A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2) by Daniel Arenson Read Free Book Online

ago—orphaned
archways, crumbling towers, walls pocked with holes, a fortress that
could be patched up with good masonry and elbow grease. Yet Castra
Luna… for a moment, Erry wasn't sure she even flew to the right
place. Nothing remained here. Not walls, not the shells of towers,
nothing but bricks and ash strewn across a clearing.
    "The Resistance took apart
every damn brick," she said to herself. "Nothing is left.
Nothing. Oh stars, Mae."
    When she flew closer, she saw
that hundreds of soldiers were bustling across the ruins like ants
over a smashed hive. Dragons were tugging carts full of crumbled
bricks, digging foundations, and clearing rubble. Men were building
scaffolding of wood and rope. Outside the ruins, a thousand troops
or more drilled in a forest clearing, marching between tents.
    Erry swallowed a lump in her
throat.
    Castra
Luna. The fort where she had trained for three moons. The fort
where she had met her two best—her two only friends: Tilla Roper and Mae Baker.
    "I miss you."
    Growing up in Cadport, Erry had
never had friends. How could she? She was the bastard of a foreign
sailor from Tiranor and a Vir Requis prostitute. Her father had
never returned to Requiem. Her mother had died many years ago.
    The other children of Cadport
had grown up in homes, sheltered, warm, and protected. Erry had
survived alone on the docks. She lived with feral cats and stray
dogs. She ate whatever washed up onto the shore and whatever she
could steal. She shivered at night in abandoned hovels. She begged,
she stole, and sometimes—she cursed to remember it—she bedded men
for a warm meal or a roof on a stormy night. Her only friends were
the animals she shared the docks with. She often went moons without
talking, only growling and barking and hissing among the strays.
    And then… then the blessed day
came.
    Then she turned eighteen, and
she was drafted into the Legions.
    They had given her boots—real
boots of leather! After years of wandering the boardwalk barefoot,
the boots felt like slippers for a princess. And they gave her
food—real food! The other recruits would complain about the stale
wafers and dried meat, but to Erry—whose meals had often been
scavenged from trash—it tasted like a feast.
    And
best of all… I had friends.
    Flying
toward the ruins, Erry blinked tears from her eyes. For three moons,
she had shared a tent with Tilla, Mae, and many other girls. For the
first time, Erry had felt like she belonged. In the Legions, she was
no half-breed dock rat. She was a soldier, same as the others. She
did not sleep among stray cats and dogs on the beach, but beside
friends. Beside Tilla and Mae.
    "And now you're gone, Mae,"
she whispered. "But I will find you, Tilla. And I will serve
with you again."
    She looked down, blinking her
damp eyes, and a gasp fled her maw. She squinted and flew lower.
    Could it be…?
    Yes. Erry felt her throat
tighten. Just north of the ruins, a cemetery sprawled between the
trees. At first she had thought that thousands of bricks lay strewn
through the forest, cast from the ruined fort. Then she realized
these were craggy tombstones.
    Erry pulled her wings close and
dived down.
    She crashed through the
treetops, landed on the forest floor, and shifted into human form.
    "Oh bloody stars," she
whispered.
    The tombstones rolled around
her, carved from the old bricks of Castra Luna. Thousands spread
between the trees. Those trees creaked in the wind, and their leaves
rustled, a whisper of ghosts. Erry shivered and hugged herself.
Even in steel armor, a sword at her side, she felt as fragile and
afraid as she had upon the docks.
    She began walking between the
graves, her boots crunching fallen leaves. Most tombstones bore no
names; they were simply engraved with a single birch leaf, an ancient
symbol of Requiem.
    Erry tilted her head.
    "The Regime engraves the
spiral upon its graves," she whispered. "The birch leaf is
an older symbol. The Resistance dug these graves."
    She had not