The Dragon's Storm Read online

  By: Andi Lawrencovna

  The Dragon’s Storm

  A Breath of Fyre Novel

  by: Andi Lawrencovna

  Copyright © at Andi Lawrencovna, 2018

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States.

  Cover art by Kim Dingwall.

  First Edition: November, 2018

  BISAC: Fiction / Fantasy / Romance / General

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. The places, characters, and events portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Works by Andi Lawrencovna

  The Never Lands Saga:

  The Crown & Daggers Novels

  Charming: Book One

  The Captain: Book Two

  The Prince: Book Three

  Breath of Fyre Series

  The Dragon’s Sacrifice

  Originally published in the Stoking the Flames Anthology

  The Dragon’s Storm

  Originally published in the Stoking the Flames II Anthology

  Stand Alone Titles:

  So Sweet: A Tale as Old as Time

  Short Stories:

  Out of the Woods: A Mother Goose Legend

  ForeverMore: A Once and Future Legend

  A Thief in the Night: A Tale of Grimm Portent

  Originally published in The Fountain Anthology

  Once Upon a Yuletide: A Charming Holiday Collection

  The Pastry Prince: A Sugar & Spice Short Story

  Originally published in the Sinfully Delicious Anthology

  Charming Ever After: A Charming Collection of Short Stories

  Coming Soon

  The Snake Charmer’s Song: A Tale of Grimm Portent

  Dedication

  To Dragon Lovers, may you forever soar on gossamer wings.

  Table of Contents

  Works by Andi Lawrencovna

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  The Dragon and the Djinn

  Prologue

  Part One: The Djinn

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part Two: The Dragon

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  About the Author

  About the Cover Designer

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  If ever you come across a lamp, take a chance and give it a rub.

  Who knows, you might find out that your wishes will be granted, or maybe that you can be the one to grant a wish yourself?

  But be careful, because some genies don’t grant wishes at all; they hoard, and they covet, and they cherish…

  Wait…

  Djinn…or dragon…?

  You never know what you’ll find out in the NeverLands.

  Acknowledgments

  To my Family. To my Friends. To all those who have supported me and who have given me kind words of encouragement. You are so very loved, and I am so very grateful to you.

  The Dragon and the Djinn

  There once was a great dragon who ruled the world.

  So great, that with a beat of his wings, he could change the shape of the earth. Trees bent in his passing. Mountains crumbled beneath the tread of his feet. He burned brighter than the sun, was the heat that warmed the snows that melted to flood the valleys and rivers.

  With a roar, he brought the storms, and his storms were mighty.

  He roamed unfettered, no one to reign in his untamed heart.

  Until she came.

  And the yoke was cast.

  She bound him beneath the waves, chained to the seas; safe kept the dragon and the lands by the blood she spilled against his name.

  A wish to guard that which she loved, the world that he’d been barred from.

  Witch.

  Blood djinn.

  Protector and betrayer.

  One drop of crimson the price of his freedom.

  One drop of red, and he will be set free.

  Fear the call of the seas. Never set foot upon the shores. The centuries have grown long, and the strength of the serpent great.

  Prologue

  He stepped into the temple as a man, left the dragon who was his true self behind, to meet the woman standing at the altar as kindred to her.

  A gift, to feel her arms wrap around him, to hold her in turn.

  When he smiled, there were no fangs to the expression, no smoke or steam to rise like they would normally from his breast. He walked over the granite floor to stand before the woman waiting for him.

  The woman who had come to him in his cave and stood her ground when faced with the beast.

  She’d taught him her tongue; she’d taught him to feel – what it meant to feel something for another creature.

  What it meant to care for one’s mate.

  He stood before her, and she reached out to touch his skin, her fingers running over his chest, the faint flush of blue scales that hadn’t faded in his transformation.

  Her gaze was wet when she met his stare, and he brushed his hands against her cheeks.

  “Why do you cry, little djinn? I’m here, just as you wished. To bind myself to you, just as I wished.”

  “Oh love,” she shook her head, fingers clenched around his wrists where she held him. Her shoulders straightened, she forced a deep breath into her lungs, backed away until only their hands touched each other. “The priests will be here soon to witness the ritual.”

  “Your khans mean nothing to me. I do not need them to witness our union.”

  Her lips trembled, “I do.”

