Faelost Read online

  Faelost

  ∆∆∆

  Book 2 of The Bacra Chronicles

  Courtney M. Privett

  Copyright © 2018 Courtney M. Privett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ∆∆∆

  For Billy Coulson and Kate Amato. Your smiles lit the world, but your time here was too brief. You are loved, always.

  For Jesse and Jerry. Our childhoods were shared, our adulthoods were not. I still carry those early memories close to my heart. Be at peace, my old friends.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Courtney M. Privett

  Western Bacra

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Other Books by Courtney M. Privett

  Huron

  The Malora Octet

  Mayfly Requiem

  The Abyssal Night

  Shards of Chaos

  The Shattered Veil

  Shadows of Absolution

  Sand into Glass

  The Crystal Lattice

  Arrow of Entropy

  Rain Falls on Malora

  The Bacra Chronicles

  Cavelost

  Faelost

  Spellkeeper

  For Children

  Elora Goes to the Moons

  Western Bacra

  Chapter 1

  The two most common lies in our world are I'm fine and You'll be okay. They are said without harmful intent, and often said in an attempt to placate worries, but still they tell us it is not our place to make another person uncomfortable or to draw too much attention to ourselves. Over and over, we mindlessly repeat variations of the same two phrases as we hide within our lies and attempt to spare others from the miserable truth. I'm fine. I'm okay. You're fine. You'll be okay. Everything will be all right. We become our lies, but only on the surface. Underneath, we are not fine and they will not be okay. We all know this but we're afraid to speak it.

  I'll say it now, though I will still speak the lie aloud—I am not okay. I never will be again.

  It all started with lies, and one day it will end with the truth. Not yet, but someday. The distressing reality that makes up the foundation of our world must remain in shadow just a little bit longer. You won't be spared from discomfort when it finally emerges. None of us will. For now, I can only reveal what brought us here. The truth is as old as Bacra itself, but my part in it began with the dragons.

  ∆∆∆

  Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap. Tap.

  I avoided the squeaky floorboard in the middle of the hall and stepped over a textbook that had been neglected long enough to attract dust bunnies. The shifting patterns of sunlight through the summer trees played off the swirling wood grain of the walls and scattered prismatic rainbows upon my bare feet.

  Shan's door was closed, and bathed in the light of the single window at the corridor's end.

  Tap. Tap. Tap tap tap tap.

  Not a hammer strike, not fingers tapping on wood . . . what was that? Curiosity outweighed the fear that my brother would be irate if I disturbed him. I winced as my final step toward the door released a low groan from within the floorboards, then raised my hand to rap my knuckles against the wood.

  Before I could knock, Shan opened the door and yanked me inside. His face was flushed, highlighting the six parallel scars that marred his cheeks. I hated those scars. His own grandmother had given them to him, and they only hinted at the damage she'd inflicted upon the rest of his body. He used to look a lot like his father, Daelis. Now he looked like a broken stranger and I was still getting used to this new version of Shan. I knew he was having trouble with it, too. A couple weeks prior, he had taken every mirror in the house into a nearby field and used them as target practice. Then he buried the shards and refused to tell Mom what happened to the mirrors. She knew he was the one who took them, but she told me he was too fragile for confrontation.

  I stumbled over a rise in the rag rug. Shan caught me, then shoved me toward his bed.

  “Sit,” he commanded. The evening sunlight briefly caught his turquoise eyes before he yanked the heavy curtains shut. He sat next to me on the bed and ran his fingers though his shaggy, wheat-colored hair. “Good timing. I was about to go find you, but you came to me instead.”

  Tap tap. Tap tap. TAP.

  “What is that noise?” I asked. The sound was much louder inside Shan's room. I hadn't been in there for a while and the changes he'd made were alarming. He had painted the walls indigo and speckled them with stars and moons. His usual clutter was gone, replaced by a multitude of neatly-arranged books. No clothes or loose papers littered the floor. What was this? Where did my slob of a brother go?

  “I'll tell you in a moment.” Shan scratched at his wrist before tracing his fingertips down the lines of his scars. He sighed, then shook his head and smiled at me. “Stop looking at me like that. You'll be fine. I want to share something with you. I know this past year has been a nightmare for you. Yeah, you weren't in the caves with us, but that doesn't matter because you still had to deal with the trauma of thinking we were dead and then getting us back but we were . . . we were different. Are different. Everything is jumbled up and upside down, and now you've gone from quiet mourning to having us back, plus Daelis and Yana and Zinnia, and all of this knowledge you didn't have before.” His words were rhythmic, and I suspected he'd scripted and possibly rehearsed them.

  Tap. TAP. Tap tap TAP.

  “Yeah. It's overwhelming. And loud.” I glanced toward Shan's nightstand. The drawers rattled in time with the tapping. “What the hell is that, Shan? Mom's going to be pissed if it wakes up the baby.”

  TAP TAP tap.

