Seraphina Quinn: The Child Of Soraxis (Prequel to the Dragon Keeper Book One)

Trigger Warnings:

This book contains child abuse and torture, Murder, parental death, graphic violence and gore, death by fire, self-harm, animal harm, brainwashing, child soldier themes, grief and survivors' guilt, profanity.

On the Night of First Flame, the villages light one fire after another so that the dark will know they are still there. It has never once kept the dark away.

The dragon was cheating.

Seraphina knew it with absolute certainty. She was faster than every child in the village. She had beaten Thom at the well race, Mira through the lower pasture, and all three baker boys across the frozen creek even though they had longer legs and an unfair habit of shoving one another into snowbanks. She had won every race since she could remember.

And yet somehow the little dragon was already at the fence post ahead of her, sitting in the snow with its tail coiled around its feet and its amethyst eyes shining with smug satisfaction beneath the pale winter moon.

“You flew,” she accused, skidding to a halt so hard snow sprayed over the toes of her boots. Her breath burst from her mouth in great white clouds, and she planted her mittened hands on her hips the way she had seen her mother do when she meant business.

The cold turned her cheeks pink and numbed the tip of her nose. Snowflakes clung to the loose strands of hair escaping beneath her cap. Somewhere behind her, the festival bells chimed, calling the last families down from their houses.

The dragon blinked at her.

“You did. I saw your wings move. Just a little. That still counts as flying.”

It opened its mouth and let out a sound between a chirp and a rumble, tilting its head as if it had no idea what wings were or why anyone would accuse it of using them. Seraphina pressed her lips together because she was trying hard to be stern, and it was difficult when it looked at her like that.

“Fine,” she said. “But you still cheated. Next time we race to the well and back, and you have to keep your wings folded the whole way.”

She held out her mittened hand, and the hatchling stepped forward and pressed its purple head into her palm, warm despite the cold. It was only a little bigger than a barn cat, though it ate considerably more than any cat ever had, and it had followed her home from the eastern ridge seven months ago when she’d found it tangled and shivering in a deadfall. It had not left her side since. Not once. Not even when her mother tried to make it sleep in the barn.

When she had first found it, the hatchling’s wing had been caught between two frozen branches, and its whole body had trembled so violently the dead leaves around it shook. Its scales were a dusty purple then, slick with melted snow and mud. Seraphina had wrapped it in her scarf and carried it home despite the way it snapped at her fingers with tiny needle teeth.

It slept curled at the foot of her bed most nights, despite her mother’s repeated insistence that dragons belonged in barns. Seraphina had tried to obey once. The hatchling had cried outside her window, a miserable, broken little sound that made her chest ache so badly she had crept downstairs and opened the door before her mother could stop her. After that, no one argued about where it slept.

It knew all of her secrets, even the ones she had never told anyone out loud. It knew which floorboard outside the kitchen creaked, which pantry shelf held the honey cakes, and how to nudge her elbow whenever she was trying not to cry. When thunder rolled over the mountains, it crawled beneath her blanket and shoved its nose under her chin. When she was angry, it stayed close. When she laughed, it chirped.

Seraphina had never had to explain herself to it. Somehow, it always knew.

The hatchling pushed its head harder into her palm now, warm and solid and alive. A thin ribbon of steam curled from its nostrils into the frosted air. Seraphina rubbed the small ridge between its horns, right where it liked best, and the dragon’s eyelids drooped halfway closed.

The festival blazed around them, spilling gold light across the snow until the whole village seemed to glow from within. Lanterns hung in long strings from every rooftop and fence post, swaying gently in the cold wind. Their thin paper sides had been painted with flames and dragons. Each lantern carried a candle inside, and when the wind moved through them, the lights trembled.

The square below was crowded with villagers who passed steaming cups of cider between gloved hands. Musicians played fiddles and drums near the great bonfire at the center of the square. The smell of roasted chicken, spiced cider, honey glaze, pine smoke, and fresh bread rolled through the frozen air in waves so rich it made Seraphina’s stomach ache with want.

From the dragon pens at the edge of the square came the low, comfortable sounds of the village’s older dragons—settling rumbles, the occasional huff of steam into the cold—as familiar to Seraphina as the sound of wind moving through the pines above the house.

The whole village had been preparing for the winter festival since dawn. Seraphina had watched men drag great pine logs into the square while women tied red and gold ribbons around the lantern posts, their fingers quick despite the cold. Children had been given the important task of sprinkling dried winterberries along the frozen paths, though most of them had eaten as many as they dropped. By sunset, the snow itself looked dressed for celebration, glittering beneath lanternlight and scattered with bits of color.

Tonight was the Night of First Flame.

