Page 7 of Redeeming the Dragon

“I’m sorry, Monreth. I’m sorry. Girls, I’m so sorry.”

The fact that she had switched to whom she was addressing was not lost on me. Nor on my sisters. Finally, I tore my focus from the dragon outside our door to perhaps an even more fearful sight—that of my mother, sinking to her knees, her hands clasped before her in supplication. Pleading. For forgiveness?

“I heard his voice, just as your father said,” Mama wept. Tears rolled openly down her cheeks. “He threatens to burn the village, the entire island, and all of the neighboring islands, if we do not give him what he wants. He says it is his reward. He saved your father from the storm, and your father made a promise. If your father does not fulfill his oath…”

She broke off, sobbing, too overcome to speak.

“No, Mama, no!” I heard Marisa beg. “You cannot give one of us to this dragon.”

“He’ll devour us alive,” Neena chimed in. Her voice betrayed her terror. “Is that what you want?”

“We have no choice!” Father insisted. His voice was broken; he pleaded for understanding. “Had I known what I was promising, I would have happily drowned. But I gave my word. There is no going back now.”

A cold, icy sensation sluiced over me. Even as the dragon rolled his golden eyes towards us, trapped inside the cottage and entirely at his mercy, I swiveled to stare at my sisters. They were pale, their faces practically glowing in the gloom of our common area. Who would my parents choose? Neena, the eldest? Marisa, the middle? Or me, the youngest daughter? Who would be sacrificed to a dragon to pay our father’s debt?

Or would the dragon himself choose?

“He has promised to keep you safe,” Father went on. Though his voice trembled with grief, he infused calmness into it. Assurance that what he claimed was true. “He did not harm me. He saved my life. Why should we think he would break his word, or do any differently to you girls?”

“Because he is a foul, vile, evil creature who probably saved your life to get a virgin sacrifice,” Marisa hissed.

The notion was confounding, that a beast, even one like a dragon, could think so far ahead—plan so far in advance—as to rescue my father from a sinking ship only to demand one of his daughters.

“Marisa,” I interjected quietly, “how would he know Father has daughters? He is an animal. Fearsome, aye, and possessing elements of magic. But how would he know we existed?”

“Father said they were approaching the island when he told him the price of rescue,” Neena reminded me. “So, he knew. The question is, how?”

How.

The word hung heavily in the storm-laden air. With one accord, every member of my family shifted to stare at that terrible monster. How had he known? Why were the colors of the storm similar to his? Why the strangeness of this tempest, only to herald a dragon, which—so far as I knew—had never been seen upon the shores of the Jeweled Isles?

“There is more here than meets the eye,” Mama said quietly. “Some strange witchery is afoot.”

“And yet, fearing that, you’ll simply turn us over to this beast?” Marisa cried. “How could you?”

“It’s not that simple!” Father snapped.

I wanted to agree with my sister. I wanted to say, “Yes. Yes, it is that simple. I would never consider turning my daughter over to a monster.”

However, as if the beast had read my mind, its baleful glare sought me, pinned me. Ice, then fire, coursed through my blood.

Even the worst of that storm cannot compare to this evil,I thought, as the golden eyes raked me over coals of mental torment.

In that instant, I fully understood why Father was considering capitulating to the serpent. Why Mama, who’d been prepared to fightthe beast with her bare hands, was doing the same. The sense of fear at what this creature could unleash on our island shook me to my bones. A vision overcame me of our entire island laid to waste, scorched and blackened and withered in intense heat. Of charred bodies, left to rot in the sun, since there was nobody alive to bury them. Of animal corpses with white ribs exposed amongst the soot. Of mighty tesia trees, toppled by the blast of nostrils, torched like kindling.

He could ruin this island. All of the islands in our archipelago.

He would ruin them if he was denied what he’d been promised.

I did not have to say it aloud. Mama spoke for me.

“The things I see in my mind,” she choked. “The visions he plants in my brain…”

She broke off with a sob. I knew precisely what visions she meant, what things she’d seen, for I’d seen the same.

The dragon is sharing these visions with us. What sort of power does he hold?

“He can bring fire, death, and destruction upon all of us,” Mama faltered. “My daughters, my loves, I am so sorry. But I see no other way. Your father’s promise must be kept.”

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