Page 116 of Dragon Fight

Gods above… It felt like all the breath was driven out of my lungs because, even as my dragon hung in my arms dying, Raina was still playing politics. But she wasn’t important. Draven’s healer at the palace had cured him of Kashian nut poisoning, so he could help Glimmer.

“Draven,” I said, much more steadily. “You can heal her.” My eyes flicked up to see Darkspire appear above us, gliding down to the sands. “We can take Glimmer to the palace. Your healer has the antidote.”

“Don’t take another step, son,” Raina said in a tense voice. “And call your dragon off. Zafira can dispatch Darkspire after she gets rid of this little problem and he won’t even put up a fight.” She stared down at me. “A queen does not tolerate another queen in her territory and I am done with this little facade. Zafira!”

Mother…Glimmer’s voice was weaker now, as if her essence was fading.Mother…

“What the fuck did you do, Mother!” Draven snarled, shaking off Beatrice and striding towards us. Not to disarm me, that became apparent, even as the rest of the wing came running out to the sands. “Did you poison Glimmer? What the fuck am I saying?! Of course you did.” His voice broke then, the princely mask not simply dropped but shattering in the face of his realisation. “You… You tried to kill her? What did you give her?”

When Raina didn’t answer immediately, his hands slapped down on her arms. Turning her away from me, he shook her, her head flapping back and forth on the end of her spine, her jaws clacking.

“What did you give her!”

But the queen just smiled then, despite the small drop of blood forming on her neck from my knife’s blade.

Raina was going to win. Of course she was and I took an involuntary step backwards, that instinct to run, to get the hell away from here, from the queen and her bloody dragon, from all of them burning hard inside me. She would kill Glimmer, me, and anyone else who got in her way, even Draven now he’d proved himself not willing to be a Harlstonian puppet. It was all for nothing. My fingers tried to tighten into fists, but one was curled around Glimmer, the other the dragonstone egg.

“Zafira.” Raina clicked her fingers like she was summoning a footman, not her bondmate.

Her dragon’s head rose obediently, preparing to strike. I wondered idly how painful Cecily and Arabella’s deaths had been. Did they die quickly, their lives snuffed out by the jaws of my men’s dragons? Or did they feel every movement of those razor sharp fangs as they—

“Zafira, back!” Draven snarled, throwing up a hand that had the great golden dragon jerking her head away, and he grabbed his mother’s arm. “What the fuck did you do, Mother? What did you do?”

“What I’ve always done.” She slapped her hand across his face, and Draven went still, his hand covering the mark she’d left on his cheek. “What I always will do. I remove obstacles, burn away the dross.” She raised her hand as if to attempt another blow before pointing her finger at him. “And it remains to be seen what you are. Prove it now, son. I know of your little plots and attempts at rebellion, was willing to allow you enough rope to hang yourself, but now we find out which. Do you die with your friends or slip your head from the noose?”

Darkspire let out a raucous bugle which was taken up by countless other dragons around the nesting sands. Wings flapped and dragons cried out against this crime, all but one. Mine. She coughed up more and more blood, her scales turning from gold to copper, then a dull orange. Raina noted this with a smirk, then jerked an eyebrow up at her son.

“Time’s running out, son, to prove your loyalty.”

Draven shouted and Raina screeched back, verbally jousting in a way they’d been dying to for years, no doubt. But my attention was no longer on the.

“Pippin.”

Brom slid to the sands beside me, trying to help cradle Glimmer’s lolling head, but he went pale when my dragon’s blood splattered his fingers. Soren dropped to his knees and quickly moved his hands over her body, searching for signs, something to indicate what she’d been given.

Ged stood staring down at Glimmer, his fists opening and closing as though trying to find something to hang on to. “She’ll be alright,” he tried to promise, but the look on his face, the shake in his voice, made clear that even he didn’t believe the lie he told. Flynn had turned towards Raina and was drawing his sword free of its scabbard.

“That fucking bitch…” he snarled. “I’ll cut the answer from her if I have to.”

All I could do was slump down on the sands, cradling my dragon in my arms, holding her close in the way I would after she was gone. But I wouldn’t hold her for long. If it meant I got close enough to Raina to attempt to take her life, I’d walk into Zafira’s jaws willingly after. If Glimmer was gone, I had nothing left. Nothing.

My heart…I told her, trying to keep my voice strong and true. She deserved that in her last moments.You are queen, queen of mine, always.

Mother…she whispered, so quiet it was almost as if I imagined it.

I could feel it then, a faint hint of a memory, of being in an egg and lying against her mother’s side, hearing the steady beat of her mother’s heart when she was very small. Too small to become a target for Raina’s control.

I got to my feet and stepped forward then, walking towards the queen dragon rather than away from her. My men cried out in protest, but still I strode forward. While Raina was distracted, her dragon’s head wavered, watching my every step and that’s when I realised what I could do. I hadn’t learned to wield the stone like Raina, hadn’t become strong enough to force anyone to do as I bid, but I could reach out, connect as Tanis had said.

She’s dying.I pushed that thought at Zafira, although her mind felt slippery, like I was trying to gain purchase on a cliff-face made of glass.Your daughter, your heir is dying.Zafira’s head jerked backwards at that, the only acknowledgement of my attempt to tie my mind to hers.Can’t you give her this moment?I felt irrationally angry then at the dragon’s recalcitrance.You can kill me straight after Glimmer dies, to please your queen. Just… give her this.

Sometimes people bring two parties together to get them talking, connecting, and that’s what it felt like was happening right now. Glimmer was helpless, unable to reach out to her own mother in little other than a weak plea, but I… I could give her this.

I was trying to link my mind to Zafira’s, to be the conduit between her and her daughter’s, but that’s not how it works with dragons. They don’t have layers of themselves they reveal or hide, not like humans do. So when we connected, it was completely.

And that’s when I beheld the depth of Raina’s treachery.

Zafira’s mind was a maelstrom of fear and anger and confusion, but at the centre of all that swirling emotion was one thing. A memory. Not of Glimmer, nor Raina, but of her.

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