Equinox Betrayal, page 1
part #3 of Rise Of The Dragons Series
Rise of Dragons – Book 3
Equinox Betrayal
© Gemma Clatworthy 2021
Find more at www.gemmaclatworthy.com
The moral right of Gemma Clatworthy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Sanjay Charlon (Beehive Illustrations)
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
About the Author
Foreword
Thank you to the amazing first readers, terrific typo hunters and grammar gurus – you are awesome!
This series is for my D&D group whose stories always inspire me!
Please join the conversation at Gemma’s book wyrms facebook group.
Chapter 1
I leapt to the left to avoid the dagger aiming straight for my face. Crouching low, I kicked out at the elf’s knee. She spun away easily and came at me again. I parried with Bane, my double headed axe, then adjusted my grip and swung back. She was expecting it and somersaulted out of the way. Bloody elven agility. She danced around me, tossing her dagger from hand to hand.
“Try and hit me!” she taunted. I hung back, catching my breath and weighing up my options. She was faster than me and more agile and better with her weapon. I, on the other hand, was smaller than her. Not much of an advantage there.
I rushed in, she sidestepped in time for me to overbalance and stumble. In an instant she was on me. She twisted my arm painfully, forcing me to drop my axe and then pushed me to the ground. I was expecting it and went down fast, using my weight to pull her with me. I clocked the surprise in her eyes as she staggered forward. I pulled my own dagger from my belt with my free arm and brought it round. She dived into a forward roll, still holding my arm. I cried out as my arm was wrenched forward of her volition and I did my own clumsy version of a somersault. Red stars clouded my vision from the pain of the arm bar.
She kicked out at my other hand, her long leg easily allowing her to reach my wrist. I felt the blade drop from my hand. I blinked as I felt cold steel against my neck. It was over.
She held the knife there for a second then released me.
“Not bad, you’re getting faster,” a rare compliment, “but if you’re going to try surprise, make sure your opponent doesn’t still have you in an arm bar.”
I grunted in between panting as I tried to get my breath back. Espretha was unflustered and annoyingly looked even more attractive with a slight flush to her face from the training session. I pushed myself up and adjusted my sports bra. It was a small feat of engineering to support my curvy bust, and it was always digging in uncomfortably somewhere. At least it stopped the embarrassing jiggling that had caused more than a few jaws to drop when the elf had forced me to jog round the park as a warm up for our first session.
I walked over to where Errol, my pet wyrm, was sunbathing on our bags near a tree. He grumbled softly as I dislodged him to get to my water bottle. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and took a swig. Then I dug around in my backpack for a chocolate bar. I started to tear into the wrapper and just got it open when Espretha knocked it from my hand.
“Hey!”
“While I’m teaching you, I’m in charge of your body and you are not putting that stuff in your mouth!”
I picked up the chocolate, brushing off a blade of grass and wondering how bad it would be if I ate it after it had been on the floor, “Training’s over, and you might be in charge of my body but you are not in charge of what I eat,” I protested.
The elf tapped her foot thoughtfully, “Training’s over when I say it’s over…I think we’ll finish with a jog.” I groaned loudly. Espretha’s idea of a light jog was a run around the park. My shorter legs always struggled to keep up with her and I was already exhausted. Note to self: do not provoke sadistic elf. She smiled nastily and picked up her backpack.
“I should take Errol back…” I tried.
She gave the plump wyrm a look of disgust, “He needs to lose weight too, he can come with us.”
She set off. I groaned again, but I was learning a lot in these training sessions and secretly it was nice to be bullied into taking exercise. I was still curvy, but I was more toned than I had been a couple of months ago when we had started these lessons.
I clipped on Errol’s chain link lead, “Sorry boy, looks like we’re going for another run.”
He looked up at me reproachfully but got up and trotted alongside me, jumping every so often so he could glide in the warm air. Lucky wyrm with his wings. Espretha stayed just ahead of me as we followed a circuit around Bute Park. I would have made snarky comments behind her back but I was far too out of breath to do anything but struggle on.
After the run, Espretha made sure we stretched out our muscles, then it was time for my favourite part. I was aching all over but I perked up as we left the leafy park straight into Cardiff city centre. I ignored the creepy stone animal statues that lined the walls of Bute Park and the construction noises coming from inside Cardiff Castle where they were rebuilding the destruction caused by a waking a slumbering dragon earlier in the year. I was laser focused on our destination: the Dragon’s Head café. Home of heavenly syrupy coffee and the best brownies in the city.
I entered first and collapsed onto the counter. Brinda, the owner, smiled at me, “Coffee?”
“With extra syrup,” I panted, “and two of your brownies.”
