Fire, fire, and more fire is everywhere I look. I can’t see anything through the flames as they warm my skin. I look up and see the top of a building, strange lights hanging from the ceiling with wire hanging between them. This can’t be Dragca. I feel myself turn around, and I see a figure walking through the fire. I run towards them, a sword in my hand that I hold up in the air.

“Don’t,” a female voice warns and I stop, looking over to see a woman my age with black hair that touches the floor, a green dress, and black swirl tattoos on her face.

“Who are you?” I ask. I see the flames are frozen in place, and I look back at the woman.

“A friend, and what happened here, cannot happen,” she smiles, and steps away, “This is your warning, my friend,” she says, and then everything suddenly goes black.

I sit up sharply in bed, holding a hand to my head and feeling like tiny daggers are being shot through my skull. What in the world was that dream? This is the second one since I got here. I jump when I hear a smash from my bathroom, followed by the sound of water being poured. I slide out of bed, walking slowly over to the bathroom, and open the door, not knowing what to think. The tree spirit has made a bath in the sink, with bubbles everywhere, and she is floating in it.

“Err, hello?” I ask, watching as she sits up in the water, swinging her hair around, and splashing water all over me.

“Bee,” she says simply.

“Bee?” I ask.

“Bee,” she says again, pointing at her chest this time.

“Is your name Bee?” I ask her. She nods, before swimming over to the plug and pulling it out as I just stare.

“So, Bee, you chose me or something?” I ask, and regret it instantly when it sounds like I’m quoting Pokémon.

“Bee,” she says standing up as the water drains and putting her hands in the air. A ball of green glitter appears in her tiny hands, and she lets it go. It dries all her clothes as it lands on her and she floats up into the air, flying past me back into my bedroom. I walk back into my room to see her land on my pillow, pulling my quilt over herself, and promptly going to sleep.

“That’s rude, and cute. Hell, I don’t know,” I mutter, and I see her lips turn up in a little smile.

I groan when I realise it's Saturday, and I have history lessons or whatever with my uncle. I go into the bathroom and get ready, dressing in the leather uniform. I look back once more at a sleeping Bee before walking out. Thorne is leaning against the wall opposite my room, and he silently lifts a chocolate muffin and a coffee cup in the air.

“An apology muffin? I heard humans buy food to say sorry,” he says, holding out his offerings. I accept them and laugh.

“Sometimes they do, but I’ve always preferred flowers or wine,” I wink at him.

“Aren’t you a little young in human years to drink?” he asks, but it’s playful.

“I lived in Britain; the drinking age is eighteen, but they don’t reinforce that much. I was drinking with Jace from fifteen,” I say, thinking about how out of control we used to get because we knew we had so much responsibility in our future. It was just a good way to let off steam, to relax.

“When I mess up next time, I will remember the wine,” he says, knocking my shoulder in a playful way. I eat my muffin, throwing the wrapper in a bin on the way to my uncle’s office. It’s clear everyone sleeps in on a Saturday, as we only see a few dragon’s guards as we walk. I drink the coffee slowly, wondering how Thorne knew I liked a lot of sugar in my coffee. Thank god for dragon high metabolism, or I’d be the size of a house.

“Good luck, and I will wait here, as usual,” Thorne says, running his hand through his brown hair, before lowering it back to his side.

“Thanks,” I smile at him before knocking on my uncle’s office door and hearing him shout for me to come in. I open the door and walk in, seeing him sat on his chair behind his desk. In the middle of the room is a map of Dragca. It’s huge. I’ve seen maps of Dragca before, but this really shows the intricate details. It looks like a dragon eye. The main part is the land around the pupil of the eye, which is where we are. The pupil is mainly mountains, with two gaps in them. One is the castle my father lives in and the other is the Academy.

“Have you seen this map before?” my uncle asks.

“Yes, we had one sent with us when we were left on Earth. I have looked at it a few times, but never studied it,” I say as he gets up and walks over to me. He picks a long walking stick up off the side of the wall and points the tip on my father’s castle.

“The royal castle of Dragca, where you were brought up. It’s on top of a mountain, making it impossible to penetrate. As you know, massive dragonglass spears are kept on the top of the castle and will shoot at any enemies that get close. Not to mention the dragon guard who fly around defending the castle,” he says, moving the tip of the stick across the map to the academy.

