Empire of Flame and Thorns (Flame and Thorns #1)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

T he collective gasp that rips through the tavern could probably be heard halfway to the Unseelie Court. All the fae patrons, and all the shifters from the Red Dragon patrol too, stare wide-eyed at the scene before them.

Clear liquid slides down along Draven’s sharp cheekbones and over his chiseled jaw before dripping down on the front of his black armor. Firelight from the hearth makes the drops that cling to his dark eyebrows glint before they slip down to curve around his eyes on their way down his face. His mouth was slightly open when I threw the drink, so a few drops rest along the top of his bottom lip as well.

For what feels like an eternity, no one says anything. No one moves. No one even dares to breathe.

My head spins, dizzy with disbelief. Mabona’s tits, I just threw a drink in Draven Ryat’s face.

I stare at the drops sliding down his skin. Well, at least it was a glass of firechaser , which is a strong and clear liquor, and not a sticky and foul-smelling ale or something. If anything, the concentrated alcohol should help clean the dirt off his armor. Which I realize now is absolutely spotless, so there is no dirt to clean off. But that?—

Draven’s tongue darts out, running lightly along the seam of his bottom lip to lick the alcohol off. The sight of it snaps me out of my spinning thoughts.

His golden eyes sear through my very soul as he stares me down.

Only mere seconds have passed since I threw the drink.

The whole tavern is holding its breath.

Draven cocks his head.

I bolt.

Clamor and raised voices echo behind me as the soldiers snap out of their stupor and lurch into motion to stop the lunatic who just threw a drink in their commander’s face, but I’m already out the door.

I use the tavern’s front door so that, in case there are still some resistance leaders escaping through the back door, the soldiers won’t see them since they’re chasing me in the opposite direction.

My heart slams against my ribs as I skid out onto the cobblestones and sprint towards the nearest side street. I need to make the soldiers lose sight of me. If I can do that, I will be able to disappear into the crowd. The dragon shifters might patrol these streets, but they don’t know them like we do. Like I do. This is my home. I know every nook and cranny like the back of my hand.

Boots pound against stone behind me as the soldiers give chase. I throw myself around the next corner. But shouts split the air, informing me that they saw me. I push myself harder.

Wooden buildings flash past on either side of me as I hurtle down the next street while praying to Mabona, the fae goddess, that I will have luck on my side today. Because there is one gigantic flaw in my plan to disappear into the crowd. The soldiers might have to chase me on foot, or shift into dragons and try to find me from above in their huge hulking forms, but Draven is capable of a half-shift. He could simply fly after me through the streets. And if he does, I’m doomed.

So I pray to Mabona that he is too prideful to chase after me himself and that he will instead leave that to the grunts who serve underneath him.

I leap over a broken crate of half-rotted turnips and swerve around a barrel of potatoes. The people who were trying to sort through the root vegetables to find which ones can still be saved scramble back so quickly that they knock over their stools. Wooden clattering echoes between the crooked buildings around me as the stools hit the street while I continue sprinting down the road.

A narrow alley is coming up on my left, but the soldiers are still too close. They will see me if I dart into it. So instead, I take an abrupt right and leap straight in through an open window.

Shocked cries ring out as I roll right over someone’s kitchen table. But I can’t stop to see what they’re doing, because I need to make it to the door on the other side before the shifters can spot me.

Shoving a chair out of the way, I barrel through the kitchen and out towards where I assume the back door to be.

“Where is she?” the captain demands from outside the open window.

“B-back door,” the terrified owner of this house replies from the kitchen right as I yank open the back door and slip out.

A frustrated snarl rips from the captain’s throat. It’s cut off when I throw the back door shut behind me and sprint out onto the empty road behind the building. The dragon shifters must either pass through the house too or go around the entire length of buildings. Either way, it buys me enough time.

I take a quick left and then a right before running along another deserted street. The sound of pounding footsteps from behind is no longer audible. And there are no black wings of death following me either. I breathe a small sigh of relief but still continue to weave in random patterns through the city to make sure that they have truly lost me.

Eventually, I end up at the Golden Gate, the gate on the west side of the city which leads to the Golden Palace.

In the shadows of the gate, I stop and lean my back against the rough stones of the city wall. My chest heaves after my lengthy run. Tilting my head back, I rest it against the cold stones.

Gray afternoon light from the overcast sky paints the grasslands outside in bleak hues, making the dead trees that line the walk to the palace look even more miserable.

Aching sadness fills my chest.

It didn’t used to look like this. In the old paintings, saved and kept secret and passed down from generation to generation, this path was magnificent. Grand trees with vibrant leaves and colorful flowers lined the walk from the city to the palace, making it look like the trees were forever living in a glorious season of spring. Now, only burnt trunks remain.

