The Girl Who Rode Fire
Description
I never asked for a dragon. Or a mark that bound me to an elite Academy that didn't want me. Especially not to him. Bastian Roen-the Empire's golden son. Cold. Untouchable. And furious that someone like me, a herb-gatherer from nowhere, got chosen by magic meant for royalty. "Spare meat," he called me. "You didn't earn her," he said about my dragon. So I trained harder. Fought through every bruise and insult. And when we were thrown into the Bone Maze together, I expected hatred. Maybe death. I didn't expect to fall for the storm behind his eyes. Or the way his voice cracked when I nearly died. "I didn't ask to want you," he whispered. Then he kissed me like it hurt to breathe. Now he won't even look at me. But I'm not done. With him. With this place. With becoming more than they ever believed I could be. Even if love, like fire, burns.
Chapter 1
Feb 13, 2026
The Serathian cliffs had been trying to kill people for centuries, and today they were feeling particularly ambitious with Mira Solvain.
She’d grown up hearing the stories in Saltmere’s taverns—how the ancient Serathi had thrown their criminals from these very rocks, believing the sea winds would carry their souls to judgment. How dragon hunters used to nest here, back when dragons were plentiful and stupid enough to build rookeries on accessible clifftops. How her own grandmother had lost three fingers to frostbite gathering winter-bloom here, sixty years past.
“Stupid bloody cliffs,” Mira muttered, her satchel bouncing against her hip as she hauled herself up another ledge, breath coming heavier now.
The coastal outpost’s healer, Old Henrik, had been specific: fireleaf and moon-moss, and don’t come back without them. Easy for him to say—he wasn’t the one with thick thighs and a pack full of glass jars trying to scale a mountain that clearly hated her. Every upward step made her calves scream and her chest burn, but she pressed on, jaw tight. Just a little further, she told herself, even as the rocks beneath her boots shifted like they wanted a show.
The wind cut through her wool cloak like it had a grudge. Below, the Cerulean Sea churned gray and furious, waves crashing against rocks that had been sharpened by millennia of violence. Above, storm clouds gathered with ominous intention.
In Saltmere, they said the cliffs remembered every death. That on nights when the moon was dark, you could hear the screaming.
Mira had always thought that was bullshit. Until now.
The sound that split the air wasn’t human—it was something raw and desperate and utterly alien. A screech that made her bones ache and her teeth clench.
“What the hell?” She froze, herb-gathering forgotten.
The cry came again, closer now, and something in her chest twisted. Whatever was making that sound was in serious trouble.
Her feet moved before her brain caught up, scrambling over loose shale and around a jutting outcrop. The Solvains had never been particularly bright—her father had died trying to fish during a storm, her mother had worked herself to death in the salt mines. Clearly, self-preservation wasn’t a family trait.
She crested a ridge and stopped dead.
In a hollow between two boulders, something silver writhed in agony. A dragonet—no bigger than a wolfhound, but unmistakably draconic. Barbed rope wrapped around its ribs like some sick parody of a gift ribbon, and blood, bright red and entirely too much of it, dripped from a mangled wing.
“Holy shit,” Mira breathed.
The creature’s head snapped toward her, golden eyes blazing with pain and fury. It tried to hiss, but the sound came out weak and broken.
Mira had seen plenty of blood in her nineteen years—Saltmere wasn’t gentle to its children, and Henrik’s clinic saw everything from fishing accidents to tavern brawls. But this was different. This was deliberate. Cruel.
“Poachers,” she snarled. In the old days, dragon hunting had been honorable. Dangerous, but honorable. These days, it was just butchery. Hatchlings stolen for their scales, their blood, their hearts. The Caerborn Academy claimed they were cracking down, but clearly their reach didn’t extend to every gods-forsaken cliff in the kingdom.
The dragonet watched her approach, too weak to flee, too proud to submit. Its breathing was shallow, labored.
“Okay,” Mira said, pulling her belt knife. “Okay, let’s do this thing.”
She knelt beside the creature, and it flinched. Smart—humans meant pain. Had always meant pain, probably.
