Page 71 of Dragon Fight

Damn you, I do, I insisted, fear making my heart leap in my chest.

What the general had described was inadequate to what I felt the closer I got to the dragons. They didn’t seem like the others in the mews, eating, chirruping, chittering, creeling when the man in the apron brought food over. They didn’t seem like Glimmer, self-contained and perfect. Instead they were… locked up in something, a darkness, and not just the literal darkness their potential riders were being subjected to. These dragons clawed their way away from us, spines curving, heads low, fangs flashed defensively as wave after wave of fear and pain poured off them.

Glimmer stopped and faced me, as if willing me to understand, but she needn’t have. As soon as the psychic connection between her, me and the other young dragons was established then I was yanked in. To a dark place, a dank one that stank of mould, blood and fear. My muscles tensed, my teeth locked together as I heard the furtive whispers of my friends, too scared to give full throat to their terror in the darkness. They’d already learned what happened when they did that. My hand delved into my pocket, the heavy weight of the crystal egg that Cynane had given us warming in my palm as I did so.

“Where are you?” I asked in a low voice, having no idea what Ged heard or the man tending to the dragons in the mews.

“Pippin?” Lance’s voice was a mixture of terror and responsibility. “Gods above, tell me you’re not in here too. She wants you. Tell me she didn’t get her hands on you!”

“Not there,” I said, blinking, seeing the room and the darkness overlaid over top of each other. “But where are you? How did this happen?”

“Queen’s men came when Zafira rose,” Lance muttered desperately. “Went looking for you and took us when you couldn’t be found.”

“Fuck…” I tried not to curse too often, but now was the right time for it. “I should’ve—”

“Done exactly as you did. You got out, right? You’re safe, right?”

Lance seemed to need to know that so very desperately, his voice breaking on the words, tears clogging his throat. I could feel his pain as if it was my own down the connection we shared. There were parts of him that ached deeply, like old wounds that had never healed and others that were sharp and fresh, much harder to ignore.

“I’m safe,” I replied, “and I need you to be. Where did the queen take you?”

“To an interrogation chamber at first. Gave her men carte blanche to do what they wanted to us. I tried to fight them.” He ground those words out, then spat something onto the ground. “I tried so fucking hard.”

“You were outnumbered, outmanned,” I said, trying to reassure him.

“Completely fucking outmanned. She had us thrown in one of the castle dungeons to rot and until yesterday that’s where we stayed. They came for us last night, beat us back and then pulled hoods over our heads. I thought we were on our way to the scaffold. Jenkins begged and then they beat him…” I could almost feel the lump in his throat, stopping him from saying much more. Probably because I felt my own do the same. “But we were moved somewhere. Somewhere dark, dank.”

While I’d been swanning around the countryside, enjoying my honeymoon. Hot bile rose in my throat, feeling like it was choking me.

“We’ll get you out. Half the keep is in an uproar, thinking the queen has something to do with this,” I promised him. “We’ll stage a bloody insurrection if we have to, bring every dragon we can to the palace and burn it to the ground to get you out.”

“Please, Pippin…”

That was the part that broke me. When I met Lance, he was a tall lad, strong and capable, showing me how to wield a sword and hold a shield with considerable patience, the man he would become clear in the boy. That Lance would never kneel, never beg, but right now, that’s what he did.

“You will not say a fuckingword about this to anyone,” Ged growled to the mews tender, his brows pulled down into a severe frown. I blinked, the connection with Lance fading slowly and for a moment it felt like the two figures were overlaid over each other. But as the world came back, the mews worker cringed back in response to Ged’s ire.

“Of course not, Rider Ged. I would—”

“You a Harlston man?”

The man in the apron shook his head violently.

“I’m from Hartsborough,” he stammered out. “In Tharfield.”

“Then you know how badly this will go if any of this conversation gets out.” Ged stabbed his finger into the man’s chest and he stumbled back, the smaller dragons around him fluttering in response, but those before us? Glimmer approached with a low crooning song, the lads’ dragons seeming to relax in increments at the sound of it.

Get meat, Glimmer said inside my head.Get meat now!

I stumbled over to the man and plucked the bucket of meat scraps from his hands, lurching back over to the dragons. Glimmer’s orders forced my limbs to move before my brain could respond. I dropped down onto my knees, the violence of the gesture making the dragons shrink back, but not for long. When we’d broken the connection to Lance and the others, something else had roared back. The dragons’ natural, animal need to survive had them scrambling over, clambering up onto my lap and snatching up scraps of meat, scoffing them down.

“Gods above…” the man gasped. “I haven’t been able to get them to eat a scrap for days.”

“Pippin has the touch,” Ged said, settling down beside me. “Slowly now.”

He plucked a dragon off my lap, striking it between the shoulder blades as it choked on a hastily swallowed morsel. The meat was spat out on the floor, but the dragon fought free, scrambling to get at the other scraps until Glimmer stepped between them. Her humming song grew louder, more intense, feeling like it filled the whole room right then, which made me wonder what it was.

What are you doing, Glimmer?

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