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Chapter 1

I was convinced that my life was over, and I just didn't understand why it had happened to me.

I had done everything right. In every class I'd had, I'd paid close attention. I'd never failed a test, convinced my instructors that my combat ability was something special, and shown uncommon intelligence for a soldier.

I'd been told that dragons like me didn't end up with the lousy jobs. With my marks, reputation, and skill set, I was told that I was effectively guaranteed a spot in the spec ops division.

I graduated after a decade of training and routine, in the top two percent of my class. And I was determined to prove to them that marks weren't everything, and that, really, I was even more elite than that, and with enough experience, I would easily be worthy of being part of the Praetorian Guard.

I'd set the vision as my goal years ago. I would work my way up the spec ops branch of the military until I was finally recognized as great, and be put in a post that would allow me to interact with the emperor every day as one of his personal elite soldiers.

The future was bright and exciting until I got my job, courtesy of our great Green Dragon Empire bureaucracy.

As usual, I couldn't blame the messenger, or I would have blown up. What he told me was that my job was being bodyguard for the daughter of a well-known public figure. The girl's name was Shala.

She was a little older than me, which I assumed meant somewhere around a century of age. She was a soft-spoken girl, though her past bodyguards reported her being very condescending, on account of having servants to boss around for most of her life. She requested and received a library in her home because, like many well-to-do green dragons that hadn't decided to colonize the outskirts of the empire, she loved to read.

It sounded like an interesting enough situation until he told me the details of her living state.

She lived practically right under the shadow of Imperial Palace, home to our great emperor. The highest-security location of the entire empire, with soldiers like myself constantly strolling around both on and off duty, was barely a minute's flight from her! Just by being there, she was protected against greater things than I could handle even if I were some kind of demigod.

Apparently, the inhabitants of that neighborhood have always been mostly children of wealthy and influential dragons, and bodyguards accompanied them as a display of their family's status. In essence, I was being assigned to her as an accessory.

It was unlike me to argue with a superior, but I brought up my high grades and my specialties in combat, high-pressure situations, and espionage; this had to be some sort of mistake!

It was no accident. I had been assigned to her not because she was in danger, but because they had assigned mediocrity to her for the last two bodyguards, both of whom were dismissed and sent to the colonies without pension. She had reported being inappropriately and forcefully handled by the second one. I didn't ask what the first had done to be let off.

The next day, it was time to meet this Shala girl, whom I hoped I would only have to know for a short time. I cleaned out my half of the soldier lodge, disposing of what little I owned, and said farewell to my longtime dwelling place as I headed downtown, right toward the capitol of the world's largest, most prosperous empire.

She took a while to answer the door. First she told me to go away. I told her that I wasn't permitted to leave, by my duty as a soldier.

Shala opened the door and stood right in the middle of the entrance, keeping me from making my way in, eying me intently, her legs tense as though anticipating some sort of foul play from me.

She was beautiful, in that odd, regal sort of way. It seemed, from my stroll around, that there was a common look for this area--a common air to the heiresses, perhaps.

It looked as though she was a decade or three older than I was, by the way a hint of violet had already developed on her green scales. It was a mark of maturity; upon coming of age, males' scales darkened ever so slightly, and females' outermost layer of scales lost their green coloring along the edges, reverting to their unpigmented violet.

From what I'd seen, Shala was a typical girl from these parts. She was young, and so she lived here with a bodyguard until she'd come of age enough to be wed, or perhaps to take part in the family business.

My keen eyes picked out something special about Shala, though. She was built as well as they came. She was still slender and very proportionate for her height and gender, but beneath her scales, muscle subtly rippled every time she moved. Her posture and body language had the same kind of grace and pomp as all the neighborhood's delicate-looking girls, and her silhouette would have been indistinguishable from them, but when she moved, the difference was detectable. Shala was abnormally alert in the way she walked, intimidatingly conscious of her movements, and observably strong.

"You're my new bodyguard, then?" she asked. She looked like a scared deer, and spoke with exaggerated softness, as though she was trying to whisper it to me--to have no one else hear.

