilled, and the sense of isolation set in. Her mother and the old dragon were gone.
 

Kyra screamed, succumbing to her new self. Every bone, tendon, muscle, emotion, spiked with incinerating torment. Spasms took her, and red was all she saw. Red and red and spasm and red.
 

And then there was peace—harmony.

37

CONVERGENCE

Sebastian

Sebastian’s arms ached
with the pain of clinging to Anguis’s tail. Pain was good, a glorious thing. Pain meant life, and life meant another chance with Kyra. He wasn’t going to question how he was still alive. He was a Reaper, after all. All that mattered was Kyra. For the way he’d treated Kyra, he deserved getting whipped and thrashed through the water like a battered fish trapped on a line. A line attached to a whirling, runaway speedboat.
 

The second time Anguis swept his tremendous tail up through the broken ice and sweet air kissed Sebastian’s skin, he let go, tumbled to a stop upon the frozen surface. He bounced upright, verve zipping through his nerves and tendons. He was more than alive; he was strong, hearty, and sharp-witted.
 

“Shit,” he mumbled, taking in the scene. To his left, a dragon scuffle of epic proportion. A slight shift to his right, and there was his captor from earlier, the Water Dragon, clenching tight to his own head and screaming. Ahead, Kyra’s parents yelled at his father. A few yards beyond, Talia flailed on the ground.