The Selection: Bride Of The Dark Dragon

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We walk out of the carriage and I put my cape on. It’s incredibly cold here! But something is wrong, though and I feel it at once.

“Derrien”, I call for my companion and he looks at me raising his brow, “I don’t think this is the place that I have shown to you on the map…”

He gets an artifact out of his pocket that looks like a little box and opens it. I see some purple light of dark magic coming out of it and come closer to look. There are a map and two beaming dots in it. And my guess is one of the dots in the box, and the other is our destination point.

“You are right”, he says firmly, “We are at least 10 miles away from where you advised us to land.”

“Why haven’t the griffins taken us there?”, I ask.

“That’s what I am going to find out now”, he says and creates a ball of dark fire, throwing it in front of us with force. It flies far, but soon it meets an invisible obstacle and dissolves in it.

“Oh my!”, I change my vision to a magical one and come closer, “It’s a barrier! More like a dome even. It completely covers this part of the mountain! I’ve never seen a barrier this huge!”

“You are adorable,” he chuckles sarcastically. Of course. For him, it’s probably nothing. His kind is superior to ours. I couldn’t break his barrier in my room for the life of me.

We both come close to the very edge and I look at the pattern that created this magnificent shield. Intricate. Not simple at all. Placed with one of the best magicians of the Kingdom. However, I notice another strange thing.

“What is it?”, Derrien asks as if he reads my mind.

“Wait a second”, I say and stretch my hand. Surprisingly, it goes straight through the barrier without any trouble. “Strange,” I look back at the gerdian, “Shouldn’t this prevent us from entering?”

“Hmm”, the dark lord repeats after me and his hand also goes through the shield without any problems, “This may mean only one thing, little mage. This thing is here not to prevent us from entering. It’s for something else!”

“I wish I knew what it is exactly, but the pattern used doesn’t say much to me. Maybe if I ever got graduating from the Academy…”, I sign, but he takes my hand in his and just walks inside the barrier pulling me in as well.

“Only one way to find out!”, he says firmly, “Don’t get lost!”

“My bag!, I squeak trying to keep up with him.

“It’s just some 10 miles to the goal and we’ll be back in no time as I will use my transportation skills to get us back”, he says.

“Why didn’t you use it in the first place?”, I ask since he is the first to mention the subject that’s been bothering me since he announced the whole trip thing.

“It could only be used to the places I know well. I can’t transport us to an unknown mountain, the landing might be too dangerous. I’ll survive for sure, but…”

He stops talking, but I know now that the reason he is not using his usual flames is because I am with him. He didn’t want me to get hurt. And that’s sweet. He also thinks that I am a weakling. That prick!

I giggle quietly to myself and he turns to look at me but says nothing. However, flashes of dark magic in his eyes tell me more than he wishes to share.

We walk in silence for some time. The road is tricky as we are going uphill. Derrien checks his artifact from time to time to check that we are on the correct route. The road is tricky as we are going uphill. I almost fall own once, but luckily, he gives me a hand in time and helps to get up, giving me support. However, when I try to take my hand back, he doesn’t let me.

“I can walk by myself, you know?”, I say to him.

“I know”, he smirks, “But it’s just faster this way.”

I don’t see how it’s faster, considering that he slowed down significantly. And now it just looks like we are on a leisure stroll here. But oh, well. Who am I to contradict the decisions of the gerdian lord? It feels nice to be out of the Dark Selection castle. For the first time in all those days, I can breathe!

I take a deep breath of fresh air, close my eyes, and smile as this feels nice. When I open my eyes, I feel Derrien’s gaze on me. But it’s a bit embarrassing to look back. I must have looked like an i***t.

“Why did you decide to become a battlemage?”, he suddenly asks.

“Why are you interested in that all of a sudden?”, I can’t help myself saying.

“Well, we don’t have women fighting in our country. And although I’ve seen one or two female battlemages in my life, none of them looked like you,” he answers honestly.

“And how do I look?”, I snort.

