Dragon Prince - Chapter Thirteen
Dragon Prince
Chapter Thirteen
“Put your swords away,” Hyunjoong ordered sternly, looking directly at his guards. They paused for a minute and Yunho cast another hard look at Myungki who was only a few feet away and still fully armed. Resolutely he slid his sword back into its sheath and the rest of the men followed his lead.
“A dragon?” Jaejoong questioned. “I thought the king had taken care of all of them.”
Hyunjoong shook his head and offered Yoochun his hand to help him stand. “There is a village just north of here that has been destroyed by royal soldiers and dragon magic. Did you know anything about that?” At the question the eyes of his four guards widened.
“What?” Jaejoong asked.
“The village was destroyed and everyone was killed besides a single child. Did you know about it?” his eye narrowed.
“No,” Jaejoong replied and the rest of his guards echoed it.
“Dragon magic?” Yunho questioned. His eyes narrowed at Youngsaeng. “Maybe,” Yunho growled darkly. “There are still some rouge dragons left. How hard would it be for them to take over the minds of some royal soldiers and force them to do this to frame the king?”
Hyunjoong paused for a minute, thinking. “I wouldn’t think it would be too hard. Dragons can already speak directly into your mind.”
“You fool,” Youngsaeng growled. “A dragon can’t take over your mind anymore then a human can!”
“And you expect us to believe you, a dragon?” Jaejoong questioned incredulously.
Youngsaeng’s eyes swirled with black. “Trust me pathetic human, if I could take over your mind, you would already be under my control.”
“Maybe you haven’t mastered it yet,” Hyunjoong countered, his voice filled with doubt.
It was the words of the prince that were the final straw for the dragon. Youngsaeng snarled and lurched forward out of Kyujong’s restraining hold. The healer’s scream of, “Get back!” sent most of the gypsies scrambling backwards as skin turned to scales and the other man’s body began to expand.
Instinct kicked in and the guards formed a human wall in front of the prince and drew their weapons. A moment later they were forced to suppress their surprise as a fully transformed dragon stared them down with wings spread. ‘Foolish humans,’ a voice echoed in their minds. ‘As if your pathetic weapons could so much as scratch me.’
They watched as the dragon gathered his muscles and the guards prepared themselves for attack. A moment later the dragon sprang, but not as they had expected. Instead of springing directly at the guards, he spread his wings and used them to help him bound straight over them. From behind he snatched the prince, who had been staring at him transfixed, with his forepaws. The dragon, with his captive, snarled and leapt into the air. His powerful wings carried them up and away from the ground.
Yoochun pulled the string of his bow back, taking carful aim at what looked to be the venerable underside of the dragon’s wing. “Don’t,” Yunho commanded right before he would have fired. “If he drops the prince, he won’t survive,” Yunho said tersely.
“Boy, you guys sure have a knack for losing your charge don’t you,” Hyungjoon said with a smirk. Yunho and the other three guards, turned angrily only to come face to face with several armed gypsies.
“Un uh,” Jungmin told them with a smile. “Just put down your weapons gentlemen and no one will get hurt.”
Yunho glanced around, taking stock of every weapon. He counted six swords, two daggers, and an arrow knocked and ready. They weren’t odds that the four of them couldn’t beat. They had faced worse in their training.
Jungmin must have seen what he was thinking because his smile widened. “I wouldn’t. Kyujong’s arrows are dipped in poison. If the arrow doesn’t kill you, the poison will in under a minute.”
Yunho gave the arrow a hard look and decided that he couldn’t chance something like that, especially when the prince wasn’t there to protect. It would be better, he decided, to bide his time and wait until the prince or the dragon returned. “If the Prince is harmed, your entire clan will know my wrath,” Yunho threatened.
“Youngsaeng won’t hurt him,” Kyujong said confidently.
Yunho didn’t offer a response. Instead he threw down his weapon and the other three guards followed suit. Myungki grinned and ordered, “Bind them.”
