The Lightning-Struck Heart (Tales From Verania 1)

And so we did.

I was not a fan of the Prince. He was cocky, arrogant, rude, and apparently had brought me out here to beat a lesson into me about wanting to secretly bone his boyfriend. (My life.) I had no reason to care for him aside from the fact that he would be my King one day.

But that’s all it took.

Because he would be my King one day. Even if I walked away, even if I left the City of Lockes, I would always be a part of Verania, and he would be my King.

So my only thoughts were to keep him safe.

I glanced over my shoulder.

I really wished I hadn’t.

Because the dragon had crested the hill. It wasn’t as big as I’d thought it’d be, which meant it was still young. However, it was still the size of a house, which meant it was much bigger than Justin and me.

The dragon was black, its scales mottled with stretches of red almost the color of the King’s crest. Two horns grew out the top of its head that looked to be as big as I was. The wings were translucent, light filtering through.

They were a rarity in the world, and the sightings of them even rarer. They were intelligent, fierce creatures who killed and took for the sheer sake of doing so.

I’d thought them all named. I thought I knew them all, the ones that resided in Verania. Two lived in the north, a mated pair that lived high in the mountains where snow never melted. There was one to the west, a desert dragon that burrowed extensive tunnels underneath the sand. There were rumors of a fourth that lived in the Dark Woods, but it’d been at least a century since it’d been seen. That dragon had been old and white, and the woods were deep. It was possible it’d died years before, its bones resting where no man had stood for decades.

But this. This one was new.

And I knew the moment it spotted us, dark eyes glittering.

Justin must have felt it too, because he said, “Oh shit.”

And all I could say was “Faster.”

The weapons shed. It wasn’t ideal, but maybe I could—

The dragon roared behind us.

And if that wasn’t a sound to make you shit yourself, I didn’t know what was.

I hazarded a look over my shoulder.

The dragon was right there.

And it was rearing back and I could smell the gases from the flammable liquid filling its throat from a gland near the back of its tongue.

Fire.

I most certainly didn’t want to die right now.

Especially not with Justin.

We weren’t going to make it to the shed.

I grabbed him by the arm.

I thought ies and clo, twisting my right hand in a circle over my head. The air around us froze in a snap as the moisture solidified downward, cocooning Justin and I in a circle of thick ice. I grabbed him and pulled him, covering him with myself.

And it came then. The fire. There was a low mmmmm that turned into a blast of hot air and orange-red light. It shone through the fractals of ice, and if we weren’t mere inches away from getting burned to nothing, it would have been beautiful. But being that close to death really takes away from pretty fire-ice lights.

The fire died.

Justin said, “Oh.”