Lightfall, p.1
LightFall, page 1
Table of Contents
LightFall: The Dreadmarked Dragon Book 1
Copyright
Dedication
Map of the Living Lands
1. The monster haunts
2. Sweet as the love
3. Blight take you
4. The white tower
5. The point, the edge
6. Truly flawless auric purity
7. It has been said
8. The hart knows
9. A pot
10. By the time
11. Hide
12. And so
13. One for you
14. I told them
15. Mind
16. Ask the sun
17. Benedictions
18. As the light remembers
19. For centuries
20. What became of
21. The brilliance
22. Temptation
23. Let the mountain crack
24. If only
25. Close your eyes
26. The fall
27. I butchered demons
28. Against silence
29. Remember
30. I danced for you
31. Rawr!
32. Sleep and dreams
33. Ride to the fight
34. The road goes on
35. These threads
36. At last
About the Author
Thank You!
HE IS THE DRAGON PRINCE, chained by the ghosts of sacrificed auras to a savage dragon. From solitary confinement in his obsidian tower, he flies out with the dragon to fight the demon horde—cursed by fate to give his soul and someday his life for the Living Lands.
Me… I’m nothing.
Or not quite nothing. I’m a good thief, clever with my great-grandfather’s animdao blade and my wayward tongue, which has kept me alive when no one else could be bothered—but which only get me in trouble when the Dragon Prince rescues me. He wasn’t rescuing just me, of course. There’s a fine lady and a brave soldier and a shy little shepherd, and also a holier-than-me cleric and a king, and some people who didn’t deserve to be rescued, truth be told… Neh, it’s a long story.
But every day is getting shorter, the nights colder as winter comes and whispers swirl of demonic verges splitting across the kingdom, freeing more ghastly spawn from the Lost Lands and threatening all that is bright and beautiful.
If that isn’t bad enough, the mystical binding on the dragon has begun to fray, and the scars that wound the Dragon Prince are bleeding where no one else but me can see. When only a Devouring will sate the monster’s hellish hunger, one waver off the path of auric purity will doom the Living Lands. Awful place for a thief, really.
Now the prince is threatening me as if this is my fault—although it may be partly my fault because I’ve never been able to keep my fingers to myself—and we’ll have to find our way through ancient tomes and fabled talismans and terrible battles before the kingdom crumbles. But I might be falling too—falling for the dreadmarked prince. He did save me, after all, so I might just save him in return.
+ + +
ENTER THE EXCITING WORLD of the Living Lands in LIGHTFALL, book one of The Dreadmarked Dragon duology, an epic adventure romantic fantasy, where noble intrigue and demonic war are equally fatal, where one touch in the dark may lead to desire or damnation—and love might be most dangerous of all.
LightFall
The Dreadmarked Dragon: Book 1
Copyright © 2024 by Elsa Jade
Cover by GetCovers
Images from Depositphotos
Map elements from Inkarnate
Red Circle Ink
First Edition 2024
ISBN 978-1-941547-54-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, stored in a database or retrieval system, or used for machine learning or to train artificial intelligence, language models, or similar current or future technologies without the prior written permission of the author and publisher.
For Mom, who taught me to love dragons.
(Full-size version at ElsaJade.com.)
The monster haunts me. Even chained in the black tower, it calls to me. If only I’d known…
~ Last words of King Ormonde before he disappeared
CHAPTER 1
I WAS GOING TO DIE. Everyone died—from greedy fingers groping the wrong pocket or from demons or whatever—but it was going to happen to me on this cold, gray morning as soon as Orton’s headthumpers realized they’d charged right past the dead-end alley where I was hiding.
A shame that dead part—me and the alley both—since I had a sweet bun I hadn’t eaten yet. Hoping to lose the headthumpers, I’d run the maze of the market row and grabbed a bun from the last cart along the way. The scent of the summer’s speridia jam drifting from my cloak pocket would be my final, fading memory.
A garbled shout sounded close. That was Orton’s biggest, nastiest headthumper, Tivvo. Hunkering against the brick wall, I dug the bun from my pocket and shoved half in my mouth, letting the rest stopper my heaving breath.
Pure crystal chiming rang through my head, drowning out Tivvo’s rallying cry. Ah, the bun really was so good it sang on my tongue, sweet and tart. No wonder that cartman was charging so much, too much for a pathetic street-sneak such as myself. But his light touch with the flaky dough was matched by my thievingly nimble fingers.
I chewed fast and swallowed faster, a vulgar counterpoint to the music. Then the bun was gone, but the chiming went on, swelling until the music seemed to gild the grime of my hiding place.
At the open end of the alley, a swirl of purest white veiled the gray. A flurry of silkha pennants, high and low, swept past as the sanctified weavings cleared an auric path for some fortune-favored Sevaare scion. For generations the l’Hazan of Sevaare had ruled this lightkeep unchallenged; why their auric paths needed cleansing I had no inkling. Maybe such meticulous attention to their spiritual virtue kept them in power.