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
Hyunjoong decided almost immediately, that although he didn’t mind flying, he would much rather do so from the dragon’s back rather than dangling in his hold. Despite his position, he felt safe and secure and he knew with a strange certainty that he was. He couldn’t explain how he could possibly feel safe when he had just been snatched from the ground by a rather irritated dragon, but he did.
Youngsaeng had said nothing to him since they had taken off from the ground but Hyunjoong could still feel the anger vibrating through him. Each down stroke of the dragon’s wings was rough and violent, much more so then it had been the first time they had flown together.
He didn’t know where they were going but it wasn’t far. Hyunjoong guessed that they had flown just far enough that neither the gypsies nor his guards could see them any longer when Youngsaeng’s flight took a sharp downwards turn. The dragon waited until the prince’s feet were a foot above the ground before releasing him into the grass. Using reflexes born from years of training, Hyunjoong hit the ground with his knees bent and let his forward momentum carry him down and into a roll. By the time he had stopped moving and was rising to his feet, Youngsaeng had banked and landed right in front of him.
The dragon folded his wings and began to pace through the grass, his tail flicking restlessly. ‘You act as though you wish for the truth, yet you believe lies,’ the dragon said with an emotion Hyunjoong couldn’t define coloring his voice.
“How do I know your words aren’t lies?” the prince countered. There was a hiss and Youngsaeng turned to stare at him.
‘How do you know if you won’t even listen?’ Youngsaeng replied.
“I am listening,” Hyunjoong insisted.
‘No foolish Prince,’ the dragon surged closer and Hyunjoong found himself curious instead of cautions. ‘You listen with this,’ the dragon bumped his head lightly with its muzzle. ‘When you should be listening with this,’ again the dragon bumped him, but this time it was on his chest right over where his heart would be.
The dragon’s head pulled back a bit and Hyunjoong’s hand followed. Before he could get out of reach, Hyunjoong reached out and placed his hand on the dragon’s muzzle. They froze there for a moment, staring into one another’s eyes and caught, not for the first time, by something indescribable.
“I am listening,” Hyunjoong said softly. “Tell me your truth.”
Lids closed over golden eyes and the dragon pulled away, breaking the moment between them. His eyes opened again and he padded a few paces away before settling his body down onto the grass. He stretched there in nearly a straight line, opened his wings slightly, and closed his eyes. Hyunjoong had seen birds, lizards, and other animals doing the same thing, simply stretching out and basking in the sun.
He walked the short distance to the dragon and settled onto the ground by his shoulder. It felt somehow right to lean back against hard muscle covered in smooth scales and he was surprised to feel the scales warm beneath the fabric of his shirt.
Youngsaeng’s head lifted and a single golden eye peered out at him for a moment before it closed again and his head rested against the grass once more. Hyunjoong was almost positive he heard a noise akin to a purr rumble from the dragon before Youngsaeng’s voice in his head distracted him from it.
‘What truth do you want to know?’ Youngsaeng asked quietly.
“What were you going to tell me out by the grave?” Hyunjoong asked after a moment.
There was a pause and Hyunjoong wondered if the dragon was going to tell him no. A moment later Youngsaeng began. ‘When the world was much younger then it is now, your kind did not rule the land, dragons did.
‘There were the wood dragons of the Eastern Forest, the fire dragons of the Southern Desert, the earth dragons of the Central Plains where your kingdom now stands, the metal dragons of the Western Mountains, and the water dragons of the Northern Islands. By the time your kind had begun to appear, dragons had already formed a peace with one another.
‘Although we each had our own regions of origin, we tended to mingle along the borders and in the Central Plains, the location where humans began to appear. At first dragons were simply curious about humans but it was little more than that. We were saddened by the shortness of your life spans when compared to our own so it became difficult for dragons to bear befriending humans. Instead dragons chose to withdraw from them. In our absence, the humans grew in numbers much quicker than we ever expected and quickly out grew the land that they had settled.
