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“At least she’s smarter than you,” Loker declared.

“Stop talking! Clemmy’s got a good point. What made you seek after the egg? Where are you both from?” A man having chiseled features sauntered toward me, exuding an air of confidence and authority.

“I am the princess of the Clandike Kingdom.”

“Princess? The king doesn’t have a daughter? I thought she died long ago,” Luella, the shortest girl with dark hair and skin, said. She looked a lot younger than the rest–maybe twelve.

“That’s what he told everyone, so they wouldn’t come looking after me. Scaleborne,” I said. They all nodded in response, understanding the difficulties of being a Scaleborne and hiding your whole life.

“How did you know how to get to the egg?” asked the girl named Clemmy.

“I found a map. Well. Stole a map,” I said, not sure where they were going with this.

“Did you see the gatekeeper?” Clementine asked. I could tell that she was definitely more educated than the rest. How did she get so educated?

“Gatekeeper?” Loker, Angie, and I asked at the same time.

“Yes, the Scalekeeper. She guards the gates to the dragon. She was put to watch over them, keeping them there until the time was safe to open it up.”

“No—” I started, until Damian interrupted me.

“I saw her.” We all stopped, staring at Damian. What did he mean by saying that he saw the gatekeeper? The dragon keeper? Was this the Scalekeeper that Belle talked about earlier? The one Nana and Belle mentioned? I remembered her saying,‘everything comes at a cost with them.’

“Tell us!” yelled Loker impatiently.

“She appeared when I touched the egg. She asked me what my wish would be, and I told her to save Aurelia. She then told me that Aurelia was alive from my wish but still injured and that Ineeded to bring her your way. After, she then told Belle where to bring us. And it was directly to you.”

“Belle?”

“He speaks the truth,”she told me, understanding there was a Scalekeeper.

“Did she say anything else?” The head leader asked.

“Yeah. I also asked her about the Deathlies, and she said you would know how to kill them.”

“She said that we would know how to kill them? Unbelievable. We don’t even know where they are and what they are! Let alone how to kill them,” Angie said, rolling her eyes and scoffing. I could tell that she had an attitude.

“She told me to tell you, ‘yamceeii2axuaeii3uama4,’” Damian continued.

“Use what is yours,” Clemmy translated. “But that doesn’t make sense. How could you see the egg or talk to the Scalekeeper, if only Scalekind can?”

“I’m unsure,” Damian reported, looking at me, hiding something that looked as if he was uncertain he should share with everyone. “A huge gate opened up. The gates to the dragons.”

“I’ve heard about this. It was a folktale talked about in my Shamla community. The folktale talks about a sorceress who locked up the gate to the dragon world. No one really knows the reason behind it. There were a few different rumors being that her lover was a dragon and cheated on her, so she locked up the gates forever, placing a curse on whoever opened them. Another one was that dragons started to overtake the mortal land, disrupting it and holding no boundaries, so she locked them up for a thousand years until they were meant to escape and populate the earth, but to do so in return for peace and prosperity to the mortal kind.”

“Well, what’s done is done. Whatever the consequences may be,” Damian retaliated.

“I’ve seen them before. The Deathlies,” Luella said softly. “In the Forbidden Forest. They flew across the sky, and I saw them touching the trees and the ground. I watched as everything they touched turned to disease. I knew that their touch poisoned the town next to us, and it killed everyone, starting with their plants and water. I wish I was with my parents…”

“She was an orphan,” Angie piped in, protecting Luella. However, she said it in a tone that referred to me judging her, snapping her head in my direction, which I had no intention of doing. “She was left as a Scaleborne baby on the steps to whom she refers to as her parents. They hid and protected her. Until they were tortured and killed,” she said aggressively. Luella had her hands covering her face.

“Angie, you don’t have to be so graphic,” Loker said.

“What? It’s the truth. They should know so that they don’t go making rude comments or questions about her.” I wanted to fight back that I wasn’t making any assumptions about Luella, but I let it slide until Angie glared further daggers into my eyes. What was her problem?

“You’re acting like you don’t have issues of your own,” Clemmy stated.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Angie fought back, standing taller.