  Shan held up his left hand and shook his head. “I'm not done. I'll show you when I'm done. So, I want to try something so we can reclaim what we had before the whole Jarrah mess. You've been avoiding me and I want my best friend back. I want you to be comfortable around me again. I know I've changed, but I'm still me underneath all of the accumulated weird. I'm still sorting through that. I need you to help me. That's why I want us to do this together.”

  “Do what?”

  TAP. TAP. TAP.

  Shan drummed his fingers on the top of the nightstand before sliding open the drawer. It was stuffe
d full of gauzy fabric and fine cotton batting that he likely had taken from the discard basket at either Grandma's dress workshop or Grandpa's textile store. Nestled between the folds were two gold-flecked yellow eggs, each the size of my hand. They gyrated and clicked when Shan touched them.

  Tap. TAP tap.

  “Oh shit, Shan . . . are they hatching?” I tried to draw a breath, but it caught in the back of my throat. Mom had told me about the dragon eggs that Shan had stolen from the underground city of Aes, but this was the first time I'd seen them. Shan had kept them hidden away within his locked bedroom for the past six months and I'd nearly forgotten he had them.

  “Yep.” Shan handed me one of the eggs. It was warm, almost hot, and much heavier than it appeared. I was afraid I'd drop it, so I swung my legs up onto the bed and sat cross-legged. He retrieved the second egg and mirrored my position. “I tacked a sign on the door when I pulled you in, so I don't think anyone will bother us. I think our parents assumed I'd let both dragons imprint on me, but I would rather one be yours.”

  “I'm not sure if I want that,” I said, my voice cracking. The egg rattled and nearly rolled off my knee. I braced it between my thighs and glared at him. “They're your dragons. Mom said they're your responsibility. They should imprint on you and only you.”

  Shan touched my elbow and smirked before returning his palms to his egg. “Oh, no, no, no, Tessen. The one you're holding is yours. It's a gift, to make up for being stuck alone for months when you thought we were dead. It's a shared experience, a dragon bond to help us reclaim our own bond.”

  TAP TAP TAP.

  “I was thinking more like we'd hang out, just the two of us, and play board games.”

  “This is more fun. This is something unique to us. Stop fidgeting. Stop glancing at the door. You're not leaving this room.” Shan was irritated now. He was quick to anger as of late, another aspect of his new personality that made me nervous. I had to hold onto the hope that the changes in him were temporary. Maybe doing this would help him. Maybe it would send him down a path to rediscovering the carefree person he used to be.

  “Fine. I'll stay. But only because I love you, not because I want to.”

  Shan's eyebrows arched and his ears perked. The ears of half-elves were not as expressive as those of full-blooded elves, but they still offered a good suggestion of mood. I was human and couldn't do anything interesting with my own ears. We were half-brothers, but I didn't like to think of him with that “half” attached. He was my brother, and that was it.

  Tap. TAP.

  Shan smirked again and returned his attention to the egg on his lap. “Yana's slinking around the door. Was. She's gone now. Probably went to tell Dad about the sign.”

  “Why don't you give her the egg instead of me?” I asked. It made sense when I said it. Yana was our adopted sister, an Uldru girl who Mom and Daelis found in the caves and rescued. She was magic-skilled, making her a more appropriate person for a dragonbind than ordinary me.

  “Um, no. Yana's a little kid. You're seventeen. She needs stability, not a dragon.”

  “So do I.”

  TAP.

  “Tessen, you're fine. The only person in this house who has gone through less drama than you is Zinnia, so deal with it. Do this for me. Please.”

  “Sorry. I don't–”

  “Please?”

  “Fine. I will. I'll do it. I'll let your damned stolen dragon imprint on me. If it eats me, my death is your fault.” The egg jarred against my legs. TAP TAP TAP. This little thing was feisty. And terrifying. And it hadn't even hatched yet. What the hell was I supposed to do with a dragon?

  “I love you, Tessen. I really do. More than anything.” Shan fiddled with his pendant. It was an eerie-looking thing he'd designed as a personal symbol, an alternative to either the Sylleth or Goldtree family crests he was entitled to. Mom said he'd enchanted it to boost his resilience when he was tortured by the Jarrah. It was a turquoise eye with a pair horizontal wings sprouting from the right side and a loopy snake emerging from the left. It was creepy and I hated it. I wished he'd hide it under his shirt and stop playing with it.

  “I lo–”

  TAP!

  The egg shuddered and cracked. A sparkling fragment slid down my hand and onto the quilt. A blue eye stared up at me, then blinked. A scaly snout pushed upward, further fracturing the tough eggshell.

  “Oh shit,” I mumbled. The dragon seemed to be struggling with the shell, so I peeled back the shattered top. The golden inner surface of the shell caught the lamp light and reflected color bursts upon the walls.

  “I'm the firstborn, but you get our firstborn dragon. I think that's appropriate.” Shan's voice carried a serene, dreamlike quality I hadn't before heard from my agitated post-cave brother.