‘The dragons assumed the humans who began blundering into our nests of eggs were simply confused and fearful. We assumed that they did not truly want to hurt us or our young, despite the damage they did. Still the actions of the humans showed the dragons that they had two choices: form a pact with the humans or chance the death and destruction that may result from a war.
‘With this in mind, the leaders of each of the five dragon tribes came together to find a solution and they did. A single dragon would be sent to the son of the leader of the humans. She would bond with this son, in the dragon form of what you would call marriage, and they would help each other to understand the other’s race.
‘The plan worked. They ruled the humans well and for many long years due to the bond lengthening the life of the human. Dragons and humans agreed that this pattern needed to be continued for both of their sakes and so a tradition was born.
‘Every heir was to be bonded to a dragon. Through that bond the human would gain the use of the dragon’s magic and an extension of their life. They would rule wisely together before retiring to the land of their choosing after a reasonable amount of time and leaving a new heir to rule in their place. The human, because of this, became known as the Dragon King and his son, the Dragon Prince.
‘The arrangement worked well and human and dragons lived in harmony, until your great grandfather,’ Youngsaeng paused to allow his words to sink in.
“My great grandfather?” Hyunjoong asked confused. “My great grandfather died in the Great Dragon War.”
A bitter laugh echoed in his mind. ‘You humans called it that. We call it the Great Slaughter, the time where the blood of my people flowed freely.’
“But didn’t my great grandfather, by tradition, have a dragon wife?”
‘She was a dragon,’ Youngsaeng confirmed quietly, ‘and the first to suffer at the hands of the Dragon King. Your great grandfather was a greedy man. It was not enough for him to rule for fifty years and leave his kingdom in the hands of his newly married son. Instead he wished to rule until his life came to an end which would amount to hundreds of years.
‘The dragons had warned against this, since they knew how power could easily corrupt a human. Even his wife cautioned against it and threatened to drag him from the throne if he would not go willingly. Instead he bound her using the element she was weak against to hold her. This enraged her people and they demanded her release. The King met them not with words but with violence and the first dragon was killed with malicious intent by human hands.
‘Following that began a war like none ever seen. Dragons and humans killing and being killed until the soldiers on either side could no longer remember what they were fighting for. It is said that during the war, the Dragon Prince took advantage of the chaos and killed his father for the crown.
‘All that is known is that years after the conflict began, a group of dragons and humans met with the new Dragon King to settle the war once and for all. It was supposed to be a meeting of peace but it turned into a meeting of blood.’
“I remember this from history. The dragons tried to kill my grandfather at the meeting and he barely managed to fight them off,” Hyunjoong reported.
‘The dragons only tried to kill your grandfather because he tried to kill them first,’ the steady purr paused for a moment as anger reined in Youngsaeng’s voice ‘He discovered a dark secret that the power of our magic lies in our blood. He figured out a way to use it but to do so took a lot of dragon blood, so he killed for what he needed.
‘You know the rest of the history,’ he said with a sigh. ‘How humans began systematically wiping out dragons. Your grandfather collected the blood and added it to his collection of power. Sparing only one dragon to give to his son as a wife, he killed all others. Dragons scattered from your lands into the surrounding kingdoms.’
‘Shortly after he was married, your father killed your grandfather for his crown. He decided that the way the blood of the dragons was being collected was inefficient. Instead it would be beneficial to keep living dragons captive and occasionally bleed them but not kill them. In this way he would never have his supply dry up. So he began offering rewards to anyone who brought in a living dragon, rewards large enough that nowhere was safe for dragons any longer. Even his own bride was not safe from his evil.’
“My mother died giving birth to me,” Hyunjoong growled darkly.
‘Did she? Have you asked anyone other than your father?’ Youngsaeng asked.
