Page 86 of The Princesses of Ruin
The dragon, now well-lit from above, shifts his shoulders and rises to stand. He pads down his mound, snapping branches as thick as my torso as he goes.
“You’ve brought me a nice treat. This speaks more to your respect than words.”
He snatches the bear from the ground with a snap and tosses it into the air. The enormous beast flips end over end twice and is then chomped in half. The rest slops back to the ground, and the dragon licks it clean.
He groans in satiety, then sits back on his haunches like a cat.“Say what you’ve come to say.”
“We need the scale of a storm dragon,” Kazimir says, getting right to the point.
“I am not a storm dragon.”
“But the young one—the one you saved from my vile former fiancé—he was…” I say, my voice feeling small from my lips.Would you be willing to help us find him?
He tilts his massive head from side to side, and I wonder if it’s ano, or if he’s simply stretching his neck.
What must we do to earn your help?
The dragon clicks low in his chest, the vibration shaking me to the core. From the depths of the nest, something shifts. Pines are pushed aside and the air crackles with power. It smells like a storm.
I grab Kazimir’s hand, sucking in a gasp as the immature electric-blue dragon pushes its face through the foliage of the nest. The green dragon looks down on it with fondness.
“What say you? Give up a scale to save their people?”
The blue dragon winces its eyes shut in painfully slow blinks.“When they tried to sacrifice me to their gods?”
The adult grunts.“For the girl, a favor is owed.”
The blue looks up at him.“And to her people, nothing.”
“Please,” I say as my feet carry me forward. “I’ll do anything.”
“Alyse.” Kazimir hisses my name as he grabs my arm.
“Anything?”the blue asks, its head snapping toward me.
Its eyes are snake-like, the pupil a narrow slit running down its gray iris. Gray like Kazimir’s. I can see the storm in them.
“You would give meanything?”the dragon asks.
I feel in my gut that it’s going to ask for too much, but that we’ll have to give it anyway. There is no other way forward. We cannot fight two dragons and win.
“Alyse, please…” Kazimir implores and the pain in his face makes my heart reel.
I don’t want to say yes, but I must.
“Anything in my power,” I amend. “It’s yours.”
Lightning shimmers over the dragon’s face and it morphs, disappearing from view. The nest shifts, collapsing and parting as a…
A boy emerges.
He’s no more than eight with brilliant blue skin and hair white as snow. Two leathery wings sprout from his back, and his fingersare claw tipped, but he lacks a tail. He steps forward unabashedly, though he is nude, and holds out his hand. In his palm is a zapping blue scale.
“You will…make a deal…with me?” he asks, his Fynish halting and broken.
“We will,” I say.
The boy looks at Kazimir. “And you?”
