I do not own any BBC Merlin characters!

Chapter One

Kaida could hear them calling for her in the courtyard below. The faded voiced of servants as they scrambled to find her, unwilling to climb the Dragon towers and search the rooftops, meaning that she's safe for now.

Leaning back against the parapet Kaida watched the skies, the haze of barely formed clouds broken up by flashes of colour as the Dragons dived across it, their wings wrapped tightly around their bodies, spiralling downwards before pulling up at the last moment. They seemed to weave through the ebony stands of hair which danced in front of her eyes, glittering a brilliant, deep jade as they tracked each dragon's flight. She belonged up on the towers.

They had been her hideaway when she was younger, just as they still were in some ways, an escape from the murmurs of the ghost court below. Little power remained in Canicus Castle, the draughty old half-ruin that she'd grown up in. During the summer, the sun would warm to stone walls, and bright light would cause the sea around the island to shimmer and dance, beckoning the blooming flowers to spread their petals and explode in vast arrays of colours. However, when winter came, the winds howled around the towers and city boundaries, making the rooftops so dangerous, that every citizen was forbidden from climbing upon them.

Only dragons would brave the storms. Their wings could slice through the hammering rain and snatching gales so effortlessly, that anyone watching would have thought that it were a calm day. No one did watch though. No one but Kaida, the only daughter of Balinor Fraener.

Her father was a badly formed memory. The blurred face of a man and a whiskery chin scrapping against her cheek as he kissed her goodbye. He left her with little else, except the stories of his youth, to be told by those who would always know him better.

There had been no mother for her to turn to, only a rather stern nursemaid, who scolded her for crying and told her to behave like the princess she was. Kaida hated her nursemaid and didn't care when the woman died the next year, carried off by the sweating sickness.

The nursemaid's words stuck though, and when the news came that Uther had betrayed Balinor and entrapped the Great Dragon, Kaida refused to weep. Despite the skies filling with the keening of Dragon's, their mourning pitching through the air as they lamented and swore revenge, Kaida's eyes remained dry. Her father was in her memory, after all, only a blurred face and the scratch of stubble against skin.

The news had broken what was left of her grandmother's pride. A woman, once iron clad in her resolves, crumbled beneath the sorrow of losing her son so soon after the loss of her husband during the purge.

Kaida was born once the purge had begun her grandfather already dead and her father fighting beneath the mantel that was left. She was told that Uther was cruel, twisted by hate and grief, taking vengeance against the world for his wife's death in any way that he could.

There was supposed to be peace. Her father left to secure a peace between the dragons and Camelot, but Balinor never came home and the dragons were forced into exile. The last Dargon Lord of the Fraener Clan simply vanished.

"Kaida?" Imogene's voice bobbed up, the warm rumble pushing away the memories of waiting for her father to return. Bringing her back into the present where the wind is shrieking and the dragons are soaring above her.

Imogene was her dragon, the hatchling that had chosen her when Kaida had first been taken to the nests at six years old. Her uncle had claimed she was too young, but her grandmother had stood her ground for once, and as a child, Kaida had followed Lord Hathorn to the nests and found her dragon.

She wasn't a dragon lord, so she was unable to command a dragon to do as she wished, but it was rare that Imogene would disobey her. The link between an individual dragon and dragon-child was more personal, and often the lords would bind themselves more closely to a single dragon to form the same bond.

"Kaida? Why are you hiding on that tower top?" Imogene asked, her growl hidden just beneath the words and her worry causing Kaida's stomach to clench. Kaida shook her head, dropping her gaze to the lichen speckled slabs beneath her.

"Eleanor is locked away in the nursery again." she muttered, almost spitting the words as they came out more vehemently that she had expected them to.

"You should go to her." Imogene said, navigating the air currents expertly and hovering above the tower. The dragons rarely strayed far from Canicus any more, the Island had become the only place where they felt safe, one of the few places where they felt free of Uther's grasp.

"I refuse to go in that room." Kaida remind her, tilting her head back and leaning it against the rough stone. She looked up at the shimmer of violet and silver, bobbing gently above her. "You know how I feel about that room." she added more softly.

There parapets around the tower groan and crack, stone chips flying as Imogene manages to land on the tower, her talons securing her to the protesting perch.

"Go to her." She repeated, her face barely centimetres from Kaida's, smoke coiling lazily from her nostrils.

"You've been roasting birds again." Kaida observed, catching a whiff of singed feathers on the smoke.

A small puff of smoke engulfs her as Imogene snorted, sending Kaida spluttering and waving as she tried to clear the air.

"Hey!" she yelled, still choking on her words so they came out more strained and brittle than she would have liked.

"Go to her!" Imogene ordered.

"No!" Kaida snapped, still waving to clear the air. "I will not deal with that fool!"

"She is your step-mother." Imogene growled. "She loves you as if you were her own!"

"She is a woman who my father got pregnant, they never married, the only link we ever shared was the baby, and he died!"

The wind itself seemed to die, the banners around the castle sagging back against their walls as the sudden calm swept over Canicus. Kaida braced herself, clamping her mouth shut as she waited for the next cloud of smoke to engulf her.

