Dragonfire Series: Prologue - Echo
Echo
Far away, Morna watched from the edge of her years. Her hands trembled, still bearing the scars from the magic that had shaped the curse. Through her scrying glass, she saw what she never thought she would. A child and a dragon. Bound not by vengeance, but by love. Serena's laughter carried across the snow, piercing the silence Morna had built her world upon. She watched as the dragon crowned her with ferns, listened as he spoke her name in a voice that bent the air. The old words rose unbidden: When fire meets storm in children's clasp… Morna had dismissed the prophecy as folly, a tale often found in dragon stories and whispered by dragon mothers to hatchlings as comfort—a promise that the magical curse would someday break. She had believed her vengeance too strong for prophecy. Now, watching Serena and her dragon, Morna understood. The curse could break if this bond ever birthed a line strong enough, if fire and light ever braided through blood. She could not kill the girl. Not yet. The magic would not allow it. So she waited, whispering to those who would listen. She passed her knowledge to apprentices, to bloodlines, to those who would become Watchers—humans sworn to guard her vengeance and ensure the curse never broke. Morna died three winters later, but the curse did not die with her. Centuries passed. Morna's apprentices did not. They carried her curse across oceans, through wars, into the new world. In Dallas, where glass towers caught the sun and blues clubs pulsed through the night, the Watchers kept their vigil. They wore suits instead of robes, drove cars instead of horses, but the oath remained: guard the curse, watch for storm and fire, strike before the prophecy wakes. The dragons lived among them—quiet, mortal, forgetting what they had been—until one of them remembered. And the rain, like forgetting, began to fall once more.
