Takeshi Endo, my forever favorite, is a Dragon Knight.
I drop my hands as I step forward, hoping for a different face, different eyes, and a different reason to feel like the universe has cracked into bits. “Takeshi? Is that really you?”
He says, “Unless you want to die, stay where you are. This isn’t your business.”
That’s his voice. Low enough to make him sound older than seventeen, but soft enough to make anyone feel like they can trust him. I’m too dumbfounded to speak. Takeshi is a Regular. Whatever magic he’s using, it doesn’t belong to him, and he’s ordering me to let him hurt a dragon. This is the same boy whose dragon steed was murdered by a Gold Wand. Now he’s acting like dragons are disposable. And he’s wearing the Dragon Knight uniform.
Takeshi walks up to the Fire Drake, raising his claw dagger in the air.
I run.
My clothes are sticking to me. My throbbing knee is killing me with every step. I still pump my arms and soar around the lake. I race toward the boy I never thought I’d stand against.
Takeshi lowers the dagger.
I tackle him before he finds flesh.
“Ugh!” Takeshi crash-lands beneath me. He loses his grip on the dagger. It rolls a good seven feet away, just shy of splashing into the water.
Before Takeshi can push me off, I lunge at the dagger as fast as I can. The stupid thing is heavier than it looks. I try to pick it up with one hand, but it clangs back down.
Takeshi seizes it in a flash. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Get back!” The kindness in his voice is long gone. Now there’s only a cold, foreign slice of rage.
The Fire Drake roars the loudest yet.
Takeshi and I face the dragon together. The Fire Drake shimmers three times brighter. It’s trembling, too, as if it’s going to rip itself to shreds. The spell. The Fire Drake’s writhing its way free of its hold. And it’s not actually trembling. It’s trying to spread its wings.
“Take cover!” I yell at Takeshi, but he’s marching forward again, right to where the Fire Drake can kill him in seconds. “Takeshi, stop! You can’t do this!”
The Fire Drake’s wings fold out into the air, cracking the spell apart.
Golden shards shoot all over the place. I shield myself with both arms as the Fire Drake stomps the floor repeatedly. A few shards graze my skin. They leave tiny cuts that sting, but there’s barely any blood. When the shower of shards ends, I find another fireball queued up in the dragon’s mouth. It’s aimed in Takeshi’s direction. Which also happens to be my direction.
I snatch Takeshi’s wrist. “Come on!”
To my surprise, he breaks into a run with me. I hear the blast of flames biting at my ankles. Heavy drops of sweat roll off my skin from the scorching heat. I push onward, dragging Takeshi like he’s my shadow, then catapult into the lake. Takeshi dives in right beside me. We look up as a steady stream of fire darts above us. I hold what little breath I have left, but the fire doesn’t stop. The Fire Drake aims its stream all over the lake’s surface.
Everything within me is about to burst. I need air now.
One more minute … Just wait one more minute, and it’ll end …
The fire stops.
I kick my way to the surface, gasping in the open again. Just as I’m about to sink back down, Takeshi rushes out of the water at full speed.
“Takeshi, no!”
My cry for him is useless. He’s pulling himself onto shore where his claw dagger landed, while the dragon queues up a brand-new fireball.
Something rattles to the far, far left of the chamber.
Footsteps echo across the whole floor, as well as angry shouts. Dozens of security guards are dashing into the room, their Silver wands out and ready.
Takeshi has about five seconds before the Fire Drake burns him to raw bone. He grips his dagger tightly, whipping out another gold orb, and looks right at me. “The world you know is a lie,” he says. “The world that’s coming, that’s the one you should believe in.”
He smashes his orb on the floor. A gust of ashy-white wind swirls around him.
He’s gone.
The fireball misses him by a split second. It scorches his footprints and the mark his dagger left on the ground, but still the Fire Drake keeps venting its frustrations. We both stare at the spot where Takeshi once stood, but only one of us has more questions than rage. The Fire Drake stops firing once the guards approach. It slowly retreats out of respect, not with the frenzied fear of an Un-Bonded dragon, and watches them pull me out of the lake. It doesn’t try to attack me again as I lie on the shore. The real threat has disappeared.
“Are you okay, miss?” one of the guards asks.
There’s so much I want to tell the guard, so much I want to ask him back.
Todd is stirring back to consciousness, swatting at the air and mouthing something I can’t understand. He doesn’t know Takeshi Endo is no longer missing—or that I’ve lost my shot at competing in the Blazewrath World Cup.
Tears mix with the lake water soaking my cheeks. I’m wiping myself clean and holding in the swear words desperate to shoot out. It hadn’t been the Sire who killed my dream. It hadn’t been Mom or Todd. It had been the boy who was once all things good and right in this world.
“Miss? Can you hear me?” the guard says. “Let me help you up.”
I sniffle, standing up on my own. “We have to get my cousin to the hospital.…”
Since its debut in 1965, the Blazewrath World Cup has taken the world by storm. Perry Jo Smith, British football legend and Silver Wand, founded the International Blazewrath Federation and began the tradition of handpicking which nations would compete every two years. Smith had been keen on including non-rider athletes in the tournament as well, which led to the creation of the Runner position. “Anyone can be a Runner,” Smith once said. “You are not less because you do not have a dragon steed. We hope to encourage youth from all walks of life to try out for their country’s team. It will be an honor for us to witness you thrive among marvels.”
—Excerpt from Harleen Khurana’s A History of Blazewrath Around the World
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS ISN’T HOW I PLANNED ON GETTING FAMOUS.
For the past hour, all sorts of people have been trying to get a picture of me. Paparazzi. Newspaper photographers. Random Floridians who saw me when Waxbyrne’s surveillance footage interrupted their programming. The Regular police had to cordon off the lot. Since the incident on Level Five involved a dragon and magic, this isn’t their jurisdiction per se, but I’m grateful they’re here. It’s a straight-up circus, and I’m the main event.
The ambulance doors are shut. I’m sitting on a stretcher with Samira, who’s flipping through her phone in search of Sire and Takeshi updates. Her parents are on their way. Mom’s outside trying to get in touch with Papi, while Todd’s been rushed off to the hospital.
I press my knuckles to my sore, stinging eyes. I stopped crying after leaving the shop, but that itchy redness still plagues me. The throbbing in my knee has faded to a dull ache. At least my clothes, hair, and backpack aren’t wet anymore. The police allowed a Waxbyrne guard to use the Insta-Dry Charm on me. My minor cuts have been magically healed, too.