Page 25 of Dragons Of Shadow and Sea

"Monstrous," he agrees. "But it was war."

I miss my mother every day. I hate her, sometimes, for abandoning me. But what would it be like to be with her still? And know she'd done something so grotesque?

Malik lets out a low breath. "That seemed to exorcise some of the demons in her soul, but it wasn't enough."

"No?"

"Removing the sympathizers was a temporary solution. More Shadow Dragons were coming for us. We were besieged on all sides--our position indefensible." There's a distance in his voice, like he's reciting facts he learned in a textbook, and for all I know, he is. "And so they called upon the magic of the deep waters once more. They washed our kingdom away."

That was what it seemed like, to us outsiders. My parents knew some of the dragons who flew out to the Water Kingdom on a rescue mission. The entire land--all the monuments and buildings and homes...they were gone. Replaced by the sea.

"But all of your history..." My voice chokes.

"Preserved in memory."

"You couldn't have gotten everybody out."

"We tried."

Those remote villages. The wildlife. Trees that had stood for centuries. Destroyed.

"We relocated it all here." He gestures around broadly.

As we've been talking, we've explored deeper into the park, reaching a section of it that feels older, despite the modernity of the rest of the city. A shiver runs up my arms.

"Where is here?"

"A small island in the tropics. As far as we could get from the other dragon kingdoms without retreating to the poles."

Could he be less clear?

I raise a brow at him. "Not quite ready to share latitude and longitude yet, huh?"

"National security," he reminds me, shrugging apologetically, but he doesn't really seem sorry.

"How much was here when you arrived?"

"The bones of the city. Enough shelter for everyone, and the raw materials to build the new kingdom to suit our needs."

"That's a lot of stuff."

"It was deep magic." A crease of worry appears between his eyes, but then it's gone. "My mother was intent on creating a place where our people could be truly safe. Utterly isolated and disconnected from the rest of the dragon world."

"Wow."

"Up until now it's worked."

A million questions race through my mind. "How?"

"More magic, and the resilience of our people," he says with pride.

That's all well and good, but a part of me remains skeptical. I don't know much about the logistics of running a secret magical kingdom, but it seems impossible for a society this technologically advanced to be completely self-sufficient.

"And you've had no contact with the outside world at all? For over a decade?"

He frowns, hesitating. Like he can't quite decide how much he should reveal. Eventually, he allows, "We monitor some current events beyond our borders. But only for the purposes of keeping ourselves protected."

A part of me is still skeptical, but I can feel, in his heart, that he believes what he's saying.

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