To Seduce a Dragon - Poppy Rhys

1

I’m next.

Jaya looked down at her nails, still dirty from digging last night. She’d been so tired she collapsed into bed without washing up. She was lucky her mother didn’t demand to know why she was filthy this morning.

She didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t tell her the truth either.

Sometimes she wondered if her mother knew. Thing was, the other girls—Remmy, Ferin, and Sersha—were much prettier than Jaya. Better physical genes to pass on. Remmy with her thick golden hair, Ferin with her dark skin, and Sersha with her formidable height.

The only thing Jaya had going for her was her thick brown hair and its natural waves. And she liked to think she had more brains than those three. Everything else about her was… painfully unremarkable.

If anyone knew what she buried every month, no one said anything. Maybe all this time, her mother was doing her a favor by turning a blind eye.

Jaya’s mother had been one of Priora’s maidens in her youth, after all. She knew better than anyone what the life of a fertile woman in the Mist Lake was like. She’d been one of three wives herself up until three summers ago when her husband, Jaya’s father, fell sick and died.

The trainer’s cabin loomed ahead as she was dragged along by her eager mother like a boar to slaughter. She’d be offered up so they could one day send her to her fate.

This is what I wanted, right?

There was still time to change her mind. Come clean. Confess.

But they weren’t real, the beasts they spoke of. Just legend. Myths to give people hope and lift their spirits. And this would save Jaya. She wouldn’t end up like the others…

Stuck on her back, popping out babies to carry on the species.

“Stop dragging your feet, Jaya,” her mother chided, her bone-bead necklaces tinkling with each step. Jaya always knew whenever she was near—those sounds had been a comfort throughout her life.

Today they grated.

They reminded her she wouldn’t hear them every day. She’d be stuck in this place, with this sacred trainer of the Mist tribes, far away from everything she’d known.

Jaya felt a little guilty. Others wanted nothing more than to be one of Priora’s maidens, be one of three wives to a single man, and pray for sons. And here Jaya was, squandering the gift by choosing the life of a guardian.

The sky swirled gray with the coming storm and there, across the overgrown meadow of freshly bloomed pink and golden flowers, stood a squat cabin made of dark, bark-covered logs, and a woven roof the color of soot. Trees four times its height, heavily laden with their green needle-like foliage, towered behind it and encircled the clearing.

Any other day she might revel in the moment, spread her arms and twirl among the weeds and flowers, dance for the storm that would bring more rain and, with it, warmer weather.

Others were there, also led by their mothers as offerings. She counted five total, from four different Mist tribes, their colors proudly showing who they represented. Red, green, blue, and two yellow.

Absently, she stroked the excess length of her belt along her thigh, the soft leather dyed purple and twined with matching feathers and small animal bones. Village colors were worn with pride this far north, and a way to speak of where a person traveled from.

Jaya’d never met anyone who wasn’t from Mist Lake. She’d only heard stories from others of Venys’s vast and varying landscapes. It shook her to her core to think there was a place where the sun grew so hot it threatened to kill people. Or a place filled with year-round greenery, never seeing a flake of snow.

Closer they strode until they were all standing outside the lodge. Its crude wooden door swung open and out came the most intimidating woman she’d ever laid eyes on.

She stood taller than anyone she’d met in her short seventeen summers. Her shoulders broad, her medium-length brown hair streaked with glinting lines of gray, and her angular face tanned by the sun. Her leather pants were tight around her muscular thighs and tucked into furred boots, much like the ones the rest of them were wearing.

Her shrewd blue eyes squinted, assessing every tribute here.

Various animal pelts hung off her shoulders and draped over her chest, proof that she was a skilled hunter and would never want for clothing or meat.

Jaya stood straighter when the trainer’s eyes fell on her and her dread mixed with new anticipation.

Jaya wanted to