Page 2 of Betrayed By Dragons

What if I'm just wasting her time?

My ribs tighten painfully. For a long moment, everything in the chamber is silent and still.

Then High Priestess Fang sighs. The stone wall beside me shifts and quivers before sliding forward, molding itself into another seat not three feet away.

The priestess glides toward me with silent steps. Dressed in her ornate white silk robes, she could be a ghost, floating inches above the ground for all I know. But when she sits down on the new stone bench, she looks far more human than she's ever looked before.

She's a woman of Asian descent and indeterminate age, with pale, golden skin and a smooth complexion, untouched by wrinkles. Her eyes hold a darkness and a depth that suggest she's seen more years than one would expect, though, and there's a weariness to her now that makes me pause.

"Did you know," she asks quietly, "that the first time I used the Anchoring Stones, I nearly broke my neck?"

She lifts her hand, showing off the rings that adorn her fingers and thumb. They're plain, silver-colored bands, but set into them are polished stones of different hues.

I blink owlishly, sitting up straighter. She's referred to the stones that augment her magic and establish her place as the leader of the Stone Kingdom's most powerful mystical sect before, but only in passing.

"Oh?"

She curls her fingers into her palm, and white light glows faintly around her hand. She looks up at me, and our gazes connect.

"They weren't meant for me."

"Oh."

My pulse picks up. The Shadow Bracer wasn't intended for me, either. Rhiannon brought it to Unity, imagining that she would wear it herself. But once it locked onto me, it rejected her.

"I was a neophyte, then. I had magic, of course, but its true strength had not revealed itself. I had entered the Order with intentions of serving the priestesses, and perhaps, if I was lucky, I would be able to develop my own skills as well." She flexes her fingers outward again, the stones shining in the dim light. "After the death of the last High Priestess, I was sent to fetch the stones from the East Tower." One corner of her mouth flits upward. "I was so nervous. To be so close to such power, surrounded by guards. The king himself was waiting for me in the great hall of the temple."

My own throat tightens in sympathy. I had the "honor" of meeting King Haoyu when I first arrived in the Stone Kingdom. He's intimidating to say the least.

He also kind of hates me, I think. Or at least he hates what I represent.

His only son being mated to a woman with no power or wealth--and who also happens to be mated to the youngest prince of the Fire Kingdom?

Yeah. He hates that a lot.

But the king's shitty opinion of me isn't the point right now.

High Priestess Fang's voice takes on a distant quality, as if she's got one foot in the present and one in the memory. "It was the strangest thing. One minute, I was walking resolutely down the spiral steps. The next, I was in the air. I must have tripped--on what I don't know. I can only blame my nerves. And maybe my new robes." A rare smile curls her lips, and she refocuses her gaze. "It was a hundred steps, cut out of unforgiving rock. I would have hit my head and died, only--the stones..."

They glow again, brighter this time.

"They rose out of their case. They surrounded me. I imagined they were there to save me, and in my mind, I saw the staircase flattening out. Protecting me. And then it did."

"Wow."

"'Wow', indeed," she agrees. She drops her hand to rest it in her lap. "After that, they would respond to no other. They were mine, and I was the High Priestess." Her smile this time is rueful. "It took me three years to learn to repeat the feat, and another three after that to fix the staircase."

My laughter startles me. "Oh. But--"

"We're a superstitious lot, here in the Stone Kingdom." Her expression remains stoic, but a faint glint of humor twinkles in her eyes. "The High Priestess had broken the tower steps, so it was the will of the gods that it remain broken. We had to transform into dragons to fly up there for six years, and then transform again to get down."

"You all must have gotten very adept at transforming in midair." The tower is small; too small to house a full-grown dragon's wingspan.

"Very," she agrees, desert dry. Then her voice goes serious again. "Great stress can reveal powers that might otherwise go untapped for decades, Ember. You have shown your strength already, and you are making remarkable progress learning to summon your abilities at will."

"I am?"

"Of course you are." She says it so matter-of-factly. Like this was obvious, when minutes ago, I was circling the toilet of despair. "Patience."

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