Chapter Twelve
I wake with a scream in my throat. I shouldn’t be here—shouldn’t be alive.
I’m hot and damp with sweat, and I can’t make out anything in the pitch blackness of my surroundings.
Sitting bolt upright, my fingers grasp at a gritty stone floor.
The balmy air tastes like mildew. Not only that, but the oxygen seems depleted.
I try to catch my breath, but I can’t seem to.
“She’s awake.”
The voice is nearby, but I can’t see a thing. It’s a male voice, vaguely familiar.
“Can she see us?” asks an imperial voice with a strange accent.
No, I can’t freaking see them! It’s pitch dark. The last thing I remember is falling off the back of a dragon and plummeting toward my death. Except I didn’t die. At least, I don’t think I did. Somehow I lived even though I must have been a mile from the earth when I fell.
What the actual fuck?
I jump to my feet, marveling that my body seems unharmed.
I try to remember what exactly happened before the dragon ride.
We were in that alley, and then… The sound of fighting and screeching echoes through my mind.
Blood. There had been blood that splattered out in the alleyway.
Did my guys kill Bradley? Sharp Tooth was working for the Sun King. Maybe he was the dragon?
Did my guys grab me and run because they were afraid of the king? Were they caught?
“Who’s there?” I demand, reaching out a hand, trying to find a wall or another person. “What did you do with my friends? Where am I?”
“Stop stumbling around before you hurt yourself,” says the gravely old woman voice, sounding a bit annoyed. “You’re fine.”
Fuck that. I step slowly, moving through the darkness with my hands outstretched.
There’s a loud sigh, and then a plume of fire shoots out, and a torch bursts to life.
I stifle a shriek as another torch in the wall ignites.
Light flickers over walls made of brown stone threaded with veins of gold.
Beneath my feet, what I had taken for pebbles are loose gold nuggets that glitter in the firelight.
A massive snow-white statue of a dragon stands on four legs near the wall, its body encrusted with jewels.
The thing is twice the height of a grown man and twice more that long from nose to tail.
Watching in shock, I can’t tear my eyes away as it stops next to an unlit torch.
Not a statue.
Its maw opens, bearing sharp fangs, and it sighs, igniting the next torch with a plume of fire.
A Dragon.
It’s much larger than I thought it would be so close. Probably around three-hundred or so pounds, maybe more. Its skin is sheathed in luminescent white scales.
It turns to blink silver-disc eyes at me.
“Do not be afraid.” A stooped, wrinkled old woman appears out of the gloom before me.
Her hair is white and straight as icicles as it falls around her shoulders, all the way to her waist. She pets the green beast beside her, another dragon, this one encrusted in emeralds and diamonds.
This one is smaller, with a translucent ruff around its neck and she same leathery sort of webbing on the back of its legs.
Her hand runs down its scaly side. “He’d probably chew off his own tail before harming you. You’re very safe with this one.”
“Who are you, and where are Pax and True?” I demand, all in one breath.
“Calm yourself, child.”
I glare at her spookiness, ready to run past the woman. The dragons could definitely take me, but it’s too tight a space to maneuver in. Before I can do anything though, the green dragon opens its mouth, sighs, and lights a torch on the opposite wall.
Light falls fully on the old woman’s features, and I suck in a breath, squinting at her. It can’t be who I think, and yet… Something in her face is undeniably familiar.
“Are you…?” I break off, my heart hammering so hard I can’t speak. Choking back a gasp, I drop to my knees, bowing my head to expose the back of my neck to her. “Your majesty, I’m sorry for my rudeness—I...”
The only things I can think to say would come out ruder, so I fall silent.
“Forgiven,” she says. “You may stand. I like to talk to faces, not necks.”
I climb to my feet again, panic thundering in my ears.
I chew on my lip, ashamed of my earlier abruptness as I stare into a face much like the one in the portraits I’ve seen at the academy and in drawings so many times, but much, much older.
No one has seen the queen in hundreds of years—at least no one who returned to tell the tale.
She looks much older than I expected, ancient and imperious yet perilously frail, like a phoenix feather about to crumble to ash.