Hyunjoong opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again. He couldn’t say that he had asked anyone else and as much as he wanted to say that he trusted his father’s word, he simply wasn’t sure that he did anymore. “What proof do you have?”
‘It is the nature of the bond. When a dragon bonds with a human, it ties itself together entirely with the human. The human will not die until the dragon does because of their bond. If your mother was dead, your father would be as well.’
“So you are saying that my father gets his magic from dragons that he has caged somewhere, by getting blood from them every now and again?”
‘Yes,’ the dragon said simply and Hyunjoong didn’t know what to say in response to that.
“Wait,” Hyunjoong said after a moment. “That is why the clan has been moving all over.”
‘Yes.’
“You are trying to free your people,” Hyunjoong said the moment he realized it.
Youngsaeng didn’t say anything in reply to that. ‘What will you do now Dragon Prince?’ he asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” Hyunjoong replied honestly.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
A few hours later the dragon shook his body and shifted. At the movement behind him, Hyunjoong stirred from his doze and shifted forward, stretching his stiff muscles as he went. He turned and watched the dragon stretch like a cat, arching his back and extending his claws and wings to their full length before retracting them again.
‘We should return. Your guards are probably wondering if I have killed and eaten you,’ there was mirth in the voice in his mind and Hyunjoong smiled.
“Not likely. They will assume that I taste bad,” Hyunjoong retorted. The dragon shook with a rumbling sound that the prince thought must be a laugh.
‘Get on,’ the dragon ordered, kneeling so that the prince could do so easily. Hyunjoong nodded and climbed on the dragon much the same way he had the first time. This time he noted that the dragon’s scales were much warmer then they had been before. He wondered if that has something to do with spending the morning laying in the sunlight or something else entirely.
This time Youngsaeng began their flight with an easy run, opening his wings to catch the air as he did so. When he was ready he sprung upwards and flapped his powerful wings only a few times before catching an updraft. Once they were in the air Hyunjoong found the ride as relaxing as it had been the first time. For some reason he found himself entirely comfortable in the air with the dragon, so much so that it was a highly enjoyable event.
As they drifted through the sky, Hyunjoong didn’t attempt to keep his mind from wandering to the one question he couldn’t find an answer to. What was the truth? With the conflict between everything he knew and everything he had been told, both things certainly couldn’t be true.
A part of him was convinced that the words his father had told him for so many years couldn't be lies. He couldn't begin to fathom how information like this would have been hidden from him if it were true. Yet some part of him irrationally believed that everything Youngsaeng had said was the truth. He couldn't shake the feeling anymore then he could deny it. Even if he could forget the words of the man, he could never forget what his own eyes had seen.
If nothing else, the things he saw were something he could believe in. Hyunjoong knew in the deepest fibers of his being that dragons hadn’t been the ones to ravage the village, but that didn’t mean the King had either. Even if the King wasn't behind what happened in the village, someone close to the King was, and something needed to be done. Justice would be seen to, he would be sure of it, yet he could not do anything until he knew the truth. He would settle for nothing less than the knowledge of what truly had happened to the village and to Haneul’s family. He knew of nothing that could take him back in time and show him who was responsible for what had happened even though he needed desperately to see just that. He needed to see proof himself to judge for himself what was truth and what was lies.
He turned the problem over and over in his mind. After a moment’s thought he decided judging whose words were truth and whose were lies, was not going to help. In fact that was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He needed to find the truth for himself and suddenly he knew exactly how to do it.
Chapter Fourteen
Masterlist
AN: Sorry this is so much later then usual. I had chapters written and hated every bit of them. It took me a while to realize that my plot had tried to run away without my character development. After an afternoon spent with printed versions, colored pens and no fear of scribbling out a ton of stuff, I had them hacked to bits and put back together in something I was a bit more happy with. I am satisfied with how the rewrite turned out. Thanks goes to my wonderful beta hoshi14 who got this chapter back to me in about two hours, with my silly little mistakes fixed.
