Page 115 of Dragon Fight

I couldn’t wield the fucking thing, not the way I needed to, because what had my life been but a cry for one thing and being given something far worse? I hadn’t asked to be bloody queen, to be the obstacle Raina had to grind to dust to achieve her terrible goals, to put my dragon in her sights. Because instead of a shower of golden light, my scales growing brighter and brighter as I healed the other side of my heart, the past kept shoving forward, a horrible ghost that seemed to haunt me so thoroughly I was useless for anything else.

“C’mon, lass…”

I heard the desperation in Draven’s voice as he fought to feed me that bloody awful moss and wash it down with water, forcing me to drink more, chew more. He’d known exactly what was wrong with me, struggling to get me to take the antidote even as—

My mind stuttered to a stop.

Tanis dropped away as I shoved the stone egg into my pocket. My mind felt like it was on fire as I quested out, the sound of hundreds of dragons humming in my head, filling me up. I searched among them, looking for one in particular.

Darkspire’s mind was exactly as I’d expected, sharp as a knife’s blade, but I slid along it, letting it cut me, as I speared in.

Where is Draven?I demanded.

Nesting sands. The queen—?

Is dying if your master can’t heal her. Be ready to take us to the palace.

He will know this, ‘Spire assured me and that’s when I moved.

If you askedme what the path between the kitchen to the nesting sands was after that day, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I didn’t have to know. It felt like I gleaned the knowledge from all too many minds as I zipped through them, lifting the relevant information, until I burst out onto the open area of the nesting sands.

There wasn’t as big an audience as a Gathering, but the Dukes of Skane and Tharfield, were present, standing by their representatives as they readied the young men and women to present themselves to the eggs beyond. I didn’t pay them any mind, stepping onto the sands to get closer to him, driven by the need that kept pushing me forward, strengthening my resolve as it squashed my self-doubt.

“Draven!” The prince’s head jerked up, his eyes widening, and his body going still when he saw the state of Glimmer and her blood spotting the pale bleached sand. “Draven!”

“What in the gods—?” the prince snapped, about to approach.

“Don’t move, my son.”

And that’s whenshestepped forward.

From the corner of my eye, I noted that Beatrice was here, not in the general’s office. Of course she was. Why would she meet rider justice when the queen was here to decide on her fate? I watched the countess sidle up to Draven, taking the prince’s arm, as a lady might. Her grip though? There was nothing ladylike in the way she struggled to stop him from coming to me. But the far greater obstacle and danger was where the greater part of my attention lay. The queen reared up before me like a snake about to strike, her eyes as cold as one.

“What have you done to your dragon?”

“NO!” I shouted, the whole nesting grounds echoing with it, and my hand went to the knife strapped to my thigh, jerking it free and pressing the tip to her throat. Gasps rang around the nesting grounds, but I no longer cared. When the dukes had urged me to commit treason, I had blanched, but no longer. “You will be silent or, gods help me, I’ll go to the scaffold gladly, knowing I cut your throat open.”

“Draven…”

Raina ground that out, obviously not having thought that this eventuality might arise. Her hand clawing at her necklace, but I jerked the knife down, twisting the tip between the wide links of the soft gold chain and dragging it to the side to get the resistance I needed to slice it apart. The screech she made as it slipped to the ground was delicious, and I stamped my foot down on top of it to stop her from grabbing it back.

“Mother!”

Was Draven’s cry to rebuke his murderous parent or a plea for her safety? I didn’t have the chance to check because, as he said the word, Glimmer did the same, although her mental whisper had a different tone. One of distress and need.

Mother…

My dragon never spoke about Zafira and I had assumed that was the way of dragons. They were reptiles, not mammals, their process of bearing progeny completely different, but when I heard it, my heart felt a pang of empathy.

Mother…! Mother…!

I’d made similar sounds myself while my mother lay on her deathbed, bleeding out onto the mattress as she’d tried to bear my father a son. I’d cried out for her in her lacquered wooden coffin while I watched it lowered into the ground, keeping up my sobbing until my father had forced me to stop. I’d gone back later in the night, flinging myself at the marble headstone that was all I had left of her, crying into that impervious surface, all of my pain and anguish, the bewildering emptiness I hadn’t realised could exist until she was gone.

But how often had Glimmer cried out the same thing, getting much the same result?

Zafira’s head rose, snakelike and dwarfing the lot of us. Her nostrils flared at the sight before her, sucking in a deep breath then expelling it in flurries that stirred the sands.

“Is this your cunning plan, you little bitch?” the queen sneered at me. “Poison your own dragon and then try to pin the crime on me? Draven, you must act. You see exactly what this jealous little chit is now.”

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