The Dragon's Heir [Beta][Complete]

Prologue - Rewritten but Unedited

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Welcome reader! Thanks for choosing to give my book a go, I hope you enjoy it like lots of my amazing fans have so far. Sit back and relax!

To past readers coming back, I have terrible news... I've... changed the prologue. I'm sorry if you liked it! I personally found it painful to read, but I hope you like this new version. Tell me what you think of it?

So many thank you's already but... Thank you everyone for making my dream of 3mil reads come true! I love you all so much, you can't even begin to imagine!

I would also like to note again that this book is in its raw form and therefore unedited and full of grammatical mistakes. If you can't handle that, please find another book. Also, when I first wrote and published this, I was thirteen, so I hope you understand why there are plot inconsistencies. Thank you for your understanding.

Also, thank you @skybunnies for her interpretation of Arabelle in the media section'

Read, vote and fan...and enjoy! Xoxo

~

Prologue

So much has happened since I first discovered the truth. I don't even know where to begin my story. I could start from the beginning, but nothing happened until I was much older. Yet without the beginning, you don't know enough to understand the rest of the story. Interesting, isn't it, that the years I thought were nothing but boring space filling times ended up holding meaning for the future.

As a little girl, I grew up with a boy, well, he was actually a prince, called Harrison. My family was always close with the Royal family. I think we only stopped playing together when he turned fourteen and I turned twelve. It was as if something in him changed. He barely looked at me. Looking back now, he was simply beginning the process of growing up, while I was still a child.

We used to meet everyday at four in the morning, on the roof of his castle. While he would sneak through all the stairways to the top, I would leave my room in my family house and climb the outside of the castle to the roof. Terribly, terribly dangerous. We would sit and play small games until sunrise, when we would watch the bright sun break light over the mountain range. It was a beautiful sight. I still remember it now, years later. Yet as we got older, my sister, who was the Prince's age, started to be around him more.

My mother kept scolding me whenever I tried to play with the Prince. I didn't understand why at the time, as I was too young to notice the way my sister, Evangelina, looked at the Prince. The way he would walk hand in hand with her. The way she would dress up in her best blue dress and do her honey golden hair as beautifully as possible whenever the King invited us to join the royal table for dinner. I most certainly didn't notice the way Prince Harrison's younger brother looked at me with curiosity. He knew a lot of things then that I would take many years to find out through him. Many things that changed my life forever.

When it was my twelfth birthday, the Prince came to the roof in the morning. He told me that he was 'betrothed' to my sister and he could no longer be seen with me. I didn't know what betrothed meant at the time, so I continued to try and play with him. That was when my sister confronted me, shouting and screaming at me for trying to ruin her future. My mother soothed my crying self and grounded my sister, but that didn't work. She claimed she was a Princess now and was meant to be respected above all those aside from Prince Harrison, the King and the Queen. I think that was one of the last acts of kindness I saw from my mother.

One day, we couldn't find her in bed at her normal wake up time, which was odd. She was never up before anyone else. We searched the house and the castle high and low and still couldn't find her. We'd searched all but one place, a place we had thought she definitely wouldn't be found in: the royal quarters. My mother charged into the Prince's room to find her laying in his bed wearing nothing, and the Prince rolled as far away from her as possible, curled in a ball, eyes wide open and bloodshot. My mother grabs him and starts questioning him and he starts to sob, saying he didn't want to, but Evangelina was saying it meant she was certain to be his bride... that even their parents would never tear apart their love. Somehow, none of us were surprised at her brash actions.

My mother was enraged and told the King that the betrothal was going to be delayed until she could teach her daughter the ways of a lady. The King agreed with this, as he needed to teach his son the royal ways. We left the castle with sad faces to go to our birth town, far across the country. I remember I jumped on my horse and looked to where Prince Harrison was staring at the ground. He looked up to say farewell, but he wasn't watching Evangelina...he was watching me. His icy blue eyes melted into my green ones with sadness, his brown hair blowing around in the breeze as my black hair was too. We were so young, and yet somehow we already held a connection that no one could stop.

Evangelina moved her horse in front of mine and blew Prince Harrison a kiss, but he didn't return it, he just nodded, which satisfied me at least. When I looked back at the prince, he whispered goodbye to me – I couldn't hear it but I could read his lips – and I whispered back, then turned and cantered off to catch up with the front. Somehow I managed to fight back the tears I so desperately wanted to shed.

We rode for days and nights, and Evangelina got sick. She seemed to get weaker and paler the longer we rode, so we stopped for a while in a small village on the outskirts of our land. Most of the villagers stayed away, but I went and played with some of the other kids my age. Somehow, while most of the villagers were scared of nobles, I was always different. Evangelina's condition still didn't improve. A month passed, and she was still just as pale and weak. My mother sent a messenger to tell the King she was ill and to send a royal doctor. A week later, the messenger came back with the doctor and he made Evangelina better, then told my mother that he had orders to stay with us until we returned to the palace.

Riding some more, I could see Evangelina's stomach is growing, but our food supply was getting less. At the time, being young, I had no idea what was happening. Then it suddenly clicked in that she was pregnant with the Prince's child. If she survived the birth, she would be royal by the child's rights. My heart suddenly felt heavy as we rode into our town, and Evangelina's many maids rushed to her side. That's how it was ever since then. Always about Evangelina.

For the next year, I spent most of my time learning to do things like swordfight, joust, shoot a bow and arrow, and other things a woman should never really do, since my mother was busy training Evangelina in the ways of a lady. Little did I know these skills would come in so handy. My older brothers, Daniel and Rory, helped teach me along with my little brother, Maxwell. Evangelina lost the child, having fallen off her horse while learning how to ride in side saddle. By the time we left for the palace once more, I was fourteen and my sister sixteen. This time, Maxwell, who was barely eleven, along with Daniel and Rory, who were twins of eighteen, came back with us. They usually stayed back at our house to look after things since our father was gone, but since Evangelina may have been getting married they had to come.

After numerous months travel, we arrived at the gates to the castle. Sitting high, with a bow slung over my shoulder and a sheath of arrows on my back, I must have looked like a completely foreign person. The gates opened and we rode in, but the sight of Prince Harrison made me nearly turn around and gallop back to our state house. He had grown even more handsome than I remembered, but he couldn't be mine: he was for Evangelina. Yet, neither of us could look away from each other. Evangelina jumped off her horse, oblivious to the look we were giving each other, and folded her arms around him, snapping him out of the gaze.

It wasn't long before Evangelina was sick again though. Ever since her miscarriage she had been constantly on and off being unwell. I think this is a good place to start my story.