The Dragon Blood Guardian *COMPLETED*

Bloodlines

"My...my..." I couldn't get the words out. I kept gasping as if I'd been trapped beneath the water. A shaking hand covered my mouth as I struggled to find air. I tried to call the soldier from within me to command control, but for so long I had ignored the other facet of myself. The forgotten orphan, the lost daughter.

"Please, forgive me Adelaide." The king swooped down, kneeling before me and grabbing my hand. Instinctively, I wanted to take hold of his arms and pull him up, unable to see him submissive before me. Yet, I couldn't command anything in my body to move. All feeling, all thought had been focused upon the touch of his hand on mine.

"B-but, you d-don't know," I stuttered, my words rattling with the tears I fought back. "I could be just like Cecily. I may not be your daughter."

Then, a smile returned to his face, his eyes warm and glistening with unshed tears. "I may not have known much over these past twenty-four years, but I've always known you were my daughter."

"B-but, we should do a genesis potion... I need to make sure..."

"Not necessary," he said, rising to his feet and swiping my words away with his hand. "I have other means of knowing. Do you have the pendant?"

"I-I, well yes." He threw me off guard, but it helped clear my head. Curious to see where this was heading, I reached into my pocket and withdrew the cylinder whose chain still needed to be mended. He took it from me with a smile and handed it to the sisters. Clasped in both their hands, they said a chant and soon liquid metal oozed through their fingers and fell to the floor. When they opened their hands again, a ruby gem laid in their palms.

"She was right, the final jewel was in there," I muttered.

"Yes," said the king, as he retrieved the gem. He then moved over to a table beside the throne and procured the bracelet that once belonged to Cecily, that once belonged to my mother. "I would not allow you to be separated from me without some mark of your birth. So we had your aunts fashion this pendant."

To my surprise, the king did not insert the jewel into the last slot on the bracelet, instead he removed all but one and put the rest in a velvet bag, which he handed to the sisters.

"There was something Cecily was wrong about though. The bracelet really didn't need all of the jewels," he said, handing the bangle over to me. "Lord Gadfrey saw me use the jewels during the war with Raidenfall. It's how we won."

"The-the fire," I stuttered, my words struggling to form as my brain rushed to catalog all the new information invading my thoughts, "the one caused by the dragon at Everwood...it-it wasn't you, was it?" I looked up at him with pleading eyes, but my answer came in a resigned bend of his brow and pout of his lips.

"I didn't want to do it, but my pride got the better of me. I wouldn't allow them a single centimeter of advancement upon our soil and with our army a day's journey away, I had to do something." He sighed and looked out the windows for a moment, before turning back. "It's a terrible weapon that destroyed many lives and as Lord Gadfrey saw, I did it without even using all of the gems."

"Then, why didn't..."

"Why didn't Cecily manage to use it?" asked the king, regaining some brightness to his voice as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "Because these gems are like most charms in the fact that they've been imbued with power to be used quickly and efficiently by a mage. Lord Gadfrey knows how charms work better than most, so he was more than familiar with the necessary components for the spell and was thus not surprised when he learned such a powerful charm needed two components, the jewels and the bracelet.

"By convincing him he needed both parts to work the charm, he never questioned the jewels nonreactive behavior when he came in contact with them, just as he never questioned my unwillingness to allow him access to both marks of the crown. Had he been granted access to both he'd soon discover that these jewels are very, very old and imbued with even older magic. That they're from before the great war, before the mages nearly wiped themselves off the planet.