House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)

I knew I was focusing on something small, like the foot suction, so I didn’t have to deal with the fact I was on an alien world … riding a magic carp … oblong sphere, and dragons were pulling said sphere like a carriage.

There was a small jolt; breezes blew up as the carpet moved. I had never been particularly great at keeping my balance, something that contributed to my hatred of physical activity, but as the dragons flapped and we rose up above the height of the platform with its light ball in the center, I wasn’t thrown off at all. I had a very good view then of the other houses. Imperial still remained near the center, but it looked like a whirling mass of light – similar but not the same as the one we just took from Daelight Crescent – had appeared in the floor before them. I gasped as one by one they stepped forward onto the whirl of gold and then disappeared.

Where was their territory?

As the dragons surged forward, we crossed closer to the water world, which was … House of Royale – I recognized some of those blond students, some with hair so white it was a blinding beacon on top of their heads. They were taking turns to dive into the water, graceful despite the fact the platform was quite a ways up from the water. I blinked a few times, then more rapidly as I caught glimpses of scales as they disappeared below the surface. Jero must have caught my fiftieth gasp for the day.

“They’re mermaids,” I said.

He tweaked my nose. “Good try, doll, but we call them Caramina. Cara means ‘tail’ or ‘appendage’ in our original language. Which roughly translates to ‘tailed folk.’”

Sounded like a mermaid to me.

I tried to see the final house, the one made up of the sector of trees. That had to be the Leights. There were only a few of them left on the platform. I hadn’t seen their house at school before, so I tried to catch all the details I could. They had dark skin, varying in shades from light brown to a beautiful ebony. They also had long hair, most calf-length or longer, thick and wavy. I was immediately envious. There didn’t look to be a single strand of frizz or fuzz, despite their waves.

So unfair.

I strained to see what their special gifts were, but just as one stepped toward the end of the platform, the dragons changed direction, and then all I could see were the billion-plus trees that made up their land. The dragons moved fast, their powerful wings pulling us with great speed through the sky. I lost sight of the platform completely, focusing on the world below. The mountain ranges were vast, rising and climbing in no discernible pattern. The weather was quite mild, but it looked cold in some areas below.

“You don’t have clouds?” I asked, keeping my voice low. I had not missed all the questioning looks I was getting from the other House of Darken members, some of them downright hostile, but I was too busy enjoying my first ever trip to an alternate world to really care.

Star let out a light giggle, the sweet sound drifting along the air. “Clouds are fascinating. I really enjoyed seeing them.”

I couldn’t help but snort, a far less sweet a sound. “Astoria is the perfect place to see clouds, although not really the fluffy white variety. More mean and stormy.”

She hadn’t answered my question, and even though I really wanted to know – the emerald sky was untouched by no other color or object that I could see – I didn’t want to ask again.

Jero came to my rescue. “No clouds. It doesn’t rain here. Water comes from other sources.”

The way he stumbled over the word water, I wondered if it was different here, maybe called something else.

So I asked him.

He shook his head, that caramel-streaked hair tumbling across his forehead. Piercing blue eyes locked on me, eyes I could no longer call sky blue, since their sky was emerald. “It has the same sort of properties as water, but it doesn’t exactly taste the same. It will keep you healthy, though, so don’t worry.”

“What do you call it?” I knew it wasn’t going to be water.

“Water,” he said drily.

I snorted again, so ladylike. “Well … I did not see that coming.”

Jero cracked up then. He might not have been able to move his feet, but his hands worked fine as he alternated between laughing at me and ruffling my hair. “I’m just messing with you, pumpkin. We call it legreto, liquid life.” Their accent was so beautiful that even English resembled poetry when they spoke it. Then they had to up it by using their native language, which literally sounded like music on their lips.

Damn them.

Legreto. I let the word roll around my mind; it rolled so smoothly off Jero’s tongue that part of me wanted to speak it out loud. I was just opening my mouth when a set of dark eyes met mine, dark eyes with twilight twinkling strongly within them. Lexen had been quiet since greeting his dragon … friend. I hadn’t forgotten that he was an overlord, whatever that was here, and all of the reverent looks that he received made a lot more sense. He was important.

“Your hair!” I had a sudden realization. “The symbols are the same that were on the platform.”

I knew they had seemed familiar. I found myself staring at the intricate symbols etched into the side of his hair, just the one side, which somehow suited him perfectly. “What do they mean?”

He grimaced, reaching up to touch them. “They’re a cage of my position. Unique messages, written in the old language. All of the overlords have them. Mine formed at birth, so I’m next in line for whenever my father steps down.”

“Can a woman be an overlord?” I asked, wondering if this was a patriarchal society.

All of them nodded. “Yep,” Star said, sounding proud. “Sometimes there are multiple children born with the marks. Sometimes there are none and then the houses will vote for their next overlord.”

“Those who are voted in, rather than born to the position, get their symbols after their initiation,” Jero told me.

I really wanted to know what Lexen’s symbols said, but I was a little afraid it was like asking someone their weight: personal, and none of my business.

“So … what do your symbols say?” Holy shit, where was my filter? I tensed, waiting for the slap down, but it never came. Lexen wasn’t the one to answer though.

“‘Draygone Lord, Ruler of Skies,’” Star trilled. “Lexen is the first to wear the draygone lord symbol in thousands of years. Father is so proud.” She said draygone not dragon, but since they sounded similar, and no one had corrected me before, it must translate.

I thought it was a little odd that we would call the beasts something so similar, but maybe the myth of dragons on Earth actually originated from Daelighters.

Jero, Marsil, and Star all looked proud of their brother. Lexen just looked resigned, like he knew it wasn’t something he’d earned, or probably even wanted, but he was stuck with the position. Kind of like being sent to Earth, another obligation. But what did Lexen truly want? What made him happy?

Before I could dig too deeply into his psyche, the dragons started to descend, swinging in close to one of the mountains. It had to be a hundred miles wide, and almost that tall. The huge creatures weaved expertly in and out, using air currents to glide toward the base. I lifted myself, standing as tall as I could to see everything. The mountain, while looking similar in structure and shape to ours on Earth, was made of a material other than rock, more like … an opaque diamond, with swirls of color intersecting throughout. Snow caressed the top, cascading down in long stripes of white. Except…

“How do you have snow without rain?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the peak.

“The draygones,” Marsil said simply. “The draygones are responsible for most things in Darken. Always look to them first.”

“How is it you live with dragons and they don’t eat you?”

The silence was long. I had to turn from the mountain to look between them. “They don’t eat you, right?”