Betrothed to the Dragon_Lick of Fire by Kara Lockharte

Author:Kara Lockharte [Lockharte, Kara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smartia Publishing
Published: 2018-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

8

“Holy gods, Hunter,” I said, taking a colorful rainbow towel from him.

“There are no gods,” he said, quoting a famous ancestor of mine, showing off his knowledge of my family. “Just shen.” His undisguised dragon gaze told me he wasn’t through with me yet.

Something inside me quivered in hot anticipation.

As I wrapped the towel around me, I heard something cracking.

Maybe I felt it more than heard it, as true magic didn’t have a sound.

And then I saw them: Grandma’s wards were briefly visible as they dissolved into tiny nothingness.

Suddenly, I heard her voice in my head.

Little fox, I am proud of you.

And then she was gone.

No. No. No.

My cheeks were wet. I wiped them with the back of my hand, took a deep breath, and realized I was crying.

Why was I crying? I didn’t even know for sure what that was really her, or just another random echo I was imagining.

Hunter had the strangest look on his face.

“Your magic.” He began to laugh, an odd note in his voice. “You’re a Justice.”

“A what?” I was listening and speaking at the same time, but all I could think about was that Grandma might be gone.

I heard something breaking, a sound like rock crumbling. I looked around but couldn’t see what it was.

“I didn’t even know Earth had Justices.”

I felt hollow. I wiped my cheeks again and took a breath. “What the hell is a Justice?” The rumbling continued. Hunter turned, looking for the source of the ominous sound as he spoke. “In the histories of the world from which we came, there are stories of Justices. Always rare, always feared.”

Hunter stopped, and my gaze followed his to the north wall of the cabin. Before our eyes, cracks in the white plaster crawled upwards towards the ceiling.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the wall.

“Where they walk, people will sicken, the milk will spoil, and good works will crumble to dust,” he said, as if quoting something. “Dragons hunted Justices to extinction a long time ago.”

The cracking on the wall stopped. It shouldn’t have happened. I scrambled away from him and picked my clothes off the floor. “What are you talking about?”

“Justices erase magic. Originally, they were known as balance-restorers, those who could reset things to a state as if they had never been altered by magic. Restoring Justice, they called it.”

I threw on my bra, and then put on T-shirt. “Why did dragons start hunting them?”

“Over time, dragons began to rely on magic more and more, building everything with it. Cities, spaceships, hospitals. A Justice became a weapon that the dragon kingdoms used mercilessly against each other. The histories say Justices brought an end to the Golden Age. And so as a result, they were hunted because they were a weapon thought to be too dangerous to exist.”

I took a step back, horror sinking cold teeth into my skin.

He realized I was backing away from him. “I didn’t hunt them, Sophie. This was all well before my time.

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