AN: After rereading Talons of Power a few times, I realized that to me, Anemone seems to be almost as much of a protagonist as Turtle is. I doubt she'll ever get a POV (at least in the main series), since she's already had her character growth by the end of Talons of Power, but to me that's a bit of a shame; I think that she's a very interesting character behind her somewhat bratty/spoiled exterior. From her dialogue over the course of the series, it was pretty easy for me to piece together what I think her perspective of the story would be. Hopefully, I've been able to do her character justice!

If you enjoy this story (or even dislike it), please review letting me know your opinion on what I've done well and what you think I can do better. Thank you in advance for your support!

Disclaimer/Warnings:

I do not own Wings of Fire or any of its characters. I've also borrowed some dialogue from Talons of Power, for this story, so all credit for that goes where it is due.

Spoilers for Talons of Power ahead!

I can't remember a time before I was chained to my mother's side, a time when she ever listened to or cared about what I wanted. There was only ever It's for your own good and You're the only heir and I'm the queen—you have to listen to me.

I asked her once how long I would have to wait before I could finally be free of the harness that bound me to her, and her reply was Maybe by the time you're full grown.

Ever since then, ever since I was a tiny dragonet, I counted down the days until my seventh birthday, feeling as if I would never be free to do anything I wanted or even learn how to think for myself. I was completely smothered by her, admired by the tribe from a distance without ever being allowed to have an identity beyond "the princess". It was nice to be special, but it was also frustrating to be defined so completely by my role. I was "the only heir", and part of me feared that was all I would ever be.

That was why the day I discovered I was an animus was the best day of my life.

From the moment I'd hatched, I had always been special—the lone heir to the SeaWing throne. But now I was even more than that. I was the first dragon with magic in generations. I could grow up to be not only queen of the SeaWings one day, but also the most powerful dragon in all of Pyrrhia.

With all my mother's dragons crowded around me, my talons tingling with magic, I could just feel all the possibilities unfolding around me.

And even though Whirlpool's lessons, which started the very next day, were quite probably the most boring things I had ever endured, I was glad to have the opportunity to practice. In the first few weeks after we discovered my magic, whenever my mother was asleep, I enchanted my pearl necklaces to dance and strands of seaweed to change color, and all sorts of other fun things. Being magical made my days stuck on a harness less boring, made the remaining six years until I was full grown seem less bleak.

I figured that the tingling in my claws, which had started when I'd cast my first spell, would only become stronger the more I used my powers. The more objects that I enchanted, the more wonderful my magic would become. I could prove to my mother that I could defend myself, that I didn't need her to protect me.

But I was wrong about that. So, so wrong.

I don't know exactly when I learned about the Massacre. The council members must have whispered about it in front of me, thinking I was either deaf or stupid—but I wasn't. I came to realize that my beautiful magic was no longer a toy, but a weapon, one that could make me lose everything I was if I used it too carelessly or too much.

I hesitated to practice after that, resisted Whirlpool's orders as much as I could so that I didn't have to waste my soul on his petty enchantments. I tried to tell my mother that I didn't want to train anymore, that I didn't want to become crazy like Albatross, but she refused to see anything wrong with her precious Whirlpool or his classes.

He told her that using a little spell here and there would be like losing a grain of sand from a beach—almost completely insignificant to my soul—and she believed him, because she has always believed whatever she wants to hear, whatever would add the perfect balance of suspense and heroic triumph to her story. In her mind, I was the hero meant to end the war, and nothing could possibly ruin that. I would train and I would become her perfect secret weapon, all without losing my soul or my mind.

It only got worse when my mother told her SandWing ally, Blister, about my new powers. She wanted to cast so many awful spells... My mother wouldn't hear a word against her either. I would never admit it, but Blister's ideas gave me nightmares.

Things got better when Tsunami came. She was fearless and would answer to no one. We're royalty, she'd said. Meaning we do whatever we want.

And with that one sentence, my sister turned everything I'd spent my whole life believing completely upside down. And her way made far more sense.

I wasn't the only heir of the Sea Kingdom anymore, but I was still its only animus. I was far more powerful than all the dragons who thought they could control me. More powerful than my mother, even. As much as she might pretend to, she knew nothing about animus magic. Her opinions, which she presented as fact, were not always right. The world was in reality nothing like she had always made it out to be.