I raise my gaze to the palace itself that is visible across the grasslands. Made of shimmering pale stone, it shines like it’s filled with golden light when the sun reflects against it. It used to be the seat of power in our court. A jewel in the beautiful landscape and a testament to the marvelous power of the Seelie Court.

Now, it’s a deserted relic. A reminder of everything we can never have.

Rage burns through my heart, fierce as wildfire, as I shift my gaze to the iron wall that now circles our beautiful castle. Cold iron. A metal that drains our energy and blocks our connection to our magic. And those sadistic fucking dragon shifters built an entire wall of it around our most precious building.

Another burst of fury pulses through me, and I squeeze my hand into a fist. Isn’t it ever enough? I get that what our ancestors did to the dragon shifters was wrong, but by Mabona, it has been thousands of years since then! Haven’t they already gotten their revenge?

Closing my eyes, I heave a tired sigh. Even after all these years, I can still hear the voice of the dragon shifter teacher at school who taught me and the other kids before we became old enough to work. Can still hear his nasally voice as he tells us about how awful our ancestors were. How we deserve everything we got. Because it will never be enough. No amount of penance will ever be enough to absolve us of our cruel acts.

He used to tell us that thousands of years ago, fae and dragon shifters were allies. That we lived in peace and harmony. But then the fae discovered a new metal deep within the roots of a long dead volcano. A metal they called dragon steel . Though it’s not actually real steel. It’s harder and, more importantly, it can bend a dragon’s will.

My old teacher used to say that just as we are weak against iron, the dragon shifters’ weakness was dragon steel. And our ancestors used that to their advantage. Apparently, they forged bracelets and collars from the steel and forced them onto the dragon shifters. And then when the fae of old channeled their magic through the dragon steel, the shifters had no choice but to obey them. So the fae turned the shifters into slaves and became dragon riders, treating them as if they were no better than horses.

Eventually, the shifters rose up and killed all the dragon riders. My old teacher was always very vague about the details of exactly how that happened, for obvious reasons. But apparently, the dragons slaughtered everyone who had enslaved them, and all the other adult fae too. They spared the children but trapped them inside the Seelie Court so that they would be isolated and vulnerable.

My gaze drifts to the thick forest of gnarly trees and sharp thorns that completely surrounds our court. The old roads to the rest of the continent are still there, running right into the dense woods, but they’re useless now. It’s possible to walk a limited distance into the forest, but then the thorns become so thick that it’s impossible to get through.

Since this unnatural vegetation apparently continues for miles upon miles around our court, it has made us entirely isolated from everyone else. We have no idea what happened to the Unseelie Court, but I can only assume that they suffered a similar fate. I don’t even know how the dragon shifters managed to raise this strange forest of thorns all those millennia ago, but it has kept us prisoner ever since.

I still remember the vicious smugness in my teacher’s voice as he told us that this is what we deserve. That it is our turn to live in poverty. To live as slaves. Our turn to suffer so that we might pay for our ancestors’ crimes.

Heaving a bitter sigh, I shake my head. It’s time to fight back. To take back our home. Reclaim our freedom. That’s the whole reason why I joined the resistance. If only they would actually let me help . It has been years, and still all they ever let me do is be a lookout. I want to do something meaningful. Something important. Something that will actually aid our cause.

With another angry shake of my head, I push off from the wall and straighten again while I squeeze my hand into a fist. Determination pulses through me as I start back towards the city. I need to do something to prove myself to the leaders. Something that will finally make them trust me. Something?—

My gaze snags on a poster that has been nailed to the wooden news board.

Stopping in my tracks, I blink at it.

That’s it. That’s what I need to do in order to actually make a difference for our resistance movement.

After quickly checking the address at the bottom, I hurry towards the correct building. It should be open for another half hour before the administrator closes up and goes home for the day. Picking up the pace, I sprint towards the building.

Once again out of breath, I arrive at a well-kept wooden building with about ten minutes to spare.

All around me, people have started heading home for the evening. A tired-looking fae man with silver hair limps past, supported by another guy who carries an axe in his other hand. Given their clothes and equipment, they must be from the Lumber Guild. Across the street, a member of the Painter’s Guild continues trying to give the rundown building before him a much-needed facelift. Green paint is splattered across the sleeves of his white shirt.

I draw in a deep breath to refill my lungs and then push my hair back behind my pointed ears in an effort to make myself look more presentable and less like I have just spent the past hour trying to escape from a patrol that was hunting me.

Once I’m reasonably sure that I look as composed as I’ll ever be, I open the door and stride across the threshold.