Her mother said it was older than the village, older than the stone well, older even than the dragon pens at the edge of the square. Every year, when the longest cold settled into the mountains, the villagers gathered to remind the dark that they were still there. They lit one fire from another, passing flame from house to house until every window burned gold. Then, at the center of the square, the eldest dragon of the village—Aurelius—would lower his head and breathe the first true flame of winter onto the great bonfire.

Seraphina loved that part best.

She loved the way everyone went quiet before it happened. Even the babies seemed to understand. She loved how Aurelius would lumber forward from the pens with snow steaming along his scales; his rider walking beside him with one hand resting against his shoulder. The dragon was too old to fly far anymore, and one of his horns had been broken, but when he opened his jaws, the fire that came from him was bright and golden and alive.

When the dragon breathed into the waiting logs, the entire square erupted into cheers.

The bonfire leapt high, sparks spinning up into the dark like a thousand tiny stars trying to return to the sky. Someone began clapping. Someone else shouted for music. The fiddles struck up, and the hatchling startled beside her, wings popping half-open before it realized nothing was attacking it.

“It’s only music,” she whispered.

The hatchling gave her a doubtful look.

Across the square, couples began to dance in circles through the snow. Men laughed when they slipped on patches of ice. The village blacksmith—Theron—lifted his little daughter onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd, and near the bakery, three boys were daring one another to run close enough to touch the elder dragon’s tail before Old Marta noticed.

Seraphina knew everyone here. She knew which house had the crooked blue shutters, which dogs would steal scraps from the tables, which aunties pinched cheeks too hard, and which men would sneak extra cider if their wives weren’t watching. She knew the shape of every roof buried beneath snow and the sound of every bell tied above every door. The village was not large, but to Seraphina it felt endless. Safe. Like the mountains had curved around it on purpose, holding it in both hands.

And tonight, with the fire burning and the dragons rumbling, it felt as if nothing bad could ever find them.

She would remember that feeling later.

Not clearly. Not all at once. Memory would become a broken thing after this night, full of missing pieces and gaps. But some fragments would survive buried beneath all the lies that came after—the warmth of her father’s arm, her mother’s laugh, and the impossible certainty that nothing bad could ever find them in a village so full of light.

The hatchling’s stomach growled, and Seraphina looked down.

“No,” she said.

The hatchling looked toward the food tables.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Its tail gave one innocent little flick.

“You already ate two pieces of chicken, half a sausage, and something from Mistress Elowen’s basket that I’m not telling Mama about.”

The hatchling blinked, as if none of this sounded familiar.

Seraphina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t pretend.”

“Seraphina!” Old Marta called from a table stacked high with sweet rolls, her cheeks red from the cold. “Come take yours before that creature eats them all!”

Seraphina looked at the hatchling.

The hatchling looked at the sweet rolls.

“Don’t,” she said.

It was already moving.

She chased it back through the crowd, apologizing to three different adults she nearly toppled, before catching it around the middle and scooping it against her chest. It squirmed and craned its neck back toward the table with open longing. A half-eaten sweet roll dangled from its jaw, crumbs scattering into the snow.

Old Marta shook her head, but she was laughing, and the sound of it carried warm and easy over the noise of the square. “I’ve never seen anything like the two of you. Joined at the soul, my mother would have said. You’ll be trouble together for years yet.”

“It’s not my fault,” Seraphina said, straightening her coat with as much dignity as she could manage.

“Never is.” Old Marta pressed another roll—an uneaten one, this time—into her hand. “Go find your parents, little one. Your mother was looking for you.”

Seraphina nodded, set the dragon down, and made her way toward the bonfire.

Her father was tall enough that she could spot him from a distance; his broad shoulders silhouetted against the firelight, and he had her mother pulled close beneath his arm. Both of them watched the flames with the relaxed look of people who had nowhere else in the world they needed to be. When Seraphina pushed through the last cluster of villagers and reached them, her father caught her up off the ground with one arm and held her against his chest, and she felt the low rumble of his laugh against her ear.

“There she is,” he said. “We thought the hatchling had carried you off into the mountains.”

“It can’t carry me. It’s too small.”

“Give it a year.”

Her mother smoothed the snow from Seraphina’s hair with a gloved hand. “Did you eat anything tonight that wasn’t stolen?”

“Old Marta gave me a roll.”

The hatchling appeared at her father’s feet and sat with an expression of profound innocence; sweet roll crumbs still clinging to its snout.

Her father looked down at it for a long moment. “It has sweet roll on its face.”

“It cheated at the race too.”

Her mother laughed, low and soft, and the sound of it settled into Seraphina’s chest the way warmth always did—like sinking into a bath after a day in the snow. She leaned her head against her father’s shoulder and watched the fire, and for a little while there was nothing in the whole world but the festival and the falling snow and the smell of pine smoke, and her parents close on either side of her, solid and certain as the mountains themselves.

