The chirping of the crickets sounded through the entire cabin, all else was quiet in the house, too quiet. Aurelie's guilt ate at her now that her magic cooled and she no longer had it enticing anger.
Usually, when her aunt and uncle had gone out without her, Aurelie savored every moment of their absence because she could train as long as she wanted to, but tonight that felt like a betrayal.
She had to make it up to her uncle. Hurting him was like stomping on a baby bird that had fallen out of the nest. He never had a bad thing to say about anyone. Even when the Sproots overworked and underpaid him, month after month, he praised them for giving him work in the first place, and quickly defended them to Aurelie and her aunt whenever they complained about them. Whenever he and Aunt Elizabeth fought, though this happened very rarely, he was the first to apologize. This was not Aurelie's nature at all, but tonight, she was going to follow his example.
Aurelie carved one slice off of a beetroot, and traced it over her lips, combed her hair and let it hang down her back in puffy curls, then calmed the mess with damp hands. She intended to be on her best behavior and look the part as well. Uncle Kaiden insisted on her presence, and she deserved to suffer a bit after the way she spoke to him.
The path to the Sproot's manor was covered by thick trees, Aurelie could not see ahead of her whatsoever, but at least she walked the path often enough to know the directions off by heart. When she finally saw the lights of the manor, she had about a tablespoon of sand and pebbles in every shoe. She wore the uncomfortable ones tooâbecause Aunt Elizabeth loved them and by now her uncle would have told her what happened, meaning she had extra groveling to doâso her heels were done for.
As she came closer, a strange sound caught her attention. It was the whistle of the wind, strong and loud, but there was no wind outside. Not even a soft breeze. The air felt crisp and smelt like rain but was stagnant. Aurelie stopped for a moment and listened extra carefully. It definitely came from the manor. She walked faster, a pace away from breaking into a run before a strange, purple light caught her attention.
It emanated from the lower floor of the house. It rose up toward the ceiling and began to swirl. Aurelie's heart sunk and came up with a punch to her chest. Blackness crawled out from the center and merged with the purple light.
It was a shadow walker portal. She had never seen one anywhere before, only imagined it to life from the pages of her books. There was no mistaking it, though.
Her aunt and uncle sat at the table with big men standing behind them both. One of the men looked to have his hands on Uncle Kaiden's shoulders.
Aurelie crept along the tall hedges, keeping in the shadows of them, to get a better look. The men wore white and black uniforms, the colors of the Dranoirs.
This was it. The moment they feared. The Sproots sold them out to the Dragon King. Her grandfather was so sure that they would protect them. He bet all their lives on it. And here they were, seventeen years later, breaking their word.
Aurelie's pulse pushed into her ears, drumming and muffling out the howling wind that came from inside the house.
The Sproots stood with their backs toward the windows but it was not them that sparked the fire that crawled over Aurelie's eyes. It was not the guards or the portal that must have been carrying the King. No. It was the sight of Debil, sitting at the far end of the tableâa serviette tucked into his collarâcalmly eating his dinner as if nothing of significance was happening around him.
Aurelie tried to think of a way to help them but she was completely useless. If she were to run into that room, the Dragon King would have her too. She was forced to watch from outside as her aunt and uncle waited for their death.
The Dragon King did not want them because he feared they would overthrow him. Aurelie would bet her life that the thought had never even crossed his mind, even though Kaiden was the rightful King by birth. No, he wanted their magic.
The Dranoirs were the bats of the magical world. They were able to leech magic from anything and anyone who possessed it. The first Dragon King was a wizard and the leader of a rebel coven who plotted to overthrow the human kingdom. His members created a spell to siphon the magic of the dragons to him. They killed every dragon in Highfire with the spell but the magic remained, safely tucked within him. He was said to be so powerful that any injury he sustained formed thick dragon scale over the wound. However, with every coming child, he realized that his magic grew weaker as his power slowly began to divide itself among his children. He only died because his third wife, a High Council member from Halbrook, refused to sacrifice another one of her children to his endless need for magic. She stabbed him while he slept. Forty-five times in the heart, making sure that not even his scales could keep up with the damage she did.
Modern day dragons were not as strongâAurelie certainly did not grow scalesâbut they could be. Her father thoughts so, at least. They ran from him exactly for this reason. Eventually, they knew he'd find them, but hoped their deaths came sooner. Aurelie and Uncle Kaiden were the last remaining dragons except for her father.