A small brass bell tinkles above me when I open the door. At the sound of it, a male dragon shifter looks up from a document that he was reading. He is sitting behind a large desk on the other side of the room, facing the door. Apart from that, and the chair he is sitting on, the small room contains only bookshelves filled with leather tomes and documents. There is a door to my right, leading farther into the building, but I’m pretty sure that everything I need is right in this room.

“What?” the shifter behind the desk snaps, his voice laced with impatience.

His blue eyes lock on mine as he raises his eyebrows expectantly. Since dragon shifters have very long lifespans, just like we fae have, it’s difficult to tell how old he is. Their physical age stops around the same time as ours do, so everyone looks like they’re somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. This man in front of me might be twenty-five or five hundred years old, and there is no way to know just by looking at him.

“I’m here to register for the trial,” I reply as I walk a little closer to his desk.

He heaves an annoyed sigh as if this is something that takes great effort on his part when it’s in fact his literal job. Setting down the document he was reading, he twists in his chair and reaches towards a stack of papers on the shelf behind him. The paper rustles in the air as he yanks one out and then turns back to me. After slamming it down on the desk, he picks up a pen and then levels yet another impatient look at me.

“Name,” he demands.

“Selena Hale,” I reply.

Faint scraping sounds drift through the room as he writes down my name. Without looking up, he asks, “Age?”

“One hundred and sixty-seven.”

“Guild?”

He could technically look that up on his own since the dragon shifters are the ones who assigned everyone to their guilds, but I answer anyway. “Fishing Guild. I’m a fish cutter.”

With his eyes still on the paper, he wrinkles his nose as if he can smell the stench of it. I have to suppress a sudden flash of anger. It’s not my fault that I’m still working a low-level job in the guild. Just like everyone else in this city, the other people in the Fishing Guild don’t trust me, so they never move me up to better jobs.

“Magic type?” the shifter asks.

“Emotion magic.”

At that, he looks up from his paper for the first time since starting the interview. Suspicion pulses across his whole face as he looks at me. I just remain standing there, keeping my chin raised.

“Emotion magic?” he asks at last.

I nod. “Yes.”

Almost subconsciously, he moves a little farther back in his chair while he looks at me with suspicion in his eyes. They always do. Whenever people find out that I possess emotion magic, they always look at me like that. As if I’m going to use my magic on them and start manipulating their emotions without them knowing. As if I’m going to make them do things that they don’t want to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I can do that. Well, part of that anyway. It’s a bit more complicated than people think. But what I can’t do is hide it. As soon as I mention my magic, it’s as if everyone forgets that no fae who was born with magic can use it without people seeing it. Because our eyes glow when we channel magic. So if someone is looking me in the eye, they will know whether I’m using my magic to manipulate their emotions or not. But because emotion magic immediately makes people nervous, they seem to forget that.

The dragon shifter behind the desk seems to finally remember that my eyes will glow if I use magic, because instead of looking down at his paper again, he now keeps his eyes locked on mine while he continues the interview.

A dull ache buries deep into my heart. Even though I haven’t done anything to earn their mistrust, no one ever feels truly comfortable around me because of my magic type. It’s why I can’t move up in the guild and why I can’t move up in the resistance either.

But this… this is going to change all that.

“Alright,” the administrator says as he takes the finished paper and slams it down on top of another pile. “That’s it. You’re registered for this century’s Atonement Trials. They will begin sometime in the next two to four weeks. Be ready at any time.” He jerks his chin. “Now, get the hell out of my office.”

I swallow down an angry remark at his rudeness and instead just give him a nod in acknowledgement before I turn around and walk back out the door.

Cold winds rip at my clothes as I step back out onto the cobblestone street, but there is a fiery sense of anticipation burning in my chest now. I grin as I flip my collar up and start down the street.

The Atonement Trials. Every one hundred and fifty years, the Emperor and Empress of the Iceheart Dynasty hold a tournament in the Seelie Court. The Atonement Trials is supposed to be the one scrap of mercy that they will bestow upon us. It’s a series of competitions that pits fae magic users against each other to prove who is the strongest and most worthy. The three people who win the tournament are deemed to have atoned for the sins of their ancestors, and they are awarded with a highly sought-after prize. They are allowed to leave the Seelie Court and are given funds to set up a new life in the world outside.

Last time the Atonement Trials were held, I was too young to compete. I was only seventeen back then, which means that I had barely started practicing with my magic. The other contestants would have mopped the floor with me.

But now, I’m much stronger. Now, I have a chance to win.

This is how I prove my worth to the leaders of the resistance. If I win, I will get to leave the city and have access to the rest of the world. I can find out what happened to the Unseelie Court. I can be a spy. A real asset. I can help the rebellion more than anyone in this entire city.

All I need to do is to win the Atonement Trials.