My further attempts that day ended in disappointment due to the fact that whenever I tried to use a new trick to toss Night into the sea, Dare interfered.

 I knew he was doing it on purpose, and I couldn’t understand why he was taking the side of the man who had staked a claim to his only daughter. But not just any daughter, a Queen’s daughter.

A few hours after spying the Isle in the distance we were put into port on high tide and the ship was hooked to the dock. I stayed further behind the others who were excited to see the Isle. The last few hours on the water I had learned from Rin that everyone on this boat who had been picked by Dare was going to become a student at the Magic Academy of Hidel. No one had ever been  to the Isle before besides Dare and the ship’s crew.

“Oh, come on Hazelin; we have to go to the school,” Rin said, tugging on one of my hands. I was tempted to snap at her hand, but decided it was best if I could keep my insane mind and coarse behavior to myself here as much as possible. It might be best if no one knew about it if it could be helped.

“Come, Bride, and see the Isle with us,” Night breathed in my ear as he passed me by.

What I did next I could swear wasn’t my fault he provoked me. My bare foot tripped him and sent him over the railing of the ship into the bay water under the dock. He did, however, have a nice scream going down, but when he didn’t come up after a long moment I started to worry. It hadn’t been my intention to kill him yet.

“I think you killed him,” Rin whispered in my ear. She looked around to see if anyone had been watching. They hadn’t; all had left the ship for the loading dock. She looked back to me. “Go after him! You knock him in, and you best do it before someone notices! What would it do to Dare if someone here finds out? No one knows he has a daughter yet.”  The distress in her voice made up my mind.

No matter how much I hated the mage, it was not my place to hurt him, not yet. I slid my borrowed tunic off my shoulders, leaving it to pool around my ankles and my body to stand bare to the world. Rin gasped but I had already turned to the far edge of the ship and jumped over the edge, my long black hair swaying behind.

I slid into the warm aqua blue waters with little problem as a thin layer of scales grew over my skin to protect it and my black hair turned silver like my dragon’s mane. Murmuring a spell, my feet molded into webbed fins, and I whipped around in the water towards the direction of where Night had fallen into the water. I saw him then, sinking the rest of the way to the bottom of the bay.

I felt my eyes widen at how deep the water was. By this moment Night had sunken more than two hundred feet and had about fifty more to go. I saw him struggle for a moment, still trying to fight his way up, and yet he couldn’t. Bubbles burst from his mouth and nose and then he went still.

“Shit,” I breathed into the water and darted down towards him. Just as he rested on the bottom of sea floor. I  wrapped my arms around him and shot upwards, going as fast as I could. My muscles burned and my arms loosened because of Night's heavy weight, but I tightened them and wouldn’t let go.

I looked down at his pale face and felt my heartbeat pick up. He had the stillness of death about him. I turned my face to the bright water ahead and the moment I broke the surface I changed my body once more into my dragon form, launching us into the sky. When we were about four miles above the water, I changed back to my mortal form, quickly setting about a Forbidden Spell as we fell back to the earth. My wet hair wrapped itself around us in protection and I used energy to force the water out of his lung and to put air back in. I looked below us and saw we were getting too close to the Isle. I would have to change back into a dragon and leave Night on the shore, then fly off and change back. No one could know the dragon was me. Dare had told me all dragons had disappeared from the world and the fact that dragons could turn into mortal forms was a dragon’s secret only. No one must know or I could be used as a weapon again.

I shifted forms and with a mighty roar I opened my mighty wings and landed softly on the Isle’s shores. People were screaming and yelling from the dock, and some were rushing our way. I sent a shot of fire their way before quickly launched myself into the sky. I flew as high as I could go before it got too cold and dropped to the waters once more as a mortal. I swam my way over to the ship and climbed my way up its mighty side. Slipping onto deck Rin brought my tunic and I quickly put it back on just in case someone was nearby, but I needn’t have worried.

Everyone from the dock was over on the shore where Night still laid. Not a soul had paid me any heed. Thank the gods. But it looked as if my time on the Isle was going to be a bit of a challenge.