Page 77 of A Matter of Destiny

Instead, this elf must have opened a hole directly behind the throne.

Still, it’s ridiculous. It’s idiotic. What is Rensivar supposed to do, trip and fall off the throne he’s just claimed? Blunder like a blind beast into a pit trap? I’m almost ready to whip my head around and give the elf a rude hand gesture of my own when a sudden realization spreads over me like ice frosting a windowpane.

All this chained elf with the burning blue eyes needs is a weapon. Something strong and hard, pointed at just the right place, to tip Rensivar and his throne into the trap waiting just behind him.

I take a breath, say goodbye to this human form that has carried me through so many adventures, and stretch forward, reaching for the dragon form my mother gave me. My borrowed clothes shred, and the sound of sundered fabric fills the pine grove. My wings stretch forward, the night air fluttering along their edges. And every voice in the Tarn of the Maiden falls silent.

I walk out of the trees on four legs, my head down, my gaze on the grass, my heart thudding like a funeral dirge in my chest. I will not look at Doshir, and that will be a gift to him. If this fails, there will be no final longing glance to pin him to me.

“Ah, my Champion,” Rensivar booms. “At last.”

There’s a touch of pride in his voice that would have been hard to understand back in Valgros, when I thought I was nothing to him. Before I knew he’d sired me, kidnapped me, and stripped me of my identity. And then raised me to be a weapon.

I clench my jaw to keep from twisting my lips into a smile. Because I am the weapon. My claws dig into the ground as I brace myself against the mountain, ready to fire. Ready to explode in his hand.

“This is Rayne,” Rensivar announces. He sweeps a claw across the ridge line as if encompassing all of the Iron Mountains. “My Champion.”

I pull in a breath. My heart pulses low and strong, a war drum in my chest. Every muscle in my body stands at attention. For just a moment, I let myself remember the men of His Majesty’s Royal Army as they stood atop the ridge, their weapons at the ready. Rensivar’s lips part into a grin, and he turns to look down at me like he’s picking a piece of meat in the marketplace.

“She is my daughter,” he says.

A clamor of voices rises behind me. I close my eyes, sink my claws into the earth, and breathe, letting the scent of crushed grass and pine pitch, of stone and water and dragon, fill my lungs. Then I open my eyes slowly, focusing on the tangled mass of metal that is the Throne of Claws. My father’s tail threads through the base of the throne, moving like a serpent in the sun. I narrow my eyes at that point, that fulcrum of nightmare steel.

And then I explode.

Chapter34

Doshir

“No!” I scream.

My heart feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of my chest, and the fire inside me burns the back of my throat. Rensivar said her name. He just called Rayne forward, claimed she would serve as his Champion, and by all the names of all the blessed Mothers, she can’t—

Something hard and warm closes over the back of my claws as Rensivar’s massive head swings toward me, his eyes narrow and his lips pulled back in a snarl. I turn away from Rensivar’s gaze. The pain howling through my body from the ragged hole in my wing echoes the shock and rage howling through my mind.

How could this have happened? How could I have let this happen?

My eyes sting, then focus on my claws. A hoary silver paw rests over them. Nyrgin. I glance up to see him shaking his head, and I force my jaw shut as reason wages a brutal battle against my heart.

Somehow, Rensivar just split open the mountainside that has cradled the Tarn of the Maiden since before the time of dragons. His magic swallowed an entire human army. Mothers above, I just saw it happen. We all saw it happen, the kind of thing that belongs to legends that make reasonable people shake their heads, wave their hands, and then call the split earth a metaphor and the magic symbolic.

But it was real. The air stinks of dragon blood and upturned earth, and most of the dragons of the Queensmoot are still in the air, hovering uneasily over ground that had been solid for their entire lives and then suddenly, horribly, was not.

Above me, Rensivar makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. He’s sitting on the Throne of Claws now, sitting like some horrible parody of my mother, the previous black dragon to claim that throne. His tail curls through the elaborate rings and arches beneath the seat, and his claws twist around the sharp edges.

“Oh, but she will,” Rensivar announces, his voice sliding through the air. “Or do you care so little for your king, Rayne?”

The sound of her name in his jaw makes my scales stand on edge. My low growl cuts through the air, and Nyrgin’s grip tightens over my claws. Don’t, he’s saying. Not now. I pull a breath through my nostrils and try to control my own frantic heart. Why accuse Rayne of caring so little for her king? He couldn’t possibly mean himself; Rayne fled Valgros, and she fled from him as well.

Valgros. King. Donovan. The pieces slide together, but they still don’t make sense. Rayne’s human face rises in my memory, her cheeks painted by the firelight, tears glittering like diamonds in her lashes.I gave him everything, she’d said,and he never cared for me at all.

But how would Rensivar know that? Something flutters beneath my scales like the first spring wind after a long winter. Rensivar thinks he holds the whip that can beat Rayne into submission, but by the Mothers, he’s wrong. Rayne ran from Rensivar, and she ran from King Donovan. For just a moment, I let myself imagine her brilliant crimson wings spreading against the night sky. Lifting Rayne into a better life, somewhere far from here.

“Oh, Rayne!” Rensivar calls. “Don’t keep the dragons waiting, child.”

My eyes jump from Rensivar’s open jaws to the ridge line, to Wendolyn scowling at me as she makes slow circles above the tarn, and then back to Rensivar. I don’t see any sign of Rayne at all. Perhaps this is all an elaborate bluff. Perhaps she was never here, and she fled last night. The thought twists inside my chest, equally painful and oddly satisfying. Perhaps she’s gone to the Silver City, just like we talked about doing a lifetime ago in my little room above the Valorous Arms in Valgros.

“Rayne!” Rensivar cries.

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