Heir of Amber and Fire Rachanee Lumayno (books on motivation txt) 📖

ones, eat at least five times as much as any human. How are you going to make up that food deficit if you won’t hunt?”

“I’ll eat trees or bushes or something. If we find a nice apple orchard...”

My father snorted. “A vegetarian dragon. Imagine that.”

I stopped eating as a thought suddenly hit me. “When you hunt... you don’t hunt anywhere near Annlyn, do you?”

Joichan shook his head. “Shapeshifters don’t taste very good. It’s the confusion between which form you’re eating. Human? Or animal?”

The food I had just swallowed threatened to come up. I pushed my plate away, my appetite gone. “Oh.”

My father laughed. “I’m just kidding. I’m a shapeshifter myself; I don’t hunt my own.”

I nodded, but it was some time before I was ready to finish my breakfast.

After we cleaned up the morning meal, we got ready to leave for Calia. On the ledge, I looked over the steep slope going downward. There wasn’t enough space for us both to transform, much less for me to get up to speed for flying. “Uh... Father? How are we going to do this?”

“We jump.”

“You can’t be serious.” We would plummet to our deaths within moments.

“I am. Now, jump.” With that, Joichan took his own advice and leapt off the ledge. I screamed, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of Joichan’s plunge or because suddenly there was an immense golden dragon flapping its mighty wings in front of me. The dragon didn’t say anything, but I could just see the exasperated amusement in his eyes. What are you waiting for?

Okay, here I go, I thought. I hope he can fly fast enough to catch me before I hit the ground.

I closed my eyes and stepped off the cliff.

I may have screamed again. I’m not sure; the air was rushing by me so fast that any sound from my throat got ripped away. I opened my eyes, expecting to see my father flying right next to me.

Instead, he was still hovering in the same place I had last seen him in.

And the ground was coming up way too fast.

I closed my eyes, trying to slow my anxious breathing so I could concentrate. In. Out. In. Out. My nerves calmed somewhat, enough for the hasty training of the last week or so to take over.

My awareness turned into myself, pushing out any intrusions from the outside world. My magic settled deep within me, filling every part of me and heightening my sensation of my self. My body tingled with the latent power within me. When I was ready, I pulled.

There’s no better way I can describe it. It felt like I was tugging my human skin over my head, revealing my dragon form underneath. My nose elongated into a snout, smoke trailing from my nostrils. My body grew larger, skin becoming thicker with shining golden scales, new muscles rippling. Wings unfurled from my back, and I was aloft.

I glided a little unsteadily back to my father, who had been watching, unmoving, as I went through my shift. Was he laughing at me? There was a smile in his eyes, something I never thought that was possible for a dragon.

“Good job.” Joichan’s rumbly voice held a tremor. He was definitely laughing at me. We started our flight northward to Calia.

“You just stayed there. Would you have flown after me if I couldn’t have changed in time?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “But I knew I didn’t need to.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

WE HEADED STRAIGHT for Calia, with a few stops for rest and food. The dragon’s body was much stronger than my normal form, but as I was unused to being a dragon for any length of time, I tired faster than Joichan did. Also, I was still learning to fly — some of it was instinctual, which helped, but I definitely needed more practice.

My father was highly amused when I insisted we cook the game we hunted. Even though I was resting in my dragon form, the human side of me couldn’t stomach the idea of eating raw meat. Joichan obliged, and kindly turned away to eat his share, one of the cows we had taken from an open field. I was pretty sure I could still hear it mooing, although my father assured me he had killed it first before consuming it.

As we flew I asked my father about his solitary life. In general, dragons didn’t enjoy living near civilization. But if you were a dragon who could also become a human, wouldn’t you want to live near other people?

“Not necessarily,” Father said. “Dragons are, by nature, very reserved creatures. In my case, my dragon nature won out over my human side.”

When he was eighteen, my father said, he moved to the nearby cave where my friends and I had first encountered him. But with constant interruptions from dragon seekers (or worse, dragon hunters), he moved to his second cave in the mountains, occasionally using the first one as a base to visit his foster family or his few friends in Annlyn.

And Father lit up when I mentioned meeting Pazho. “He’s a good man; he just accepts things as they are and never imposes his viewpoint on them. He’s one of the few people who never treated me like I was cursed.”

“He’s the one who gave me my soulstone,” I said.

“I’m not surprised. Pazho is one of the wisest people I’ve ever known. He has an uncanny ability to clearly see to the heart of things — or people.”

We were gliding through the air, our huge shadows skimming the ground below us. Admiring the fast-moving countryside, I looked up and ahead — and flew straight into a cloud. Suddenly I was being attacked my hundreds of little wispy feathers made of cold air. I began sneezing uncontrollably, bits of flame snorting from my nostrils.

Father laughed. “That’s why you should pay attention to where you’re flying.”

“Easy for you to — a-choo! — say,” I said, my voice thick. “A-choo! I need to rest.”

Spotting