Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Sometimes they need to stand in front like they’re the big, scary one. Don’t laugh.
-Humaning for Beginners: A Dragon’s Tale of Human Management
Taron slid to his knees beside me, his boots sinking into the mud. He bowed his head in a gesture that was almost reverent.
I welcomed his presence as sadness and fury collided in my chest. One man’s cruelty and another’s secrecy had extinguished a life of such beauty and wild, fierce grace.
Emotions I hadn’t dared let myself acknowledge surged to the fore. Inside me, a violent storm erupted. I wasn’t blameless in this. I’d been so occupied with my troubles, I’d lost sight of those of my people.
While I could do nothing to change the past, I could absolutely change the future and protect my queendom as never before. A list of tasks became as clear as my emotions were raw.
Kill Lorik, as I’d vowed.
Punish Councilman Roland for helping produce this tragedy.
Cut Taron from my life for good. Even if it meant sending him home and destroying the traveling stones myself.
Remind my people why loyalty mattered, so every traitor learned that betrayal would be paid in blood. If the skies must blaze, so be it. This should never have happened, and it would never happen again.
I sat in the dirt, my breath hitching in shallow bursts.
Taron gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. An unexpected comfort and wholly unbearable.
I flinched, not from pain, but from the threat of emotional collapse. Such a simple gesture shouldn’t have the power to crack me open, but here we were.
“She asked for protection,” he said low, as if to not wake Leah. “There must be a reason she waited for you, and it wasn’t to deliver Lorik’s message.”
“Nein.” I closed her lids with gentle fingers. Her sweet face no longer radiated raw sorrow. “She had a message of her own.”
Her final words echoed fractured and haunting. Hand shaking, I stroked the soft fur of her snout. “Stone. Heart. Take. Do you think she meant the words literally?” My voice cracked, low and fragile.
Taron’s expression of concern appeared carved from steel. “There’s only one way to find out.”
I gulped. “I don’t want…not sure I can…”
“Let me. Please.”
I chewed my bottom lip. Here I was, a dragon berserkatrix, and a queen to boot. Rooting around a dead body wasn’t new to me, but I nodded, more tears falling. “Everything is catching up to me, I think.”
“I understand,” he offered with a heavy tone. He withdrew a dagger.
“I suppose I identify with Leah’s plight. When I lost Leopold, I lost my entire world.” And now…
My gaze landed on Taron. Now, I was going to lose someone I craved but shouldn’t.
“You loved him,” he said, voice still so heavy.
“Ja.” Of that, I had no doubt.
A muscle jumped beneath his eye. “That… none of us knew.”
He got to work, motions quick and efficient, handling Leah’s body with a respect that comforted me.
Dang him. Without meaning to, I slipped from tolerance into something far more dangerous.
I doubted I’d ever be able to go back to being enemies at war.
If we severed the bond and said goodbye—when we severed the bond and said goodbye—I would remember him here, like this.
The friend who’d helped me through a difficult situation.
“You were right.” Taron freed our prize.
My heart thudded at the sight of the lament stone. A small, round, transparent rock, glittering as if it contained a collection of tears.
The dragon prowled through my mind, its desire clear. Give her a warrior’s ending.
I glanced down at the dear thing, who’d guarded the stone with her life until my arrival. Oh, ja, of course. Leah had served the queen of her homeland well, and she deserved a warrior’s death.
As Taron cleaned up the lament stone and added it to the cloth holding the other ingredients, I gathered materials available inside the pen and built a makeshift pyre of sticks and rocks.
With my hand on Leah’s face, I spoke my thanks.
Not just to her, but to all those who’d served me and died in service to the queen.
“You will forever live on in the hearts you helped.” Then, I blew a gentle stream of my hottest fire from her head to her paws.
The flames licked over her body and worked fast. Within minutes, she was ash, floating away in the breeze.
Finally, Taron whispered, “It’s time.”
Ja, with all three ingredients in our possession, it was time for us to return to the palace and brew our potion. And stay alert, expecting Lorik to attack.
At my nod, Taron extended a hand and raised me to my feet. We didn’t speak as we strode through the village, our pace matched without effort, not stopping until we reached Vogler, who patiently waited for us.
“You have been a gracious host, Staffholder,” I said. “Expect an invitation to the palace. We have much to discuss, including the needs of your citizens.”
He nodded his thanks and extended his arm toward a gate past the village garden. “The launch pad is this way.”