In the months following the end of the war, any respect I had left for her turned to contempt. She kept Auklet and I on harnesses, even though I pointed out to her that the only threats killing off the heirs had been eliminated. She was stupid and narrow-minded, unwilling to see reality and too completely wrapped up in her dramatic story where she was the most important character to notice how delusional she was.

So stupid. Couldn't she see that I was born to be greater?

Eventually, I decided that I'd had enough. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to go to school, I wanted to have friends, and I wanted my life to be all it should be. All I deserved to have.

So I enchanted Auklet's harness to change my mother's mind about keeping me cooped up, to convince her that as long as she had one of her daughters leashed to her side, it would be all right to not worry so much about the other one. Anemone has animus magic, my spell convinced her to realize. She can take care of herself.

And my mother didn't suspect a thing. She thought sending me to school was her own idea. She thought she was so brilliant and caring. Ha—as if she'd done anything for me but hold me back.

Manipulating her was ridiculously simple, I learned. Feed her ego by convincing her of her own brilliance and she would go along with any idea you put in her head. How had I never noticed how self-absorbed and foolish she was?

I had never been told that my magic could enchant not only things, but also other dragons. Whirlpool and my mother had been too blind, too narrow-minded, to think of anything beyond moving objects and casting little curses.

What I had done to Whirlpool made me start to question the limits of my powers. It was exhilarating to realize, as I pushed what I had always considered my boundaries, that in reality there were none there at all.

And I had cast countless spells for Whirlpool, with no consequences—little things to make my life easier here and there probably wouldn't hurt either. Most of the tiny spells I'd done over the course of my lifetime hadn't harmed me at all.

The only time I'd felt any difference in my soul was when I had killed Whirlpool.

I still don't like thinking about that, the way my blood ran cold and I felt frozen in place as the electricity crackled and eels swarmed over and I watched without blinking or averting my gaze as they devoured Whirlpool. I still don't like thinking about how a tiny part of me thought he deserved it, how a voice seemed to whisper in my mind that this was my true power, that if I wanted something, I could and should take it.

I was not as powerless to change my life as I had always felt. I didn't have to wait for my mother's approval. I could redefine what it meant to be a princess. I could make my role into anything I wanted it to be. Tsunami had taught me that.

For a while, school was fun, even if I did resent the other dragonets being treated as if they were my equals. Icicle, and maybe Turtle and Winter (if I was feeling generous), might be somewhat close to my worth—they were royalty, too.

But I was the only animus. I was the only one hatched to be truly great.

Tsunami told me not to use my powers to figure out who set off that explosion—I was a bit disappointed that I'd missed it, to be honest; it sounded really exciting—and I listened to her only because I knew she meant well. But it was immensely frustrating. Shouldn't I be able to use my magic for myself for once, after being forced to cast so many of Whirlpool's idiotic enchantments? Hadn't Tsunami herself taught me that as princesses, we deserved to do anything we wanted?

Only Darkstalker truly understood me, or so I thought. I was amazed when I met him, when he recognized that I was his equal, that the two of us were born better than any other dragons in Pyrrhia. Stonemover was a mess—he didn't count. Darkstalker and I were different from any other animus dragons, too. We alone were smart enough to know that our powers weren't a curse or even a gift, but our birthright.

I know now that he was manipulating me, using me. But even now, it's still hard to resist the thought of all the glory I so completely believed I was destined to have.

His rejection hurt more than anything. It stung to realize that I had ruined my only chance to be his apprentice, that I couldn't have his undivided attention and love, the two things I wanted more than anything else in the world. He would always care more about Moon, a dragon with far inferior powers, who somehow had a connection with him that I'd never figure out how to replicate.

This isn't fair, I'd screamed, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. It's not fair!

If I couldn't have the things I wanted most in life, I decided, I'd take everything else I'd ever wished for. The throne, the authority it gave me, complete power over my life in the Kingdom of the Sea. Maybe if I had everything else my tribe had to offer me, the treasure and the admiration and the power would fill the hole Darkstalker's rejection had left in my heart. Maybe then he'd even change his mind about me, I managed to convince myself. Maybe I could have all the power and glory he'd promised me.

And then Turtle swept all those delusions away.

