The Dragon's Rose Page 17

  It seemed certain that Mercedes was set to be a sacrifice however the handsome Prince Gael liked the look of her and felt that she could serve a different and more important purpose for him and him only...

  CHAPTER ONE

  Clink!

  The telltale sound of change hitting the base of my cauldron spurred me on as I hit the high note of the aria I had composed. It wasn’t a particularly ground-breaking song, but it was a funny rhyme about the latest celebrity couple set to a generic enough tune.

  Clink!

  I finished with a bow, and a small round of applause. It was a nice summer afternoon, so the crowds in the park were much more plentiful than they normally were around this time. If I packed up quickly enough, I could grab a snack before the dinner-time rush.

  I waited until my audience of ten or so dispersed, then gathered up my things. I traveled pretty lightly, but it still took me a couple minutes to put my guitar away, put my props in my backpack and grab the mini-cauldron I used as a donation cup.

  I made sure not to count it until I was well away from my spot, as it was fairly tacky to do in front of patrons, but once I was under the cover of some willow trees with a fresh hot dog in my hand, I dumped my winnings into my lap.

  Ten dollars. Not bad for fifteen minutes of work. Granted, that didn’t count the prep or gathering all my supplies, but still not bad. If the dinner rush was fairly standard, I would probably bring in another twenty or so. Dinnertime always made people’s pockets a little looser.

  I looked at the time on my cell again, checking that I was still on schedule. Once I was done busking the dinner crowd, I needed to hop on the train and get to my grandmother’s place before it got too dark.

  Thinking of my precious Nana who preferred Abuela, her Latina name, just made me sad. I tucked those thoughts away until I was done working and didn’t have to wear my performer façade. Sometimes the constant going made me wonder if I had made the wrong choice to take a break before my final year of college, but I was twenty-five now and had never had a chance to really experience life.

  Even since I was fifteen, I had been holding down a job and going to school non-stop. After my Abuela had passed, it just seemed like I needed to stop and actually exist in the world where I had spent so much time fighting to survive. It helped that she had left me a tidy inheritance that would get me through a year or so, depending on how well my street performances did.

  But it also came with the surprisingly heavy burden of going through everything she owned, deciding what to donate, what to give to which family members and what to treasure for myself.

  It was no secret that my Abuela was a bit…strange. From curios to ancient books written in languages no one in the family understood, her possessions matched her personality. She had lived a colorful life—according to her, at least. Fortune telling in Barcelona, reading palms in Rome, restoring Tarot cards for an occult museum in NYC. It was inspiring, really. To follow her heart and let her creative spirit take her where it willed, and to be able to make a living off it.

  Maybe that’s what I was searching for—the satisfaction of knowing that you were where you needed to be, doing what you needed to do to feel complete. Ever since I was a child, I began feeling a growing detachment to our always spinning world. The bright lights of technology just seemed cold and harsh to me. The interconnectivity of society seemed oppressive. Of course, I loved my microwave, internet and cat videos, but it was growing more and more hollow with each passing day. I couldn’t help but feel like I was meant for so much more than a college degree and binge watching shows online when I got a free moment during the weekend.

  But delusions of grandeur or not, I finished my dinner routines without any hitches. The crowds weren’t quite as thick as I would have liked, but I still made out with a solid twenty as I headed back to Abuela’s home.

  Wait, my home. I needed to remember that now. That’s why I was here, after all.

  Although it was an old one, that repeating revelation left me in a melancholy mood as I opened the door of my new-to-me abode. Kicking my shoes off in the doorway, I wolfed down a chili cheese dog and wondered what I should tackle that night.

  My Abuela had a knack for making nothing easy, but I didn’t mind the challenge. I had separated the house mentally into several sections, and my goal was to clean and curate one per week. I had just finished up with the closet to her room last week, and now I was on to a new area.

  I was partially tempted to just take off my pants and curl up in bed with my latest TV drama, but if I started procrastinating now, I would end up back loading all of my work to the end of the week and that always made me miserable. I tapped my chin, thinking carefully, before settling on her study.

  Although her study was a very loose approximation of the word. It was more of a library/museum display area than anything. It was a small, octagonal room lined with bookshelves and not-so-bookshelves. Every flat surface was covered in something curious, ancient or occult. I made sure to have a pile of both boxes and bubble wrap in that room, lest I accidentally break something and end up cursed for all eternity.

  I had told myself I would look at the books last. I had always had an affinity for the smell of old tomes, and I knew that if I started to pull them down that I would inevitably get distracted. I lasted maybe five minutes, and only managed to line one box in bubble wrap, before I found myself standing in front of one of the cases, pulling an old, leather bound volume down.

  “Opening the Third Eye,” I read to myself, letting my finger trace over the raised detailing of the front. I had no idea what it was about but it seemed both very niche and very old. I lovingly put it back onto the shelf, deciding that it would be a part of Abuela’s collection. Next came another book, this one a more modern hardback. “Sex in Your Sixties: Hit Restart on Your Love Life.”

  I shook my head and laughed, before putting it into my donate box. If there was one thing Nana didn’t need, it was romantic advice. She had suitors knocking at her door until the day her door closed for the final time. Even at her funeral, there had been men from all over the world who had visited to lay flowers at her grave.