Then her mother’s hand went still against her hair.

Seraphina felt it before she understood it—a small hesitation, quickly smoothed over; the kind of stillness that came before a held breath. She looked up. Her parents were watching something past the edge of the square, some understanding passing between them without a single word, the way adults did sometimes, in glances and the set of a jaw. Her father’s arm had tightened around her mother’s shoulders. Her mother had turned her face away, just enough that the firelight no longer reached her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Seraphina asked.

“Nothing,” her father said, and his voice was easy and unhurried as he set her back down on her feet. “Are you cold? We could go inside for a while.”

But her mother’s gaze had drifted and stayed toward the eastern ridge.

The hatchling made a small, uncertain sound at Seraphina’s feet, and pressed itself against her ankle.

It was playful only moments ago. Now every line of its small body had changed. Its wings tucked tight. Its head lowered. The scales along its spine lifted one by one, and a faint tremor passed through it.

The village dragons went quiet first.

Seraphina noticed it before any of the adults did, because she had grown up listening to them, had learned the difference between the low settling rumble of a sleeping dragon and the silence that followed. That silence spread now from the pens outward, swallowing the square by degrees, and she found herself looking toward the eastern sky without quite knowing why she’d turned.

One by one, the familiar sounds died. The elder dragon stopped rumbling near the bonfire. The heavy-winged gray in the far pen lifted its head and went still. Even the young green dragon that always clicked its claws against stone fell silent, its long neck stretching toward the ridge.

The light was small at first. Only a smear above the black tree line, dull red, the color of a coal left burning too long in the ash. She might have thought it was some distant fire, except that it moved. In pulses. Like something breathing, slow and patient, out beyond the trees.

Around the square, heads began to turn. The music faltered, then stopped.

Then the rider came.

He came from the north road at a dead run, and when the crowd saw him, they drew back in a widening circle. He made it only to the edge of the square before he fell over, and two men lunged to catch him under the arms before he struck the frozen ground.

Seraphina could not hear the words he gasped out. But she saw the faces of the men who did hear them—saw the color drain from Old Marta’s cheeks, saw the fiddler let his instrument fall slack at his side—and that was enough to tell her that whatever the rider had said, it was the worst thing anyone in the square had ever heard.

Only one word reached her clearly.

Soraxis.

The name moved through the crowd without needing to be shouted. It passed from mouth to mouth in whispers. Mothers reached for children. Men turned toward the weapons racks by the smithy. Riders near the pens ran for their dragons, but even they moved with a fear Seraphina had never seen before.

Her father knelt in front of her in the snow, his hands coming to rest heavy and warm on her shoulders.

“Stay close to your mother. No matter what happens.”

“Papa?” She whispered.

He kissed her forehead, the scratch of his beard rough against her skin. “Be brave for me.”

There was no trumpet warning after that. No drawn-out approach. The red light she had watched pulsing beyond the trees surged forward all at once and swept into the village, and where it struck, wood splintered and stone cracked, and people screamed and scattered. Dark shapes moved at the edges of the firelight.

Dark Riders.

The first house on the east row exploded outward, thatch and timber flung into the night in a shower of sparks. Seraphina felt the heat of it against her face from thirty feet away, a dry, blistering air that stole her breath.

Dark shapes dropped from the sky.

Their scales were black; red veins ran through them. Where the village dragons’ eyes caught the light and shone gold and amber, these creatures’ eyes burned a flat, furious crimson, no pupil, no white, just endless red. Smoke poured from their nostrils in thick, sour ribbons, and when they opened their jaws, the fire that spilled out was not orange but the same terrible red as their eyes.

Her mother seized her wrist and pulled her through the scattering crowd. Her father had turned back toward the square, his body angling itself between his family and the oncoming riders, and for one confused moment Seraphina could not understand the way he stood there—too still, too certain, unmoving among villagers who ran in every direction around him.

Seraphina watched a corrupted dragon breathe its fire across a house’s roof, and the flames spread, eating through stone as easily as wood.

The village dragons met them in the air with roars that shook snow from the pine boughs half a mile off, and the sound of their collision was like mountains grinding together. Wings tore. Talons raked. A gout of amber fire met a gout of red, and for a moment the sky above the square burned two colors at once before the red swallowed the amber whole.

Snow turned to slush and then to steam beneath the falling embers, hissing in great clouds that stung Seraphina’s eyes.

She planted her feet. “Mama—the hatchling—”

“Seraphina, we have to—”

But she had already wrenched free.

She ran toward the bonfire, toward the wreck of tables and scattered festival lanterns. Smoke rolled across the ground and burned her throat with every breath.

She found it beneath the grain store steps, pressed into the deepest black corner of the shadow it could find. Wings clamped so tight against its small body that it looked like it was trying to fold itself out of existence. When it saw her, it made a sound she had never heard from it before—thin, high, terrified—and she dropped to her knees in the snow and gathered it against her chest.