Chapter Thirteen
“Put your swords away,” Hyunjoong ordered sternly, looking directly at his guards. They paused for a minute and Yunho cast another hard look at Myungki who was only a few feet away and still fully armed. Resolutely he slid his sword back into its sheath and the rest of the men followed his lead.
“A dragon?” Jaejoong questioned. “I thought the king had taken care of all of them.”
Hyunjoong shook his head and offered Yoochun his hand to help him stand. “There is a village just north of here that has been destroyed by royal soldiers and dragon magic. Did you know anything about that?” At the question the eyes of his four guards widened.
“What?” Jaejoong asked.
“The village was destroyed and everyone was killed besides a single child. Did you know about it?” his eye narrowed.
“No,” Jaejoong replied and the rest of his guards echoed it.
“Dragon magic?” Yunho questioned. His eyes narrowed at Youngsaeng. “Maybe,” Yunho growled darkly. “There are still some rouge dragons left. How hard would it be for them to take over the minds of some royal soldiers and force them to do this to frame the king?”
Hyunjoong paused for a minute, thinking. “I wouldn’t think it would be too hard. Dragons can already speak directly into your mind.”
“You fool,” Youngsaeng growled. “A dragon can’t take over your mind anymore then a human can!”
“And you expect us to believe you, a dragon?” Jaejoong questioned incredulously.
Youngsaeng’s eyes swirled with black. “Trust me pathetic human, if I could take over your mind, you would already be under my control.”
“Maybe you haven’t mastered it yet,” Hyunjoong countered, his voice filled with doubt.
It was the words of the prince that were the final straw for the dragon. Youngsaeng snarled and lurched forward out of Kyujong’s restraining hold. The healer’s scream of, “Get back!” sent most of the gypsies scrambling backwards as skin turned to scales and the other man’s body began to expand.
Instinct kicked in and the guards formed a human wall in front of the prince and drew their weapons. A moment later they were forced to suppress their surprise as a fully transformed dragon stared them down with wings spread. ‘Foolish humans,’ a voice echoed in their minds. ‘As if your pathetic weapons could so much as scratch me.’
They watched as the dragon gathered his muscles and the guards prepared themselves for attack. A moment later the dragon sprang, but not as they had expected. Instead of springing directly at the guards, he spread his wings and used them to help him bound straight over them. From behind he snatched the prince, who had been staring at him transfixed, with his forepaws. The dragon, with his captive, snarled and leapt into the air. His powerful wings carried them up and away from the ground.
Yoochun pulled the string of his bow back, taking carful aim at what looked to be the venerable underside of the dragon’s wing. “Don’t,” Yunho commanded right before he would have fired. “If he drops the prince, he won’t survive,” Yunho said tersely.
“Boy, you guys sure have a knack for losing your charge don’t you,” Hyungjoon said with a smirk. Yunho and the other three guards, turned angrily only to come face to face with several armed gypsies.
“Un uh,” Jungmin told them with a smile. “Just put down your weapons gentlemen and no one will get hurt.”
Yunho glanced around, taking stock of every weapon. He counted six swords, two daggers, and an arrow knocked and ready. They weren’t odds that the four of them couldn’t beat. They had faced worse in their training.
Jungmin must have seen what he was thinking because his smile widened. “I wouldn’t. Kyujong’s arrows are dipped in poison. If the arrow doesn’t kill you, the poison will in under a minute.”
Yunho gave the arrow a hard look and decided that he couldn’t chance something like that, especially when the prince wasn’t there to protect. It would be better, he decided, to bide his time and wait until the prince or the dragon returned. “If the Prince is harmed, your entire clan will know my wrath,” Yunho threatened.
“Youngsaeng won’t hurt him,” Kyujong said confidently.
Yunho didn’t offer a response. Instead he threw down his weapon and the other three guards followed suit. Myungki grinned and ordered, “Bind them.”