I'm an animus, too, he told me, and that didn't fit into the world as I'd always known it, because I'm the SeaWing animus, the only one, the most special dragon in the tribe. Orca didn't count—she was too stupid to survive a challenge even with unlimited power at her clawtips, too foolish to tell everyone what she was and become the sole hero of the tribe, the role that had always been mine, the role that no longer was mine because now Turtle was an animus too and I'd just lost everything that made me special not only in Darkstalker's eyes, but also the rest of Pyrrhia's.

And then it became even worse, because then Turtle told me the words that made everything fall completely apart: I'm the one who made you an animus.

No, I cried, clamping my talons over my ears as if that would stop the words from echoing inside my skull over and over. Despair washed over me like a tidal wave.

I was worse than simply not special. I was nothing.

I was no one at all.

Not hatched for greatness, not inherently better than everyone else.

Because my beautiful magic had never really belonged to me at all.

It's my power, I screamed anyway, as if that would make it true. You can't just take it; you can't just say it's yours! You did not create me!

And then we'd fought, unleashing the brunt of our magic at each other, because maybe if I defeated him, I'd be able to prove to myself that he was lying, that I was a true animus, that I was more powerful than he was. I was filled with blind anger, so much anger that I no longer cared if I was going mad, because maybe then the same mindless hatred that had caused the Massacre would wash away the pain and the sense of nothingness that felt as if they were drowning me.

But Turtle brought me back from the darkness.

You're very powerful, he said, and I clung to his words because I didn't feel powerful at all, I felt weak and empty and insignificant. I'd been many things over the two years I'd been alive, but I'd never been insignificant before.

Turtle saved me from myself. He told me that there was a future for me other than madness, that I could come back from it even though I felt that I was right on the brink of losing my mind. As we'd fought, I'd touched insanity, and I knew what it felt like. I knew I desperately didn't want to lose myself to it, and that I would have if Turtle hadn't pulled me free from its grasp.

He treated me like an equal. Even though he offered to, he didn't take away my power when I told him that I still wanted it. He recognized that it was still mine, even though I hadn't been born with it.

Slowly, the feeling of being nothing and no one ebbed away. Maybe I hadn't been born special, maybe I wasn't better than everyone else, but I still had my magic and no one was going to take it away from me.

And then Darkstalker summoned us and I realized that I had been just like him. He, too, thought he was better than everyone else and deserved to have everything go his way. But thinking that way was bad—it had very nearly sent me over the edge into madness. Was he mad, too, behind that friendly smile and all those pretty words?

Now I could see he was just like my mother. He thought everything he did and said and even thought was flawless and inherently right. He was too self-absorbed to see that the world didn't actually belong to him. He wasn't the center of the whole world the way I'd thought I was the center of mine.

He didn't deserve my love. I as good as told him so.

Then Darkstalker enchanted me to be his puppet. Again, I felt as if I was nothing, but this time I refused to accept that. My will was suppressed, but I was no less than any other dragon, just like no dragon had ever been any less than me. What I can or can't do does not define me or anyone else.

Then Turtle gave me his hiding spell, and suddenly it was up to me to save all of Pyrrhia. And then I was special again. But I've known what it's like to be no one, even for just a moment. Now I know that specialness is not a right, but a gift—one that we have to use wisely to deserve. Our powers don't give us the right to take what we want, they are something we must earn the right to use.

My powers don't make me special. It's what I do with them that does.

Turtle and I are animus dragons who have chosen to use our powers for good. Darkstalker and Orca didn't. Even Stonemover didn't.

That's why it's up to me and Turtle to save the world. It isn't the role my mother picked for me, or the one I would have chosen. But we don't always get to pick, and we don't have the absolute right to.

We have the responsibility to do the best we can in the role we're given.

It's possible to come from being no one to someone.

I won't forget either of those things. I've learned those lessons the hard way, but I think they'll make me a better dragon someday—someday soon. I can be a better dragon today, right now, as I fly to Jade Mountain as quickly as my wings will carry me with the enchanted stick clutched desperately between my talons. I don't have to follow the path I've always believed I was born into.

Tsunami was wrong when she said we could do anything we want. I think she knows that now. She's not as amazing or flawless as I thought she was.

But that's okay. We're all flawed. Even me.

Maybe our virtues and our flaws are two sides of the same coin. My powers are a curse, but they are also a gift. It's possible for them to be both. I know that now. And I'll do my best to learn from it.