  He nodded, brow furrowing though he didn’t ask why the blessing of the men who had forsaken her time and again meant more
than his desire to join them together. He’d not, he realized, asked after most of her life outside of what time she spent with him.

  But they would have a lifetime together to answer those questions.

  He could wait until her priests arrived for her comfort.

  The masked servants entered the chamber, and he looked over them, but they meant little. It was her face he focused on, her will he obeyed when she told him to hold out his wrists for the bracelets that would show their commitment to each other, and he complied, never flinching, though she’d chosen iron which burned his skin.

  Such a small pain to bear for her.

  She used a knife across her palm, let a pool of blood fill her hand. Blood djinn worked their magic, their will in spells spoken in crimson. She painted the shackles with marks. Her hexes traveled over the metal, the iron heating red-hot against his flesh with her curse.

  “Amece—”

  He turned his gaze to look at her, tried to catch her in his arms and pull her to him, stop whatever it was she was doing, not knowing what she was doing…

  But he couldn’t move.

  Dragon or not.

  Storm god or not.

  Bound, but not in the way she had promised they would be bound together.

  “Bound by my blood. By my blood, set free.”

  The priests strode forward and linked chains through the cuffs on his wrists. They hauled him from the temple, and he could not fight to stop them.

  They carted him to the sea, and they threw him into the deep, and when at last he was free to transform, to take back the shape he’d abandoned to be with his betrayer, the men who tossed him into the surf sent spears to pin him to the sands below.

  He bled, and he fought, and he begged to be let go, begged the woman that he’d thought to love to forgive him whatever he’d done, do not do this thing to him, release him from this prison.

  His only answer was the crashing of the waves.

  Chapter One

  She slipped down to the sand’s edge and stared out over the surf crashing along the shore.

  So many waves. So much water. A landscape of blues that stretched before her eyes to the distant horizon, fell off the edge of the world. What waited just out of sight? What great adventures lived out there on the seas?

  Monsters and heroes and creatures out of myth and legend that were more fairy tale than reality and yet…

  The wind blew warm at her back. The stifling heat of a desert surrounded by salt water that no one dared touch.

  Beware the dragon…

  She spread her arms wide, closed her eyes and breathed in the air that should be damp with the spray of the ocean before her but held only the arid heat of the wasteland at her back.

  “I will have to leave here soon. Forced to a land far from the sea.” I will die in a grave of sand and never know the depths of the waves.

  Havence crossed her arms over herself, watched the surf churn as it came close to the shoreline, the white froth at its mouth strangely alluring.

  Only dragons lived in the sea.

  Only one dragon.

  “Are you out there?” Do you truly hate me? I don’t think I can fear you.

  She slipped off her sandals, looked over her shoulder quickly to ensure her mother’s horse was not yet in the yard, no sign of dust rising upon the road to their small cottage on the seashore.

  Her feet sank into the sand. The grains were soft against her toes, tickled, caressed, enticed.

  Just a step further, a step closer to the ocean and the wonders, the dangers, it hid.

  Havence allowed the shawl to drop from her shoulders, dangled the thin gauze between her fingers, took another step forward.

  The wind picked up.

  The waves churned closer to her toes.

  Her shawl ripped from her hand and danced across the surface of the water, tugged out to sea by some unseen force Havence didn’t understand but wanted to know, knew better than to approach.

  The distant sound of thunder rumbled in the air.

  Not thunder, never thunder, no storms in the desert but those of sand and wind.

  The sound of a cart crunching over dried dirt and uneven roadway.

  Her mother returning home, what magics she performed done for the day.

  The cursed sea witch – sand djinn, blood spirit…so many names for a magic used to cure the ills of those who hated her for the very power they needed to survive.

  Magic indeed.

  Ven could brew a potion from the bark of a long dead tree and a thimble of water to relieve the ague. That was all the magic she had.

  Only the Ilvanysto retained their ties to their sorcery, and what a false claim that was. All of it lost in trapping the beast beneath the seas.

  Trapped to save the desert people from the dragon’s storms.

  Doomed because without the creature, there were no rains to replenish the waters and sew life in the sandy fields.

  Havence would be commanded to the great temple in the last oasis man had made of the golden plains.

  “Are you out there?”

  They would take her there, and brand her with the symbol of her kind – the winged serpent coiled around a desert willow, the monster who nurtured the trees.

