Page 94 of Dragon Fight

“As you are to me, Ged. I...” I smiled then, feeling my throat close up. “Know that I love you as well with everything I have.”

This should’ve been a glorious moment, one where the angels sang and a stray beam of light shone down from the heavens, but instead we faced a challenge. A need to find the lads and remove them from whatever diabolical plot the queen had in play.

“I’m going to say that again when we get back to the keep,” I promised. “Over and over, until I get better at it.”

He snorted. “As if you aren’t perfect as you are. Now, let’s find those lads.”

Glimmer waited patiently; her eyes gleaming as we drew closer.

You accept them as your mates,she observed.

More and more, I agreed as we walked down the hall.It’s a hard thing for us humans. We are terribly afraid of love.

But you are not human, she told me.You are a queen. Be as fierce as a queen in love as in battle.

I’ll try, I replied wryly,though it may take me longer than a glorious creature like you. You must be patient with me.

She snorted at that, then turned to the right.

The riders are down here.

We approached a series of locked doors that had small openings built into them at eye level, but we couldn’t see much through the metal grates in the openings. The rooms seemed to be dark and dank, much like the dungeons the boys were held in. I heard muffled moans and tried to work out where we should look. Glimmer just walked up to a door and stopped in front of it, like a hound pointing to its quarry.

“Lance?”

I rushed over to the door, and was wrapping my fingers around the bars, ready to bend them with my bare hands, when I heard a reply.

“Pippin?”

His voice sounded rusty and corroded, and when he appeared before the small gap, he didn’t look much better. One eye was swollen shut and his face was covered with bruises gone a sickly yellow and green. My hand shot through, reaching out, reaching for him but he flinched back, something that hurt my heart.

“Lance, lad,” Ged said, peering around me. “Are you all there, and all in one piece?”

“All here,” Lance replied, “but in one piece? Jenkins has been lying where they threw him when we got here, not moving at all. He’s still breathing but…”

His voice trailed away as I drew back, looking down at the door, the lock. I tried the door handle, scratched at the lock in desperation before turning to Glimmer.

Do you have fire? Can you melt this lock? Burn down the door?

Not yet. Her reply was almost shamefaced.I’m not full grown and—

Before I could find out anything further, the far-off sound of a bellowing dragon’s reverberated through the complex, making Lance and the others shrink back in their cell.

“Who’d you bring?” Lance had to pause for a coughing fit, then his voice grew in strength. “Please tell me you brought others, the whole fucking corps down here, because that’s what you’ll need. This is a Harlstonian garrison in the middle of the city. They’re slowly taking over each one, though fuck knows where the king’s solders go. They either join the cause or get shoved off a cliff, I’m willing to bet. You’ll need everyone, every man to stop her, because nothing else will. She’s got that stone, Ged, the stone that—!”

We need to go, now, Glimmer told me.Darkspire is creating a diversion, but we’ve been gone too long. We can’t open this door right now.

But he can, I shot back.‘Spire could melt the place to the ground.

And declare war? A queen doesn’t tolerate—

Yes, I bloody know that, Glimmer, you’ve told me that often enough.

And the only reason why I am tolerated thus far is because I am not grown, have not claimed my mates, my territory. I am not a threat, Pippin.

And that’s what it took for me to stop. At this moment, none of us was presenting a threat. None of my husbands’ dragons were here, only Draven’s. And if he used Darkspire to retrieve the boys, to attack the garrison, it would either be spun as a rebel prince attacking the king’s own men or used to prove the fact that he was not loyal to the Harlston faction.

And I knew exactly what would happen as a result.

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