Free Breath of Fire by Liliana Hart

archives of our clan, leaving Niklos’ lair to return to Dimitris. She traveled for two days and nights to reach his camp, and his victorious shout rang out across the Earth Realm, calling all the other Archos who had once been his friends. Dimitris thanked Maliah for killing his enemy and then fed her to his people.
    “The other Archos came to Dimitris and agreed to join with him for a short time to declare war on our clan. Their sole purpose was to obliterate us entirely. We had no immediate leader and were considered weak, especially since Niklos had been destroyed by a mortal woman. The position of Archos couldn’t be filled because our clan members began to vanish right in front of our eyes. There was no trace of them, as if they’d never existed. Much like the clan members who have recently disappeared.”
    A chill ran over my skin, but I held in the shudder.
    “The loss of our archives is what gave the other clans our weaknesses. The archives held our entire history—the marvelous things our people had created, every documented power, every major event, births, deaths and marriages. Our lair was impossible for outsiders to see in that time period, but with our archives in their hands we no longer had a safe haven. Our lair no longer had to be hunted for, and our scents no longer had to be tracked. All they had to do was travel to a specific place and time, at a specific moment in our history, and wipe us out one at a time.
    “They assassinated the most powerful of our kind first. Alasdair and I were the youngest of Niklos’ children and the weakest. Niklos had sired twelve children in all. I waited in fear for the day of my disappearance, but it never came. And when our enemy clans traveled back in time to kill my brothers and sisters, it changed the course of history, so all of their children vanished as well—for they had never actually been born.”
    “How was it stopped?” I asked.
    “Niklos and the other four warriors were the only ones who had the ability to open the portals to travel through time or between the other Realms. It was considered a lost power after the Banishment. But after decades of senseless killing, Alasdair’s rage manifested into the ability to open portals just as Niklos could. His power to do so had been lying dormant all that time.”
    She paused and gave me a meaningful look, and I remembered her earlier words about my lack of powers.
    “Alasdair went back to a little-known time in our history, a time that was insignificant to our enemies,” she said. “He moved the entire clan to a safe location, changing the course of our future. He saved hundreds of lives, and his heroism kept our clan from becoming extinct. His new powers gave him the right to be Archos.”
    “So you’re saying the traveling power has manifested itself in others, and they’re jumping time to kidnap other Drakán? To what purpose?” I asked.
    “Unfortunately, not even I can see the enemy’s thoughts or intentions. I have heard of only one other of our kind who possesses this power besides your father. And they are only rumors, whispered from fear, but I have heard them often during my travels through the other lands. There’s a reason we consider the Belgian clan the most dangerous of all. It is their Archos, Julian, who is said to hold this power. Julian is the son of the original Archos Dimitris, but there is a rumor that his mother was a Romanian descendant. Which means that Julian has the blood of two lines in him, making him the most powerful of our kind.”
    I’d heard similar rumors over the centuries, but I never thought they were real. Stories of Julian of the Belgae were like human stories of the bogeyman. Complete fantasy.
    “If he’s as you say, wouldn’t Julian fulfill the Prophecy?” Erik asked.
    The Prophecy was the most important thing to the entire Drakán race. It was what gave us hope—a reason to follow the guidelines of human civilization. After the gods banished the five