Page 111 of Dragon Fight

“That’s a hard thing, killing your own bloody mother,” Soren added. “We can do as the dukes asked, build a case against Raina and force the king to set her aside.”

But I knew how that would go. I’d never know what the hold was that Cecily had over my father. It was far less tangible than what Raina had over the king. But the results were the same, each man powerless, made impotent by the ambitions of these grasping women.

And that’s what made what I was going to do so hard.

Their eyes turned to me—as I knew that all of those who wanted peace would—but I knew what I had to tell them.

“I… can’t do what you need me to.” I reached down and grabbed the stone egg off the floor and tossed it to the nearest man, seeing it go flat and dull as soon as he caught it. “I couldn’t even freemyselffrom a stupid bitch who sought to steal all that was mine.” I smiled, but it was a wretched, jagged. “I had to wait until you swept in, seeking the truth, then dispensing justice with your dragons.”

“You were there, too,” Flynn said urgently. “You forced the truth out of her and then sent the lot of them to their maker, and determined their sentence. You weren’t passive in all of this.”

“But I couldn’t do it on my own.” I stepped back then, from them, from the stone and all that it entailed, even from Glimmer who still lay there weakly.

Pippin…?

Our bond felt shaky, fragile, as if talking to Tanis had weakened it rather than made it stronger.

“So it’s all on me?” My voice cracked, and my feet widened the distance between us as I took another step away, then another. “I’m the only one—”

“We are with you, Pippin,” Brom said, taking a step towards me, but his attempt to follow me just made things much worse. It triggered something inside me, an old impulse I had relied on for too long.

When my father had refused to hear my pleas, it had killed something in me. I’d felt like I couldn’t reach out, ask for help, for justice. Instead I’d had to tolerate the intolerable, and my apathy had boosted my abuser’s power. I had never wanted to do that with Raina, but she was queen. Her political might hammered me and everyone else down, her position made unassailable by her birth, her abilities, her dragons and her… connections.

Tanis had told me our strength came from them, but I…? Right then I just saw everyone in this room and all those outside of it who would be hurt by my inability to wield the same damn power. And that thought fed that same broken thing inside me. The Pippin who sought to stand up to such injustice was a new version of myself, not quite fully formed, and so she was something I pushed to one side as I edged towards the door.

“If I’m in some ways supposed to be the answer to this situation then we are doomed because I am…”

I hadn’t dared say this to myself, back when I looked after pigs, because to do so would’ve been the killing blow to my desire to survive. But I could now, in this unfamiliar space.

“I’m… nothing.” That both hurt and helped to say. It was like there’d been a poisonous thorn that had been festering inside me and now it was pulled free. Pus and virulent blood rushed out and that was such a relief. “I am nothing.”

I said those words to my wide-eyed audience, nodding at the truth of them.

“I’m not going to be any use to the general in this fight,” I told Soren. “Report back to him about that.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have left them, but my legs, my feet were moving before I could even think twice about it, the door to the training room slamming shut behind me as I ran. Upstairs and down hallways. A couple of times I heard my name being called as I passed, but that just had me running faster.

Left, right, straight and veering off, I ran and I ran until there was nowhere left to go. I reached a dead-end, a corner of the keep. I slowed my pace and stumbled into a little alcove that had been set there, with a tall slender window, perfect for giving a view of the capital beyond, but not so wide as to be a target for enemy projectiles. I stared down at the city, wishing for the first time that I was back at my estate. I would have curled up in the window seat in my bedroom, pulled out a book and buried my nose in it, following someone else’s adventures until I could stop thinking about my own. I settled against the sill of the window, and leaned my head against the glass to stare out, instead.

Which was perhaps why I didn’t see him coming.

“Hello, love.”

My head whipped around to discover I had been found, just not my husbands or my dragon. Marcus Lighthands stood before me, a wicked smile on his face.

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“If you’re here to give me some kind of stirring talk about being a queen, save it,” I snapped.

Marcus’ eyebrows shot up.

“I would never,” he told me. “Don’t like queens much myself. Never had much time for any sort of royalty. Seems like a singularly stupid way of running a country, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t,” I bit off, then was forced to wipe at my nose with the back of my hand as more blood dripped free.

“Here.” He handed me a clean, if well darned, handkerchief. “Don’t like to see a lass bleeding either. Honestly, I think this country would benefit from one hundred percent less queens,” he said, as I wiped my nose.

“More seditious talk from men who seem intent on holding clandestine meetings with me,” I said, pacing back and forth as I tried to stop my nose bleeding. “What a surprise. So let me guess, you have a cunning plan to take down the government, stop war and, somehow, I’m a key part of it.”

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