AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eight hundred years ago
My best friend is a dragon, and he wants me to kill him.
I stare at him in confusion, astonishment, anger, and one hundred other different emotions while they pass over my face just as I experience them.
“You must,” Dreven insists, sitting with me on the boundary while we enjoy our daily breakfast together.
He remains in flames while I am in my element of ice. Our table, plates, everything is catered to our needs to withstand our power. I look forward to breakfast every day. Dreven and I have known one another for years. We took over as the Princes of Elementalu when our fathers died and decided to rule as allies, as friends. Our land is united. Our people are united. The balance is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. No other planet, no other dimension I have seen has come close to what we have built here.
We are the future of what so many other dimensions should be, and he wants me to destroy it.
I drop my ice cup holding my tea. The liquid freezes across my side of the table but stays in liquid form as it travels to his. Small pieces of ice scatter onto the ground, some making their way across the boundary, and I hear a few sizzles from hot meeting cold.
Studying his face, I wait for him to tell me it is a joke, but his face is still, even a little ashen. His gorgeous obsidian color is ill. There’s the typical dark undertone and usually, when the light hits it, various amounts of colors dance upon his skin. It is said that his species of dragon are born in a volcano, the magma drenching the eggs and making them glass.
They are the Volcanic Dragons, needing heat and flame to survive.
Dreven’s colors are pale. The gorgeous aura of colors seems distant. Even the scales on his shoulders are dry and do not hold the beautiful shine they typically hold.
“Why?” I whisper, keeping my voice low yet filled with rage. Ice begins to grow on my shoulders, dangerous spikes forming as my emotions get the best of me.
“You have to calm down. You’ll bring attention. It isn’t like you to lose your cool.”
I narrow my eyes at his bad joke. “My cool is not lost. Your mind is. You have to be insane to think I would ever do such a thing. You are my friend. I cannot, I will not do that to you.”
He sighs, a large cloud of smoke billowing in front of him. “I beg of you,” he whispers, lifting his large green eyes that have flashes of yellow and brown, reminding me of marbles fairies make from dreams.
Just as he begs me, a scale drifts from his shoulder to the ground.
I gasp, reaching for his hand. When our palms meet, the temperatures of our bodies clash causing steam to rise.
“What is happening to you, Dreven? You have to tell me. I cannot kill you if you do not give me a damn good reason.”
“I’ve met my firebond,” he says, a half-smile forming on his lips before it turns to sorrow. “I was flying a few weeks ago... Alone. She was beautiful.”
“I do not understand. Is it not a dream to meet your firebond? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
He nods. “It is. You know I have children already. I needed an heir. I’ve never met my firebond, but I knew when I saw her, she was meant to be mine. I experienced her touch just as a troll took her from me. She was a dragon as well, visiting from another dimension. She wanted to see Elementalu.”
“Took her? I’ll gather my soldiers. We will go get her. This is not the end.” I will not ask why he kept his mate from me for weeks. It is not important to the circumstance. I refuse to be selfish in his agony.
But as flames take over his eyes and drip down his face while he cries, it hits me that she was not simply taken.
Her life was.
“Oh, Dreven,” the words are a gust of broken wind leaving my lungs. “What happened?”
“They came at night while we were asleep. They were shockingly quiet. I didn’t hear them, Cailian. I didn’t. I wish I would have. I wish—”
“—I know. I know.” I keep a hold of his hand and he tightens his grip.
“They ripped her heart out. Trolls love dragon hearts. It’s their favorite thing to eat.”
I gasp, hating he had to see his firebond die. To meet her and feel bliss only to watch her die, is nothing but torture.
“We did not mate which means my fire is killing me. I’m burning from the inside out. It hurts, Cailian. I feel my bones becoming weaker as they lose their strength. My scales itch as they dry, and my chest constantly burns.”
Tiny ice droplets hit my cheeks as I cry. I try not to, truly, but my friend is dying, and there is no way to save him. It’s been weeks since he has met her, and it seems his fire is doing what it is meant to do— burn— and it’s scorching him from the inside.
