Darian shrugged.“It was nothing.I could have brought more.”
“No, you shouldn't have.You brought just enough.And if you brought more, I would have things left over now, and with the dragons gone, I don't need much.”
She truly didn't.She had grown quite self-sufficient in the past two years.But perhaps she would start needing more, if only as an excuse to go into town and visit the general store.Because as much as she wanted to pretend she didn't, she liked Darian and his uncles.
Well, perhaps she liked Darian more than his uncles.
The walk was good for her, anyway
They reached the edge of the woods as the sun was setting, and Darian stopped her there, looking around specifically to make sure the field was clear before they continued walking.
That wasn’t like him.
“What was that?”Celia asked as they started off again.
“Something feels off,” he admitted.
“What do you mean something feels off?”Celia asked, looking around.Nothing felt off to her.
“I don't know,” he said.He was scanning the horizon, back and forth, back and forth as they walked through the meadow toward her home at the base of the mountains.“Perhaps it's something, perhaps it's just me feeling odd because the dragons are gone—”
The sunset was blotted out by something large landing in front of them, and Celia resisted the urge to scream as Darian’s arms dragged her behind him forcibly.
She'd never been more grateful for his presence, even as she tried to peek around him to see what it was.
When she finally managed to poke her head out from underneath his arm, her eyes widened at the sight of the large fire dragon sitting in front of her.
This was not a baby—this was a full-grown male.
He was ginormous.
His scales were dark red, with large horns growing out of the top of his head.His eyes were the size of both her fists together, and his head alone was the size of Darian’s torso.She knew the baby dragons grew rapidly, but she'd never seen an adult before.
This was something she'd never expected.
“Where is the Emberlin?”A deep voice issued from the dragon.
She could understand him.
Celia tried to dart around Darian’s arm to see it better, but he grabbed her and put her back behind him.
“What do you want?”Darian asked.
“The hatchlings have told me that there is an Emberlin here,” the dragon said, “and I am here to find him, to give my fellow dragons a hope that we have been missing for far too long.”
Celia poked her head around Darian’s arm, and this time he let her, though his grip on her arm prevented her from going any further.The infuriating man—she didn’t need protection from a dragon.Probably.
This was a fire dragon, after all.If he wanted to kill them, his flames would no doubt be big enough to completely envelop her and Darian where they stood, so it was unlikely that he wanted to kill them.
And what was an Emberlin?She had never heard the term before.She’d seen lots of things in scrolls that had told stories of dragons.Though most of them were written as childhood fairy tales, she often found them to be accurate—which made sense, given that dragons were real and not simply a myth like so many believed.
How was it possible that dragons had been so completely eradicated from their people's history?It didn’t make sense.It never had.
But now she was here, standing face-to-face with the largest thing she had ever seen, and it was asking them something.
“I am the Emberlin,” Darian said, the words surprising her.
She let out a gasp, and Darian looked back at her with an apologetic grin.“My last name,” he said.“One of the few things that I know about my father.”
