The Lost Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 3) by Dan Michaelson (top 10 best books of all time .TXT) 📕

the dragon pen as we were getting ready to go, aware of the Vard.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before stepping past Natalie and me and opening his door. “Come,” he said.

She followed her father in, and I hesitated a moment before trailing after her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into the office of the Sharath, but what other choice did I have?

The office was large—the walls were lined with rows of shelves, along with wood paneling, which also covered the ceiling. Dragon-shaped lanterns hung around the room, reminding me of those within the Academy. None of them were lit, though the Sharath swept his hand around in a tight spiral as soon as he entered the room, and the lanterns burst into flame.

I snorted.

Natalie looked over to me. “What is it?”

“It’s your father. He’s a dragon mage.”

“I’m not a dragon mage,” the Sharath said. “I’m one of the Djarn, and my connection is different from that of your dragon mages.”

I chuckled again. “If you say so, but it seems to me that it’s the same as the dragon mages.”

The way he’d pulled on power and the connection he’d drawn was nearly identical. I even recognized how he had pulled on that power and the way energy flowed from him. I thought I could even repeat the pattern, though it wasn’t one I had seen before. It was a tight pattern, and he had flicked flames from his fingers as he spun it, angling them toward each of the lanterns to illuminate them. There was a level of control he had that reminded me of some of the more powerful dragon mages.

“Have a seat,” he said.

He took a seat on a chair behind a massive oak table and leaned forward, looking across it at Natalie and me. Two ornately decorated wooden chairs rested on the other side of the table, and I sat down on one high-backed chair, trying to get comfortable, but the chair itself seemed as if it were meant to keep me uncomfortable. Natalie sat, as well.

“Now tell me what you encountered,” he said.

Natalie shook her head. “I don’t even know what we encountered, Father. I felt something, and we left to go and investigate.”

“In the middle of the night. Without telling anyone.”

I smiled to myself. It was the kind of thing I could have imagined my parents once having told me. That would’ve been a long time ago, before my brother had been injured, before my father had been injured. It would have been during a time when I was still a child, at least in my parents’ eyes. As soon as my brother and father had injured themselves, I had grown up. I had no choice but to do so.

“I did what I thought was needed,” she said.

“It could have been dangerous,” the Sharath said.

“I realize that. Which is why I didn’t go alone.”

The Sharath turned his attention to me. He had a flat stare and steely-gray eyes. Then he looked back to Natalie. “You told me you were going to investigate.”

“Well, I was going to investigate, but I did so after I was certain I had detected something,” she said.

“I see,” the Sharath said.

“Don’t you even want to know what we uncovered?” she asked.

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me the Vard have been moving along the southern border of the forest.”

Natalie frowned. “You knew.”

“We received word overnight.” The Sharath turned his attention to me, and he glowered at me for a moment. “The king has many resources, as I’m sure you’re aware. The Vard aren’t a new threat to us.”

“This is different,” I said.

“And you’re so certain of that?”

I nodded. “I’m certain what I felt.”

“I’m sure you are. A student, new to the Academy, who has been involved in other instances where the Vard has attacked. Somebody who would have no reason to think the Vard are involved more than they were.”

“This isn’t like that,” I told him again. I considered for a moment, debating how much more I was going to say to him. He should know the other attacks were not the Vard. He had been there, and he had seen what Donathar had done—the way he had attempted to make it look as if the Djarn were responsible. That wasn’t the work of the Vard.

But as I watched him, I couldn’t tell whether he would believe me now.

And I couldn’t tell if he worried about the threat of the Vard in the same way as Thomas and others within the kingdom did.

“I had detected something else in those instances. In this case, I detected power.”

He arched a brow. “Power?”

“It pulled upon my senses.”

“He called it a cycle,” Natalie said, looking over to me.

Her father frowned. “What was that?”

“He said it pulled on his cycle. He knew there was a dragon in danger. And he helped the dragon.”

Her father turned his attention to me and frowned. “Who taught you that?”

“Who taught me what?”

There came a sudden surge of power. The suddenness of it took me off guard, and I barely had time to react. When I did, I tried to latch on to the other dragons, trying to cycle through that power, wanting to use it so I could protect myself, but even as I attempted to do so, I didn’t think I was going to be fast enough. I could feel the energy he thrust upon me, the way he was trying to spin it at me, and within that, I struggled. I strained to resist him, trying to withstand what he did, but heat looped around me.

It was similar to the way Thomas used heat, but was also unique. The way it looped was powerful, a pattern that pressed inward from all around, swirling from the outside of the walls, squeezing inward, as if to compress me. I had to resist. I had to fight. I felt as if I needed to react and throw him off, but I didn’t even know if