Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) Read online

  Nicole Conway

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2014 by Nicole Conway

  Avian by Nicole Conway

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by Month9Books

  Cover Copyright © 2014 Nicole Conway

  Cover Image Copyright 2013 Bidermann

  Cover Image Copyright 2013 DimaChe

  To my grandmother-in-law, Evelyn Conway.

  I can never thank you enough for all that you do for us.

  PRAISE FOR FLEDGLING

  “Not just another dragon story; this memorable escapade is fast-paced and packed with action. It will leave readers on the edge of their seats”

  -- D.J. MacHale – Author of “The SYLO Chronicles” and “Pendragon”

  “A captivating first installment in an exciting to new series.” – Amazon Reviewer

  “I would recommend this book for someone who's tired of reading the same old same old. Very inventive and can't wait to see what happens next!” – Amazon Reviewer

  “A must read for anyone who loves coming of age stories and dragons!” – Amazon Reviewer

  “The book was great. It grabbed my attention from the beginning and held it to the end.” – Amazon Reviewer

  “I truly enjoyed the story and could relate to the characters. Can't wait for the next portion of the saga!” -- Amazon Reviewer

  “I thoroughly enjoyed this journey of characters. I cannot wait to read more from this author on these characters and their continuing journey.” – Amazon Reviewer

  “As a mother of a young boy and a teacher of young children, I recommend Fledgling to all young adolescents. It is truly a remarkable book. It is an easy read and deals with things that young adolescents face. I enjoyed reading this as an adult as did my mother!” – Amazon Reviewer

  “I read this in record time. I couldn't put it down. Very good read and kept you thinking. Can't wait for Avian to come out!!” – Amazon Reviewer

  Nicole Conway

  one

  Not everyone can be a dragonrider. Not everyone can handle the stress or the physical demands of having the most dangerous job in the king’s forces. My mentor, Lieutenant Sile Derrick, once told me that dragonriders are not born—they are made. He said that they have to be hammered, shaped, and baptized in fire, just like when a blacksmith molds a lethal sword out of a hunk of raw metal. Blybrig Academy is where all dragonriders are made. It’s our forge. Never in a hundred years would I have guessed I would find myself there, facing the furnace of my destiny. But destiny has a funny way of picking you when you least expect it.

  There was snow on the mountains when I left Blybrig behind for the three-month interlude in my training as a dragonrider. I hadn’t been back home to Mithangol in almost a year. I wish I could tell you that I was looking forward to seeing my father, stepmother, twin half-sisters, and older half-brother again. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was absolutely dreading it. The very thought of living with them put painful knots of anxiety in my stomach.

  I looked into the cold wind from the back of my dragon, Mavrik, who stretched his wings out wide to catch the updrafts. He soared like a magnificent blue-scaled eagle. I was sitting between his strong neck and powerful wing arms in a saddle made of finely crafted leather. He could sense my uneasiness. Every now and then, he flicked a glance back at me with one of his big yellow eyes, making curious clicking and chirping noises.

  “It’ll be fine.” I tried to sound confident. “I’m sure things will be different now.”

  In fact, I knew they probably wouldn’t. If anything, now they would be much worse. My father had never liked me. He had never even wanted me to begin with. But after my mother passed away, there was nowhere else for me to go except maybe a prison camp. I’m pretty sure that’s where I would have ended up if my mother hadn’t left behind a letter that named Ulric Broadfeather as my biological father. That letter made him my only living relative, so he was duty-bound to adopt me. It was a law in Maldobar, so he couldn’t refuse even though I was a halfbreed. It would have looked worse to abandon me than for him to have a halfbreed for a son.

  Far below, tucked into the crevices of the Stonegap Mountains, I saw Mithangol. That was where Ulric and his real family lived, and where I’d been an unwelcomed guest since I was twelve years old. It was the dead of winter now, so all the roofs of the houses and shops were covered in a thick blanket of clean white snow. I could see the steep slopes dotted with dark fir trees and smoke rising up from all the chimneys.

  I’d lost all track of time while I was in Blybrig Academy. It was close to the coast and cut off from the world by mountains on all sides, so the seasons practically stood still. It was always warm, dry, and sunny there. After spending so many months in the constant warmth of the desert, I’d forgotten what the winter cold felt like. I shivered hard, and Mavrik made an unhappy grumbling, growling sound. I guess he didn’t like the cold, either.

  Since I was sure no one at home was expecting me, I wasn’t in any hurry to get back there right away. Besides, there was someone else I had to see first. Mavrik circled around the outside of the small city looking for a good place to land. Finally, he cupped his wings and lurched toward the ground, stepping awkwardly into the snow and growling as he hunkered down long enough for me to jump down out of the saddle. I took my bag off his back, and gave him a good scratch behind the ears.

  “Go find a good spot in the sun,” I told him. “At least until I can figure out how to fit you in the barn.” I wasn’t sure Ulric was going to allow that—especially since there was a good chance Mavrik might eat the horses. The only thing more dangerous than a hungry dragon is a bored dragon.