  I amused myself for a moment with imagining me giving that book to one of my uptight cousins, but continued to move onto the next book.

  I lasted longer than I thought I would. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later that I pulled down a battered, aged book that had once clearly been a crisp emerald, but had faded over the years into a dirty green. It was heavy, almost impossibly so for its size, and there was some sort of lock on the side.

  I sat down in Abuela’s reading chair, turning the cover over to inspect it.

  The Shattered Kingdom, Book One.

  It was certainly old school, but there was still a fairly beautiful illustration of a fully armored knight on the cover, and a black scaled dragon with purple eyes and fangs that looked like it could relieve its attacker of a limb or two.

  I reached over to the clasp at the side, trying to figure out what was going on. It seemed like the top and bottom of the covers were interlocked together by a series of metal loops, with something long and thin stuck down between them. I found a knob towards the top of the contraption, and carefully pulled.

  Nothing happened for a moment, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. What was the point of a book that made itself hard to read? Being read was a book’s whole reason for existing!

  But then my fingers caught the rough edge at the top of the lock, and I jerked back in pain. More than a bit incredulous, I looked at my finger to see a brilliant drop of scarlet red.

  I got a paper cut… I mused to myself. Before I could even get to the paper part of this book. That probably doesn’t bode well.

  A clicking sound interrupted my banter with myself, and the knob at the top of the lock popped upwards. Grasping it again, I pulled out a thin blade about the length of my hand.

  “Well that’s melodramatic.”

  I stared at both the book and dagger
for a moment, not quite sure what to do. Of all the books I had handled in my life, none of them came equipped with its own weaponry. After a moment for my brain to wrap around the situation, I shrugged and opened it up. I had already spilt blood over it, I might as well read it, right?

  As I turned to the first page, the familiar scent of age and dust tickled at my nose. It was borderline intoxicating to a literature-phile such as myself, and I settled into the prologue.

  Long ago, the Valley of Plenty knew no human kin. Dragons, fey and magic wielders roamed the land in balance with the mortal beasts. But as the ages passed, the exploring, ravaging humans shored at the Crystalline bay.

  These humans were witness to the peace, the prosperity, the balance of the valley, yet they saw only the wealth. Hungry to control it all, they brought more and more of their number to the pristine waters at the foot of the valley, until they had an armada. And then they unleashed war upon the blessed cradle.

  Thousands upon thousands died, slaughtered on the battlefield and in their beds. Eventually, the human’s prolific numbers and knack for survival began to beat out the magic users. Then the fey. And then the dragons. Just when it seemed like all was lost, and they would wipe the valley clean of every last vestige of its previous inhabitants, a strange figure appeared.

  The humans feared it, the dragons revered it, and what little fey they were whispered of an Oracle who could save them all. The war came to a standstill, and an uneasy peace was formed for years, each faction hesitant to anger the seer that must have been sent from the gods.

  But then, as suddenly as the Oracle had arrived, they vanished, leaving a vacuum in the place of a peace maker. The humans, now ruling the prosperous Kingdom of Vacar, began their assault on dragons again, after their glittering hordes and bejeweled mountain holds.

  The dragons are losing, and should they fall, the last of the magic that holds the valley together will return to the gods, and all that is known shall be dust.

  Beware.

  I took a deep breath then let it out. Well that was a doozy, as far as setting up some world-building backstory goes. I liked it though. I felt like I could already picture this world and I was less than two pages in.

  I stood, stretching for a moment and going to grab both a drink and a snack from the kitchen, before returning to the chair and letting myself sink back in the book.

  After all, if I was feeling dissatisfied in my world, why not escape to another for a little while?

  I didn’t stop reading until my bed-time alarm went off on my phone. The shrill sound practically gave me a heart attack as it ripped me from the little fantasy I had been thoroughly immersed in.

  I don’t know if it had been the political intrigue or the characters that had sucked me in so thoroughly, but I was definitely hooked. Also, the book had a pretty unique take on dragons.

  Sure, they were still your giant, fire breathing magical creatures capable of great destruction, but they were also humanoid. In their homes, they cast off their massive forms and shifted down into a much more compact, basically human visage. Also, they had a pretty strict hierarchy, with the Queen Mother of the dragons ruling them for centuries, and then her Court of Champions. And her Champions were as varied as they came.

  There was the Dragon Prince Gael, a sizable beast with scales of dazzling white and gold markings. His human form was quite tall, with long blond hair and piercing lavender eyes that the author loved describing in multiple admiring metaphors. There was the General Garrick, an older, grizzled dragon with scales of sable in one version, and a long, long, grey beard in another. And then the Advisor Myrik. Myrik was the one I was the most suspicious of out of any of the fey. His scales were described as the darkest of obsidian, occasionally flashing purple when the moonlight refracted from them. His gaze was one of pure violet, and always looked like they were up to something.

  And that wasn’t even including the actual humans, who were just as varied and interesting. The particularly complex thing about the Ursine ruling family was that they definitely saw themselves as the good guys, but their ardent desire to secure the longevity of their people was putting them squarely in bad guy territory.

