House of Dragons: Royal Houses Book One

too dangerous. They were still learning their fire. And with the older ones, they became sensitive to the touch.
Her fingers trembled, assessing the danger to herself. But Gelryn leveled one large eye upon her, and she gently rested her hand on his snout.
Her body convulsed at the first touch. Her eyes slammed shut. And then it felt as if someone had latched on to her ankle and was dragging her deep underwater. She gasped as she tried to get air in, but all she felt was the tug. Water seemed to fill her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Gods, she couldn’t breathe.
Kerrigan began to struggle, to try to escape whatever was happening to her. She didn’t want this. She needed air.
Release your fight, child.
Kerrigan heard Gelryn’s voice, but it sounded murky. As if he were far above her. He wanted her to drown. To release and give in to this… death. But she’d been hurt too many times to give in to defeat. She would swim. She would kick and flail and reach the surface. This would not be the end.
Kerrigan!
His voice actually sounded… anxious. Had she ever heard a dragon sound anxious? Not when they were as old as Gelryn. The young ones, sometimes. But confidence was their state of being. It made her anxious, just hearing that voice.
He wanted her to release. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t stop. She was a fighter. If she gave in… then what?
She didn’t have an answer. Perhaps this was part of the test. She should be able to release, but she couldn’t. She’d fail.
That was fine. She would rather keep the fight within her than give it up for some test. A test she hadn’t even planned to enter. She had just been drawn to the room. Her curiosity getting the better of her, as always. One day, if she made it out of here, she might learn to repress that particular desire.
Release from this. You will surely perish if you do not.
Kerrigan shuddered. Perish. If she didn’t release… she’d die.
But she couldn’t. She looked skyward—or what she assumed was skyward—in this cavern, where she was also somehow underwater. Disoriented, desperate for air, and feverish, she saw a light. Should she swim toward the light? It was a bad metaphor for the end if she did. But there was air up there. Sweet, beautiful air.
It might be the end, but she couldn’t stay down here any longer. She couldn’t survive it.
She made the decision.
She swam up.
Her head crested the invisible barrier. She inhaled deeply. She could finally breathe. There was air in her lungs again. Her head was no longer fuzzy. She felt suddenly weightless. As if she were floating.
She looked down to where the water had been and saw that the divide between above and below was distinct. But she didn’t know where above was. It didn’t feel like death. Though floating in an abyss filled with light wouldn’t be the worst way to go. Except that she still felt like herself.
None of it made sense.
Where was Gelryn?
As if she had conjured him out of thin air, the dragon appeared before her. She gasped in surprise and then amazement. He was Gelryn, and he was not Gelryn. He was an apparition. Just a distinct ghostlike version of himself. Not the impenetrable, solid dragon she knew.
Kerrigan looked down at her hands and jolted. She was just a ghost of herself as well. She couldn’t exactly see through her hands, but it was close. They had a hazy outline to them. She wasn’t solid any longer.
“Where are we?” Kerrigan finally managed to get out. Fear coated her words.
We are on the spiritual plane. He hesitated, as if in incomprehension. You pulled us both through.
“I did?” she asked. “How?”
That I do not know.
“Scales,” she whispered. “What do I do? How do I get us out? Is this normal?”
We will assess how to get out when it is time to depart. Gelryn paused over her other questions. This has never happened before.
He said it like an admission.
They were silent at that realization. Kerrigan had done something that no one else had ever done before. That Gelryn knew of at least. All because she had been too stubborn to let go? Or was there another reason?
“Why did this happen?”
Truly, Kerrigan of the House of Dragons, I do not know.
She was stunned. “You have never entered the spiritual plane?”
In fact, dragons enter all the time. We are the dominions of the spiritual. The test is to project your essence out onto the spiritual plane so that I might assess your magical prowess.
“And I brought you out with me?”
So it appears.
“Huh. This isn’t part of the test then, is it?”
No. He rumbled in his chest. Fire heating through and then dissipating. You appear to be in control of this plane. You were the one who created it.
“Created it?” Kerrigan asked in confusion.
Whoever summons the spiritual plane commands it. It would take a great magical user to wrench control of someone else’s spiritual work. At present, it seems safer for us both to allow you to control it. This is not how I test my subjects, but it seems prudent to continue—and quickly. The spiritual plane saps your energy. I do not want you to pass out and strand us here.
Kerrigan shivered. “We don’t want that.”
No, we do not. Gelryn stretched to his full ghostlike height. Show me each of the four elements.
“I don’t have anything to show. I mean, I can probably get a flame in here,” she said uneasily.
Magic was a conduit. The elements were its source. It was possible to create something out of nothing, but it was draining. That was why, in fights at the Wastes, all four of the elements were provided for the competitors. A lot of Fae couldn’t even summon them out of nothing. Only the strongest among them.
She supposed this was why there was testing to begin with. To get the strongest among them to compete to be