The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2) by Dan Michaelson (best free ereader TXT) 📕

try to understand even more. Eventually, I suspected that I could touch upon even more power, but it would be challenging. So far, everything at the Academy had proven challenging.

In time, I hoped I could. I’d found that the more I stretched the power apart, moving it from one hand to another, the easier it became for me to feel as if I could use it. I started to try to twist the energy when I heard a soft laugh behind me.

I spun to see Natalie approaching. Her dark hair hung behind her, the soft breeze catching it. She was dressed in a lovely blue gown, and she carried a notebook in one hand, striding toward me, just a hint of a smile sweeping across her face.

“You again,” I said.

She shrugged. “I wondered if I might find you,” she said. “I hadn’t been certain, but here you are.”

“Here I am,” I said.

“You don’t have to be disappointed to see me,” she said.

“It’s not disappointment,” I said. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Then don’t let me get in the way.”

I frowned. “I’m not so sure I should be practicing around somebody else yet.”

“Why? Are you afraid you might lose control over it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I’m not concerned.”

I turned my attention back to the dragon pen, holding my hands closer together. For a moment, power flared up within me, growing more vibrant and intense, but then I eased it off, letting some of that energy fade and dissipate just a little bit as I started to wrap the connection together.

I could control it when I wove it together like that.

Interesting. Now for me to try to do different things with it.

“That reminds me of my mother,” Natalie said, scooting closer to me. She seemed unconcerned about the heat from the flames stretching off of me, though there really wasn’t much heat, just flames. I suspected they could burn, but that would require an intention to do so. I had to push harder through them in order for them to truly burn. It was a strange piece of the dragon magic I’d learned. Holding on in this way created fire, but it wasn’t traditional fire.

“How does it remind you of your mother? Was she a dragon mage?”

Natalie looked down at my hands, watching me twist my fingers as the power wove together. “She wasn’t a dragon mage. She knitted, and I still have a few of the blankets she made for me.”

There was something in the way she said it that caught my attention. “What happened to her?”

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “She was lost,” she said softly.

Like my father. “How?”

Natalie looked up, meeting my eyes. “You don’t want to hear about that. Besides, you were busy practicing. I seem to recall you saying that you didn’t necessarily want somebody watching.”

“I wasn’t trying to dissuade you from staying here,” I said.

Natalie chuckled and leaned back, resting her hands on the grass as she watched me. Her hair was loose today, and she shook her head, getting it off of her shoulders. She was dressed in a pale blue gown, far more formal than I would’ve expected for somebody attached to the Academy in any way. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. She had been coming here the last week or more studying the dragons.

Could she be the person responsible for the missing dragons?

I had a hard time thinking that, as I’d seen no sign of a connection to the dragons from her in the time that I’ve been here. If she did have one, she hid it well.

Unless she was working with someone else.

She kept coming here. That had to matter. I should be on edge, but when I was around Natalie, I found myself on edge for different reasons.

“You aren’t a part of the Academy,” I said. “Not a student, at least. You aren’t dressed like any servant I’ve seen in the Academy.” There were dozens upon dozens of servants who worked within the Academy walls. As employees, they moved around practically unseen. Most were dressed in white, though I’d seen several wearing black clothes embroidered with dragon scales to make it look as if they were wearing the dragons themselves. They tended to serve people of higher rank within the Academy.

“You can just ask me what I’m doing here,” she said.

I shrugged. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I’ve been curious about the dragons,” she said. “Others within the city aren’t prevented from coming here. I think the king is more than happy to have people aware of the protections the dragons offer.”

I turned my attention back to the dragon pen, holding on to the power flowing through me. I could feel the energy stretching between my fingers, pressing out of one side and into the other. I tried to continue to hold on to that power, weaving it as much as I could, and as I did, I attempted to do something more with it. I still couldn’t.

“Have you tried stretching it out from you?”

“I’m limited on how it works,” I said. “It seems to need to cycle through me.”

“I’ve seen other dragon mages who can unleash power away from them,” she said.

“You’ve seen that?”

“I have been in the city longer than you,” she said.

“I can try, but my concern is that I don’t have enough control over it to let it flow outward.”

“You won’t know unless you try.”

She was right. In the time that I had been working with the dragon, feeling for that power, I had come to know the power came from the dragon and through me, but I hadn’t done anything with it. Maybe that was something I needed to change. I could try to see if I could loop it out and away from me.

I got to my feet. I wasn’t going to do this seated. If something happened and I lost control over the power, I wanted to be ready to run. Not only to get away from the possible explosion of