Page 2

F or the millionth time, Vahly reminded herself that she was no dragon. As the last surviving human—and possibly a future queen—hanging from the side of a cliff probably wasn’t the best idea.

Muscles quaking, she blew the hair that had fallen from her braid out of her mouth and forced her body upward to grab a crack, her toe wedged into a tiny dish on the rock’s face. Sweat trickled down her temple and wet the linen shirt she wore under her laced, leather vest.

No, this wasn’t the best plan.

But it was thrilling.

A curling, violet fern the size of Vahly’s fist appeared on a ledge not far from her right hand.

Helena, the healer in the Lapis dragon clan, called it vivanias.

She used it in medicines for the younglings.

The stuff was rare as a cool day in summer, and Helena would pay handsomely for the small harvest. At least a ruby or a handful of old human coins.

With that sum, Vahly could enjoy several rounds of dice at the cider house.

Gambling was really her only true vice, and surely at least one such habit was permitted.

Of course, she also did some thieving, but those days were seldom, and there was time enough to consider that when she wasn’t hanging from a cliff.

She stretched to pluck the delicate fronds, but her short sword caught on a nub of rock and she nearly lost her hold.

“Stones and Blackwater,” she snarled, trembling as she worked the sheath’s loop to the back of her belt.

For all this trouble, she would demand three rubies and the coins from Helena.

She tucked the valuable fern into one of the small bags at her belt.

After all, no dragon could do this job. They’d never fly this close to the Sea Queen’s realm.

One splash of recently spelled salt water and a dragon was injured for life, or quite often, died from the contact.

As if the sea folk could read her thoughts, the ocean breeze blew in a rush of salty air that raked across one side of Vahly’s face.

Shuddering, she imagined them far below, in the water, looking so much like humans, but with blue-green fins along their limbs and a taste for exactly her type of flesh.

During a sea battle that happened long before Vahly was born, the Sea Queen had proclaimed her intention to cover the world in ocean water, flooding this last island of Sugarrabota and killing every creature left on land.

Twisting, Vahly looked down.

Two hundred feet below, the sea surged and swelled like the back of a great watery beast.

Vahly’s foot slipped.

Her fingers instinctively latched onto the mountain, and her nail ripped, pain searing her finger. Heart thrashing, she lifted her foot up and to the right, pulling up on a tiny crag.

A rushing sound of water filled the air and roaring waves crashed into the cliffs. Spray reached like a clawed hand into the air.

Vahly heard herself shriek.

She scrambled to lodge her hands into a long fissure that ran along the upper half of the cliff’s face.

The rock scraped at the back of her knuckles.

Heart racing, she switched her feet, raising the left to stand on a higher divot in the rock.

Her fingers numbed as she climbed, and with every breath, she feared the sea folk’s spelled wave would thrash higher and drag her into the depths.

“This is not worth a game of dice,” she hissed as she jerked her way, higher and higher, to another ledge, to the next lip of rock that might hold her weight.

The ocean roared.

The tip of a wave crashed against her leg, soaking through her boot and trousers. She had to fight panic, reminding herself that she was not a dragon like her family. The spelled salt water would not burn her flesh to black or eat into her bones.

But still, she could drown. Or the sea folk’s needle-sharp teeth could shred her body. With perfectly evolved fins and powerful water magic that controlled the tides, they would have no problem introducing Vahly to a gruesome death, as they had the rest of her kynd.

From handhold to toe grip, with her torso and limbs burning, she climbed along the fissure to the top of the cliffs. Using bruised and bleeding hands, she dragged herself the rest of the way to safety. She rolled to her back and gasped for air.

Once she could breathe normally, she leaned over the edge and glared at the rolling waters as they receded. “Getting a little out of hand, aren’t you?” she said, wryly.

Had the sea folk been aiming for her specifically or was she in the wrong place at the wrong time?

A tall rock, not big enough to be called an island, stood about fifty feet offshore. This season’s high water mark was nowhere to be seen.

The oceans were definitely rising. And fast.

Amona, Vahly’s adopted mother and the Lapis dragon Matriarch, had told Vahly the Sea Queen had figured out how to multiply salt water. With that information plus what she’d seen today, Vahly wouldn’t be surprised if the sea folk managed to overtake Sugarrabota in less than a season.

