261 Queen of Illusions

She was very beautiful and strong and had a twin sister, Janet, who was even more powerful and known as the master of mirrors. Together the girls were creating quite a ripple in the world of Lore. The thing was that they were both discovering their powers. 

When the sisters turned twenty-five, their mother told them the secret of immortality and how can it be accompanied with power. The sorceresses had to kill others to become stronger by absorbing their magic and the stronger person they killed, the more powerful their magic became. 

It was said that Lorza, the vampire, was the mightiest of all the rulers and he ruled the world with his mate and wife Emma. He wore a necklace that was steeped with so many powers that it was said that the necklace was his secret of ruling all other Lore species. 

Naturally, Sedora and Janet went after the vampire to seek his powers. 

The rule of the Lore was survival of the fittest. Either you surrendered to the one who was most powerful or you became his ally. 

The two sisters didn't surrender nor did they become his allies. Together they killed him and made his wife Emma to succumb to their force. Janet acquired the necklace. However, before she could wear it, Sedora tricked her and killed her before they left Lorza's stronghold. The necklace became hers. 

Later, Sedora was made to wear the crown by none other than her mother while she was mourning the loss of her daughter Janet. After she crowned Sedora, she cursed her with a painful death by one of her own, by someone who would be unnatural in this world. In a rage of anger, Sedora killed her mother. 

She was now completely invincible. She sought the advice of many oracles and seers and Shamans as to who would be even more powerful than her. But they all told her the same thing. "Someone born unnaturally." 

It was the Shaman of the Land of Derize Barrens who predicted that her future would be in her control if she married Gayle Silver, the king of the Lykae, because if he married another woman, his line would bring her end. 

So instead of letting him marry any other woman, Sedora seduced Gayle and created an illusion that she was his mate. He married her, marked her and they had two sons, Caleb and Daryn. She would have killed them had the Shaman not said that they were just means to reaching the curse. 

All she wanted was to eliminate any threat to her life and empire. She wanted to control her own destiny. She was on the verge of mania a number of times and had tried to kill the sons. However, it was Gayle who thwarted her plans and kept them safe at all times. She wanted to call them to her lands in the Amazon, to control them, but Gayle never allowed them to go. 

He raised them single handedly when he came to know how she cheated him. The problem was that he was scared that she would eliminate her own sons being the sorceress and so he never let them out of his eyes until they were old enough. Caleb had already attained immortality and Daryn was in the process. 

When Caleb married Pia, Sedora was happy. In fact she pushed Caleb to marry her because she was a pureblood like him and if they had babies, this would have been a natural process. She was extremely angry when Daryn married Dawn. Gayle hadn't informed her about their marriage and so she was absent during the ceremony. When she came back, she had a big fight with Gayle regarding it and threatened that he would lose his life if he continued to support Dawn. 

Since then Sedora had continually supported Pia in her ventures to remove Dawn from the Silver Clan, because she knew that the moment Dawn was out, she was waiting for her to strike. Somehow, Dawn was too clever and she dodged her efforts. It was her pregnancy that made her extremely jittery. Now she had two options: either to kill Dawn or kill her son. 

She had come back to where she started from with Dawn's pregnancy. By marrying Gayle, she wanted to control her destiny, but it was slipping through her hands like sand. 

And her archenemy Brantley was closing in. He was doing everything in his power to eliminate her. And she was so craving to meet him, to kill him and to leech his powers. He was the big bad boy of the Lore, matching her powers, or even more. He had a dragon, his source of magic. The thing was that even Dawn had a dragon, whom her people had spotted a few days back in the jungles. By the time they reported it to her, the dragon had left. She wanted both Dawn and her dragon. She had to kill Dawn!

Pia could be the key to many closed doors. 

--- 

Next day Dawn was back in the Ensmoire forests with Quetz. 

'Congratulations!' he said as he hopped on his feet around her. 'I will become an uncle!' he half opened his wings in excitement. 'I will be naming the kids.'

'Sure,' she replied as she ate an orange offered by the Eoben. Now that even the Eobens came to know that the dragon rider was pregnant, they behaved themselves so much that they started to attune themselves with her mood swings. So if she was feeling hot, they would blow a cool breeze, if she was hungry, they would immediately present her with food, if she was angry, they would shower their aromatic petals on her to lighten her mood—the list was endless. 

Quetz let her eat and said, 'Today I am going to take you to the top of the mountains.' 

'Why?' she asked as she threw the peel of the orange and the Eoben on which she was leaning against, its branches quickly picked them up and gobbled them. 

'There's something you need to learn.' It was very important and he was instructed. 

'Let's go,' she said, finishing the last piece. She hopped on him and he took off to the sky with a few powerful strokes of his wings. 'Why do I feel you have grown longer?' 

'Even I feel the same, but I think the change is not noticeable. But oh boy! Do I look handsome?' said Quetz smugly. 

Dawn stroked her hands over his steel hard shiny scales and they shimmered under her touch. 'You are a handsome dragon Quetz,' she replied with a chuckle. 

'Ain't I?" he replied and soared higher with pride.