  I wanted to keep reading, I really did, but I had some errands I had to run tomorrow before busking and I couldn’t afford to go to bed any later. I wasn’t exactly the most productive person when I was sleepy.

  Yawning, I got up and made sure to pack the book into my knapsack for tomorrow. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should put the blade in or not, but finally I settled on sliding it back into the lock. It wasn’t like anyone was going to get hurt by it unless they went poking their nose where it didn’t belong.

  Smiling to myself, I put my glass in the sink and got ready for bed. Sure, Nana was gone, but when I read in her comfy chair, I felt like she was there with me, telling me the story of this kingdom of old. She had always loved a good tale. Maybe that’s where I got my love of reading from.

  I was just about to head up the stairs when I heard a sliding sound followed by a loud thump. Confused, I peeked back into the study to see that a book had fallen off the shelf onto the floor near the chair where I had been curled. I must have accidentally pulled it to the edge when I was sorting earlier.

  I couldn’t very well leave one of my grandmother’s beloved tomes on the floor, so I walked over and picked it up. Unlike the others, it wasn’t professionally bound. Instead, it was more hewn together like an ancient, antique diary. I found my fingers caressing the tanned binding, once more tempted to sink into the written world, but I managed to resist and slid it back onto the shelf.

  I got maybe two steps away before it fell again.

  That was weird.

  I turned back to the shelf, and sure enough, it was sitting on the ground right where it had fallen before. I just must have not pushed it as far back as I should have.

  This time, after bending down and retrieving it, I pushed the volume very carefully into where it had fallen from on the shelf, making sure to pin it between two very large encyclopedias in what looked like Japanese Kanji.

  Walking backwards, I kept my eyes on it to make sure it was secure. When the thing didn’t budge, I let out a sigh of relief and turned back towards the stairs that led to my new room.

  Thunk!

  I froze, foot halfway planted onto a stair. Slowly, I walked back to the study, to see the book had fallen again, and this time was right next to my knapsack.

  “Alright then. You wanna be that way? Fine!” I didn’t know why I was talking to a book, but it seemed like it was actively fighting me. More than a little frustrated, I threw it into my bag then marched out of the room.

  This time, there were no thumps, no bumps and no books stubbornly leaping off shelves. I continued up the steps and settled into my new bed. I fell asleep rather quickly, which was somewhat unlike myself, and that night, I dreamed of Abuela…

  She was reading to me, and I recognized the words as being the same ones I had just read a few hours earlier. But, instead of dictating from an actual novel, I realized she was writing in a notepad as she talked.

  What…what was going on? Was my dream trying to make it seem like she was the author?

  I didn’t ponder on it for long, because her kind eyes crinkled at the corners and she reached down to pat my dark, dark hair. I could smell the faint scent of caramel empanadas and ink on her wizened hand, and I pressed my head into her touch.

  “I miss you,” I murmured, feeling the calm and certainty of her presence fill me.

  “I miss you too, beba. But you’re about to blossom into everything you’re meant to be.”

  “Am I, Abuela?”

  She nodded, her long white hair bouncing out of her loose bun. “Yes, my darling. Just remember, you must open your eyes to see all. I am so proud of you.”

  I reached up for her, longing to be pulled into a hug, but she faded into shadows and I slipped down into deep, deep slumber.

  CHAPTER TWO


  Someone had told me when I was younger that I would get used to chores. Apparently, I missed that part of growing up, because I still found my errands as tedious as I did when I was younger. To the bank for this. To the DMV for that. Just an endless list of things that were ninety percent busy work and one hundred percent soul crushing.

  Thankfully, I ended up at the tourist trap I was hoping to catch just in time for the afternoon busk. It took me a few more minutes than I would have liked to find a spot, set up my change-cauldron and pull out my guitar, but I was all set and ready to go before losing too many opportunities to make a dime.

  This time, instead of my usual upbeat fare, I settled on a melancholy aria that seemed to fit the wistful promises that often were carried by fresh spring breezes. My fingers plucked at the strings dolefully, and I drew out long, breathy notes as I sang of past lovers and broken dreams.

  Thankfully, the crowd seemed fairly into it. Perhaps it was the vague unsettling that came with changing seasons, or apprehension at the changes inevitably coming with the warmer sun, but either way I ended my hour routine with fifteen more dollars than I was expecting. Not bad at all.

  Quickly, I cleaned up and rushed off to find a nice place to eat and read before the dinner busk. I grabbed a chili dog, and gratefully found that there was no one in my little hidey hole.

  It wasn’t really a hidey hole as much as it was a couple of very low branches under a luxurious weeping willow that were at perfect sitting and reclining height. I loved to perch myself on them, spread my legs out on the boughs, then lean against the strong trunk and rest. This time was no different and I settled into my spot, hanging my bag from a branch above and fishing the book back out.

  Within seconds I was pulled back into the novel. I lost track of time as I sank into intrigue, politics and battles. Again, I found it strange to be routing against my own species, but it was clear that the rage-filled prince was dead set on the utter extinction of all fey. I was just getting to his plans of storming the main dragon keep, and the unveiling of his new weapon, when the words just stopped.