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
Hyunjoong decided almost immediately, that although he didn’t mind flying, he would much rather do so from the dragon’s back rather than dangling in his hold. Despite his position, he felt safe and secure and he knew with a strange certainty that he was. He couldn’t explain how he could possibly feel safe when he had just been snatched from the ground by a rather irritated dragon, but he did.
Youngsaeng had said nothing to him since they had taken off from the ground but Hyunjoong could still feel the anger vibrating through him. Each down stroke of the dragon’s wings was rough and violent, much more so then it had been the first time they had flown together.
He didn’t know where they were going but it wasn’t far. Hyunjoong guessed that they had flown just far enough that neither the gypsies nor his guards could see them any longer when Youngsaeng’s flight took a sharp downwards turn. The dragon waited until the prince’s feet were a foot above the ground before releasing him into the grass. Using reflexes born from years of training, Hyunjoong hit the ground with his knees bent and let his forward momentum carry him down and into a roll. By the time he had stopped moving and was rising to his feet, Youngsaeng had banked and landed right in front of him.
The dragon folded his wings and began to pace through the grass, his tail flicking restlessly. ‘You act as though you wish for the truth, yet you believe lies,’ the dragon said with an emotion Hyunjoong couldn’t define coloring his voice.
“How do I know your words aren’t lies?” the prince countered. There was a hiss and Youngsaeng turned to stare at him.
‘How do you know if you won’t even listen?’ Youngsaeng replied.
“I am listening,” Hyunjoong insisted.
‘No foolish Prince,’ the dragon surged closer and Hyunjoong found himself curious instead of cautions. ‘You listen with this,’ the dragon bumped his head lightly with its muzzle. ‘When you should be listening with this,’ again the dragon bumped him, but this time it was on his chest right over where his heart would be.
The dragon’s head pulled back a bit and Hyunjoong’s hand followed. Before he could get out of reach, Hyunjoong reached out and placed his hand on the dragon’s muzzle. They froze there for a moment, staring into one another’s eyes and caught, not for the first time, by something indescribable.
“I am listening,” Hyunjoong said softly. “Tell me your truth.”
Lids closed over golden eyes and the dragon pulled away, breaking the moment between them. His eyes opened again and he padded a few paces away before settling his body down onto the grass. He stretched there in nearly a straight line, opened his wings slightly, and closed his eyes. Hyunjoong had seen birds, lizards, and other animals doing the same thing, simply stretching out and basking in the sun.
He walked the short distance to the dragon and settled onto the ground by his shoulder. It felt somehow right to lean back against hard muscle covered in smooth scales and he was surprised to feel the scales warm beneath the fabric of his shirt.
Youngsaeng’s head lifted and a single golden eye peered out at him for a moment before it closed again and his head rested against the grass once more. Hyunjoong was almost positive he heard a noise akin to a purr rumble from the dragon before Youngsaeng’s voice in his head distracted him from it.
‘What truth do you want to know?’ Youngsaeng asked quietly.
“What were you going to tell me out by the grave?” Hyunjoong asked after a moment.
There was a pause and Hyunjoong wondered if the dragon was going to tell him no. A moment later Youngsaeng began. ‘When the world was much younger then it is now, your kind did not rule the land, dragons did.
‘There were the wood dragons of the Eastern Forest, the fire dragons of the Southern Desert, the earth dragons of the Central Plains where your kingdom now stands, the metal dragons of the Western Mountains, and the water dragons of the Northern Islands. By the time your kind had begun to appear, dragons had already formed a peace with one another.
‘Although we each had our own regions of origin, we tended to mingle along the borders and in the Central Plains, the location where humans began to appear. At first dragons were simply curious about humans but it was little more than that. We were saddened by the shortness of your life spans when compared to our own so it became difficult for dragons to bear befriending humans. Instead dragons chose to withdraw from them. In our absence, the humans grew in numbers much quicker than we ever expected and quickly out grew the land that they had settled.
