Prologue - The Roots Remember

The earth knew when the curse broke.

  It felt the shudder first. A deep, wordless crack through soil and stone. Magic that had slept for a thousand years stirred beneath roots older than any road or tower. The world held its breath. Then released it in a long, aching sigh.

  Far below the limestone ridges of central Texas, deep where time had carved ancient chambers into the bedrock, an old dryad woke.

  He did not wake quickly. Trees never did.

  Awareness crept through him like thaw after winter. First the deep roots. Then the bark. Then the places where bark had long since fallen away. His thoughts rose like sap climbing a wounded trunk.

  Light reached him last.

  The dryad blinked into the dim cavern he guarded. He remembered this place. He had guarded it before human maps had lines. Before the first settlers cut into the hills. Before the curse sealed magic under stone.

  The chamber was part of a forgotten network beneath what mortals now called Natural Bridge. Long before they named it, dragons had shaped it. Their claws carved tunnels. Their heat sealed faults. Their breath smoothed the great halls of stone.

  And the trees had been asked to guard what dragons hid there.

  The dryad remembered the reason.

  He remembered the old war.

  Long ago, before the curse, dragons had fought dragons.

  Clans turned sky against sky. Pride burned hotter than flame. Their battles scarred whole regions. Valleys became craters. Forests became ash. Ancient trees, who had stood for a thousand years, fell burning in a single night.

  When the smoke cleared, the dragons saw the ruin they had caused.

  And the trees saw that the sky had forgotten the ground that held it.

  The dragons sought forgiveness.

  The trees demanded balance.

  The pact was simple.

  Life for life.

  Root for scale.

  The dragons swore never to burn a forest again. Never to scorch a grove without cause. Never to land with careless destruction or let their young tear apart what could not regrow.

  In return, the trees agreed to guard the entrances to dragon hoards and egg chambers. They agreed to hide the sleeping places of young dragons, to seal the caverns with root and stone, and to keep the treasures of each clan safe from rival claws.

  A covenant between sky and root.

  A binding older than any crown.

  Above this pact, another order had once stood.

       The Order of Keepers balanced dragon power with spellcraft and wisdom.

       Witches, ward makers, and Watchers were all branches of the same order then, weaving protection through forests and binding elemental magic to harmony.

       The Keepers tempered dragon fire and kept the world from burning under its own strength.

       But the curse shattered the pacts.

  Dragons fell into human shape.

  Magic thinned.

  Memory faded.

  The Order of Keepers fractured.

       Some hid.

       Some hardened into enforcers who forgot what they once protected.

       Some forgot their true purpose entirely.

       None remembered the old covenant, and magic began to wither in the silence that followed.

       Dragons forgot their oath.

  Trees did not.

  Even after the forests were felled.

  Even after the young sprites were cut down as timber before their roots could anchor.

  Even as highways carved through old groves.

  The trees kept watch.

  The dryad before the egg had once been one of many guardians.

  Now he was the last.

  He turned toward the object he had vowed to protect.

  The egg rested in a cradle of moss and cold stone. Gold veining shimmered faintly across its curved shell. It pulsed once, as if answering the earth’s tremor.

  He leaned close, limbs creaking, leaves shaking loose from his shoulders.

  “Little one,” he murmured. His voice was wind in hollow wood. “You wake early.”

  The egg answered with a soft thrum. Not sound. Not sight. Something felt through the roots.

  The dryad’s heart ached.

  He remembered more now.

  The egg belonged to the Earth Dragon line, the only line that had lived entirely beneath the stone. Their clans had dug far below the surface, closer to the heart of the world, where their fire could not scorch forests and their landings would not shatter ancient trees.

  Earth Dragons had been the first to swear loyalty to the trees.

  And they had been the last to fall to Morna’s curse.

  The egg pulsed again, sharp and frightened.

  The ward around it trembled.

  Cracks spread along the old spell.

  The dryad froze.

  He felt something outside the chamber.

  A presence moving through the earth.

  Hunting.

  A shadow brushed against the ward.

  Hungry.

  Searching.

  Drawing closer.

  He lurched upright. Bark split along his spine. Twigs scattered across the stone.

  “No,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

  The curse had broken.

  The world was shifting.

  Old protections were failing.

  He pressed his palm to the egg. Warmth pulsed into him like a heartbeat.

  “Sleep, little one,” he said. “Tree will return.”

  He turned toward the tunnel that led upward. His limbs trembled. His bark peeled. His roots dragged behind him like ancient scars. The climb was long. His strength thin.

  But trees keep their vows until they fall.

  As he climbed, something reached him through the stone.

  A shock of power.

  A flare of lightning without sky.

  A stormline crackling through the earth like a cleaved bell.

  He stopped, stunned.

  Storm magic.

  Old.

  Familiar.

  Impossible.

  Dragons should not have stormlines.

  Only one lineage ever carried fire and storm together.

  Serena’s line.

  The line that once helped protect the Earth Dragon clans.

  The line the egg would recognize.

  The dryad pressed his hand to the cavern wall.

  He felt the echo again.

  This time clearer.

  A call.

  Not from the Earth Dragon.

  From the egg itself.

  The egg had stirred when storm magic shattered the curse.

  It was calling for help.

  And the one who broke the curse carried that call in her very blood.

  The dryad’s breath rattled.

  “Not dragon,” he whispered. “Storm girl. Egg calls storm girl.”

  He did not understand why.

  He only knew the egg’s pulse reached upward toward the surface, toward the world above, toward a new magic it recognized as kin.

  He must follow.

  When he emerged, the world above burned with harsh human light.

  Metal towers pierced the sky.

  Engines snarled through the air.

  Roads cut deep scars across the land.

  “Lost,” he murmured. “All lost.”

  But he kept walking.

  Because he felt the egg’s echo inside the stormline.

  Because that echo pointed to a single presence he could identify in this broken world.

  Not the Earth Dragon he sought.

  But the storm born woman who had shaken the curse loose.

  The one the egg now called for.

  The one everything would soon depend on.

  He took his first step onto asphalt.

  Branches snapped.

  Leaves shed.

  Bark flaked like old paper.

  Still he walked.

  Slow.

  Unsteady.

  Searching.

  Searching for the girl who broke a thousand year curse.

  Searching for the storm that had woken the egg.

  Searching for Allie Grayson.

  His voice creaked from deep in his hollow chest.

  “Find storm girl,” he whispered.

  “Find her. Before they do.”