I hadn’t registered it the first time I saw him. The extent of shame and embarrassment on Dey’s face all because he failed to seduce me.
She was raised among humans.
Barely better than animals.
The words hurt more than a fenite dagger in my back.
I wasn’t disoriented this time when I woke up. I knew exactly where I was and what I had just witnessed.
I barely made it to the bathroom before I vomited my breakfast into the diamond-accented toilet.
You had one job.
Barely better than animals.
I couldn’t stop hearing the words inside my head. Any glimmer of hope that had been left inside me, any miniscule piece of my heart that still held onto the possibility that my father had a good reason for everything he had done… Gone. Incinerated by the flames coiling underneath my skin. A fire that wanted to rage until anybody who had ever hurt me regretted the day I was born.
If I had any sense of self left, I might have been worried about the dark thoughts coursing through my head. The voice inside me that screamed I was powerful now, and they couldn’t treat me like that.
Barely better than animals.
I held up my hand, visualized what I wanted, and smiled as thin wisps of fire emerged from the tips of my fingers, curling slightly as the writhing flames coalesced into inch-long talons. I pressed my hand to the floor, and the claws burned into the stone easily as if it were littler harder than clay, leaving a red hot glowing handprint.
My father wanted to manipulate me? Fine. I could play his game.
I rotated my hand, admiring the control I already had over my ability. Maybe it was my hatred driving it, maybe it was just a reaction to my father’s words.
It didn’t matter how it happened. He could call me whatever he wanted.
This animal had claws.
I’m not sure what I might have done if I had been alone in my room. The fire inside me demanded retribution and pain. I wanted to rake my new fiery claws over the king’s face and watch him scream until his magic healed him so I could do it again and again until he knew what it felt like to be helpless.
Only I wasn’t alone.
It was so soft, the tiny mewling noise that caught my attention.
The flames disappeared back inside me as I spun on the cold floor of the bathroom to look behind me.
“Jenni?” The word slipped out on a stunned exhale.
A tiny red creature sat in the middle of the doorway, its head cocked to the side, analyzing me.
Jenni.
My crescia.
I held out my trembling hand, and she tentatively moved toward me, her legs unsteady as a newborn fawn. Four tiny new tails swished behind her, the miniscule scales only giving off the faintest twinkling sound as they brushed together. She was bigger than her unbonded form, but still so small that she could climb into my hand and sit comfortably as I lifted her up. She couldn’t weigh more than a pound or two, but her size didn’t detract from her magnificence.
“My crescia is a baby dragon?” My words were hushed and awe-struck, made only more reverent by the slight echo off the stone that surrounded me.
Jenni wasn’t a baby dragon, of course. Dragons did not have four tails. Dragons did not have gauzy bat wings that looked like sky dimming into night—a deep shade of crimson that faded into purple then finally black with star-like speckles on the edges. And dragons definitely did not have adorable little feline faces, complete with whiskers that tickled as she nuzzled my palm.
She was fascinating.
She was perfect.
And when she opened her mouth and coughed out the tiniest little spark of fire before curling up in my palm and falling asleep, I knew that she was mine.
