The Selection: Bride Of The Dark Dragon

MIRA

I come back to my senses in an unfamiliar room. It’s still the Selection castle, I am sure of that as I recognize the unique stone used for its walls. But everything else bothers me. This is neither the gerdians rooms, neither the girls’. I am unfamiliar with the place I am in.

“Finally!” I hear Alexandra’s voice and turn my head to see her stand next to a fireplace. I flinch and only now realize that my hands are tied. And with a magic blocking rope of all things! I am in deep… trouble!Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“Alexandra!” I try to fake a smile, “What is going on? Why am I tied up? And where are we? Could you help me and…”

“Oh, drop the act, Mira!” she rolls her eyes, “I know you suspected me for a while!”

“I did”, I follow her advice and admit, it’s no use to pretend with this cold-blooded murderer! I just need to get her close to me and knock her out. Luckily my legs are still free and it looks like a possible task.

“Well, clever you!” she chuckles, “Although it doesn’t help you in life much, does it?”

“How did you guess?” I snort, “Was it the rope? Or that time you knocked me out?”

“That wasn’t me,” she grins and I hear steps behind me. I turn my head but do not see the third person in the room. So, she was not alone. That would explain a lot!

“And to whom do I owe the pleasure to?” I raise my brow and hear a heavy sigh.

“That would be me,” Xia steps in front of me, and I gasp with shock. No! No, no, no! She can’t be one of the murderers!

“You?!” I almost feel tears in my eyes, but anger overwhelms me. I wouldn’t cry! Not in front of the two of them!

“Sorry, dear,” my ‘friend’ smiles weakly, “I had no choice…”

“You had no choice to knock me out? Or you had no choice to kill Bella and Fawn?! And the first girl…”

“I had no choice in any of those,” Xia sits in front of me and gets something from the cleavage of her red dress. I don’t show any emotion when I see the amplifier artifact in the shape of a ruby flower hairpin that Derrien and I were looking for all this time.

“People always have a choice!” I retort.

“Not if they are battlemages, Mira,” Xia smiles softly and I can’t help but choke on her words. Battlemages. They are both battlemages! Just like me!

“Why on heavens would battlemages do something like that?!” I ask still not believing what I am hearing.

“King’s orders, of course,” Alexandra chuckles, “Or what – did you think that battlemages get only the noblest of tasks and never dirty their hands? I have news for you, Miradora Freyn, we get all sorts of missions from our superiors. So, be careful what you wish for! This job is not for everyone!”

“Why would King Bendor want for you to kill innocent girls? What’s the point?” I ask and Alexandra rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed with all my questions.

“No one wants to kill innocent girls,” Xia replies, “Definitely not the king! And neither do we. But our Kingdom comes first, Mira!”

“What does our Akyrian Kingdom has to do with anything?”

“Everything!” Xia’s eyes sparkle with the reflections of the flames in the fireplace, “Mira, look at what the gerdians are doing! They are behaving as they own us! You of all the people were screaming it first when you arrive! You feel exactly what we feel. And the King feels the same. He’s been looking for ways to put an end to this for a while, planting “wives” he chose for the top-ranking gerdians. So that we have information and control. But this year is the most important year. Because Ryden Dargen takes part, the future Emperor himself. Getting him a wife who is one of us was the most important task!”

“All this because you want to marry Dargen?” the disgust must have shown on my face as Alexandra rolls her eyes once again.

“Of course!” she snorts, “Having our hands on the Emperor of the Gerdian Empire could have been the best thing that ever happened to our Kingdom! But you messed everything up for us. Honestly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about…”

“And that’s why you couldn’t land him in the first place, even after spreading your legs for him,” Xia retorts, and I see that although they are working together they are not friends. Good. Maybe I can use that.

“So, why the murders though?” I remind them of our main topic.

“Well, the first girl…” Xia sighs, “We needed her place. Unluckily, they didn’t choose our third agent and we tried to get her in. She was supposed to be next. Her body is very responsive to the dark gerdian magic and this is their main criteria for choosing girls for the Selection. But something went wrong and they choose you instead. It was a big miscalculation on our part.”

“Miscalculation? It cost a girl a life! Her name was…” I start talking, but she interjects.

“Mira, these were orders… What could we do?” Xia doesn’t look happy with the whole situation.

“But what about Bella? The Selection hasn’t even started when you used Crystal Shard to kill her!”

“You were the one to figure that out, weren’t you?” my ex-friend smiles sadly, “Yes, this wasn’t the plan. She saw something she was not supposed to see. Right before that dinner, she walked into the wrong room and saw me getting important artifacts from my superior. She didn’t get what was going on. But she was not supposed to see that… and our mission is too important to risk it… I had to do this one and it felt horrible. She seemed like a nice girl.”

“She WAS a nice girl!” I feel a single treacherous tear roll down my cheek, “And what did Fawn see for you to kill someone you called your friend?”

“That wasn’t me!” Xia snaps and looks at her accomplice furiously, “That moron over there was sure that if she is out then Dargen would crawl back to his one-night stand! i***t! Unfortunately, I found out about it when it was already too late. Leaving her hanging there till morning was one of the hardest things for me…”

I clench my lips. I can feel that Xia is genuinely sorry. But that doesn’t change anything anymore… I hate them both!

“It would have worked!” Alexandra almost yells, “If you didn’t come into the picture! Dargen got obsessed with you for some reason!”

“So, I was next on your list?” I snort, but inside I am scared.

“I wish!” Alexandra g****s, “They wouldn’t let me!”

“They?” I raise my brow and that’s when the door opens…