Page 4 of Prince of Blaze and Embers
The Stormscales took their chance, unleashing a devastating, coordinated attack upon the Blaze Prince, sending him and his huge dragon scurrying into evasive maneuvers as it rolled and dove away from the rebel dragonfires.
As the dragon battle moved back out over the South Cape Sea, I heard Bella and Garris both gasp in unison. I looked at both of them as their eyes went wide, peering in shock at the side of my neck.
“Ash…” Bella muttered, “your neck… it’s… glowing…”
“Huh?”
Bella dug her hand into her bag, fumbling for something, and pulled her small mirror free with shaking fingers.
I grasped it immediately, angling it toward my neck, and what I saw made my stomach drop. I felt both eyebrows raise, and a wind gusted through, blowing my long hair off my neck and behind my back, revealing to me what the two were awing over.
Upon my neck was a mark I’d never seen before, glowing in brilliant gold, in the shape of a curving crescent moon, streaks cast through it like rolling waves.
In the reflection, my free hand shot to cover my mouth. My jaw dropped, and my mind raced to figure out what the hell was going on with my body. I took a staggering step backward, nearlytoppling over as my knees wobbled. As the light glowed on my neck, I forgot all about the danger we were in, running my quivering fingers from my mouth to the golden light. And as my fingers glided over the light, a terrible pain shot through my mind like a pickaxe entering my ear, and a voice I’d never heard before spoke to me.
The voice was grim, hollow, commanding.
Its words took me, cutting through my defenses like a hot iron pike through a bar of velvety soap. The words were hallowed in my mind—deep like bedrock in an ancient cave.
“It is time. You must free me. You’ve awoken to your true self, and so you must awaken me…”
CHAPTER 2
The strength in my body fizzled away to nothing, and my whole body felt like it was bearing the weight of a giant moose on my back. A daze took my mind as the events whirled like a cyclone in my head.
Magic. I had just used magic. Me.
I tried to force myself to wake up from the dream, but the smell of burnt flesh still filled my nostrils. This was no dream. My hands were trembling, not from pain—but from something else. Something alive. My heart thundered like it wanted out of my chest, and the air around me shimmered with the echo of whatever I’d just done.
Magic.
I had used magic.
The word hit me like a slap—wild, impossible, illegal.
I looked down at my hands, half-expecting them to be glowing or scorched or changed somehow. But they were still mine. Dirt-streaked. Callused from years of scrubbing floors and hauling buckets. But they didn’t feel like mine anymore.
They felt… powerful.
A spark lit in the hollow of my chest. Not warmth. Not safety. But something sharp and addictive.
I had power.
Me.
A slave.
I didn’t know whether to run from it or fall to my knees in worship.
When we entered the forge, I got the overwhelming feeling my life would never be the same.
Sure, the smoke from the bellows smelled the same; the sounds of hammers hitting hot iron rang in my ears dully. This was my home—and I hated it.
So, a new life didn’t really seem all that bad. And as Garris led us into the back room immediately, all eyes from the other slaves were on Bella and me. Even after a dragon attack, a fucking dragon attack! They still forced us to work nonstop, pounding, polishing, riveting, fitting, organizing, sweeping, mopping. As if dragons didn’t just set roads ablaze and fry innocent people in the alleys between. As if I didn’t just use magic.
Garris took us into the dark room, shutting the wooden door behind him.
We knew how this went now. I just dearly hoped he only whipped me and not Bella. She didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who talked back, and this time I didn’t care. I could take the pain. I had done it before, and I would do it again. What’s different this time is that I couldn’t get that voice out of my head.
