The Protagonist Speaks

Dear readers, tonight with us is a young woman sold as a slave to a war dragon and heir to the throne. But instead of cruelty, she found that behind the brutal exterior lies a man at odds with the future forced upon him and a dragon with plans of his own. She is here to tell us about the dangerous magic which stirs in the east and the building royal pressure, while she and the prince are drawn together in a bond neither expected.

Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was your life like growing up in servitude?

I couldn’t tell you the name of the village I grew up in or even point it out on a map of Estroria. My first nine years were spent in the loving care of my mother who taught me magic and about the beauty of the world. She didn’t have time to educate me on the world’s horrors, but I learned when the self-proclaimed “law enforcement” of the village beat down our door one night and took her life for refusing to cast spells for them. Their leader was in possession of an ancient magical artifact he bound around my neck, a collar that restricted my magic and made me his property. Only to use the powerful flow in my veins when he allowed me brief, and highly monitored, access to my magic.

Once I was taken as a slave, my childhood ended and I lived in a slave house with a violent foreman carrying a whip and broken down men, women, and children beholden to a careless master. What I experienced of the village was limited to glimpses as I was escorted from the slave house to my master’s workshop where he had me perform spells and act as his bodyguard against other overly-ambitious, power hungry thugs living outside the reach of the crown by their own laws.

Your ownership was recently transferred to the powerful War Dragon, what do you do in his service?

If by ‘transferred’ you mean Prince Cole’s dragon, Talon, claimed me as a prize in the middle of an auction during a festival in the capital, then yes, my ownership was ‘transferred.’

As for what I do in the prince’s service, the palace has more maids, servants, and staff than the royal family needs, and formally trained royal mages who are far more educated and talented than a slave. I learned magic based on my former master’s needs and those spells don’t carry over into palace life. There is little I have to offer a prince, let alone the fiercest warrior in Telasia. But he seems keen to keep me around, at the request of Talon, and finds menial tasks for me to assist him around the palace.

What was it like facing off with a dragon?

When my former master decided to sell me at auction, I was prepared to enter the service of another ruthless slave owner, perhaps a noble who wanted a personal spell caster. Instead, when I was presented to the court, Talon, the dragon bonded to Prince Cole, and the fiercest creature in the known world, chose to claim me. His mouth was large enough to swallow me in one gulp, and even though he’s burned entire armies with a single breath, and expanded Telasia’s borders through conquest, I wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, I welcomed death in his gullet rather than facing another brutal master and further meaningless existence.

But Talon had other plans for me, and I went from being an unwanted nobody to the prize of a powerful dragon and the property of the crowned prince. Though, I’m not sure if I can live up to the palace’s expectations.