‘The dragons assumed the humans who began blundering into our nests of eggs were simply confused and fearful. We assumed that they did not truly want to hurt us or our young, despite the damage they did. Still the actions of the humans showed the dragons that they had two choices: form a pact with the humans or chance the death and destruction that may result from a war.
‘With this in mind, the leaders of each of the five dragon tribes came together to find a solution and they did. A single dragon would be sent to the son of the leader of the humans. She would bond with this son, in the dragon form of what you would call marriage, and they would help each other to understand the other’s race.
‘The plan worked. They ruled the humans well and for many long years due to the bond lengthening the life of the human. Dragons and humans agreed that this pattern needed to be continued for both of their sakes and so a tradition was born.
‘Every heir was to be bonded to a dragon. Through that bond the human would gain the use of the dragon’s magic and an extension of their life. They would rule wisely together before retiring to the land of their choosing after a reasonable amount of time and leaving a new heir to rule in their place. The human, because of this, became known as the Dragon King and his son, the Dragon Prince.
‘The arrangement worked well and human and dragons lived in harmony, until your great grandfather,’ Youngsaeng paused to allow his words to sink in.
“My great grandfather?” Hyunjoong asked confused. “My great grandfather died in the Great Dragon War.”
A bitter laugh echoed in his mind. ‘You humans called it that. We call it the Great Slaughter, the time where the blood of my people flowed freely.’
“But didn’t my great grandfather, by tradition, have a dragon wife?”
‘She was a dragon,’ Youngsaeng confirmed quietly, ‘and the first to suffer at the hands of the Dragon King. Your great grandfather was a greedy man. It was not enough for him to rule for fifty years and leave his kingdom in the hands of his newly married son. Instead he wished to rule until his life came to an end which would amount to hundreds of years.
‘The dragons had warned against this, since they knew how power could easily corrupt a human. Even his wife cautioned against it and threatened to drag him from the throne if he would not go willingly. Instead he bound her using the element she was weak against to hold her. This enraged her people and they demanded her release. The King met them not with words but with violence and the first dragon was killed with malicious intent by human hands.
‘Following that began a war like none ever seen. Dragons and humans killing and being killed until the soldiers on either side could no longer remember what they were fighting for. It is said that during the war, the Dragon Prince took advantage of the chaos and killed his father for the crown.
‘All that is known is that years after the conflict began, a group of dragons and humans met with the new Dragon King to settle the war once and for all. It was supposed to be a meeting of peace but it turned into a meeting of blood.’
“I remember this from history. The dragons tried to kill my grandfather at the meeting and he barely managed to fight them off,” Hyunjoong reported.
‘The dragons only tried to kill your grandfather because he tried to kill them first,’ the steady purr paused for a moment as anger reined in Youngsaeng’s voice ‘He discovered a dark secret that the power of our magic lies in our blood. He figured out a way to use it but to do so took a lot of dragon blood, so he killed for what he needed.
‘You know the rest of the history,’ he said with a sigh. ‘How humans began systematically wiping out dragons. Your grandfather collected the blood and added it to his collection of power. Sparing only one dragon to give to his son as a wife, he killed all others. Dragons scattered from your lands into the surrounding kingdoms.’
‘Shortly after he was married, your father killed your grandfather for his crown. He decided that the way the blood of the dragons was being collected was inefficient. Instead it would be beneficial to keep living dragons captive and occasionally bleed them but not kill them. In this way he would never have his supply dry up. So he began offering rewards to anyone who brought in a living dragon, rewards large enough that nowhere was safe for dragons any longer. Even his own bride was not safe from his evil.’
“My mother died giving birth to me,” Hyunjoong growled darkly.
‘Did she? Have you asked anyone other than your father?’ Youngsaeng asked.
Hyunjoong opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again. He couldn’t say that he had asked anyone else and as much as he wanted to say that he trusted his father’s word, he simply wasn’t sure that he did anymore. “What proof do you have?”
