Page 228 of Of Empires and Dust

Beside her, Gaeleron bowed his head and pressed an armoured fist to his breastplate while Faenir stood tall on Ella’s right. The wolfpine didn’t growl and his hackles stayed low, but neither did he back down.

Varthear blew a warm breath over Ella, and the smell of ash and the sweet scent of fresh blood filled her nostrils.

Just as she had done every time she had entered the Eyrie since waking, Ella placed her hand on the scales of Varthear’s snout.

The dragon pushed her snout forwards and pressed it into Ella’s palm, a deep rumble resonating in her throat.

“It’s good to see you, too.” Ella ran her fingers along a fused ridge where a talon had torn the dragon’s lip open. “You look stronger each day.”

A deep rumble resonated from across the Eyrie, and a black mound in the corner of Ella’s vision rose, pale blue wings shaking as though trying to loose a settled layer of snow. Sardakes was an altogether different beast than Varthear. Where Varthear was lean and sleek, Sardakes was dense and powerful, his horns thick, his shoulders almost a third again wider and more muscled than the other dragon’s.

The obsidian dragon nuzzled his snout into the base of Varthear’s jaw, a purr in his throat. There was something pure in watching creatures capable of such destruction show such deep affection.

Sardakes twisted his neck to look towards Ella and blew a warm breath over her before leaning down and nudging Faenir’s side with his snout. The wolfpine bowed, paws spreading, his tail whipping back and forth.

As Faenir played with a creature that could eat him for supper, Ella turned to Gaeleron, who was busy staring in awe and reverence at the two dragons.

“Why do Queen Uthrían and King Galdra wish to speak to me?”

“To thank you for what you did during the battle.”

“Why do Queen Uthrían and King Galdra wish to speak to me?” Ella repeated.

Gaeleron frowned. “Likely to influence you before Calen returns. The Triarchy have been in a constant, silent war since long before I was born. Not a war of blood and steel, but of words and power. You are the Draleid’s blood.”

Ella nodded. The candour was refreshing. “I will see them on one condition.”

Gaeleron raised an eyebrow.

“I need you to take me in there.” Ella gestured towards the enormous passageway in the rock on the western edge of the Eyrie. “They’ve refused me three times.”

“I know why you wish to go in.”

“It is your choice. Either you bring me inside and I will take an audience with both king and queen, or you don’t and I won’t.” Ella didn’t like playing these games, especially not with Gaeleron, but she would play them if she needed to.

Gaeleron shook his head. “I will do as you ask, but I will go in with you. That is not negotiable.”

Ella pursed her lips and agreed. She followed Gaeleron across the platform. Across the way, near the stream that tumbled off the edge, three of the Dracårdare – the Dragonkeepers – cleaned the remnants of what looked to havebeen the dragons’ most recent meal. They scrubbed blood from the rocks and picked strips of skin and fur from the grass. And as Varthear lifted into the air and alighted in the stream, water spraying, all three of the elves knelt and pressed four fingers to their foreheads.

“Their lives have been dedicated to the dragons since before they had seen their twentieth summer,” Gaeleron said. “Andinarí, the elf on the far right, has now seen one hundred and twenty-one summers pass him by. And in all that time both Varthear and Sardakes had been listless and unmoving. Seeing the dragons like this is akin to Varyn himself extending his hand into the world.”

Ella watched Varthear dip her head into the stream as the elf Gaeleron had pointed to scrubbed at one of her teeth. “Do you spend a lot of time here?”

Gaeleron shook his head. “I’d never been here before Calen brought me. Very few of my people ever have. No. Andinarí is my uncle.”

Four guards stood by the enormous opening in the rock, all bearing Calen’s sigil. But one thing Ella had learned since finding her way back was that Calen’s sigil didn’t always mean Calen was the one giving the orders.

“Narvír.” One of the elves stepped forwards and bowed his head to Gaeleron. The guard glanced at Ella and Faenir, his gaze lingering on the massive wolfpine.

“This is Ella Bryer.” Gaeleron inclined his head towards Ella. “She is the Draleid’s kin. I am to escort her within the walls of the holding quarters to conduct an interrogation of the traitor Farda Kyrana. By order of the Draleid himself.”

The guard licked his lips, glancing back at the others. “Nobody is to pass, Narvír. Not until the Draleid returns, by order of Chora Sarn. The prisoners may venture into the Eyrie,but they are to be sheltered within the rock – for their own protection.”

“Is it Chora Sarn’s sigil you wear on your chest or Calen Bryer’s?”

“I…”

“It is a simple question.”

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