“Tea for me,” Espretha had barely broken a sweat. Sometimes I really hated her. She took a seat at one of the mismatched tables and lounged. Elves always made themselves immediately at home wherever they were.
I sank into the opposite seat and waited, studiously not looking at the pictures of famous people hung on the walls. Brinda had conspired with my mother to get my picture on there after I’d been featured in the Cardiff paper when the first dragon had awakened and now there was a picture of me looking dishevelled, to put it mildly, hanging brightly on the wall. I had refused to autograph it.
Brinda bustled over quickly with our order and a small bowl of water and a biscuit shaped like a dragon for Errol. He licked her hand then starting lapping the water noisily under the table.
“That was a good session,” Espretha commented as she sipped her tea delicately. I inhaled deeply, savouring the bittersweet aroma of my coffee and grunted my assent.
“How’s business?” she asked, carefully not meeting my eyes. This was how it always started.
“It’s OK. Aloora’s had to teach me more about managing a social media account now everyone wants a picture in my shop. The hashtags are a nightmare.”
She winced at the mention of my gnomish friend. Good. She should feel guilty that she kidnapped Aloora earlier this year. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive her for that, but Aloora had been surprisingly sanguine about Espretha contacting me and I trusted my friend even if I didn’t entirely trust the elf.
She nibbled at the brownie I pushed in front of her. She never ordered her own, but I was determined to convert her to unhealthy ways and, as my Mum always said, “Fatten up your friends and it will make you look slimmer!” I’d always laughed about that but in hindsight I had been a chubby teenager.
“You’re getting a lot of business from that…painting…though?” she visibly stopped herself from shuddering.
I hated the huge mural that my so-called friend Marco had painted on my shop wall. He’d created a buxom dwarf that sort of looked like me, with a beard! It was monstrous but he was my friend and I leapt to its defence, “Yeah. It’s trending all over Cardiff! I’m lucky I’ve got such good friends.”
Another wince. It was petty but after training sessions, I always liked to provoke her. It was my way of getting my own back.
“A lot of supernatural beings like the picture?”
This was what I had been waiting for. She always tried to be subtle but really she wanted information about Lorandir. An elven customer turned friend of mine who had helped me rescue Aloora and had tried to stop the cult that Espretha had joined. We hadn’t been successful at stopping them awakening a dragon, and her childhood friend had cut her out of his life.
“Yep,” I took a long drink of my syrupy coffee, savouring the sweet flavour. I couldn’t resist trying to provoke her, “Lorandir was in the shop the other day…”
“I saw…in one of your posts.” I nodded brightly. She was stalking him on social media then. Good to know. “Does he know about our training sessions?” she asked, a little too nonchalantly.
Schiztz. I had been enjoying tormenting her but hadn’t actually got around to telling him I was hanging out with his ex-friend, who had kidnapped my friend and who we had fought together. I mean, how do you break that news without sounding completely crazy? And I was enjoying getting to know Lorandir.
I pulled out my phone to check the time and did a double take. Saved by the time! “I have to go! I promised Aloora I’d help her with apartment hunting. Sorry Espretha, got to go!”
I downed my coffee and took the remains of my brownie to go. Errol protested as I tugged him out of the door, shouted goodbye to Brinda and hobbled back to my shop cum flat. I left Errol tucking into a small bucket of coal and had a quick shower before texting Aloora and walking to the taxi rank. I was too late to be able to catch a bus so would have to get one of the licensed cars to take me instead. A lot of people were on the streets today and there seemed to be a lot of red and blue shirts around. The colours of the Welsh rugby team and the Cardiff blues football team. I guessed there was a match somewhere. Not at the stadium of course – that was being used as a nesting ground by the dragons. An American couple nudged my shoulder as they passed. The man in a plaid red shirt with stubble that might be called a beard in the right light spoke by my ear.
“Gee, it’s just like the movies ain’t it?”
The wife nodded blankly as her husband took a photo of a large magical ward etched onto a building; part of the city’s efforts to reassure its citizens that they were safe. From the look on her face, I guessed it was about the thousandth time he’d stopped to capture the city with his camera.
Aloora replied with the address, distracting me from the couple. It was the third time she’d sent it to me. Then a string of emojis, including a clock and a surprised face. I got the message and quickened my pace, my tired muscles protesting.
Chapter 2
Aloora was standing outside a sleek apartment building, tapping her foot and scrolling on her smartphone, frowning slightly.
“Sorry, sorry!” I held up my hands.
She waved her own hand dismissively and typed something into her phone before putting it into her leather satchel, embossed with a dragon design. “Who does he think he is?”
“Who?” I was not following this at all.
