Dragonfae (a Tonkin Trilogy novella)

Rrrenbo

While this is a novella, it can be read as a standalone.

A hundred thousand years before the Miami Battle, the War of the Dragonfae took everything from me, as it did from everyone else in the Realm.
  The sad part is that it all could've been avoided if it weren't for Kana-Vieve Tonkin's idea to enforce an Empiric system in the Realm. 
  Many people rebelled and refused to partake in the chaotic order that was the Empire, which caused the Empress to fight back. She summoned every man and woman aged twenty-one and older to fight for her in the War.   Needless to say, she won the War, but I lost my brother, as did hundreds of other men and women across the Realm.

  Two years passed, and I'd grown used to my regret and resentment toward myself for letting my brother fight. I got myself a job as a blacksmith and bought myself a house, and life was starting to become more bearable. That is, until I was met by a man named Heresee Tonkin, a cousin of the Empress and the man who would soon become the leader of an army of rebels, twice the size of the first one.
  For all I knew, he wanted to start another War. He insisted I accompany him further North, where I was tasked by the Empress to protect Rhaen Barc, an important woman in the Realm, but little did the Empress know that Rhaen was part of Heresee's little rebellion, as was a band of four other people, which soon grew to be four thousand.

  Our goal was to overthrow the Empress and restore peace and democracy to the Realm, and be rid of the autocratic Empiric system that caused more harm than good.

  But little did I know that what we had to do would either reinstate peace and prosperity to the lives of millions, if not billions of people in the Realm...
Or quite possibly end the World.