“Are you ready to fly again?” I asked Taron.
“Always.”
The silence resumed as we wrapped our arms around each other.
The feel of him…his strength and the intensity of his presence screwed with my composure, but I hid it well.
I was sure of that. One hundred percent.
Holding his stare, I unfurled my smokewings, lifting us off the ground. Another flap and we soared higher.
I released him as soon as my wings caught a current.
We glided through the night’s dark sky, now lit up with stars.
A beautiful sight for a victorious journey, and yet, I felt as if I was flying straight to my doom.
I tried to shake it off, but that only intensified the impending dread.
Worse, my dragon still prowled through my mind, once again demanding, Burn him.
Cinders! The need to test him in my flames blazed, fierce and sure. I’d never been able to resist in the past, and shouldn’t have been able to resist now, with Taron. A difference I didn’t understand. Unless…
What if Leopold hadn’t been my firebrand?
Nein. Wrong. Of course he was. Had to be. The way I’d shaped my life after his death proved it.
Didn’t it?
And yet the question pressed harder. What if, what if, what if?
I’d assumed he was, though he’d never faced my fury. Never had an opportunity to calm me. Taron had, and he’d passed the test with extra credit. What if it had never been Leopold at all? What if this particular Locke was always meant for me?
If Taron could be made into a phoenix…if he were indeed my firebrand… if he could forgive me for the long line of Lockes who’d died in the past…if he could survive my flames… Longing gripped me. So many ifs. Questions, suppositions. Risks.
Could I—wait. Hmm. What was that? A cloud of smoke loomed ahead. Frowning, I narrowed my focus. The second I identified what I saw, my stomach roiled. Two shifters flew our way.
A very much alive Nyla sat astride the one on the left, and my injured father rode the other. Rainer, Lorik’s right-hand man. The former lay slumped over, soaked in blood and secured by rope. While Nyla possessed her hands and feet, Cedric did not.
To escape my dungeon, he’d needed help from within. Seemed I had a traitor in my midst.
I swallowed back bile.
The pair noticed my approach, their initial shock quickly twisting into glee. Before them flew the queen, no army in sight, only a vulnerable human in tow. A single strike to knock me off course and Taron would fall to his death.
“Shifters,” I hissed, craning my neck to toss the word at Taron. His human eyes wouldn’t be able to see through the smoke, as I could.
Rainer branched off, seemingly flying away from me. The other kept coming with Nyla, war written in every line of his body.
“Do what you gotta do,” Taron shouted over the noise. “I’ll be good.”
Let’s hope so. With a thunderous shout that shook the entire realm, I unleashed my fury. Fire ignited in my veins, a searing promise of the coming pain. In a blink, my body surged outward. Limbs elongated, scales erupted across skin as liquid flame then quickly hardened into molten armor.
I am dragon, hear me roar.
I folded my wings without a word, knowing I had one chance to turn the sky into a weapon.
For a heartbeat, the world became a roar of wind and the sick, sweet tang of adrenaline as I plummeted.
The current that had carried Taron vanished, and he fell with me; for a breathless second, we plunged together into an open throat of sky.
He didn’t panic. Rather, he trusted me. That trust steadied something raw inside me, and I angled my body with a violence that made the air scream.
He landed hard between my shoulders, an unforgiving weight that knocked the wind from us both.
I felt every impact through every bone, while his exhale was a grunt of pain and effort.
Still, he didn’t falter. He clamped his thighs tight around me, the grip of a man born to ride.
His hands clutched my scales. He rode like a second heartbeat.
The shifter answered with a jagged river of fire, cutting the sky into a molten rift.
Heat licked my flank, but I didn’t lose speed or countered an attack.
I folded one wing, twisting beneath the blaze to shield Taron from the worst of it.
Sparks slapped at me; a strip of my left wing smoked and drooped, the shifter’s flames tinged with dragon poison.
Pain sang sharp under my scales, but I couldn’t afford to scream.
Retaliation would be useless. Flames wouldn’t even blister our foe’s hide. The best I could do was what my opponent intended: injure his rider. As Taron had trusted me, I trusted him. Rather than expend my energy on Nyla, I would focus on the beast and let Taron handle the manticore.
This fight was going to be blood and bone.
Incoming. . .
Rainer and I bit and clawed at each other as we passed. Nyla maintained her saddle seat, angling and attempting to shear me open with a sword. Taron stopped her.