  Mavrik blinked at me, snorted, and took off into the sky again. I stumbled back as the rush of wind off his wings hit me hard, making me lose my balance for a moment. I stood ankle-deep in the snow, watching him soar upwards and disappear into the low clouds. Even if I couldn’t see him, I could still feel his presence like a buzzing warmth in the back of my mind. It gave me comfort as I started hiking through the thin line of pine trees.

  I knew Mithangol like the back of my hand. I’d spent a lot of a time avoiding my family, and even more time getting into trouble with Katalina Crookin. Katty had been my best friend until I went to Blybrig, and so I started for her house right away. I still considered her one of my closest friends, even if I hadn’t seen her in almost a year. Knowing that I’d be standing in her house soon, getting hugged and force-fed by her mother while I told them about my training, put a smile on my face. I was so excited to finally see her.

  I walked down the side of the road that led past the Crookin’s home. Further down that same road was Ulric’s house, but I wasn’t going to let myself think about that yet. Katty’s father was a blacksmith, and I knew by the smell of scorched metal in the air that he must have been working in his forge. The sun was just beginning to set as I came up the drive toward the front of their house. I saw lights burning in the windows, and smoke puffing out of their chimney. The place looked cozy, and exactly how I’d remembered it.

  I knocked on the front door, my stomach churning and doing excited back flips while I waited. I wanted to see Katty, and at the same time, I was so nervous. I wondered if she had changed since we last saw each other. I was fairly sure I hadn’t grown at all, despite my best efforts. Finally, the handle lurched, the door opened, and I held my breath.

  It wasn’t Katty.

  Mrs. Crookin stood in the doorway wiping her hands on her apron. When she saw me, she started to smile. Her eyes got bright, and she grabbed me before I could even remember to hold my breath. She always hugged me so tight I thought I might suffocate.

  “Jaevid!” She crooned at me, and started kissing my cheeks. “Look at you! So handsome in that uniform! Katty told me you were taken in by the academy. Training to be a dragonrider, is it?”

  I blushed as she held me out at arm’s length. I was still wearing my fledgling uniform with the king’s golden eagle stitched onto the chest. I hadn’t bothered putting on my armor, though. It was still packed away in my bags. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh she’s going to be so excited to see you. She read your letters over and over.” Mrs. Crookin started wiping dirt from my face with her apron. “She’s out at the forge, dear. You should go surprise her.”

  Katty had told me in one of her letters that she was going to be an apprentice for her father and learn to be a blacksmith, too. I knew that would definitely make her happy. She had always talked about wanting to learn her father’s craft. It was her dream.

  I left my bag in the doorway and started out across the snow toward the barn where Mr. Crookin had built his own forge and bellows. Black smoke belched out of the stone stack, and I could see the bright red glow of the fire inside shining from the crack under the door.
r />   My stomach was doing more aerobatics than ever as I started to pull on the handle. I opened it just a little, barely enough to peek inside and see what she was doing. All of a sudden, my heart hit the back of my throat like someone was choking me. It hit me so hard I couldn’t even think. I couldn’t breathe. All I felt was a burning, angry heat in the pit of my stomach like I’d swallowed a mouthful of dragon venom.

  Katty was there, and I didn’t see her father anywhere. But she wasn’t alone. She was standing with a boy who looked like he was eighteen or so—a lot older than I was. He was a lot taller than me, too, with coal-black hair pulled into a short ponytail. He was wearing a blacksmithing apron just like she was, and they were laughing together. I didn’t recognize him, which bothered me the most. Mithangol was a very small city. Most of the younger men had bullied me at one time or another while I was growing up, so I knew who they were. But I had never even seen this boy before.

  She giggled at him while he teasingly smudged ash on her cheeks, and when she turned around to start working again, I saw him put a hand on the base of her back. It made that angry fire in my gut burn all the way up through my chest. I couldn’t even see straight.

  They hadn’t noticed I was standing there, so I shut the door and backed away. I went back to the house with my heart hammering in my ears. When I got inside, I picked up my bag and got ready to leave.

  “Wasn’t Katty working out there?” Mrs. Crookin sounded worried. She was leaning in from the kitchen, looking me over for an explanation.

  I couldn’t meet her gaze. I was sure if I did, she’d see how upset I was. “Yeah. But she’s busy. I’ll just come back some other time,” I lied.

  Mrs. Crookin didn’t try to stop me as I gathered my bag and left. When the cold air hit my face, I realized just how angry I really was. I didn’t even understand why seeing her with that boy made me so upset. But it did. It felt like some kind of betrayal, even if I had no justification for it. Katty and I were just friends. We’d always been just friends. I had no right to be upset about who she flirted with. None of that mattered right then, though. I was so furious I was seeing red.

  In my mind, Mavrik sent me an image of him burning the barn to the ground with Katty and that stranger inside. I shook my head, and looked up to the darkening sky. “Don’t bother,” I muttered.