The purple light dimmed in the room but the blackness remained. It appeared to be falling downward very slowly. The blackness curved at the top, molding something. As it continued downward, Aurelie saw a head and then a neck. Before long, dark silhouettes of two men stood in the room. They looked like living shadows, moving their heads to gaze over their surroundings.
Their color filled in quickly. She instantly saw her father. He looked almost identical to Kaiden from her distance, thick black hair and a sharp slightly left angled jaw. He was tall, but the man with silver hair that appeared with him was a head taller.
They looked like guests arriving at a party, clad in their fancy black uniforms, with a thick white stripe going across both their shirts. Aurelie saw a red smudge at the top of the white stripes. The dragon emblems. She knew it without having to have a closer look. Aunt Elizabeth made her memorize their uniforms at the age of five, to know when to run and hide if she ever came across one.
It felt unreal seeing him here with his guards and his shadow walker. She pictured an evil man, perhaps with red veins in his eyes and with a mouth that always bared its teeth, but as she looked at her father now, he just seemed like a man. Someone she could bump into in a tavern or a stall.
Tears welled in her eyes. He took more than a mother and a home from her. He took himself. She did not think of him often because her aunt and uncle were always enough, but sometimes when she was sad or felt vulnerable, she wished that he was not the monster everyone told her he was, and that he could be there to comfort her, to teach her how to use her power. To love her. Instead, he came to take away her only family.
When he fully appeared in the room, he smiled. A warm familial smile. If she did not know the people in that dining room, she would have thought that he was happy to see his brother.
Kaiden jerked his shoulders, and rose from his chair before the guard behind him shoved him back down. The guard's hand came up to his head and knocked his head against the table. Aurelie heard the knock from where she stood.
Her stomach turned.
"You bastard!" Aunt Elizabeth screamed. "How dare you? Will you let your dogs attack your only brother?"
Don't be a hero, please, Aurelie thought. Not tonight.
Her lip quivered. Sadly, this was just not the sort of person that Aunt Elizabeth was. She was the type to shout and argue, to fight back, and Aurelie looked up to her for exactly that reason. She did not lie down, she did not stay quiet, and she most certainly would not give up without at least trying to fight back. Despite knowing all of this, Aurelie prayed that she calmed down. She hoped that her aunt would somehow go unnoticed. Perhaps, the King would free her then and Aurelie would have someone. Her uncle was not going to come home that evening. Nothing had been clearer to her than that. But her childish hope had her heart frozen in her chest, hoping beyond the realms of reason that her aunt could still go free.
She's not a dragon, Aurelie thought as new tears formed and stung her eyes. Let her go. Please, just let her go. She followed her father's steady step around the room, pleading with him at every turn.
The guard who stood behind her aunt put his hand over her mouth and jerked her head backward. Aurelie put her own hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
The Sproots came to stand behind the dining table and covered Aurelie's view of her aunt and uncle. She moved her head but they seemed to have blocked her from every direction.
The King waved his hand. She did not see what for, but the purple light appeared around the silver haired man and he moved from his spot to where the Sproots had blocked her sight.
She knew they were speaking to each other, and saw the shadow walker portal expand, but to her, it almost looked like a painting suddenly. Everyone looked frozen in place from where she crouched. Nothing happened for the longest time . . . and then as if by the sound of an alarm, they all moved.
Mr. Sproot pulled out a chair for his wife. She sat down and Aurelie could finally see the chair her aunt had been seated in, but she was no longer there and when Mr. Sproot took a seat himself, Aurelie saw that her uncle's chair was empty too. Only the two guards, the Sproots, and the King remained in the room.
Loneliness crept over her, perhaps, for now, it had only been fear. She could not go back to their cabin. The Sproots would have told them all about it. The only reason the guards didn't show up there while Aurelie was getting ready was because everyone expected Aurelie to join them for dinner.
The King sat down and was served by the maid. They ate dinner while Aurelie watched them from her dark corner in the garden. She was too scared to move at the off chance that the King glanced out of the window at exactly the right movement. There was light inside the manor, so the outside would have been entirely blackened to them but that did not stop her legs from going numb or her breath from being so slow that it might as well have stopped altogether.
Her thoughts crawled into darkness, replaying the last words she had said to her uncle. She would never be able to apologize. Those words would be crowned as the very last she said to her uncle. Her vicious anger was set in stone, molded by her magic, but only molded, because she had never lost her mind entirely while trying to conjure fire, so despite having an easy target to blame, deep down she knew that the words were spoken from her core.