  And when the mark was made, she would be no more than a slave to her people, bound to the service of her dying lands.

  Havence took a last look at her scarf sinking slowly beneath the water, too far out of reach even before it was stolen from her fingers.

  Something for the ocean to remember her by, when she was forced from its embrace.

  Maybe the waves would be kinder than the men she would be forced to serve.

  Chapter Two

  Ouros stared up towards the surface of the water and willed the waves to bring him the floating piece of material the female had lost to the winds.

  She’d spoken to him.

  Her words distorted by the waves, but she’d spoken to him, called to him, wished for him to answer.

  Foolish mortal.

  He knew the tricks of her kind. The evil in their minds. So coy and plaintive. Simpering.

  They spoke, and their words were meant to entice, to instill pity.

  The poor, stupid, simple mortal, help them, help me, save me.

  Save her…

  He was the one supposed to be feared!

  A creature born of Nature itself!

  He’d answered another mortal’s call and found himself imprisoned for the going.

  The piece of silk caught around a grouper, tangled in the fish’s scales before it fought free and Ouros reached to the end of his shackles and snagged the material from the watery abyss of his prison.

  It smelled of the skies.

  It smelled of land.

  It smelled of the woman who had lost it and left it to him in the depths.

  He kept his claws well clear of the delicate fabric as he brought it to his cheek.

  So different the feel, dry cloth over water logged, but still, he pressed it to his scales and fought to remember what it had been like centuries ago when he’d been free to walk on land. The way a breeze felt on his skin, cooling the rain after a storm. Sand shifted and surrounded where he laid in it, but grass was soft and tickled the pads of his feet, crushed and released its sweet scent into the air, no hint of dead fish or salt water to clog the nose.

  He remembered the foods that were not riddled with bones, didn’t have to be eaten whole or scales and spines plucked at before being devoured. The taste of smoked meat.

  Summer Storms, the roar of a fire, its crackling and sparking song so different from the waves…

  It was all he could do not to shred the material.

  He spread his fingers wide so that it could float free of him, float away in the currents and take the memories it spurred with it.

  The silk tangled around one of the chained spikes drilled into the ocean floor pinning him to the seabed.

  The white shawl fluttered there in the current,
too far for him to reach and push away.

  He yanked on his front chain, tried to pull it free, same as he did day in and day out.

  Nine hundred and seventy-two years he had languished beneath the surface.

  Nearly a thousand years, and the spells binding him had not weakened in the slightest, no matter how hard he railed against them, the magic he threw at them, the storms he created beneath the waves, whirlpools that dragged countless humans to their doom…and not a one strong enough to break the chains that bound him.

  “Bound by my blood. By my blood, set free.”

  Ouros threw back his head and roared. The breath of air released in the silent seas a funnel that spiraled towards the surface, broke the plane of the water and spouted in a plume into the air.

  He used to chase ships beneath the waves and watch them try to outmaneuver his breaths.

  The ships didn’t even realize he was here anymore, his name lost to memory and myth, nothing more than a story told to scare children away from the beaches.

  His eye caught on the white cloth.

  He willed the barracuda to him, caught the fish in his gaze, the slit of his pupils blown wide to snare the beast’s attention, hold the spiny bastard to his will.

  It jerked in his snare but stilled to the commands of Ouros’ mind. The fish swam to the far pole, bit into the soft silk with its sharp teeth, tore the cloth from the spike, wisps of white floating free, floating away, while it brought the remainder back to Ouros’ hand.

  His claws grabbed the barracuda when it was in range, snapped the fragile spine of the hunter of the sea, brought the feast to his lips, his teeth unforgiving against its scales.

  He was careful to keep the silk from the spray of blood into the waters from his bite.

  The scarf, he kept safe from his meal, kept close to his chest, buried in the sands beneath his belly so it wouldn’t be lost, so that he could pretend he laid upon a bed of feathers and sheets that bore none of the stench of the sea.

  Are you out there…

  He had no reason for what he did, when he growled beneath the waters and peeled a scale from his vulnerable belly and caught another fish’s mind with his own to take the turquoise shard to the surface, flounder in the waves to an early death upon the sands, flopping away where the waters would not reach it, but she would see. She would come for the beasty, she would find her answer, that he listened, that he waited.