The Last of the Firedrakes [Watty Award Winner 2015]

CHAPTER 1 - CHANCE

"Get up!" said a familiar but thoroughly irritating voice. "Get up, you freak, and stop that awful shrieking."

I sat up in my bed, sweat pouring from me, my heart beating so fast I had to take deep breaths to calm down. I knew it was only a dream, but it always felt so real, as if I had actually lived through it.

I shielded my eyes from the soft rays of buttery sunlight that streamed in through the small white window beside my bed as I turned to see my fuming cousin, Cornelia, glaring at me.

She huffed and preened at herself in the mirror, applying her favorite caramel-flavored lip gloss and smacking her lips. Her perfect blonde curls were neatly styled and pulled back with an emerald green headband. "It's eight o'clock, Aurora. Get ready. We are so late. I don't want to get into trouble because of you again. We already missed the bus; Ms. Holden is going to have a fit."

She was already dressed for school, with her uniform and coat on. She flicked a glance toward me. "And if you are going to go on screaming like this every night, I am going to have to gag you. I just can't bear it anymore." She turned back to her perfect reflection. "Maybe you need to see a shrink," she added as an afterthought.

I tried to keep my anger in check as I rolled out of bed. "Okay, okay, I'm up. Give me five," I muttered and went in for a shower.

Cornelia was an insufferable pain in the neck and the worst person to share a room with, but she was my cousin, so I really didn't have any choice in the matter. Maybe I did need a shrink. I couldn't control the nightmares, and I had no idea why I kept having the same dream over and over again.

It only started a few months ago, on the night of my sixteenth birthday. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see my mother running down an obscure, shadowy corridor, carrying me in her arms. I could actually feel the heat of the flames that licked at her heels as a woman she called Morgana came rushing toward us with a gleaming dagger raised to strike. But I never knew what happened next; it always ended the same way—with a flash of light and me screaming.

I couldn't remember anything about my birth parents until this dream had started. And somehow I instinctively knew that the fair-haired woman in the dream was my real mother. I was adopted when I was just over two years old and was fortunate that the clothes I was wearing at the time had my name embroidered on them when my adoptive parents found me; otherwise, I wouldn't even know what it really was.

The warm shower dispelled the visions of daggers and burning corridors, and I struggled to get dressed as fast as I could.

Cornelia was pacing up and down our room as I quickly pulled on my ill-fitting uniform: a moss-colored blazer over a white shirt, tucked into a pleated tartan skirt. I adjusted the school crest on the left chest pocket.

Cornelia's eyes were like ice chips as she glared at me, her arms crossed, tapping her foot. "Come on. Hurry up."

I wore my scruffy black shoes and rummaged through the piles of books on my desk. "Where's the rest of my homework?"

Cornelia put her hands on her hips. "The crumpled sheets lying on your desk?"

I glared at her and nodded.

Cornelia grinned, a sly look creeping into her eyes, and shrugged. "I threw them out with the trash last night after you went to sleep. Mummy said to clean the room, so I did."

"But those were my notes," I ground out through clenched teeth.

Cornelia dismissed me with a wave of her hand. "Well, you shouldn't leave them lying all over the place if they are so important."