Winter ©

Prologue

I sigh and impatiently tap my fingers on my thigh. I've got people in front of me and people behind me that won't stop whispering. Today, fate will either bend in my favor or it will level me out like everyone else in this society.

Madame Serilda pulls her long red hair into a ponytail as she steps down onto the grey stone ground and walks over to the massive wooden doors, pulling them both open in unison. She steps into the egg chamber and motions for the line to begin moving towards her.

"Everyone move forward please!" she shouts to the large crowd of twenty one year old students. Her voice loudly reverberates down the hollow hallway, drawing all of our attention to her standing at a black podium. I nervously shake my hands out at my sides and squeeze myself into the newly formed single file line about one hundred people deep.

"Will you relax, Demetria? Everything is going to be fine," Mekhi mutters from behind me. I haven't shut up about this day since I turned twenty one a month ago, so he knows how anxious I am.

"You know I hate it when you call me by my full name and when you tell me to relax, M," I snap as I look over my shoulder and shoot him an annoyed glance.

"Well sometimes you get lost in your own little world and need to be brought back down to Saros," he responds.

I roll my eyes. "I'm fine. I'm just a little nervous, but it's nothing I can't handle."

I rotate back around to face the front. I take a deep breath and slowly let the air leave my lungs in an attempt to quell my thoughts. I've been mentally telling myself that I'm ready for the Selection Ceremony the past few weeks and now that the moment is finally here, I'm not so sure that I am. This is the day that determines who and what we are. It's a defining moment in every student's life. Today marks the 500th annual Selection Ceremony that occurs one week prior to graduation. Once the chamber doors behind Serilda open, we either bond to a dragon egg or simply become another member of the community destined for normalcy.

"Everyone settle down please!" Serilda demands as all of the idle chatter dulls down to total silence. She flashes us a beaming smile before clearing her throat to continue.

"Now, if you are a Rune, it will be obvious and you may reach out to touch the egg calling to you. If an egg doesn't call to you, do not touch it. We cannot run the risk of damaging them as they are precious cargo and becoming increasingly harder to come by due to the recent uprisings. Are we all clear?"

Her eyes pan around the room at all of us. In unison, everyone murmurs a yes, Madame Serilda.

"The first ten of you will start down aisle one, the second ten will proceed down aisle two, and so on and so forth. Don't be concerned about which aisle you end up on first, you'll all get the chance to walk down each of them."

One by one, the line moves up the short flight of steps and we enter into the room. Damn near everyone can't help but glance around in awe. No one is allowed in here until we turn twenty one and are brought in for the Selection Ceremony, so we've only seen pictures at this point. The walls are all dark grey stone with fifty foot vaulted ceilings that make the room seem even larger than it already is. When I reach aisle four, my hazel eyes pan down a line of six white granite pedestals spaced out about ten feet or so apart, each of them holding a different colored egg. Two blue Rain dragons, one green Flora, one brown Terra and two yellow Volt. The eggs are much larger than I thought they would be, about the same width and height of a very over-sized watermelon. They are covered with a sheer glittering coat that makes each individual color pop even more. It's so tempting to reach out and touch one just to see what it feels like, but I'm not that stupid. I won't run the risk of damaging an egg and what's inside of it.