Crown of Dragonfire by Daniel Arenson Read Free Book Online Page A

engraved onto the door, an old symbol of Requiem. Vale
opened that door and stepped into his shadowy home.
    His sister, Elory, lay
facedown on a pile of straw, biting a piece of wood. Ugly lashes crisscrossed
her back, and she bled where the shackles chafed her ankles. Above her knelt
Vale's father, wise old Jaren. The bearded priest was dripping ointment into
the wounds on Elory's back. She grimaced with every drop that fell, and sweat
beaded on her shaved head.
    Rage flared in Vale.
    "Who?" he demanded, speaking
between gritting teeth. "Which overseer? Was it Karah? The new one, Eldor?"
    Jaren raised his hands,
silently urging calm. Elory pushed herself onto her elbows, staring at Vale
with damp eyes.
    "It was my fault!" she
said. "I almost failed to meet my quota of bitumen."
    The rage was blinding.
Vale sneered and took a step back toward the door. "That's because Ishtafel
doubled the quotas. I'm going to find who did this. I'm going to kill them. I
don't care if they arrest me again, if—"
    "Son!" Jaren reached
out, trying to grab him, to pull him back into the hut. "You cannot help your
sister by dying. Please, son. We must bide our time. We must—"
    "Must what?" Vale said,
voice hoarse, eyes damp. He shook himself free. "Bide our time for what? Our
people have been waiting for five hundred years, Father. Waiting for a savior.
Waiting for some hope. I thought that some hope rose. When we marched behind
Meliora, I thought that finally the stars have heard our cry, that they sent us
a savior. I thought that Meliora—your daughter, my sister—is the hope we've
been waiting for all these years." He laughed bitterly. "But I was there. I saw
Ishtafel cut off Meliora's wings, saw him drag her into his palace, saw our
hope shatter. So yes. Let me go out and fight. Let me die avenging my sisters."
    A voice, melodious and
soft, rose behind him, piercing through his rage like a ray of light through
storm clouds.
    "Do not die for me, my
brother. Together we will live."
    Slowly, Vale unclenched
his fists and turned around. He saw her outside, stepping toward the doorway,
cloaked in wool. Within the shadows of her hood, her eyes shone, golden, the
pupils shaped as sunbursts with many rays. She smiled at him tremulously.
    "Meliora," he
whispered.

 
 
JAREN

    He sat with his family at
the table, knowing that this brief moment of peace would soon shatter and burn.
    We are together
again, united in the shadow of a great, burning hatred that will soon spew its
flames upon us. Jaren looked up at the ceiling where he had engraved the
Draco constellation. May we savor this moment, for it might be long years of
blood, sweat, and tears before it returns . . . if ever we sit like this,
together again.
    He looked at them all,
one by one. They stared back from around the table, silent, all waiting for his
words. Vale, his son, gaunt and scarred, his eyes blazing with fire. Elory, his
sweet daughter, her brown eyes kind and soft, even after so much pain. Meliora,
his eldest, her head now shaved like a slave's, crowned with a halo of dragonfire.
And with them, too, sat Tash of the pleasure pits, a young woman with long
brown hair, perfumed skin, and many jewels, and though Jaren had just met her,
she too was like a daughter to him. She too was family. Perhaps all in Requiem
were a family under the heel of Saraph. They all sat here in this small hut,
surrounding the small table, sitting before clay bowls of gruel—a warm meal,
perhaps a last meal.
    Their chains, which had
once hobbled their ankles, lay in a pile on the floor. Tash had come here with
an iron key, which she had used to unchain new girls arriving into the pleasure
pit. Now she had freed the chains that had bound Jaren and his family's legs.
And yet their collars remained, preventing them from using their magic, for no
simple key could unlock that cursed iron. So long as they wore those collars,
slaves they would remain.
    I am old, and I am
frail, Jaren thought. He was not yet