Chapter 4 - Blood Remembers
Mara backed away from the cell.
“No.”
The voice came again.
“Daughter.”
It was not loud.
It did not need to be.
The word traveled through the floor, the walls, Mara’s bones.
Elara laughed.
A baby’s happy sound.
That terrified Mara most.
Selene gripped the bars. “Take her away from here.”
“Tell me what’s under us.”
“Mara—”
“Tell me!”
Selene flinched.
Then she looked toward the black corridor beyond the cells.
“The first dragon king.”
Rowan drew his sword.
“That creature died eight hundred years ago.”
“No,” Selene said. “Your family chained him beneath the palace.”
Rowan’s expression changed.
Mara noticed.
“You knew.”
“I knew there were old chambers below the foundation.”
“You knew.”
“My father called it a tomb.”
Selene laughed bitterly. “Kings have always loved gentler words for cages.”
Another tremor shook the dungeon.
A crack opened along the wall.
Hot air breathed through it.
Mara stared at her mother. “Start talking.”
Selene did.
Long before men built the capital, humans and dragons shared the northern mountains. Some even took human form. A queen named Vaela married a human warlord and gave birth to children who could walk between both bloodlines.
The Drakeborn.
Centuries later, frightened kings hunted them nearly to extinction.
Selene was one of the last.
“So am I?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“And Elara?”
Selene looked at the baby. “She is the first child in seven centuries born with enough dragon blood to change.”
Rowan stepped forward. “Into what?”
Selene’s face tightened.
“Whatever she chooses.”
The dungeon door slammed open.
Queen Isolde entered with armed priests.
“Enough.”
Mara turned. “You knew my mother was alive.”
Isolde did not blink. “Of course.”
“You left her chained here for eighteen years.”
“I kept a weapon where I could watch it.”
Selene spat through the bars.
Isolde ignored her.
“The city gates are breaking. Give me the child.”
Mara stepped back.
“No.”
“Mara, I am trying to save you.”
“By killing my daughter?”
“By killing what will use your daughter.”
Isolde pointed toward the cracked wall.
“The dragon below has been waiting for Drakeborn blood.”
Rowan frowned. “For what?”
Isolde looked at Elara.
“To wake the gate.”
A priest moved too fast.
He lunged for the baby.
Lucan slammed him into the wall.
Another priest raised a knife.
Elara opened her mouth.
Fire exploded across the corridor.
Men screamed.
Mara turned away, shielding her child.
When the flames died, the iron door of Selene’s cell had melted off its hinges.
Selene stepped free for the first time in eighteen years.
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And behind her, the stone wall split completely open.
Two enormous golden eyes appeared in the darkness.
