Song of Fire and Flame

Welcome to the first book in the Dragons of Blue Fire series! This first story is about Darcie and Lincoln. Lincoln is the second son of Levi and Aurora! There will be lots of drama, trauma, and redemption. I will post trigger warnings when and if needed. You won't always agree with everything that's written, but I ask you as always to trust the process. Not everybody lives well in my world. I will just make one point. Nowhere in this story will r**e or SA be depicted. That's not what this book is about, though there will be abuse of some kind. This book won't start for a while yet, but I will add one more chapter after this one so you can meet Lincoln. Add the book to your library, and turn on notifications so you never miss a chapter! Remember to comment if you're reading :) Darcie The world tilts sideways when I hit the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, I can’t breathe. Not from pain—though agony pulses everywhere, sharp, deep, blooming under my skin—but because I am exhausted by this house, these people, this life that relentlessly invents new ways to shatter me. What did I ever do to deserve this constant torture? I didn’t ask to come here. I didn’t ask for my mother to die. I didn’t ask for my father to take me in and let his wife and children torture and humiliate me. From the moment I set foot in this house four years ago, I have been nothing but a punching bag for these people. They get off on my pain. At first, I tried to fight back, but all that got me was more pain, so I gave up pretty quickly. With each shallow breath, my ribs throb. As I push myself up, a sharp pain in my wrist halts me; something is wrong. I abandon the effort. No one here will help. These monsters intend for me to remain on this cold marble floor until I summon enough strength to move. Blood warms my tongue. I try to swallow it back, but I vomit blood where I lie. That will cost me. My stepmother doesn’t tolerate blood anywhere in her house. It’s just a pity she doesn’t think of that when she’s abusing me like I’m nothing but a pesky fly she needs to swat. I know that she secretly wants me to cough up blood so she can have another reason to hurt me. I’ll also be forced to clean up the mess before I can go to my room. She won’t care that I can barely move. I made the mess, so I must clean it up. Voices thunder above me, but they feel far away, like echoes in a dream I’m desperate to wake from. They won’t leave me alone. This isn’t the end of my punishment. If I close my eyes, maybe I’ll be somewhere else. But I’m not. I’m here. On the cold floor. Again. My stepmother’s voice slices through the ringing in my ears — sharp, triumphant, cruel. “What a pathetic piece of shi.t you are.” She hisses. My stepbrother adds his own venom, calling me names that I stopped flinching at years ago. They loom over me like shadows that have forgotten how to be human. All because of a necklace. I never touched that necklace. Instead, I know my half‑sister planted it in my room—she always does when she craves attention, amusement, or desires someone else to suffer for her lies. Her schemes always succeed; this time is no different. My half-sister, Mila, is the only child of my father, Timothy, and my stepmother, Carol. She grew up here with Kyle, my stepbrother. It was only ever the two of them and their parents. For fourteen years, Mila had them all to herself. Then I came along four years ago, after my mother passed away, and everything changed. The moment I stepped foot through the door, eighteen years old, Mila hated me. On that first day, she threw a tantrum before I had even spoken one word. I was upset about my mother, and all I wanted was for my father to tell me that everything would be okay. But it wasn’t okay. Dad slapped me because Mila was upset. He told me that I had made his baby girl cry, and he wouldn’t put up with me being cruel to Mila. I hadn’t said a word! I hadn’t even seen my father since I was two. I didn’t even know him, yet he treated me like vermin. Mom never kept me from Dad; he was the one who walked out of our lives and pretended I didn’t exist. I would rather have gone anywhere than here. But Mom and I had no other family. It was only ever her and me. So, I was thrown into this hell with no way out. That day, Carol refused to allow me a bedroom upstairs. Having her husband’s ex-wife’s child under her roof disgusted her, she claimed. Tolerating me was solely for Dad’s benefit. So, I landed in the basement. My father didn’t object—he simply echoed her words and treated me as an inconvenience, instead of his daughter. I had lived in comfort with my mother, and I wasn’t used to being treated this way. I was given a bed, and nothing else. The basement didn’t even have a window! On that very first night at the house, Kyle came to my room, and the beatings began. Of course, I fought back. I was a tough cookie, and my Dragon was powerful. I threw Kyle against a wall, which caused his mother to run into the room with two members of the household staff. They held me down while Carol injected me in the neck with something that burned me from the inside out. That was the last time my Dragon spoke to me. I never felt her within me after that night. Carol killed my Dragon to keep me weak and dependent on her. She knew that there would be nowhere for me to run without my Dragon. I wouldn’t have survived out there alone. I have no other family and no friends here. For a week I cried. Losing Reya, my Dragon and last piece of my mother, destroyed me—and with her gone, my will to fight disappeared. You would think that my father would help me. That he would care for me. Wouldn’t you? He doesn’t. Dad doesn’t get involved when I’m being punished. He turns a blind eye because he doesn’t give a damn about me. I used to complain to him, but he would tell me to behave, and Carol wouldn’t hurt me. My dad broke my heart so many times with his words. He loved my mother once, but it seemed that he didn’t care about me at all. Right now, Dad stands at the top of the stairs, silent. Watching. Pretending he sees nothing. Pretending I am nothing. Curling into myself slightly, I pull my arms around my ribs. Instinct takes over, though the motion sends pain crashing through my chest. Once again, I taste iron and force myself to swallow. I whimper through the agony. Tonight I still have to dance. The thought lands like another blow. Broken, bleeding, or trembling—it makes no difference. My stepbrother will drag me to the club, slap makeup across my face, and shove me onto the stage. Every coin tossed to my feet belongs to him. Kyle began forcing me to dance in his seedy