  I knew he would hear me even if he were ten miles away. We were linked now in a way I didn’t understand. While I was at Blybrig, I’d discovered I had a unique ability to call out to animals. They could understand me. But so far, Mavrik was the only one who could communicate back to me. That was our secret.

  I dragged my feet through the snow as I walked down the road toward Ulric’s house. My thoughts were clouded and confused. I wasn’t even worried about seeing my family anymore. All I could think about was that stranger and how he’d touched Katty, smiled at her like that, and made her laugh. It made me so annoyed with her, and even more furious and frustrated with myself. I was so caught up that when I turned the corner to walk up the steep, muddy drive toward my family’s home, I didn’t notice the house.

  Then I looked up.

  There were no lights burning in the windows, and the house was completely dark. It was getting kind of late, though. Maybe everyone had already gone to sleep? Still, it was strange that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. As cold as it was, Ulric would have normally lit the fireplace to keep the house warm all night.

  I hurried up the drive toward the porch, noticing that the garden was dead and covered in snow. My stepmother, Serah, usually covered the ground with pine straw to protect the plants from the cold until spring. Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peeked in through the front window to see if anyone was still sitting up in the parlor. Sometimes Ulric sat at the side of the dying fire to smoke his pipe until really late.

  What I saw put another hard, painful knot in my throat. I ran to the front door and started beating on it. To my surprise, the door just swung freely in. It wasn’t even locked.

  The house was empty.

  For a few minutes, I could only stand there in the open doorway while the cold winter wind howled past me. I stared through the darkness into the parlor and kitchen in front of me. There wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere. Judging by the dust gathered on the kitchen counters and windowsills, they hadn’t been here for months.

  Slowly, I began to realize the truth: they had left me. Ulric had taken his whole family, moved, and never said a word to me about it. Maybe it was naïve to expect him to tell me, but it still left me stunned.

  “Jae!” I heard someone call out to me, and I recognized who it was right away. But hearing her voice didn’t give me comfort like it usually did. I didn’t turn around. I just kept standing there, staring into the empty house, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

  Katty ran up behind me with ash still smudged on her cheeks. She was flushed and out of breath, wearing a dark gray dress and blacksmithing apron that were both covered in scorch marks. “Jae?” she said my name again.

  I was going to have to face her eventually. At least now, she wouldn’t know I was upset about what I’d seen with her. I had bigger problems. “They left,” I muttered back, finally looking back at her.

  Katty had grown. She looked different, and not in ways I necessarily felt comfortable with. The boys in town had always teased her and called her ugly because of her wild, frizzy curls and scrawny build. Her golden, curly hair was longer and it wasn’t frizzy at all. It framed her round face and made her look… very, very beautiful. Her wide blue eyes glittered in the darkness, but I had to look up to see them because she was taller than me now. All her freckles were gone, and now her skin looked smooth and soft. She had adult shapes to her body now that were almost hidden by her thick leather apron.

  She looked a lot more grown up now. And for some reason, that made me more angry and frustrated than ever. Katty was only a few months older than I was, so I had always felt better about my lack of size because she wasn’t all that big, either. But now I knew for sure that I was doomed to be a tiny scarecrow forever. Even girls were outgrowing me.

  “I know,” she said softly. “I came by a week ago to see if you’d come back yet, and they were already gone. This was left for you. I found it slipped under the front door. It’s from your brother. I hope you don’t mind, but I read it already. I wanted to know why they left without saying anything.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a wrinkled envelope.

  I took it from her, scowling at it as I crammed it into my own pocket. Why they’d left didn’t matter to me right then. All I cared about was that now I was alone here, in a big empty house. I didn’t have any furniture. I didn’t have any clothes other than my uniforms. I didn’t even have food.

  “Don’t worry, okay?” Katty reached out to put her arms around my neck. She hugged me, but it didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it just felt awkward and wrong—like she was comforting a little kid. “We’ll help you. We’ll bring you anything you need.”

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t make myself say anything else. I was too upset. My jaw locked up and I clenched my teeth.

  “I’m so sorry, Jae.” She hugged me even tighter. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  For some reason, I didn’t quite believe her. She’d obviously had some company to keep her from being lonely without me. “Yeah,” I managed to answer dryly. “Well, I’m back now for three months.”

  “You can come stay with us tonight,” she offered.

  I backed away from her a little, looking into the empty house and trying to decide what to do now. Finally, I shook my head. “No, but thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  She arched a brow at me suspiciously. I could see confusion in her eyes. “But Jae, there’s nothing here. You can’t possibly—”

  “I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “Please leave me alone.”

  This definitely wasn’t the welcome home I’d expected. Oh sure, I’d anticipated getting the cold shoulder from Serah and my siblings, being forced to sleep in the loftroom again, and maybe even getting a beating from Ulric just for old time’s sake. This had caught me completely off guard. I felt so lost.