That and coin, of course, plus enough demon-fighting fodder to sacrifice at the High Keep’s command.
The procession of white scarves and tolling bells went on and on, and even though the spectacle was delaying my inevitable demise, I shifted impatiently. My thighs cramped, and my backside was chilled from the rough bricks. Winter seemed to be coming too soon this year, leaving town stockpiles as thin as my trousers and tempers even shorter than the days. And now I was out of bun. If Tivvo was going to take my severed head back to Orton, I wanted to leave some disgusting drooled crumbs on his hands.
Beyond the alley mouth, muted colors mixed into the flowing white as people from the market tagged along. Processions always attracted followers seeking to cleanse their own auras in the path of the pennants, but I’d never seen so many struggling to get close. Though I had no claim to auric purity, part of me yearned toward the confusion.
When it came to moments of tumult, trouble claimed me.
In fact, the rapturous ruckus seemed like the perfect place for me. Now was a fine time to fumigate my long-neglected aura—and maybe lose myself in the chaos.
Ignoring the squish of something rotten under the worn heel of my boot, I took half a step toward the procession.
Before my other boot joined the first, a guttural scream ripped across the sky.
The roar was like a century’s worth of thunderstorms, honed to a jagged edge. It pinned me in place more cruelly than Tivvo’s dagger. In its wake, even the chimes shivered to silence.
At the end of the narrow alley, the white pennants wavered and fell as an enormous shadow eclipsed the hazy light. With only that limited view, it took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing: a monster scrolling across that slice of bleached-bone sky—like a fatal flaw rippling through a holy aura.
The Dragon Prince.
Everyone in the Living Lands owed our existence to the prince and the conquered demonic beast, but I’d never seen the pair myself, not before now. A pall sneaked through my shabby cloak and my more hard-worn composure to trace an icy finger down my spine.
Peering upward, I tried to pinpoint the prince against the black beast, but their flight was too high, the pallid sky too much contrast for my dazzled gaze.
Only the ill-fated prince could safeguard the Living Lands, at the cost of his own unraveling aura. How terrible, and yet glorious. But mostly terrible.
The quavering procession obviously felt the same way. A low moan of entwined fear and awe seeped from the followers, and every eye turned to trace the monster’s arc.
The pause opened a gap across the alley. And there Tivvo was, on the other side of the street, his thick, bald head angled to watch the monster. When he looked down, he’d be staring right at me.
Abandoned on the streets of Sevaare as a child, I’d learned early that pity and piety would not fill my belly nor protect me from the likes of Orton and his headthumpers. Only I alone could do that. Let the doomed prince save our kingdom while I saved myself.
With everyone else distracted by the monster, I squeezed against the alley wall and sidled toward this unexpected opportunity to escape. The early-winter wind fretted a
Before I could bolt, a door opened in front of me.
Heyo. Maybe there was some truth to this auric purification after all.
The procession, grinding to a halt under the Dragon Prince’s black wings, had left a silverleafed carriage at a standstill just around the corner from where I’d cowered. Though everyone else was watching the Dragon Prince, I found myself staring at the open door—right at Sevaare’s Chosen.
I’d seen her before, one of the middle Sevaare scions. Only from afar, since a nasty urchin such as myself would never be close to Sevaare’s nobility. But at any distance, Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare was striking, as all the Chosen had to be. Her skin was the hue of perfectly steeped tea with random pale patches like dreaming clouds; and one of her numerous black braids shone pure white, as if she were partly swaddled in auric pennants she could never remove. When her gaze locked with mine, her one dark eye widened, and wan sunlight flashed in her other colorless iris like the faintest spark of a distant fire.
Poised in the carriage doorway, she sucked in a breath, but the hissed alarm that emerged came from behind her.
“Stop her!”
She tensed, ready to jump to the street, just as the Dragon Prince’s shadow passed beyond us and the procession suddenly remembered it had somewhere to be. When the carriage swayed into motion, the Chosen staggered, batting the flurry of hands that grabbed at her from within. The reaching fingers tangled in her long sleeves, dragging her backward.
With the scrolled handle clenched in her fist, the wide-flung door began to close.
On the other side of the street, Tivvo was still swooning after the Dragon Prince. Beguiled by the haunting augury of violence. In another heartbeat, the carriage would pull away and leave me facing Orton’s headthumper.
I vaulted for the gap.
Squeezing through the door just as it slammed behind me, I stumbled over the Chosen. She sprawled half pinned against the raised bench seat, her two attendants on her. Trying to help her up, I thought at first.
Until the sharp stink of dinzah oil pinched my sinuses.
“Drink or drown, Lady Dyania,” one of the attendants snapped, pressing a thumb-sized ampule of the foul drug against the Chosen’s lips. “Either way, you are not leaving this carriage again until we reach the High Keep.”
The lady gargled, heaving against their combined weight. The smaller attendant tumbled into me and gave a stifled shriek of surprise at my presence, but the larger woman was focused on shoving the ampule past the Chosen’s clenched teeth.