“I’m not them,” she said quietly. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The dragon’s eyes tracked her movement as she reached for the rope. The barbs were vicious, designed to tighten with struggle. Some sick bastard’s idea of entertainment.
“This is going to suck,” she warned, then started sawing at the first coil.
The rope was thick, meant for large prey. The dragonet whimpered—actually whimpered—as she worked, and something in Mira’s chest cracked.
“Come on,” she muttered. “Stay with me.”
The rope snapped suddenly, whipping back across her palm. Pain blazed up her arm, and blood—her blood—spilled across the dragon’s silver scales.
Time stopped.
The air between them pulsed with something electric, something ancient and vast and utterly beyond her understanding. The dragonet’s eyes locked onto hers, and she saw something there that made her breath catch.
Recognition. Choice. Claim.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
The dragon opened its mouth and roared—not loud, but deep, resonating in her bones like thunder. Fire erupted from its throat, controlled and deliberate, wrapping around her wrist like molten gold.
Mira screamed. The fire didn’t burn, but it marked her, carving an intricate spiral into her skin that pulsed with power she’d never dreamed of.
“What did you do?” she gasped, staring at the glowing mark. “What in the hell did you do?”
The dragonet collapsed, exhausted by the effort, but its eyes remained fixed on hers. Satisfied. Like it had been waiting for her specifically.
The world tilted sideways. Her vision blurred, darkness creeping in from the edges.
The last thing she saw was those molten gold eyes, watching her fall.
Consciousness returned like a slap to the face. Mira woke with her mouth full of dust and her head pounding like a smithy’s hammer. Gray sky stretched overhead, and the taste of ash lingered on her tongue.
She blinked, trying to focus, and found herself staring up at a stranger.
He wore black leather that screamed authority—the kind of black that cost more than most Saltmere families saw in a year. The crest stitched over his heart made her blood freeze in her veins.
Caerborn Academy. Dragon riders. The untouchable elite.
“Screw me sideways,” she croaked, sitting up too fast and immediately regretting it.
“You’ve been marked,” the man said, his voice flat and professional. Like he was discussing the weather.
A second figure stepped into view—a woman with silver hair and eyes like winter storms. Her black uniform was identical.
“That’s impossible,” Mira said, clutching her wrist. The spiral mark pulsed faintly, warm against her skin. “I’m nobody. I’m from Saltmere, for fuck’s sake.”
“Geography is irrelevant,” the woman said coldly. “The dragon chose you.”
“I was helping it,” Mira protested, scrambling to her feet. “It was dying. I couldn’t just—”
“You formed a bond,” the man interrupted. “Partial, but binding. That makes you a candidate.”
“I’m not rider material,” she snapped. “Look at me. I gather herbs for a living. I’ve never even seen a full-grown dragon.”
“You have now,” the woman said, nodding toward something behind Mira.
She turned and nearly swallowed her tongue. The hatchling—no longer tiny, no longer dying—perched on a nearby boulder. It had grown, somehow, fed by their shared blood and the bond-fire. Its silver scales gleamed like polished metal, and its golden eyes held ancient intelligence.
“That’s not possible,” Mira whispered.
“Many things are possible with dragon magic,” the man said. “You’ll learn.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you people.”
The woman smiled, and it was colder than the cliff winds. “You don’t have a choice. The mark binds you to the Academy. Ancient law.”
Behind them, a skycraft materialized from the storm clouds—sleek black metal that hummed with contained power. Magic radiated from its hull like heat from a forge.
“This is insane,” Mira said, backing away. “I have a life. Responsibilities.”
“Had,” the man corrected. “Past tense.”
The craft’s doors opened with a soft hiss, revealing an interior of shadow and steel. Her new reality, waiting to swallow her whole.
The dragon on the boulder chirped softly, and despite everything, Mira felt an answering pulse in her marked wrist. The bond was real. Undeniable.
She looked back at the cliffs, at the blood-stained rocks where her old life had ended. At the vast gray sea that had been her horizon for nineteen years.
“I saved you,” she said to the dragon. “This is how you repay me?”
Its golden eyes held no apology. Only inevitability.
The Girl Who Rode Fire
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