"Yes. My name is Quetzal, and I've been assigned to you," I said, kneeling as had been advised to prior to deployment. It dawned on me that she could be afraid of me, after what happened with her last bodyguard, so the sign of respect was necessary. "Is something the matter? Miss Shala, I assure you I'm different than the guard you recently had dismissed. You don't need to fear me."

"No, that's not it at all," she said, speaking up now, most of the wariness out of her eyes. I was surprised by the way she spoke now; it was as if a whole persona had been dropped, or she had outright become someone entirely different. "I was afraid that you were going to try something funny before I had a chance to introduce myself, but I can tell that you haven't been put up to anything that would inconvenience me. Come in."

I obliged.

True to what I'd been told, Shala had a great library in her living room. Books of all types were on display, housed by sixteen massive bookshelves lined against the wall.

That feature aside, the place was the standard picture of opulence. The whole body of the estate was carved from some sort of smooth stone. A variety of fruits, both local and colonial, sat on her counter. Several glass containers were filled with various grains and spices, and the cooking room had both a gas-powered cooking range and a pump-operated sink. Off down the hallway were three doors I dared not venture toward until permitted to do so.

Shala's dwelling place had been purchased by someone with money to burn.

"This is..." I said, but I trailed off and she took a guess at what I was going to say.

"Luxurious? Immoderate? Over the top?"

It didn't seem so bad here, when I looked at it. My biggest worry, based on what I'd seen so far, was me going soft from spoiled living; Shala seemed to just have it too easy here, considering that how much of that food in her kitchen was delivered from far, far away.

"I was going to say--"

"What you think of it matters for little," she scoffed. "It won't change, because my dad has food delivered to the front door every day. I don't understand why he didn't just hire a chef, but he thinks that would make it too easy for some dissatisfied worker to kill his precious daughter."

"Kill you?" I repeated. Just how paranoid was her father, exactly? I mean, given Shala's pretense and inconsideration, I couldn't blame an underpaid chef for slipping something into her meal, but this was a well-paying employer if I'd ever seen one.

"You, on the other hand, are the product of decades of imperial military training. I'm told you're in the top two percent of your class. There's no way any such dragon would harm me," she sneered.

I snarled beneath my breath in response; if her father had influenced the military to get an elite graduate like me to babysit his little girl, I had nothing but contempt for him. Shala, meanwhile, sat down beneath her bookshelf, leaning against it, and picked up a book from beside her. I caught the faintest trace of a smirk on her face.

"Or try to take me for his own, for that matter."

Try? So the last bodyguard hadn't actually succeeded?

Looking at Shala's build, that sort of made sense. If I weren't so confident about my hand-to-hand competency, I would've probably been quite afraid of her; it was subtle, but my eye was trained to size up opponents, and I noticed how effortlessly she moved, and how her hide revealed great definition.

"I appreciate your faith in the Royal Guards," I said, trying not to cringe. I hated our title. We soldiers had been branded Royal Guards just before the last green dragon king made himself emperor and established a new age on the basis of what he termed protocol. The title of Royal Guard lasted many centuries longer than any of the actual royalty, and was really just an artifact that no one cared to replace.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you do," she dismissed. There was a pause, but it felt like she still had more to say. I waited for it. "At any rate, I'll be reading right here for most of the day, every day. Also, another thing. If I may be somewhat blunt, Quetzal?"

"Blunt?" I repeated, confused. She had sounded harsh enough with every sentence I'd heard from her except for the very first, but even with her brashness, I hadn't been able to gather much about anything. What did blunt even sound like for this girl!? "By all means, feel free."

Shala snickered, closing her book around one finger and holding that arm to the side. She craned her neck over slowly to look at me, a wicked smile on her face.

"I'll warn you there's not much use for a bodyguard around here, and you're an unnecessary convenience that I didn't ask for. Feel free to explore the residence, but this whole arrangement is a waste of your time and mine," she explained.

So she saw it the same way I did?

"I... understand," I said, still trying to keep my manners up. She probably saw the agreement on my face, because her smile got wider.

"It surprises me, but I feel as though perhaps you actually do understand. And for that reason, I'll go out on a limb and skip a few days of slow learning," she crowed, her voice rising a little more with each sentence. "You've been given instructions on how our arrangement will operate, and I don't like them. Here are my real terms."