“This is us, and again we are in a good position. We have dragons in the mountains, to keep us safe, but what is it that makes us safer than anywhere else in Dragca?” he asks me.

“I don’t know, I think I remember something about a barrier,” I reply, and he tuts.

“Every queen should know where to find the safest place in the world she rules,” he warns me and I nod, knowing he is right.

“Ten thousand years ago, there was a war between dragons and the dark magic users. When dragons use dark magic, it corrupts their souls, and there is no saving them. The dragons fought the war on the very ground we are stood on, but there was a huge price. We can’t use light magic anymore. The abilities we were said to have, were lost that night,” he tells me.

“What could we do? Why is it safe here?” I ask him.

“We could heal, we could see magic in the air, we could make portals, and most of all, we could connect to the magic of this world to do incredible things,” he says and sighs.

“Most magic is lost, as are the spirits we had as familiars, and the magic they gave us. Dark magic still exists of course, but not dark familiars, so the dark magic users will never be that powerful,” he informs me. I start to tell him about Bee when my dragons whispers,

“Not to be trusted, must keep Bee safe,” and I pause, closing my mouth before I say anything, deciding to trust my dragon. My uncle keeps talking anyway, not even noticing my pause.

“The land is safe because of the blood spilt here. It keeps those who want war and destruction away, literally stopping them from entering. Anyone that sides with the fire rebellion, would never be able to get in here,” he says, and I nod. He slides the tip of the walking stick across to the land of the eye, and to the area just above.

“Any clue what all this is across here?” he asks.

“The poor villages,” I say, remembering from my visit as a child. We flew across the purple ocean to them, and the villages are all the same from my memory. Mud huts, muddy ground, and full of the worse of our kind in some places, like the whorehouses and drug dens. There are also people who are just born into that life and don’t deserve to be there, but have little choice. Not all dragons have rich parents, so they don’t get an education or any way of escaping the life they have.

“A blight to our proud world, but every world has them,” my uncles goes on.

“My mother used to say, the most beautiful things in the world can be lost in the dirtiest and most dangerous places, which is why you should never give up hope,” I say, remembering her telling me that before she tucked me into bed one night. She really was the sweetest person, so loving and kind.

“She was too kind for a queen, too full of hope, and it was her downfall,” he says, and I turn sharply to look at him.

“Being kind is something a queen needs to rule fairly, and hope is something she should inspire in her people,” I tell him.

“In a peaceful world, yes. In a world drenched in blood and war, no,” he says and moves his walking stick to the left side of the map.

“This is where the fire rebellion live, in the old castles. They are able to see our every move with their army of seers. We cannot get too close to them, or they move around the castle so that it's empty when we do get there," he tells me.

“We have never fought with the seers before. How can we beat an army that can see our moves before we make them?” I ask, wondering about how it’s even possible to win.

“That is something your father should answer, not me,” he says and moves the stick to the other side of the map.

“What is here?” he asks me.

“Our farms. Our water farms and well, everything we need to survive, comes from the East,” I say.

“Correct. Without this, we would all starve. Or worse, our dragons would leave and go to Earth. Could you imagine thousands of dragons appearing through the portals. It would be a war on Earth,” he says, and he isn’t wrong. That would be horrible, and the humans would never just accept dragons there. My uncle moves his stick to the bottom of the map, the black lands.

“What is here, Isola?” he asks.

“Nothing, just death and dead lands. No one can go there, ever, or they don’t return,” I say, knowing about those from the little I listened to Jace. He always wondered what made the lands dead, why they were lost.

“Your father sends traitors to the throne there, and you are right. You would never want to be there, Isola,” he says and pulls his stick away. He rests it against the wall, and picks up a notebook and a pen.

“Here,” he says, holding them out to me. I put my coffee cup down on the desk next to me and take them off him.

“I want you to write down the five main towns, the villages that surround them, and memorize them all,” he tells me.

“There must be over three hundred villages, I couldn’t possibly memorize them all,” I admit.

“How do you expect to rule, if you don’t even know the land,” he shakes his head. “This is something you must learn, so get on with it,” he says. I sit down on the floor, cross my legs, and start my list with the main cities. I know my uncle is right, and this is something I need to learn.

Mesmoia…Iaarita…Kenzta…