  The dragon regarded me with odd eyes, one blue and one amber. Its golden scales rippled as it stretched its neck toward me. I slowly shifted my hand and stroked the underside of its chin.

  Tap. Tap tap tap TAP.

  “Eep!” The dragon's tiny, talonless hands grabbed at the shell and shredded the broken edge to bits. It pulled itself away from the shell and rested on my thigh. It was small, no bigger than a newborn kitten. Its damp wings were folded tight against its back, and its whip-like tail was easily twice the length of its body. A luminescent, pale green orb tipped the tail. It rubbed its face against my fingers and released a hesitant purr.

  “Congratulations, Tes. You're a dragon daddy. I think it's a girl. See, she has crests on her head and back. The males have horns instead of crests.” Shan grinned at me, an alarming amount of glee crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Look how relaxed she is. She likes you already.”

  “She's tired. Hatching must be a lot of work,” I said. The purring grew louder and more steady as I pet the tiny dragon along the back of her neck and between her wings. She was kind of cute, but how long until cute transitioned into deadly?

  TAP. TAP TAP TAP. CRACK!

  Shan's egg crumbled into his hands. His hatchling growled and snapped at his fingers. Its green eyes sought Shan's blue-green ones and they stared at each other. Instead of being solid gold of scale like mine, Shan's little dragon had faint black and silver swirls on its neck and horn-crowned head.

  Shan rubbed the dragon's neck with a single finger. “Hello, little boy. At least I think you're a boy. I've been waiting a long time to meet you. I'm going to call you Lumin. Tessen, what are you naming yours?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. My dragon was already asleep on my leg. I exhaled and glared at Shan. “Well, I did what you asked and now I don't know what I'm supposed to do with her. I don't even know what to feed her, how to take care of her, anything. I know nothing about dragons.”

  Shan shrugged before gently lifting Lumin out of the remainder of his egg. The tiny dragon curled up on Shan's palm and closed his eyes. “You'll be okay. You'll figure it out. We'll figure it out together. I don't think there is a single person alive and above ground who knows any more about solar dragons than we do.”

  “Great. All we know is what Daelis remembers reading when he was something like Yana's age. You didn't even find anything in the library about them, did you?”

  “Nothing of use.” He reached across my knees and touched the top of my dragon's head.

  “Squawk!” Her eyes snapped open as she chomped down on his finger.

  Shan drew back his hand and yelped. “Yeowch! She doesn't have any teeth yet, but that's a nasty bite. Strong little jaws. I think she'll trust me in time, but for now she just wants her mama.”

  “I'm no one's mama,” I said. The floorboards beyond the door creaked. Two rooms over, baby Zinnia let out a hungry wail.

  Shan nodded at my dragon. “She thinks you are. Anyway, Dad and Yana are skulking about the door. From the sound of it, Mom's just woken up, too. Let's introduce the rest of the family to our babies. They've been eager to meet them for a long time. And think of a name for her, Tessen. She can't be Baby Dragon forever.”

  Ch
apter 2

  I sat on the couch and doodled in a notebook while the tiny dragon slept on my lap. Daelis's confused cat stared at us from the corner. The entire evening had been uncomfortable and difficult, and the that-thing-must-be-tasty look in the cat's eyes was doing nothing to help me relax. I didn't like the sorrowful look in Mom's eyes when she realized one of Shan's dragons was actually my dragon. I knew what it meant. Little dragons become big dragons, and we couldn't keep them at home for long. Shan and I would have to find a permanent place for them to live before they were big enough to be noticed by the wrong authorities. Or to threaten the baby.

  Zinnia was only five days old. Mom was a couple months pregnant with her when she and the rest of the family escaped from the Jarrah's labyrinth caves. Zinnia was my older brother's only full-sibling. Mom and Daelis were estranged for years, since just before Shan was born, but they found each other in the caves and eloped in an orcan wedding ceremony as soon as they escaped. Those years in between gave Shan two half-siblings—me, and our little half-brother Alon, who had died from pneumonia four years earlier. Alon's father was a half-Faeline named Ragan Vale Dannis, who spent nearly six years as Mom's common-law spouse before Alon died and they decided they couldn't live with each other anymore. My own father was a different story, one I'd only learned the truth about after Mom returned from the caves.

  I grew up believing my father had abandoned us two weeks after my birth. Rohir Lim was young—only twenty when I was born, and Mom had recently turned eighteen—and he'd had previous trouble with the law, mostly because he was an orphaned kid just trying to survive. He was supposed to marry Mom, but then one day he vanished along with all of Mom's hidden money. He was labeled a criminal and a deserter father.

  It turned out everyone was wrong about him. He didn't abandon us. He was taken by the same people who abducted Mom and Shan sixteen years later. Rohir died underground, and Mom found his body during her escape. The Jarrah took my father from me, just like they tried to take the rest of my family. I wasn't the son of a heartless thief, but of a kidnapping victim. I was grateful I had the opportunity to learn what really happened to my father, but the circumstances still made me shudder.