“Beautiful, elegant, delicate, alive… You should be…”

“Sitting at home with embroidery in my hands and giving birth to dozens of redhead babies?”, I roll my eyes, “It may be surprising to you, but I find that boring. I want more. I mean, some of that doesn’t sound bad. Not the embroidery part, though. But I wanted to do more with my life. I wanted to be someone, do something great, protect my country from…”

“Us?”, the gerdian chuckles and I blush. Because yes, from them.

“You never know from where a danger may occur”, I bite my l*p and look at him slightly guilty, which makes the corner of his lips twitch in something slightly resembling a smile.

“Clever girl”, he chuckles.

“Uh-huh,” I nod, “And how about you?”

“What about me?”, he turns away not to face me anymore.

“Well, you said to Dargen once that you are an archduke and a general of your army. How did that happen?”

“It’s a long story”, he tries to blow me off.

“Well, Derrien Derwood, then you are so lucky that we have this much free time right now!”, I smirk and he looks up to the sky as if to ask why gods send this kind of punishment to him.

“Are you sure you are ready for something like that, Miradora Freyn?”, he mimics me and I giggle at that.

“Pretty sure! Shoot!”, I look at him smiling with all my pearly whites and begging eyes.

“Alright, suit yourself,” he signs as if he is annoyed, but his hand tightens on mine, “My mother was the sister of the Emperor. He loved her very much, but she was forced to marry a duke from our empire by their father, the former Emperor. The one who started the war with your Kingdom. It was a political marriage and she wasn’t happy. And one day she fell in love with someone else. We still don’t know who that was, although I have a few theories. He left. Or maybe died. However, there was a result of their affair – me. As you can probably understand, my mother’s husband wasn’t too happy about it, so he started to abuse her. Years passed, I grew stronger, and then one day, when I found him hitting my mother again, I killed him.”

I flinch at that and look at the dark lord next to me, his grip on me is tight as ever.

“Good,” I say and feel him shudder just for a fraction of a second.

However, he avoids my gaze and continues as if nothing happened, “By then, my uncle was already the emperor, so he pardoned me and gave me my step-father’s title. I became a duke and a member of the Royal League. It’s a kind of a council for the emperor, a group of advisers of sorts… So, we were in a breach of war and one of our best generals at that moment presented his grand battle plan that would probably cause us to lose a lot of people. I pointed out his flaws very politely and..”

“You?”, I snort, “Politely?”

“Yes, me, very politely. Just the way I always am,” he retorts with a smirk, “He, surprisingly, wasn’t too happy and challenged me to a duel.”

“Really? The nephew of the Emperor?”, I raise my brow.

“Alright, he called me a bastard and I challenged him to a duel,” the lord admits and I hold a laugh, “And then…”

“Let me guess, you killed him?”, I roll my eyes.

“You grasp everything surprisingly fast”, he grins at me, “But yes, I killed him. And then presented a better plan for my very angry uncle. The plan succeeded and I got another title. And then I won the war. There were no more titles to give and I was already the richest duke in the Empire, so my uncle made up a new title for me – archduke.”

“Which war was it?”, I ask and he looks at me for the first time.

“The rebellion of your Kingdom”, he answers calmly, but everything inside me turns upside down. I know very well what rebellion that was. The one after losing which we started to give 25 girls instead of 20 for the Dark Selection. Not to mention lands lost. And lives. We have lost many lives. Way too many. And all because of him? I am supposed to be furious, but somehow I am not. He did his duty… And that story of his mother… And being a bastard child… It probably wasn’t the luxurious hassle-free life that I imagined. I don’t remember those years as I was just a child back then…

“Gods, Derrien, how old are you?”, I suddenly ask and he looks surprised, “I was a baby back when that was happening!”

“Does it matter?”, he chuckles and stops, taking a lock of hair out of my face.

“No,” I admit, blushing, “But I am just curious…”

“Let me just say that I was 19 back then,” he raises his brow at me and waits for my reaction.

“Then it makes you thirty…”

But I don’t get to finish, because I sense them! They are close and they are here to kill…