“This guy ‘Denalth72’ has the nerve to tell me that the dragon we saw fly out of the ground at Stonehenge, which is still being repaired, was a collective hallucination!” She was talking about one of her social media accounts then, it was starting to make more sense. Aloora, known online as Aloora Dragonquest, was a minor celebrity in Cardiff thanks to her social media accounts that focused on her academic research into dragons. Of course, now that dragons were back in the world, her following had rocketed and instead of like-minded folk, she was also dealing with everyday conspiracy theorists.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I thought it was odd he was believing the government cover stories of gas explosions and bomb scares, after all that’s what they want you to think!”
I laughed, “Brilliant! You’ll have him rethinking his entire life with that!”
She grinned wickedly, then gestured to the building, “The agent’s already upstairs with Marco. Come on.”
She trotted upstairs impatiently, not even thinking about taking the lift. I forced myself to follow her as my legs protested at the stairs. She kept going. How many floors did this building have? I gripped the handrail and forced myself to continue. I was panting by the time she finally left the stairwell and opened a heavy fire safety door. She made impatient signals with her hands and tapped her foot as she waited for me to catch up. I wheezed as I passed her.
“Hard training session today?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“Still enjoying working with Espretha then?”
“Enjoy is a strong word…” I gasped.
“I was thinking…maybe I should meet her…you know, not as a victim.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. A flurry of expressions crossed my face. I was never good at hiding my feelings.
She sighed, “I know, it’s probably a bad idea, but her case file made it seem like this cult thing really was a blip and I’d like to ask her why she did it.”
“You know more about her than I do,” I settled for a non-committal, neutral response.
She nodded thoughtfully, then knocked sharply on a smart, white door, “Here’s the apartment.”
A keen estate agent opened the door instantly and ushered us in. I blinked as I took in the place. Light streamed in from the large windows, framing perfect views of the water in Cardiff Bay. Aloora gave it an appraising glance then started opening cupboards and doors.
I wondered, not for the first time, just how much her new job at the Magical Liaison Office was paying. Enough for her to leave the shabby student house share she was currently living in for sure, but enough for a swanky flat like this, wow!
I thought about the strange stain on the ceiling of my own bedroom and the growing patch of mould in the bathroom. This place was a palace. The open plan living room and kitchen was clean and modern. I pulled myself away from the fantastic views and walked into a bedroom.
A king-sized bed filled the space, illuminated by another large picture window. I opened a mirrored door and found a neat wardrobe filled with somebody’s suits. Another door led to a huge en-suite, including a bathtub. I was jealous. I hadn’t had a bath since I’d moved into my place. My small shower with temperamental water pressure suddenly seemed totally inadequate.
Marco walked in and plonked himself on the bed, “It is fabulous, no?” his Italian accent curled around the words.
I nodded and sank down next to him, “Perfectly perfect.”
“I think I will have this room,” he looked around and then lay fully on the bed.
I laughed at him already making himself at home here and went to find my best friend. She was standing on the small balcony, leaning on the metallic railing and looking across the water dreamily.
I joined her, trying not to think about the height. I had never been a fan of them, and put it down to my dwarven heritage. “Marco’s already moving in!”
“He’s not having the room with the views!” she replied indignantly, “Not when I’m paying the most rent!”
I put my hands up in mock surrender, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!”
I smiled. It was kind of her to help Marco leave the student house too, but as he was such a good cook, I was sure there was a slight ulterior motive. I admit it, I was jealous that my two friends were going to live in this gorgeous apartment, far enough away that I couldn’t walk over and see them. Maybe I should get a bike.
“What do you think? Be honest,” she broke into my thoughts.
I pretended to consider carefully, “Well it’s almost as good as the place with the seventies wallpaper, but you don’t have as nice views as the one that overlooked the train tracks…”
She laughed, “There’s another room you know, if you wanted to move here too,” her voice softened and she searched my face, breaking into my thoughts, “I mean, I was going to turn it into a library slash study, but I’d love it if you lived here too...and honestly, we could do with a third person in on the rent. Even with prices down thanks to the dragons nesting in the Millennium Stadium, it’s still expensive.”
It was a lie, but a nice one to save my pride and make me think I was doing her a favour, rather than the other way around. “I’ll think about it,” I promised.
She nodded, satisfied with that. It was tempting and certainly a lot nicer than my flat. But my unofficial living arrangements above my shop in Royal Arcade were so convenient and then there was the rent. I was getting my shop for a bargain price after I helped out the Arcade’s owner with a kobold problem. The estate agent tried to hand Aloora a card as we left the building. He looked pretty desperate to get the place rented out and I guessed the exodus of people leaving a dragon-infested city was taking its toll on estate agents. I had insisted on taking the lift and was stealthily massaging my sore thighs as I tried to soothe my muscles while I waited for them to finish up. She brushed him away saying she did everything online. That was true.