Vahly ran a finger over the Blackwater mark between her eyebrows.

The shimmering circle of darkness, with its highlights of yellow, red, green, and blue, represented the Source’s creation springs, the Blackwater.

Born with the mark, the dragons considered Vahly as Touched and destined to become an Earth Queen.

Only an Earth Queen could shake the seabed, beneath the Sea Queen’s wild waves, and drive the waters away from the land.

If Vahly’s powers had awakened upon her physical maturity, she could have raised mountains like the Earth Queens of the past. Vahly could have protected her dragons and all the simplebeasts on land as well.

But so far, Vahly had no power.

No earth magic whatsoever.

And at three and twenty, doubt swamped all hope of her growing into the Earth Queen everyone needed.

The summer sun warmed Vahly’s blonde head and her tanned skin, the heat like a firm hand, steadying her.

She didn’t have the power to fight the Sea Queen herself, but she could at least keep her dragon clan informed.

With today’s ocean activity, they needed to clear the lowest levels of the palace.

If the sea folk managed to flood the Lapis territory like they had the Lost Valley, the spelled salt water would kill thousands of dragons.

Pulse kicking in her throat and pain lancing through her ripped finger, she took off at a run, leaping over a small bush of bright yellow brazenberries and a patch of citrus-scented greenery before heading down the steep slope that led to the entrance of the Lapis mountain palace.

When she emerged from the narrow pass between the higher elevations near the sea and the lower region of Lapis territory, she remembered why she’d been off on a time-consuming, risky fern-gathering mission in the first place.

Spending her day attending yet another dragon ceremony from the ground, as the only highbeast present without the power to fly or do any magic, was not her idea of an afternoon well spent.

High above the palace that had been carved inside a string of seven mountains, every dragon from the surrounding four hundred or so miles flew in concentric circles, fully shifted into their dragon forms for the Dragonfire ritual.

A rangy male named Xabier had reached maturity and had to go through the ceremony to receive his fire magic.

After this, Xabier would be able to breathe fire from both his scaled human form and his full dragon form.

Dragonfire was vicious. It burned through ground, through salt water—spelled or not—and made basic fire seem adorable.

Most of the dragons present had Lapis blood and therefore boasted scales of deep blue veined with a golden color, much like their lapis lazuli stone namesake. Even after a lifetime of watching dragons shift into full form, the sight stole Vahly’s breath.

A coming storm’s distant lightning flashed off the dragons’ massive, sinuous bodies and their crystalline spikes. Light scattered like diamonds.

In comparison, Vahly was a slug.

Of course, she liked herself well enough.

She was no lazy slug. Not an ignorant slug either.

Good with bow and sword. Better with cards and dice.

But a slug just the same—fleshy, and pretty much useless in a world where war was a constant.

The dragons with Jade blood disagreed with the Lapis way of fighting the sea folk.

Every season, sometimes every moon cycle, strategy talks erupted into battles of fire and blood.

And of course, the ocean provided a hearty helping of disaster with its spear-wielding sea folk.

What Vahly wouldn’t give for even a touch of the dragons’ power. To stand as tall as two-and-a-half humans on end when in full dragon form. To breathe fire. To heal so quickly. To shrug off shell and coral blades like a mere splinter.

The dragons soared higher, their semi-translucent wings rippling in the wind and their Dragonfire crackling between bouts of thunder.

Lightning branched between them, making Vahly jump.

Raising their heads, they made sure to breathe their mighty flames above one another.

The flickering orange, yellow, and blue joined to form a ring of fire so powerful that Vahly saw the waves of heat from the ground.

Her news about the ocean activity would have to wait. There was no interrupting a Dragonfire ritual. Fifteen-year-old Xabier would have his moment in the lightning storm, among his elders and their flames.

When Vahly herself turned fifteen, her body had no idea that humans no longer existed.

It changed in preparation for procreation despite the complete and total absence of a potential mate.

Humans could not make children with dragons for a variety of reasons, one of which was that they were physically incompatible with regard to reproductive organs.