Firebond (The Dragonborn Queen #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

TYNAN

She was fast. She had to be. Behind her was a moving wall of monsters that was following her to the castle.

Her long, blond hair was in two thick braids and her light clothes contrasted with the herd of crawlers in the background with their flayed and decaying skin, crooked, veiny hands, and cloudy, white eyes in hairless, misshapen skulls.

I clenched my jaw, fighting my hatred and disgust.

The sun had lowered just enough to elongate the inky black shadows on the walls of the ancient fortress.

It was quiet on the very top of the battlement.

The stillness of the crisp air and the beauty of the sky above could not conceal the hell that was moving in on us from the ground below. I looked down again and swore.

Too many. There were simply too many of them, and only four of us.

It was only a matter of time before our luck ran out and we would be torn to pieces by these creatures.

The ones who were incapable of any human emotions, unable to feel remorse, sadness, or attachment.

Not even aware of the pain from the fire we unleashed upon them.

There was only ravenous hunger in their milky white eyes, a thirst to kill, to gorge on still warm flesh.

It took me a long time to stop thinking about them as people, because thoughts like that were deadly.

One moment of indecision out there could mean instant death.

I turned my head, observing another cluster of undead filling the space between the abandoned structures below and the castle wall.

Some crawlers were almost entirely decayed while others were new to the exposure of the disease.

That meant that the well was constantly refilling, and the current of the freshly made undead was being fortified without delay.

The speculation about the crawlers falling apart on their own was proven wrong when the mostly skeletal monsters were spotted on the borders of Talman, exactly where the first outbreak took place.

It became apparent that waiting them out was not an option.

The open area was getting too saturated with the disfigured bodies. It was almost time.

I saw the question in Victor's eyes before he spoke, “Tynan?” I froze, meeting his gaze. “Ty?”

I glanced at Solomon before raising my hand. All three of us stood motionless on top of the merlons.

“Now!” I yelled and stepped forward.

The figure of the girl below blurred as she started to shapeshift. A moment later, she soared up into the sky as a light brown dragon.

I rotated my body forward and pressed my arms tightly against my torso.

The speed of my fall increased, and for a moment, I felt calm and in control.

The cool air hit my face and stretched my cheeks.

I smiled, feeling the wild energy building up deep in my abdomen, rising from my arteries to my flesh and settling behind my eyes.

At last, it exploded deep in my core, coming to the surface.

My bones melted and molded into a beastly shape.

I could feel the heaviness of my limbs and tissues.

My talons and razor-sharp teeth broke the skin, and I exhaled, feeling an enormous release of tension.

With a soft swoosh, I soared upward and allowed the heat to rise deep in my chest. When my lungs burned with fire, I released the fountain of flames on the crawlers below.

They just stood there, reaching up their arms, fully unaware that their bodies were burning.

I lifted myself up, completing a wide circle, waiting for the deadly energy to rebuild.

My eyes followed Victor and Frid, who sprayed a cluster of undead by the weather-beaten stone wall.

Victor’s dragon was the smallest of us all.

His silver scales reflected the light of the disappearing sun.

Stripes of black reached all the way to his back, unmistakably marking him as belonging to the clan of black.

He looked up and started ascending along the stone wall.

Frid followed the perimeter of the castle, spitting fire.

She was much larger with light brown, almost sand-colored scales, and stripes of black that covered her wings and shoulders.

She was the only female in our group, and her fierceness on the battlefield earned her a certain reputation among the Shadows.

I was sure she could be a part of any warrior group if not for her undeniable connection to the clan of traitors.

Solomon’s beast was the largest. His dark brown scales concealed his stripes well enough, but he was simply too dark for any other clan to accept him.

His long, muscular dragon body moved through the air with ease and confidence.

Not for the first time, I thought that he would be a better leader than me.

His calm presence and assertive energy were what the others needed.

I looked up, noticing that the sun was quickly disappearing.

It was getting too dangerous to stay out in the open.

I signaled the final pass before returning to my position.

The suffocating scent of burning flesh filled my nostrils, making me want to spew my guts.

I concentrated on the simple task of flying steady before pulling up and circling around, ensuring everyone else followed my lead.

Frid and Sol disappeared behind the top of the battlement, Victor followed next.

Shifting my eyes back to the flames below, I glided to the top of the castle wall.

“Did you see that?” Victor exclaimed as I landed behind him.

“What?” Sol asked, already back to his human form.

“That fucker almost got me.” Victor chuckled.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Frid hissed, before shapeshifting back.

“I didn’t think he could jump so high, I’ll tell you that,” Victor snapped.

“You’ll get yourself killed one day.” Frid stated.

“As if you care,” Victor muttered.

“No, I don’t. If you don’t care about your life, why should I?” She turned away.

I ignored their conversation and allowed my body to mold back into my regular form.

My claws retracted, my scales disappeared, my bones shortened.

The wild zinging in my muscles subsided, and I was back in my black jacket with inclusions of reinforced leather on the sleeves and chest. It was almost ironic that some people thought the suit could withstand a crawler’s bite.

I did not want to ever test that theory.

I stepped closer to the edge of the wall, watching the fire.

My eyes opened wide. The flames were licking the walls, trying to get higher, while the crawlers were moving sporadically below.

Some of them attempted to jump up along the wall, trying to reach the living creatures behind it.

Victor was right, they were unpredictable, especially at night.

The cool air, or the darkness, did something to them.

Instead of being a slow wave of stumbling bodies, they became quick and agile, and they could run and jump.

I did not want to imagine what it would be like on the ground at night.

“Tell him, Ty! Tell him he’s going to get himself killed.”

When Frid called my name, I returned my gaze to her. Nothing I could say to Victor would change anything. He was uncommonly stubborn, and questioned every decision I made.

“Let’s get inside,” I said.

Frid stared at Victor’s back as he walked past us toward the door.

We were just getting comfortable when the music started to play in the dining hall later that night.

All four of us were seated at the end of the long wooden table, close to the door to the kitchen.

I scowled, noticing the intentional sign of disrespect.

Even risking our lives out there did not change the fact that we belonged to the bloodlines of traitors.

The four remaining dragon houses would never accept any of us, and there was nothing we could do about it.

The assortment of meats and wine made me frown.

It was so difficult to find fresh food these days, yet the people of Hogtain were able to indulge in such a feast. The hall was packed with citizens who did not know what real hunger was, I was sure of it.

These people were lucky they had a fortress wall separating them from the horrors of the borderlands.

They did not act like they were living with the constant fear of being eaten alive, as all of us have been for the past ten years, and yet the reminders of the world we were surrounded by were everywhere.

My eyes fell on a group of children playing together.

One of the boys held a wooden figure of a dragon while another held a cloth doll that was attacking it.

A girl, not more than three years old, was sobbing, too scared of the game.

Even the young ones were affected by the enormous shift in our way of living.

Kids born after the outbreak did not even know what it felt like to play in the woods, to run around freely.

How quickly everything we knew perished, evaporated into thin air, as if it never existed.

I was sixteen when the unknown sickness started to spread at one of Talman’s borders.

We did not know back then that the disease was highly contagious, and that eighty percent of the non-dragon population would be affected by the plague.

How ironic. The dragonborn treated people like second-class citizens for as long as I could remember.

Humans were not allowed to occupy high-ranking positions, and had to pay taxes on everything.

They could not step onto sacred lands, or marry any dragonborns.

But the disease changed everything. The ravaging waves of crawlers traveled from sea to sea, making the descendants of the gods hide behind castle walls, scared for their lives.

I turned away and picked up my goblet.

A short, heavy man in a long tunic approached our corner.