Dragon Blood (Completed)

The Girl

Chapter 3

Zane's heart plummeted as he realized something had gone horribly wrong. Standing between the three dragons was a young, dark-haired girl, and a small boy.

The girl had a wild look to her, with dark mahogany hair cut in short, choppy layers. It stood up in uneven tufts on the top of her head. She was unlike anything else he'd seen before. Her clothes were also strange. Her legs were covered in a blue material that clung to her slight form. She had boots that came up to her calves and a fitted red jacket that was zipped almost to her neck. She looked older than twelve, but younger than Zane.

Next to her was a male child in blue pants, but his shoes were very different. They were black with multi-colored lines. When the boy moved, little lights blinked. He wore a jacket with a hood, though his was black, and he was far older than three. There was no way Aminah would have been able to produce children this old in the twenty years she was gone.

After his cursory glance at their clothes, he focused on their faces, their eyes more specifically. They both had brown eyes—not the blue that would be the mark of a Bluescale, but brown like a human. Not the eyes of a royal. Their eyes were strange in another fashion because they were round in the center, not the elongated slits of a dragon's eyes.

Everyone in the room looked at the two children, shocked by what the spell had produced. Where was Kaison Bluescale and Aminah, his companion? Their son Aranzo should have been a grown man about Zane's age. No, something had gone terribly wrong.

The girl looked around the room, her eyes wide with fear. With a shaking hand, she reached out for the boy. Saying something to him in a language Zane didn't understand, the boy obediently looked at her and took the hand she held out to him.

Once she had the boy's hand in hers, she bent down and pulled a small knife from her boot. Zane was curious about these strange children, so he moved closer to get a better look. These were the first humans he'd ever seen. After hearing stories about them growing up, he was fascinated.

Although the girl held a knife, she was not freighting or viewed as a threat to anyone in the room. She was simply scared as anyone else would be. They had pulled these poor kids from some place into a room with enormous dragons and armed guards. She had a right to be scared, though what use her small knife would be against even one of the enormous dragons in the room, Zane couldn't fathom.

The boy's wide brown eyes were filled with wonder rather than fear, as the girl's were. As fascinating as they were, they were not his promised reprieve. Zane hated to see them after getting his hopes up. More Bluescales were out there somewhere, and to get these two instead was disheartening. If they had been the decedents of the Bluescale line, then the boy's eyes should have been a vibrant blue, the same as his father's. The girl should have had yellow eyes, the same as her mother, since royal children inherited their parents' abilities based on gender. Neither one of them had dragon eyes, not even the gray eyes of a commoner.

Another bad sign was their shock and fear over appearing in a room full of dragons. The Bluescales went into hiding many years ago, enough time to have children. Wouldn't those children know how to speak dragon tongue, knowing that one day they would be returning to their true home? Wouldn't they know about dragons? Even if their eyes only looked brown due to some type of glamour, they were too frightened, too unaware of their surroundings.

The girl blinked up at the dragons, like she didn't know if what she was seeing was real. The little boy said something about them. Zane only knew this because the boy pointed at Zane's father. The girl snatched his hand away, saying something in their language, then took a step back, pulling the boy with her. Her knuckles were white around the handle of her knife. The little weapon was almost laughable to Zane, but if it made her feel safe, he didn't think they should try to take it from her.