nightclub two months after I arrived here. I begged him not to make me, but Kyle said that I should think myself lucky that it was just dancing. If I wanted to act up, he could always force me to have se.x with the customers. I begged and pleaded with him not to do that to me. I had never been with a man, and I wanted to save myself for the man I eventually fell in love with. He told me to behave, and he wouldn’t. I never refused to dance after that. I didn’t even complain when Kyle bragged about how much money he makes from my dancing. I have never seen a penny, but Kyle has made a fortune! There is no way out of this hell for me. I am a prisoner in every way that matters. I stare at the ceiling, blinking through the blur. The chandelier above me fractures into shards of light, like stars I can’t reach. What would it be like to be free? To run. To breathe. To live without fear. To belong to myself. My chest tightens — not from pain this time, but from longing so fierce it almost hurts more. I wish I could see my mother again. Just once. Just long enough to hear her voice, to feel her arms around me, to remember what it felt like to be loved. My mother would have protected me. She always did. Until she couldn’t. Because my stepmother took even that from me. No one believed me when I said it. No one listened. But I know. I know my stepmother feared losing her husband, feared being replaced, feared the ghost of the woman he once loved. So, she made sure that ghost stayed dead. Carol killed my mother. I don’t know if it was by her own hand, but I do know that she had someone kidnap my mother. By the time Mom was found, she’d been beheaded. Mom had been pumped full of paralyzing agents that blocked her Dragon, so she couldn’t shift and save herself. My mother was quite capable of taking care of herself. She was strong and powerful. The only way to bring her down was to cut off her Dragon. I don’t know the full details of what my mother endured before she died. But I do know Carol was the mastermind behind her death. She bragged to me enough. When I told my father, he slapped me and called me insane because Carol was crying and asking how I could say something so awful about her. After that day, I was often starved and locked in my room for days. I was never allowed to eat at the table with these people. I was forced to sit in a corner and eat out of a dog dish while they ate like Kings! A tear slips down my temple, disappearing into my hair. When will it ever get better? Will it ever get better? I don’t know. Carol crouches beside me, her expensive heels pressing into the blood I vomited on the floor. She grabs the front of my hair, tipping my head up. She sneers at me. “The next time you touch what doesn’t belong to you, I’ll kill you!” “I didn’t do it,” I whisper, tears falling from my eyes and around my temples. “You stole, Darcie!” Carol yells. “I am so sick of this behavior! We took you in out of the goodness of our hearts, and what do you do?” She hisses. “You act out like the ungrateful cunt you are! I should cut your hands off right now! You wouldn’t be able to steal anything then.” From the corner of my eye, I see my father’s shiny shoes near my head. “That’s enough, Carol.” There’s no effort in his words. He doesn’t really care that she pushed me down those marble stairs or said such nasty things to me. He doesn’t even care that she threatened to cut my hands off and kill me. The only thing he cares about is that he doesn’t want me to die in his house. “But, Daddy,” Mila whines like a petulant child while grabbing his arm. “That was the necklace you got me for my eighteenth birthday! Darcie stole it. It’s not my fault that she didn’t get one. She can’t go into my room and take what she wants!” I don’t correct her. There would be no point. It would only bring me more pain and humiliation. I don’t care about her necklace or the things her parents buy her every day. I have never received a single gift since I walked into this house. No one acknowledges my birthday, and Christmases are just plain awful for me. It used to bother me, but not anymore. “She’s tainted something precious.” Mila sniffs, pretending to cry to gain Dad’s sympathy. Which she does. “Don’t worry, my little princess,” he says. “Daddy will get you something much better.” “Yay!” Mila giggles. “What about her?” Kyle points to me. Carol smirks, letting go of my head, and smirking as my head smacks onto the cold ground with force. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be just fine. Won’t you?” She hisses while grabbing my face in a stinging grip. I won’t be okay. Without my Dragon spirit, I have no supernatural healing abilities. Now I heal as a human would, slowly and painfully. When I fail to answer quickly enough, Carol slaps me hard across the face. I don’t cry out; I won’t give her the satisfaction. But I do groan because now, my face stings. “Won’t you?!” She yells. “Yes,” I whisper. I couldn’t speak any louder if I tried. Carol scoffs and gets to her feet. “Doesn’t she have work tonight?” “Yeah.” I hear the smirk in Kyle’s voice. I hate him so much! I hear Dad’s footsteps as he walks away with Mila, leaving me at the mercy of his wife and stepson. “Don’t let her off easily, Kyle.” Kyle chuckles. “Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t.” Carol walks away. I break out in a cold sweat as Kyle seizes the front of my shirt. I scream as he hauls me up. I can barely stand, and I’m upright only because Kyle is gripping me. “Listen to me, you worthless bitc.h.” Kyle hisses. “You have one hour to get yourself cleaned up. You have dancing to do. And if you don’t make me good money tonight through dance, you’ll be selling something else.” “P-Please,” I whimper. “Don’t.” Kyle growls in my face. “Don’t tell me don’t, cunt! You’ll do as you’re told. And like it!” He shoves me away from him. I fall to the ground and watch him walk away. I close my eyes, trying to breathe through the pain as I tell myself that this won’t last forever. I’ve told myself the same thing more times than I can remember. I should have given up hope by now, but I can’t. I won’t! But the truth is that I don’t know how much more punishment my body can take before it finally gives out. But somewhere far beyond the walls of this house, beyond the cruelty and the lies and the endless nights, something ancient stirs. Something that has been watching me suffer with growing fury. Something that is coming for me — not to hurt me, but to save me. I dream about it every night. I don’t know what it is, but it’s out there. This is the reason I haven’t given up. Whatever or whoever it is, it will be my salvation. I just know it.