One more helpless lunge and then Lady Dyania sagged, her dark eye and her light one rolling back.
I peered past the smaller attendant. “So? Did she drink or drown?”
Still on her knees, the larger woman whirled around. “Who are you? Get out. Ula, open the door.”
I sucked my eyetooth thoughtfully. “Can’t. Or all will see that you’ve drugged the Chosen One to death. The adoring crowd might rend us to bloody bits, too despoiled even for a demon.”
“Lady Dyania’s not dead.” The littler attendant fisted her hands in her skirt. “Jensim, tell me she’s not dead.”
“She’s not dead.” Jensim glanced sidelong at the Chosen. “But I shouldn’t have had to dose her again so soon.”
My eyebrows jumped all the way up. “Two doses? And still breathing? Wouldn’t have guessed her a dinzah dreamer.” Why would a scion of Sevaare need to dream her way to another path?
Jensim twisted her glare to me. “What would someone like you know about the Chosen?”
“Nothing,” I conceded cheerfully. “Except that you shouldn’t double dose a hostage you might need later.”
“Neh, of course a street-stinking stray would know that.” Ula clutched at Jensim. “If Lady Dyania dies, her brother will kill us.”
“Then he should’ve made sure the first dose would hold until the Feast.”
I’d been musing that they hadn’t objected to my hostage jibe, but… “A Feast?” I gulped the word with more dismay than the Chosen had swallowed the dinzah. “Here? Now?”
Jensim shot me a sour look. “Why else would the Dragon Prince be circling above?”
Other than being shocked to see him, I hadn’t thought any more about it. Why would I? The Dragon Prince wasn’t just literally above me; everything about the creature and the Chosen who fed it was out of my reach.
Not to disparage myself, of course, since my clever reach had kept me alive this long. But the Chosen, the Feast, and the Dragon Prince kept all the Living Lands from decaying into the Lost Lands.
I glanced at the swooned lady. “Then what matter if she dies? The Feast will leave nothing behind.” Kinder to let her heart slow to stillness and let her depart with her soul unravaged rather than become the monster’s auric meal.
Ula scrutinized the lady too. “If she died, we wouldn’t have to go.”
I focused on that last word. “Go? You’re leaving Sevaare?”
Jensim huffed out an irritated breath. “The Chosen is always sent to the High Keep with companions. Ula and me are only here since Lord Arafil wouldn’t let his sister stand for Sevaare alone.”
But in the end, after these two dinzah-wielding jailers had ushered her across the kingdom, the Chosen would face the Dragon Prince by herself. The lady would stand—and fall—alone.
“I’ll go with her.”
The words blurted out of me, like all my best ideas. And my worst ones too.
The attendants blinked at me, almost as blank as their unconscious lady.
Ula shook her head. “Go where?”
“To the High Keep.” I angled cautiously toward the window. While we spoke, the carriage had rolled onward. No sign of headthumpers, but Tivvo was back there, somewhere.
“You?” Jensim laughed out the word.
I curbed my pique. “Yes, I will go with the Chosen.”
If there was one crime Orton wouldn’t condone, it was stealing from him. My explanation that I’d only been borrowing from his untaxed stash of ambra-wine, briefly, wouldn’t mollify him, and the longer I evaded Tivvo, the more irate Orton would be. The High Keep might have other chances for me. And with a fine carriage to carry me there, no less. I’d never again have such an opportunity.
Next to me, Ula opened a cabinet and yanked out a quilted satchel. From other drawers, she took a lovely beaded shawl, a flagon stamped with the mark of Sevaare’s finest distiller—properly taxed—and a pair of woven gauntlets embedded with all the gleaming gemstones of the brightest auras.
Jensim stiffened. “Ula, what are you doing?”
“If someone else has volunteered, there’s no need for me to end up stranded at the High Keep when all’s done.” Wadding a pair of charming soft slippers into her bag, Ula cast a quick glance at me, and I grinned back.
Maybe being a thief wasn’t so bad if auric purity led to a dragon’s maw.
Jensim sputtered. “You can’t—”
Little Ula was having none of it. “If Lord Arafil cared so much, he’d go with his sister hisself.” She glowered. “He didn’t even send one of the lesser cousins for this misfortunate journey. Just us.”
I pursed my lips. “How like a lord, truly.”
Ula went back to stuffing her sack while Jensim wrung her hands. From the window, I noted we’d picked up different followers as we’d crossed the lightkeep, more of the rough folk from nearer the outer boundary wall. They reached for the fluttering pennants, but a guard in a three-wheeled chariot pulled by an armored hart shoved between them and our carriage. The chariot was emblazoned with the interlocked vortix motif of the High Keep.
Of course the High Keep would give Sevaare’s Chosen an honor escort. But the protections on both the chariot and the animal gave me pause. The hartier guard herself was even more imposing, with her armored, muscled body filling the chariot. The pike she hefted flew a pennant of pristine white, but the point glinted sharp as a dragon’s tooth.
Was this an escort or an arrest? Not that it should matter if I got out of Sevaare.