Shala set her book down, stood back up, and strolled over to where I stood. Once she was within an arm's length, she reached out, squeezed my left shoulder with her right hand, and pulled my face toward hers so that our eyes were only inches from one another when she spoke.

"I read for most of the day, and then I disappear into the basement. You will not follow me," she snarled.

My eyes widened. I knew that being bodyguard wouldn't be fun, but I hadn't envisioned this kind of predicament even in my most pessimistic thoughts.

"I can't do that. Protocol dictates that--"

A roar boomed from out of her throat, and her grip tightened enough that I almost thought I might bruise.

"I TIRE of those words!!!" she thundered. "Do you know how AGONIZING these past years have been!? They've sent me guards that have been progressively smarter, and here I was thinking that you would understand and leave me alone!!! My fifth guard in a year, the first I thought I saw some recognition with, and YOU won't even let me alone!!! What do they drill into you about this protocol that makes you adhere to it with your whole soul!? Do you even HAVE a soul!?"

The initial shock of it had worn off, and I was trying to process a response to her frustration, but when she brought up protocol, there was no hesitation required.

"Beatings and frustration," I replied. "That's how they do it. That, and bullying, peer pressure, exhaustion, and the occasional torture in extreme cases. Disobey orders, disrespect a superior, or violate a fundamental principle of the empire, and that's what we have to look forward to."

She snorted a puff of smoke, then pushed me away. Her fists clenched at about the level of her chest, she turned around, extended her neck, and belched fire up at the ceiling, snarling all the while.

"And that's all there is to it!? Your will is weak enough to forego decency and common sense for an institution's favor!?" she snapped, not bothering to turn around, remaining tense and breathing heavily.

"Perhaps," I replied. "Or perhaps I have a dream that requires me to follow my duties effectively for a while longer yet. One that will make up for everything I'll have to go through to get there."

Shala snorted, turning to me. Her face smiled playfully, while all her rage still sat in her dark green eyes.

"Oh really?" she challenged. "What, pray tell, could be worth crossing me? What could be worth the hell I'm going to put you through until you leave me alone?"

"I'm going to be a Praetorian Guard," I boasted. "I know that's what they all say, but I'm determined more than any of the others. I'm going to follow my duties to the letter until I'm reassigned to spec ops, and then I'll work my way up to the very top."

Her face went blank. She cleared her throat a couple times, stared at me with expressionless eyes and a loose face, and seemed to be waiting for something. Then, out of the blue, she started giggling.

"Oh, is that it? You're really that naive? Listen to me now when I say you'll never make it. You're too scrawny by far, and not forward or ruthless enough," she laughed. "But since you're so determined, I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Six months. I want privacy whenever I request it, and a few small favors on occasion with no questions asked. You're free to use the house as you wish, with the exception of the basement, which I keep locked up. Read anything from my library as you wish, and use this time to prepare yourself for the competition. In fact, I'll even spar with you. You may not have noticed, but I'm much tougher than I look."

If she wanted privacy, there was probably something she didn't want known. I was going to find it, and excel for my superiors where it hadn't been expected.

"That won't happen unless you tell me why you need the privacy," I replied. "And I won't accept a simple explanation. I need proof."

Her angry face was back, albeit a little more restrained.

"Stupid guard," she growled. "Has it not occurred to you that the last guy never tried to assault me? I made that up because he got on my bad side, and it's ruined his career. The same could happen to you."

I couldn't let that happen, so my mind worked fast.

"And then you'd have this same thing happen again," I bluffed. "Another guard would come in to take my place, even more brainwashed and stubborn than I am, and you'd have to go through this whole tantrum yet another time."

I'd found a chip in her armor, because she winced visibly upon my pointing that out. I felt secure in my place here, at least for a while.

"Graaaaah!" she yelled, striking the wall with a hand. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. "Fine. But Quetzal, I'm going to break you. You're already closer to it than any of the other six drones they've sent me so far, so be ready."

Six other guards? They'd only told me about two. Apparently they'd known from the start that she was trouble... so things were starting to make sense.

Shala returned to her book without another word, sat down, picked it up, and looked just as calm and docile as she had when she first opened the door.

I also sat down and returned to a state of inner peace. It was time to think up a plan worthy of a future Praetorian Guard.