Page 59 of Dragon Fight

“Well, well, I had expected to see the three of you at some point,” Draven said, flopping down onto the very nice bed he’d been given and looking up at us with a smirk. “But not so soon. Missed me?”

This one is very annoying, Glimmer informed me before stalking over to where Darkspire lay in the corner of the prince’s room. As she clambered up his side, the big dragon opened one eye to watch her find a spot and settle, before closing it again.

We think so too, I replied to her.

“I don’t think we’ve had anywhere near long enough of an absence to feel anything like that,” Brom said, but Draven’s focus was on Brom’s body language, not his words. The prince watched the wing commander wrap his arm around my waist, tucking me into his side. “We’re here to talk about your mother.” Any scrap of amusement Draven might have been feeling was wiped from his expression. “And what she’s doing to the cadets.”

“They were bruised, chastened, when I saw them,” Draven said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, a look of concern on his face. “But in one piece. They need to be to ensure my compliance.”

“We went to see the nest of an ancient dragon today,” Brom said.

“Tanis?” Draven asked. We nodded. “Well, things have escalated if they let you in there.”

“She showed us…” I went to explain what I’d seen but then my eyes narrowed as I stared at the Nithian prince. Whose side was he actually on? Ours, his father’s, his mother’s or just his? The latter I decided. “… a lot,” I finished lamely. “But we did see her with Lance and Jenkins.”

“Doing what?” When that damn smirk was wiped away, like now, he became just Draven. A rather desperate Draven. “What the hell is she doing now?”

“Does your mother have any unsavoury habits?” Brom asked. “Beyond killing young dragon queens that prove themselves to be inconvenient.”

“And murdering my brother, her elder son,” Draven replied with a growl. “You forgot that. But you’re asking about the dungeons.” Those blue eyes seemed to bore into my face. “That’s what you saw.”

“Her, the cadets and a sharp knife,” I said. “No more than that. The boys though…” I sucked in a breath. Their stricken faces were clearly etched in my brain. “They looked hurt beyond what you described.”

“Fuck!” Draven leapt to his feet and then paced across the floor, his boots making sharp clicking sounds with each step. “She’s like a damn child pulling the wings off butterflies, with just as much thought about what she’s doing. I thought…” He let out a sharp huff of breath. “I need to go back, now.” He walked towards the door of the room but, when he opened it, a dark blue dragon looked up slowly from where he was stationed across the entryway. “Tell them to let me go, Brom,” Draven ordered. “I can get into the castle—”

“And?” Brom stood tall, his attitude, his bearing formal now. “What’s the plan, my prince?”

Draven stopped. Brom’s use of his title prompted him to remember who and what he was. The man blinked, then nodded, walking over to the small table in the room and drew out a chair for each of us and indicating for us to sit down as he did so himself. His steepled his hands in front of his face as he stared at the tabletop.

“If we can get the lads out of the dungeons and back to the keep, what’s to stop her from strolling back in again and taking them or just killing them outright?” Draven seemed to be talking to himself rather than to us. I yanked one of my knives free to fiddle with it in the nervous habit I seemed to have picked up. After a few moments I slammed it down into the table in frustration. The blade quivered with the effort and the stones in the hilt? They shone almost as bright as they had in Tanis’ nest. I looked at them, then up at the other two. “The stones…”

“Could we beg the dragon enclave for a more powerful stone?” Brom asked. “They all seem to differ in strength, in capability. If we had more time—”

“We’d learn to wield them?” Draven snorted. “Unlikely. The dragons don’t want to put a powerful psychic amplifier in the hands of a human. Every single dragonstone you’ve seen since coming here, with the exception of those in Tanis’ lair, are the weaker kind which will only store a day or two’s memories, do little other than soothe the dragons who lay upon them. But…”

“But what?” Brom asked, leaning closer when Draven didn’t answer. “But what?”

“The use of the stones must’ve been widespread at some point, no doubt during the reign of the queens.” Draven’s focus flicked between me and Brom. “My mother somehow stumbled upon it, sorting through my father’s treasure chambers. Or perhaps my grandmother before her? She may have passed the secret on to my mother and…”

He let out a hiss of breath before turning to Darkspire.

“Lad, do you feel the strength of the different stones?”

The prince waited for his dragon to answer, but as we stared at ‘Spire I saw Glimmer open one eye.

“The stones don’t matter.”

“What?” the two men said.

“The stones don’t matter,” I said again, then shifted my focus to Draven. “If she was so powerful or proficient with them that she could do anything she wanted, Glimmer and I would be dead by now, with no one left alive who remembered us. Remember: the queen had to wait until Zafira rose to mate to be powerful enough to attempt that, using her dragon’s innate psychic powers to augment her dragonstone, and Zafira won’t rise again for some time.”

My words felt like ashes in my mouth as I realised why those cadets were in the dungeon.

Because the one the queen really wanted was out of her reach.

“Raina took Lance and the other cadets because she needed hostages to ensure you did what she wanted, but she didn’t need them before. Because we…” I stared at the prince, remembering his heated words, then repeating them back to him. “What I’ve wanted was always far grander than that. Everything and every person who is mine.” Brom flushed at that. “When the wing was in the keep, she had something to hold over your head. If I’m there, she’ll have something to redirect her murderous impulses towards.”

“Pippin, no.” Brom’s voice was hushed, urgent in tone. “You’ll stay here. You have to stay here. If you return, she’ll kill you—”

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