Page 40 of The Dragon Queen

Queens rule,she replied.

Stand down.

That richly resonant voice felt as if it wrapped around me like a warm blanket. One with burrs in it apparently, as Cynane emerged. I stifled a gasp as I noted the changes in the great queen. Her gold scales had darkened, dimmed to an almost tarnished brass colour, rather than the antique gold of the last time I saw her.

My queen.

I don’t know how one showed respect to a dragon queen, but I dropped my head and bobbed a curtsey, just like I’d been trained to do with human queens.

Greetings, Glimmer.Cynane sounded tired, so very tired, her movements slow as she pushed past her mates and drew closer.Greetings, Pippin. I would ask you why you have come, but I can guess.

Some of the humans…What else was I going to say? That they eyed her not yet born children and wondered if they could transform them into weapons years from now if the civil war still waged?They have expressed concern about your presence in the hatching sands.

Do they indeed?This was Hadrian, not Cynane. The massive dragon stepped forward far more slowly now.That makes sense, seeing as they worked so hard to destroy all the other hatching grounds.

Destroyed…?

Glimmer asked that, but it was just an echo of my own question. Except I knew the answer to it. My head jerked up, my eyes finding Cynane’s, and in that one unscarred golden eye, I saw it. The horrific vision I’d had while out with Draven, dragonfire destroying dragons and humans alike, the explosives cutting through the layers of the town, right down to the nesting queen… Cynane nodded slowly, making clear that she had no need of stored memories to remember that place and places like it.

They…? What did…?

My thoughts were aimless, aborted before they were even begun. What was history but the stories told of one group triumphing over the other? The victors got to decide the nature of that story and they were not the wild dragons.

But what did they obscure in the process?

For the balance to be restored, the queens must rise,Glimmer said.

My dragon had said that to me so many times, as had Tanis, but with a slight difference.

Queen, I said to her.You always said queen.

The queens must rise, she insisted, looking back at me for a second before setting off across the sands.

The last time she was here, another golden queen had stood by and watched her choke to death, so I could not let Glimmer make this journey on her own.

“Pippin…!” Brom’s shout was sharp, crisp, injecting all the command he took for granted into it, but I did not stop.

The warmth of the sands could be felt through my boots, growing hotter by the second, but I could barely feel that when so many eyes were upon me. Great alien eyes with vertical slits, in the shades of blue, green, red, purple, and bronze, they all stared, their hot breaths shifting the sand as I drew closer to Cynane. She went down into a crouch, but it wasn’t an elegant thing. The queen dragon almost collapsed down, as if maintaining her weight took too much from her and she needed to conserve her energy for other things. Her young, I realised, my eyes sliding along her flanks, looking for signs of them, even though she wouldn’t hatch for at least a week.

And what then?

I didn’t get a chance to ask as Glimmer came to stand before her, looking tiny by comparison. Cynane dropped her head low, stretching out muzzle, and both dragons closed their eyes as they had a small moment to commune. I wanted to step back, feeling likeI had gotten in the middle of something, when I heard a voice inside my head.

Come forward, queen.

The male dragons eyed me as I approached, the tension in those massive bodies making clear how much they did not want me to obey Cynane’s command. But who else could order a queen around but another queen? I moved closer, my hands rising. Glimmer’s head was a familiar shape, one that fit my palm, though nowhere near as easily now, and Cynane? My eyes fell closed as I felt it: her scales, the elegant shape of her skull, the ragged scar an aberration, I couldn’t help but follow the path of with my fingertips.

Then I heard it.

A rapid thud, that was my own heart beating faster and faster as adrenaline pumped through me, my body making clear the danger I was in, but it wasn’t the only one. Glimmer’s I knew as well as my own, having felt it thud alongside mine when she used to curl into my side, so the next had to be Cynane’s. Slow, ponderous, it was as if mine was the rapid beat of a drum and hers was a gong, struck hard over and over again.

So what was this one?

Rapid little lub-lubs, I thought it was just one heartbeat at first, but at a closer listen, I could pick out the individual rhythms. One, two, three, five, seven… My eyes flicked open to find both queen dragons staring at me, waiting for me to understand.

Your hatchlings…

Cynane let out a little huff, the sand swirling around her.

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