“I have you,” she said. “I have you. It’s all right.”

It was not all right. She knew that even as she said it. But she pressed her face into its scales and felt its small heart hammering beneath her hands, and she held on as though holding on were a kind of magic all its own.

The hatchling burrowed against her coat, claws catching in the wool, tail wrapped tight around her wrist as though it understood being held by her was the only safe place left in the world.

People ran and screamed. A woman stumbled past clutching a child to her chest, blood streaking down the side of her face from a gash at her temple. Someone was shouting a name over and over, a name that no one answered.

Dark Riders moved through the chaos on foot, unhurried, cloaks the color of blood dragging through the snow and ash.

A sound split the air above her.

She looked up in time to see her mother standing in the center of the ruined square with both hands open at her sides—and light was pouring from her hands and hardened into a shimmering wall between her family and the advancing riders. Two Dark Riders struck it at a dead run and were flung backward into the snow like they weighed nothing at all.

Her father moved in ways she had never seen a person move. Faster than breath. The air around his clenched hands darkened and folded in on itself, and when a rider raised a blade wreathed in red fire, her father swept one arm through the space between them and the rider was gone—vanished in a concussion of silence that pressed against Seraphina’s ears like deep water.

She had not known.

All her life beside them, and she had not known.

Her father’s head turned. Across the burning distance of the square, his eyes found her, and in the space of a single heartbeat his face held everything at once—love, terror, grief, and apology—before he turned back into the fire and the smoke and the screaming.

The rider came from behind Seraphina, silent as smoke.

She did not see him. She only felt the hatchling wrenched from her arms; its claws raking desperate trails across her coat as it fought to stay. It screamed—that same thin, broken sound—and twisted in the rider’s grip; wings beating against the dark cloak that pinned them.

“No—no, give it back, give it back to me—”

The hatchling’s eyes found hers through the smoke.

Terrified. Pleading.

Seraphina lunged forward with both hands outstretched, but the rider was pulling back into the smoke, and her parents were too far, fighting through too many, and she was six years old and small, and the snow was too deep and too cold and nothing in the whole burning world would move fast enough to save it.

“Seraphina!”

Seraphina turned her head in time to see a bolt of crimson magic punch into her mother's chest with a wet, heavy sound. Her hands dropped. The wall of light shattered into a thousand pieces. She stood there for a fraction of a second, swaying, her mouth opening but no sound coming out, before her knees buckled, and she dropped onto her back in the ash.

“Mama!”

For a moment, Seraphina did not understand that her mother had fallen. She understood only pieces. Her mother’s hand lay open in the ash. One of the festival lanterns rolled near her boot, cracked down the middle, its little flame guttering out in the snow.

The sweet roll Old Marta had given her was crushed beside a broken table leg, its sugar dark with soot. Seraphina stared at it because it was easier than looking at her mother. Easier than understanding why her mother’s light was gone. Easier than understanding why no one was getting up.

The fire finished what the riders had started. It ate the last standing wall of the festival square, ate the lantern strings, ate the tables where an hour ago there had been food and warmth, and folded it all into ash.

The elder dragon lay on its side near the bonfire, one broken horn buried in the snow, its golden flame gone dark behind its teeth. The rider who had walked beside it during First Flame knelt beside its head, one hand pressed to its scaled cheek, rocking forward and back without making a sound.

Seraphina stood alone in the ruin, blood drying on her scratched hands, smoke stinging tears down her cheeks that she couldn’t feel anymore. The cold had stopped mattering. Very little seemed to matter, in the strange silent space after something happens that cannot be undone.

Across the smoking wreck of the square, through the last curtain of drifting embers, a figure was walking toward her.

The closer he came, the quieter the fire seemed to grow. The crackle of burning wood thinned to a whisper, and even the smoke drifted aside from his path.

He was tall. Unhurried. The flames bent and parted around him as though they had been warned not to touch him, and behind him, growing smaller with every step he took, the Dark Riders carried their prize away through the burning dark—the hatchling was still struggling, still crying out in that high broken voice, still clawing—It fought until one rider struck it across the head with the pommel of his blade. The sound was dull and final.

Seraphina took one step forward. Then stopped, because her legs would carry her no further.

The figure came to a halt before her, close enough now that she could see his face clearly in the firelight. He had thick black hair and eyes so dark they almost matched his hair. His face was calm. Terribly calm. It was the face of a man who had walked a great distance and had known all along what he would find waiting for him at the end of it.

The man knelt before her, his black hair falling across his brow, his dark eyes fixed on her face. He studied her as though she was a rare artifact he had spent years searching for. And then he smiled.

“There you are,” he said. “Seraphina.”