Page 4 of Dragon Valley
“Having families? No one in their right mind marries a female Rider,” I scoffed. “I’m practically married to Dusa, anyway.”
“That can change,” Azel retorted. “There are more female Riders now than ever before.”
“But a man can still have his harem of wives while a woman can only have one husband,” I retorted, pulling away from his embrace. “So while his Rider wife is away for weeks to feed her family, he’s stuck with fucking the younger, prettier ones at home. What a life.”
“I didn’t invent the old traditions, Nadi,” he argued, his lip curling with frustration.
“That won’t stop you from partaking in them,” I shot back. “After all, they’re in place to benefityou.”
“How do you know I’ll partake?” he challenged, his nostrils flaring.
“What?” I laughed. “So you’ll be like an outsider? Pledging your loyalty to one wife while keeping your mistresses a secret? Why go through the trouble?”
“What if there’s only one woman I want? What if all others pale by comparison?” He leaned in so close to my face, he could have spit on me or kissed me. I couldn’t tell which one he wanted to do more.
My reflection in his warm, dark eyes looked stunned. I stood speechless with my mouth hanging open. What could he possibly be saying? Only the dark shadow falling over us broke me out of my stupor.
We looked up to see the familiar scaly underbelly of Rersa, the dragon of Azel’s older sister, Azaria. She took me under her wing in my early Rider training when no male Rider would teach me. I looked up to her as a type of mother figure, which was ironic considering she trained under my birth mother, the first female Rider in modern history.
And the first Rider killed by an outsider.
Azaria landed Rersa in the grassy field next to where Dusa and Ryo wrestled and rolled playfully in the sunlight.
“Kiss later, you two,” she called, a knowing smile spreading on her face. Her long, black hair whipped around her like dragon's smoke. “We need you both with your mounts at the south barrier. Dress in ceremonial Rider armor. We have an impression to make.”
“Okay, but we were not about to kiss!” I insisted.
“Who’s at the south barrier?” Azel asked. Probably the more important question.
Azaria’s mouth tightened. “Outsiders. Thousands of them, and they look a little worse for wear. Seems they want something and are ready to grovel for it.”
Azel and I exchanged a look and I knew the same thought passed through our minds.
What could possibly be bringing them to our southern border? Outsiders hadn't come to Dragon Valley in over twenty years.
2
NADIYAH
“Higher, Dusa!”I commanded.
My girl snorted in reply and gave her wings a powerful beat, sending us soaring over the clouds. It was cold up here, especially in my ceremonial battle dress but Dusa’s body heat kept me warm.
While cold-blooded like other reptiles, dragons kept a residual heat at all times like a fire that was constantly fed logs. It was how they fueled their firebreathing. Her scales and body were warm enough that the frigid air up here barely affected me.
We flew toward the southern border of the valley, where the mountain ranges on either side gave way to gentle, rolling hills. These hills were the end of our territory, where the Dragon God cast his barrier of protection around us twenty years ago. My mother gave birth to me a few weeks before it happened and went riding on her dragon after leaving me in Azaria’s care.
Then, from what the elders told me, she never came back. And outsiders were forever banned from Dragon Valley. Until possibly now.
The hilly terrain gradually flattened out to open grassland where —after a few hundred miles— outsiders kept their villages and farms. Apparently none of them wanted to be within a day’s walk of the valley. I said good riddance to that.
Dusa and I reached the border within minutes and dipped low beneath the cloud cover to sneak a peak to who had come to our front door.
“What? There’s so many!” I cried out as we made a wide circle.
I’d never seen so many people at once. Even at our seasonal festivals when all the dragon clans came together, we were a fraction of how many bodies stretched out into the grassland. From my perspective, they looked like a swarm of ants. Dark dots on a green landscape blurring together to form a massive colony. There were at least five times as many of them as all of us in Dragon Valley, and that made me incredibly nervous.
“Come on, Dus,” I said, leaning forward to pat her neck. “Let’s join the others and see what they want. One wrong move and we’ll torch them.”
