Page 8 of The Dragon Queen

“You were asked to take Pippin to get fitted for some dresses.”

Both Ged and I sucked in a breath to reply to that, but Draven was moving on to Flynn.

“And right when I’m trying to plan for a war with a bunch of people I don’t know if I can trust, where were you?” If Draven was hoping for contrition, he wasn’t going to get it. Flynn crossed his arms and stared the prince down. “Contradicting everything we agreed to, be anything other than discreet. Half the maids in the palace will be talking to the others about what happened between my queen and my rider.”

I flushed as I remembered it all, what had happened, but also what Marcus appeared to already know.

“And my wife.” Brom’s dry response, his stern expression hadDraven thinking he had an ally. The prince was about to discover just how wrong he was. Brom stared Draven down, not us as he continued. “You list each of the tasks you needed us to complete, as if they were simple things, but they aren’t.”

Brom nodded to me and the moment our eyes locked, his gaze softened. “Pippin was forced to step away from being a fine lady, content to be decorative, by her family, then your own mother.” He gave me the smallest of smiles, something that helped ease the pain in my chest, but that disappeared when he turned back to Draven. “She’s never going to be content with being a figurehead and you’d be a fool to think otherwise.”

Red spots formed in the prince’s cheeks, as if Brom had pulled his hand back and slapped him, but Brom wasn’t done. He held up his hand, pulling off the wedding band I’d pushed onto his finger.

“There’s also the fact you just assumed I’d willingly divorce the one woman I’ll ever love so you can put her on a throne.”

It was a hard thing, feeling that warmth in my chest flare to life, growing hotter and hotter as I heard Brom’s words. We stared at each other, all while watching Draven’s face fall. That was only the first of the blows the group would deal.

“My…” Flynn shook his head as his voice cracked on the first word, but as his jaw muscle flexed, he mastered himself. “My family was slaughtered like animals by some of yours.” If Draven’s eyes were hard, Flynn’s were ice cold. “So excuse me if I’m not ready to step into a role I never wanted in the first place. I tried…” He shook his head. “I’m trying, but…” I was walking across the room and towards him, and Flynn grabbed me as soon as I was close, then held me tight. “I can’t do it without Pippin. I can’t.”

“If I hadn’t taken Pippin down to the dragons, we would have no idea where Lance and the other lads’ dragons went,” Ged said, but each person’s words were like body blows for Draven. I watched the prince twitch, shifting slightly as everyone spoke.

“We won’t achieve anything if we don’t start working together.” This wasn’t my Soren, but the stony faced drill sergeant. He stared at each one of us. “Haven’t I told you often enough? A wing is only as strong as its weakest member. No more running off, makingdecisions on the fly. You need something? You need to communicate with the rest of the wing.”

“And within these walls, we can’t be a wing and their king.” Brom’s voice softened, though he didn’t move any closer to the prince. “You can’t order us around, take us to task for not obeying your royal decrees. Here, in this suite.” He looked around then, as if seeing Draven’s rooms for the first time. “We must be equals bound together by affection, love.” Brom stared at me and then really smiled. “Or this won’t work at all.”

For a moment, there was only silence. In the quiet I felt it, fear, regret, but most of all pain. Everyone was hurting in their own ways, and I wondered how Queen Gloriana did it, maintaining a relationship with her four consorts.

See which one needs you the most.Glimmer looked up from where she was curled up on a plush cushion in the corner of the room, then out at the window.My mate comes for yours.

“Well…” Draven’s brittle tone made clear how he was taking this. “I find I can’t set down my crown right now.” A knock at the door had us all looking around. “That will be dinner. Eat, relax, reconnect.” He turned towards Flynn and then bowed his head. “Grieve, because I…”

His voice failed him and he spun on his heel, marching towards the back of his suite before jerking open a door and disappearing up a spiral staircase.

“He’s going to blow off steam,” Brom explained. “He always does this when he feels out of his depth. Draven will be back.”

Decide which mate needed me the most, my dragon said, but how did I do that? Flynn needed support, and Ged would have welcomed me crawling into his lap and telling him that we did the right thing. Soren needed to see us start working together and I could think of salacious ways to achieve that, but right now, I marched over to Brom, taking his wedding ring from his palm and pushing it back onto his finger where it belonged.

“In what state?” I asked him, because who knew the prince better than Brom? My husband’s expression grew serious. “In what state, Brom?”

Darkspire is here,Glimmer told me by way of an answer.I am going with him.

So I was too. My choice made, I leaned in, brushing my lips against Brom’s, pulling away right as he went to grab hold of me. I was crossing the room, snatching up my flying leathers from where they hung on the back of a chair before climbing the stairs, only to emerge on a parapet, the moon hanging brightly over us.

“What…?” Draven blinked as his dragon thrust out a foreleg. Glimmer scrambled up and onto his neck, sitting just behind his skull. “Well…” His expression changed when he saw I’d followed my queen out here. Those shuttered eyes, that firm line of a mouth, he was like a door left ajar and I wasn’t sure if he was going to swing open or slam in my face. “My queen.”

That little bow, his mocking expression, it was uncomfortably like the last time we’d ridden together.

“I am hoping you won’t try to kill me this time,” I said as I climbed into the saddle, shifting as far forward as I could.

“If I’d meant to kill you, then I would’ve.” He was a presence I heard, felt, as he settled in behind me, reaching forward not to grab at Darkspire’s spine, but for me. I was tugged closer until my body slotted in against his. “I thought I was so clever, putting on a show of support for my mother’s insane plans, lulling her into a false sense of security where hopefully I’d be able to glean the full extent of what she had planned.”

‘Spire’s muscles bunched under us, the only warning we got as he launched himself off the parapet, dropping alarmingly before his massive wings flapped outwards. Glimmer’s did the same, a scream forming in my throat but never being let free as her wings and his worked, both dragons climbing higher in the air.

“So why didn’t you?” It felt like the wind tore my words from my lips, putting the question to the world, not Draven, but he heard me. “It seems like it would be easier if you’d just allowed yourself to be your mother’s, your uncle’s, puppet. Kill me, kill…” I couldn’t take my eyes off Glimmer, watching the way her wings shifted with the currents of the wind. She was coasting like an adult dragon but with Darkspire underneath her at all times to keep her safe. “Kill my dragon.”

My mate would never allow that to happen, Glimmer told me without even a backward look, a sentiment that Draven echoed.

“And how could I do that? The first time I saw this coltish, androgynous creature standing there in just a shirt, her nose burned red, I knew I was lost.”

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