Page 92 of The Dragon Queen

I stood still, my heart feeling like it was threatening to burst out of my chest, it was beating so hard. His fingers brushed my sternum as if to ensure it didn’t. Then I was just as cold, just as naked.

“C’mon.” He held out his hand. “I want to say that this will be warmer, but…”

It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. Cold water snatched the breath from my lungs as we plunged in. Flynn was already frantically scrubbing at his skin, all while shivering. Glacier seemed to take that as his cue, lumbering into the water with a groan. Glimmer threw herself off Cloudy’s neck, wings outspread and then she worked them hard, actually gaining altitude. I forgot all about the water, the cold, as I walked along, tracing her path, arms outstretched and ready to catch her if she fell.

“You don’t need to do that.” I turned to see Soren standing there beside me, the moon illuminating every scar hard won on his chest. “Young Glimmer, she knows what she’s doing.”

She did indeed, landing on Glacier’s back with a satisfied chirrup.

See.Her tone was one part queen, one part petulant child.I am a dragon. I fly well.

That you do,I replied.But can you swim?

Glacier put her to the test, dunking the two of them under the water only to emerge seconds later, my bondmate spluttering. We all started laughing, right as Glacier shook himself and showered the lot of us with water.

“Bloody water dragons…” Draven hissed. “Now, where’s that soap?”

We all scrubbed ourselves down thoroughly and then emerged from the lake, teeth chattering, as we wrapped ourselves in dryingcloths. Brom crouched before a fire he had built, the flames flickering. Logs were drawn up, stones too, forming a ring of seats that we each claimed once we were back in clean uniforms. Soren unwrapped a bundle from his saddlebags, something that had the other men groaning.

“Travel rations,” he explained, handing me a strip of dried meat and a chunk of cheese. “It’s not exactly fresh.”

“Or savoury,” Ged added. “It pretty much tastes like shit.”

“But it’s food we share together.” Brom noted that he had all eyes on him and then raised a tin cup that was identical to the ones we had. “Each time we manage to have a meal as a wing, that merits a celebration. To the wing!”

“To Pippin,” Flynn added to the toast, his eyes shining as he stared at me. Glimmer prowled closer, intent on the meat in his hands, so he tore off a piece and gave it to her. “To the little queen as well.”

“To Brom and Obsidian.” Everyone went still at my toast. “For making a sacrifice no one asked them to make, and yet I don’t know where we’d be if he didn’t.”

“Probably wearing Harlstonian colours.” Ged shook his head. “And I’d look terrible in red and black.”

“To everyone in this wing.” Draven was king, so it made sense that he would have the last word. We all watched him stand and regard each one of us in turn as he held up his drink. “I never wanted to be king, never wanted to fight a war against my own kin, but if I have to? Then I do so knowing that I have the best of the Royal Riders at my back. Tomorrow, we will ride out and find the hostages, return these women to their rightful homes. Perhaps that will be enough to turn the tide against my uncle. If the only way he can gather support for this ridiculous war is by coercion, well then, we need to make sure he fails every time.”

But how? That was the unspoken question asked as we all drank. Harlston and Skane were the largest duchies, and so the women could be anywhere, even held at the ducal seat somewhere. Much later, I wondered at that as I nestled down in my bedroll, the blankets supplemented by their warmth. There had been a little scrabbleabout where I would sleep, but right now my face was pressed into Soren’s chest, listening to his heart beat slowly as I felt Ged pressed into my back.Gods, hear my plea,I thought dimly, as exhaustion smashed into me.Whatever you want, whatever you need, just help me find the hostages.

I was safe. I was warm and held tight in the arms of men who loved me. I was dimly aware that Glimmer was nestled in a ball against the flanks of her mates. I had everything Pig could’ve dreamed of, and yet as I fell into sleep, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hostages were going through at the hands of men who didn’t care if they lived or died.

Perhaps that’s why I dreamed this.

I was flyingthrough the air, something I often dreamed of, but never with such authenticity. I could feel the way the air held my massive span of wings aloft, the pressure of the air competing with the pull of gravity. My body was sore from the effort of staying aloft for so long, but now we had returned. Down, that pulsed inside my mind, spiral down and then eat and drink, rest because tomorrow I would be required to ride again. Past exhaustion, past good sense, past the niggling feeling at the back of my mind that something wasn’t quite right. A pulsing white light dispelled these thoughts, and I fell back into compliance, making our slow descent until my wings flapped out as my claws hit the ground.

The stink, that’s what caught my attention first. It was sharp, acrid like that of urine, and it cut through the haze I hovered in. Prey smelled like that, right before I tore them apart with my jaws, and that had me looking up, searching the site. Not the soldiers. Their armour stank, but for different reasons, of unwashed flesh and food refuse. No, there. Hidden away in tents of white flapping canvas, their bodies casting shadows against the fabric. Prey? I thought again, but quickly corrected myself.

I knew exactly what was contained in those tents, and that had me stiffening. My muscles bunched, my claws digging into the earthas my rider slid free of my saddle. I was ready to surge forward, to find them, to protect them, the women.

Women…

Me, Pippin, shifted in her sleep, but my mind wouldn’t pull free of this dream. I had sought answers and I wouldn’t wake up, not until I had them.

“No, lad.” He came into view then, someone I knew well. The lines of his face, the shape of his eyes, they’d been impressed upon my mind since the moment I cracked free of my shell. He was James, my rider, my bondmate, and for a moment I was distracted by all of the memories seeing him conjured. Of being a lad and his hatchling, rambling across the hills behind the keep. Of him bringing me delicious scraps of meat and feeding me, much like a mother dragon would. Of learning to fly, the sheer terror and exhilaration of taking to the skies made all the better because he was on my back.

So why did he hold this metal amulet out in front of him now?

I didn’t like it, I remembered that for just a second, then the world went quieter, stiller. I heard his voice as if from very far away, my eyes falling half closed as the tension left my body. I nestled down into the ground, glad for the rest, my body getting heavier and heavier until?—

Her scream was what woke me from my dream. Not in reality. The part of me that was Pippin murmured something, making distressed sounds while trapped inside the mind of a dragon. But that scream… It woke us up far more effectively than anything I could’ve done. The dragon, Jade, I now realised he was called, jerked to his feet. Human distress was a sound he was well attuned to. He’d discovered the man who was beating his wife and children in the village that they’d visited and made sure he was brought to justice, helped identify a ring of young men who had brutalised a woman on her way home from work. Human women brought out a protective side in Jade, because he knew how vulnerable they could be. So when his eyes snapped open, when he saw the jeering soldiers all clustering around a woman that was dragged from the tents, he started moving.

“Control your beast!”

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