‘It is the nature of the bond. When a dragon bonds with a human, it ties itself together entirely with the human. The human will not die until the dragon does because of their bond. If your mother was dead, your father would be as well.’
“So you are saying that my father gets his magic from dragons that he has caged somewhere, by getting blood from them every now and again?”
‘Yes,’ the dragon said simply and Hyunjoong didn’t know what to say in response to that.
“Wait,” Hyunjoong said after a moment. “That is why the clan has been moving all over.”
‘Yes.’
“You are trying to free your people,” Hyunjoong said the moment he realized it.
Youngsaeng didn’t say anything in reply to that. ‘What will you do now Dragon Prince?’ he asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” Hyunjoong replied honestly.
‡†‡†‡†‡†‡
A few hours later the dragon shook his body and shifted. At the movement behind him, Hyunjoong stirred from his doze and shifted forward, stretching his stiff muscles as he went. He turned and watched the dragon stretch like a cat, arching his back and extending his claws and wings to their full length before retracting them again.
‘We should return. Your guards are probably wondering if I have killed and eaten you,’ there was mirth in the voice in his mind and Hyunjoong smiled.
“Not likely. They will assume that I taste bad,” Hyunjoong retorted. The dragon shook with a rumbling sound that the prince thought must be a laugh.
‘Get on,’ the dragon ordered, kneeling so that the prince could do so easily. Hyunjoong nodded and climbed on the dragon much the same way he had the first time. This time he noted that the dragon’s scales were much warmer then they had been before. He wondered if that has something to do with spending the morning laying in the sunlight or something else entirely.
This time Youngsaeng began their flight with an easy run, opening his wings to catch the air as he did so. When he was ready he sprung upwards and flapped his powerful wings only a few times before catching an updraft. Once they were in the air Hyunjoong found the ride as relaxing as it had been the first time. For some reason he found himself entirely comfortable in the air with the dragon, so much so that it was a highly enjoyable event.
As they drifted through the sky, Hyunjoong didn’t attempt to keep his mind from wandering to the one question he couldn’t find an answer to. What was the truth? With the conflict between everything he knew and everything he had been told, both things certainly couldn’t be true.
A part of him was convinced that the words his father had told him for so many years couldn't be lies. He couldn't begin to fathom how information like this would have been hidden from him if it were true. Yet some part of him irrationally believed that everything Youngsaeng had said was the truth. He couldn't shake the feeling anymore then he could deny it. Even if he could forget the words of the man, he could never forget what his own eyes had seen.
If nothing else, the things he saw were something he could believe in. Hyunjoong knew in the deepest fibers of his being that dragons hadn’t been the ones to ravage the village, but that didn’t mean the King had either. Even if the King wasn't behind what happened in the village, someone close to the King was, and something needed to be done. Justice would be seen to, he would be sure of it, yet he could not do anything until he knew the truth. He would settle for nothing less than the knowledge of what truly had happened to the village and to Haneul’s family. He knew of nothing that could take him back in time and show him who was responsible for what had happened even though he needed desperately to see just that. He needed to see proof himself to judge for himself what was truth and what was lies.
He turned the problem over and over in his mind. After a moment’s thought he decided judging whose words were truth and whose were lies, was not going to help. In fact that was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He needed to find the truth for himself and suddenly he knew exactly how to do it.
Chapter Fourteen
Masterlist
AN: Sorry this is so much later then usual. I had chapters written and hated every bit of them. It took me a while to realize that my plot had tried to run away without my character development. After an afternoon spent with printed versions, colored pens and no fear of scribbling out a ton of stuff, I had them hacked to bits and put back together in something I was a bit more happy with. I am satisfied with how the rewrite turned out. Thanks goes to my wonderful beta hoshi14 who got this chapter back to me in about two hours, with my silly little mistakes fixed.