.A Spark From Before.

-29-

After that I had followed her in silence, too in shock to say anything.

We finally stopped in quite a normal looking village but every building, every bench, the well, the river shore, everything, was covered in the weed called Dragon's Blossom.

"Weed? No, this is a flower of my own creation." She said as if she heard my thoughts, waving her hand over buds and they bloomed beautifully. "They are also called, amusingly enough, Arianwyns now too, the name that can't be written out of history even if it was the name of the once simple mage that didn't want any recognition."

"Why bring me here?"

"We have things to talk about dear descendant, there are things I cannot reveal or that part of fate will happen and you won't be able to avoid it so what we'll speak about is the present and what I can help you with."

"Alright." I sat on a stump, the flowers moving out of the way so I didn't sit on them, I watched in awe, they were considered weeds nowadays, how could they have turned such a beauty into weeds with just words? Today's queen is truly a tyrant. "I'm listening."

"You line descends directly from me and my darling love, Audrey." She said that name with a heavy sigh, so heavy I felt the longing in her voice. "My daughter Kia never had children of her own when she lived, raising the twins of her empress Elise as her own and it was enough, My Audrey's daughter Siera moved away from Solor in the name of love and today her descendants brought this disrepair and rot to Solor's once past glory, my daughter, the Gatekeeper, is not one by birth but by shared blood with me, a spirit with the blood of dragons and body of a human, fighting to keep the spirit plains were we and spirits rest safe even after the Blood Uprising took Kelarian from her, she still fights.... And finally, Owen, Audrey's and I's son, deliberately written out of the history books so you wouldn't recognize the name, as if he never existed, for his safety and for what he wanted to do, join the now pathetic excuse of Shadow Knights.... He is unaware of it but when he left, the maid he had shared his bed with that one night fell ill, and not just the flu, she was pregnant."

I leaned on my elbows and rested them on my knees, enamored with the history of the past.

"We took her in, made her a noble, so none would dare to hurt her but she still passed on at birth, the baby came out with silver hair and blue dragon eyes unlike how Owen's were golden, I raised that child as my grand-daughter and she became the next silver dragon despite her eyes and how that should have been a blue dragon. As my life was nearing its end I knew what was to come but in fear of responsibility, she fled, leaving the throne to take by those heirs that have forgotten that the queen lives to serve her country and not the other way around, she lived as a peasant and started the Wither Away tradition, slowly leaving nothing but a human with white hair and red eyes again, looking like those carrying a disease elves call albinism, nothing but a fleeting word remained of your heritage, forgotten was the might of the dragon that lives in you until it was killed."

I touched my chest.

"The last silver dragon died in your mother's blood, you are an empty husk, body of a human without the soul of the dragon it should have existed and yet you still were the one to awaken your long dormant magic, my grand-daughter failed in her task to kill of silver dragons in her fear of responsibility that comes with the title and now because of her foolish choice, generations of expectations rest upon your shoulders, Skarla, daughter of dragons and queens of Solor, your destiny is to be queen."

"But Seva..."

"Seva's was to save to the queendom, only that, she was tasked with taking back the throne and not sit on it as queen, she got it in her mind it was her destiny to rule but it is yours, her time as queen has past and I am grateful for what her sacrifice back then and what it did for me but trust me.... You are the heir that should sit on the throne."