The air remained clear and Imogene gazed down at her with pity.

"It smells of dirt and stone." she said quietly, the words humming against the edges of Kaida's mind.

"What?" Kaida ask, her brow furrowing in confusion, "What exactly smells of dirt and stone?"

"The hatchling's grave." Imogene clarified, widening her eyes in what could only be construed as a meaningful way. Kaida stared back, still at a loss for what the dragon could mean.

"You make less and less sense every day." she muttered, patting Imogene on the nose before standing up and heading towards the trap-door which led back into the castle. "What else are graves meant to smell like?" mutter Kaida to herself.

She pulled the trap-door closed above her, doing her best to ignore the way in which the tower shook and dust fell from the ceiling as Imogene too flight again. She hurried down the stairs, darting into the unused corridors she had committed to memory and avoiding the ones which were used by anyone who would bother her.

Kaida was used to the servants shrinking away from her, hiding in alcoves until the Princess had walked past. As the Queen's granddaughter she wasn't supposed to walk around with a sword strapped to her hip, in leather britches for riding and a purple shirt which was rolled up at the sleeves and dragged in at the waist by a thick black belt. Kaida refused to stick to the rules, and she scared more than a few people because of that. Or perhaps it was simply her personality as her cousin Erin often liked to suggest.

"Kaida!"

"Crap." Kaida cursed, the door to her chambers within sight as her cousin's voice jumped out at her. "So close." she muttered, turning on her heels reluctantly to see Erin walking sedately towards her, his cheeks flushed, suggesting that until that point he'd been running.

"Nursery?" she asked, already aware of what the answer was going to be.

"Afraid so." He said apologetically, already leading the way at a brisk jog. Kaida followed more slowly, knowing the way overly well, and in no rush to reach her destination. She ran over what Imogene had said about the grave, unable to place what it was within the description that niggled at her thoughts. She broke the sentence down, turned the words over in her mind and sought to find whatever it was, but it remained elusive.

"Kaida?" Erin's voice snapped through her thoughts.

Blinking, she realised they'd already crossed the majority and were closing in on the gaggle of people, including her grandmother, standing around the nursery door. She slipped through the bodies, ignoring the odd sighs of relief as someone murmured about all being well, the young princess had arrived.

"ELEANOR LET ME IN!" The muttering died immediately, a few stunned faces gawking at Kaida as she hammered on the door and yelled at her step-mother within. "NOW ELEANOR!"

The lock clicked, and she shouldered her way past the oak slab, rusted hinges whining unpleasantly as she did so. She opened it enough for her to slip through, and slammed it as quickly as she could, just catching the disgruntled mutterings from the other side.

Around her, the room stood the same as ever. Abandoned toys scattered across the dusty floor, and the moth tatter crib standing by the window, reminders of the child that Eleanor lost.

Picking her way over, Kaida knelt down next to Eleanor who was crouched beside the wooden crib. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, the flesh around her eyes red and swollen but her skin still holding a ghastly grey pallor.

"Eleanor?" Kaida tried, receiving a small flinch in response. "Eleanor, what is it this time?"

Her face turned and her eyes darted to meet Kaida's, fixing the girl with a manic stare as she clutched at the blanket she had pulled from the crib. Kaida had often thought the room should have been cleared, it never did anyone any good to linger too long over the past.

"I made a horrible mistake!" she cried, lunging for Kaida and grabbing hold of her arms, pulling Kaida closer. "I should have kept him! My baby!"

Kaida didn't bother to try and pull her arms free, she knew from experience that Eleanor's grip was stronger than death once it got hold of you.

"The baby died Eleanor, it wasn't your choice, you did nothing wrong." Kaida soothed.

"No!" she screeched, yanking at Kaida's arms. "I sent him away! I sent him away!"

"Eleanor—"

"No! Listen to me!" Eleanor demanded, her eyes darting back and forth manically, searching Kaida's face. "He is still alive! We sent him away, it was all a lie! I—"

The doors splintered, threatening to break from their hinges as they burst open and Kaida's uncle stormed into the room. His guards followed, ripping Eleanor from her place and dragging her from the room, her voice screaming curses down the hallways as they went.

"Are you alright my dear?" Kaida shuddered at her uncle's words, hating how 'dear' sounded when it came out of his mouth. Out of all her relatives, Erin and her grandmother were the ones she could stand, and her uncle was the one she hated above all else.

"I'm fine uncle." she reassured him, rising to her feet and sweeping past him. "It looks like you have everything under control." she hissed.

He nodded gratefully, his satisfied smirk lining his lips as he missed the sarcasm.

"I'll see you at the feast." He called, "You won't forget will you?" Kaida shook her head, reaching out for the wall once she had rounded the corner, leaning against the cool stone for support as her head began to pound. The migraine seemed to fill her head, exploding anew with each step as she made her way cautiously towards her chambers, craving the soft darkness of her bed.

Why was it that the whole family seemed so screwed up?

Updated 19/11/2012