Burned (A Dragon Story)

Chapter Five

Her hair was drawn back in golden locks, but if Elora looked hard enough she would have seen the silver streaks that glistened against the woman's hair, which suggested her old age. The woman did not have frown lines, and instead smiling ones, but Elora barely missed this small characteristic because of the seriousness that the woman was showing her in that very instant. Elora's head was raised high, but the woman's was raised higher. There was no doubt in Elora's mind that this woman acquired a greatness about her, and Elora wanted nothing more but to leave her and the rest of the people who watched her with scrutinizing looks upon their faces.

But she did not leave, and instead defied the very beings that stood before her. She watched as Ladon let go of her arm and walked to the center of the room, looking up to the balconies that surrounded him. He strained his head just barely to speak up to them, "Her name is Elora Embrook."

Their eyes left Ladon just briefly to go back to scrutinizing Elora, and then they returned to Ladon as he began to speak again, "And she is fit to be a queen."

A man from the left side of the balcony stood up abruptly and snapped, "What makes you so sure?"

Elora could not see Ladon smirk at the old man, but he did, "She is the daughter of Laura Embrook, a human, but," he said, pausing for emphasis, "she is also the daughter of Jasper."

"Jasper, who?" Another man spoke, from a different direction.

Ladon's head snapped to the second man, his eyes slitting into small slits like a serpent would when enraged, "What other Jasper do you know? For I speak of the greatest one, of the southern kingdom who was slain by Brogan for taking a human as his lover."

This time it was his other who spoke aloud, "And what makes you so sure that she is who you think she is?"

"It is not a matter of thought, Mother," he smirked again, "for I know."

Just then, the first man spoke loudly, his voice booming through the halls, "Prove it."

Ladon's smirk grew wider. He nodded, leaving the floor to take one of the torches from the wall. The fire blazed brightly, and Elora watched with wide eyes as Ladon closed the distance between them.

"What are you doing?" She gasped, as he grabbed her hand again.

Ladon did not answer her, and instead took her hand and put it into the torch. Together, their hands glimmered in the fire, and neither one shouted out in pain or agony.

With wide eyes, Elora looked up at Ladon and asked surprised, "You do not burn beneath a fire's flames either?"

"No," he smiled warmly at her, and then looked back up to the several dozen people in the balconies, "Do you see now?"

"She does not burn!" His mother gasped loudly, and immediately everyone began speaking loudly as if shocked and partially outraged.

"It cannot be so!" A woman frowned from the crowd, "for Jasper did not have a child. She must be an inbred from a different dragon from the same woman."

Ladon's eyebrows furrowed at that, and he glared at the woman as he let go of Elora's hand, "You cannot prove your assumptions. For no one knew the fate of Jasper and Laura Embrook, it is only a matter of time before we know for sure. Upon her eighteenth birthday, it will only be so long before a transformation might occur, and by the color of her scales and eyes, and whether or not she has Jasper's marking upon her chest, will we know if she is truly the daughter of him."

"Very well then," said his mother, "She can stay for the next several weeks, but if she does not change from the time she turns eighteen to the first moon afterwards, then you will have to let her go."

Elora was listening intently to their conversations, and confused by their words, she said to Ladon, "I do not understand."

Ladon turned to her and entwined his fingers into her own, "You will soon."

She did not draw her hand back, because she liked the reassurance he showed her but at the same time she only wanted to be set free and return to her life of ignorance.

She said breathlessly to him, "Why did you have to enter my life?"

"Because," he grinned at her, "I have been watching you for a long time, and I have come to love not only your beauty and spirit, but you."

Elora looked between Ladon and their entwined hands, and then without another thought, she found herself gazing into the fiery torch that he held in his other hand.

Then, she became faint from everything that was happening. She fell to the side, only to be caught in Ladon's embrace. A manservant came by his side to take the torch from his other hand so that he could support Elora in his arms. He picked her up and carried her away from the people in the balconies, saying just loud enough for his mother to hear, "I fear that I have exhausted my queen. We must go and rest now."

Elora let him carry her because her vision had gone blurry, but it was clear enough to see Ladon's mother staring intently at them as he carried her away. And with that, she closed her eyes, and rested her head against Ladon's shoulder.