“Your majesty,” I say, licking my lips. “I’m so honored to make your acquaintance, but I have to get back. My—my companions might be hurt!”
“They’re alive,” she assures me. “They’re fine.”
My heart settles a bit. “Where am I?”
“The better question might be, why have I brought you here,” she says with a wizened smile. “You are in my lair, are you not?”
“I don’t know,” I say, looking around at the dank cave, the moss-covered earthen walls, the gold nuggets underfoot. “Am I?”
“Yes,” she says, still smiling. “You are home, where you belong.”
“Where I—belong?” I nearly squeak the last word.
“Come, open your eyes and look around you.” She motions to the white dragon, which I had forgotten.
If that’s even possible. It bends down, its legs tensing before it launches itself into the air, and I fight back a shriek as it swoops off into the darkness above.
Seconds later, light appears in one direction, and I can see a long, rough-hewn tunnel.
The queen steps into it, and I follow her.
At a bend, we step onto a stone staircase, only to feel it buck under our feet.
I cry out in surprise, reaching for the walls, but they have fallen away as the stair rises.
Seconds later, the stairs flatten, becoming marble tiles in the floor of a large, round room.
Colorful light cascades down from slabs of clear, dragonstone windows set into a ceiling dome.
Moonlight streams through them onto a throne made of shimmering, iridescent, translucent white stone.
An even bigger, dark gold dragon waits there, lazing on the floor just before the throne.
It opens one eye at us, and the queen runs her hand over the top of its head, where a horned protrusion juts out.
“Is this… Is this the dragon palace?”
I know I sound like an idiot, but the only place I’ve been aside from my village is the academy and that one night on the roof with Pax in the next town over.
Since dragons were hunted and persecuted for various reasons, the queen hasn’t been seen in centuries.
There have been rumors since I was a kid that she didn’t exist, that she was long since dead.
So knowing I’m in the dragon palace has me in awe, even if I’m clueless as to why I’m here.
Apparently I’ve teleported to a hidden and heavily guarded palace without having passed so much as a single guard, and that’s the only location I need to know.
“Welcome home,” the queen says with a smile as her hand runs tenderly over the tarnished gold dragon’s head.
I step back, shaking all over. It’s too much. “I’m sorry, your highness, but I feel like you might be mistaking me for someone else. This isn’t my home.”
“It will be home from now on,” she says, never missing a beat as she pets the massive, scaly beast. “I hope your short time at the academy has taught you the traditions of our family, though I’m sorry it was cut short tonight. Did Sinetar teach you all you needed to know about our court?”
I want to laugh. Professor Sinetar offered to teach me how to get punished over his desk, but he didn’t teach me much about the dragon court.
He encouraged us to study whichever artifacts and histories we wanted.
Professor Mitchel was a little more strict, but it was clearly too little, too late.
Between lusting after my professor and skipping classes to hang out with my sister, I’ve been less than an ideal student.
“Allowing you to attend may have been a mistake. Sinetar believes someone there betrayed you to the enemy.” She sighs and steps up the pedestal, taking a seat on the throne.
“I’d hoped that your disguise would have lasted long enough for you to get the education you worked so hard for, but fate intervened, and now I need you here with me. ”
“Your enemy?” I look down at my body, my torn dress, the gems covering my skin. “There was a guy who’d been following me around and he grabbed me. He tried to kidnap me, said he was taking me to the one true king.”
“Dragons are naturally matriarchal. It is in our genetics. It is essential to our survival.” She sighs and leans back, looking wearied.
“The Sun King does not agree. He grew powerful in the Sun Kingdom while I was in hiding, and yet, he knew that I was the true queen of all dragons. He could not bear the thought that he was not the most powerful in the world.”
I nod, unsure if she wants an answer.
“He attacked the palace where I was staying in an attempt to destroy my eggs. Between him and the hunters endangering our kind, I was forced to hide my heirs throughout the lands for safekeeping, my offspring left to the care of strangers and raised as humans, lest they draw his attention. I’m sure you’ve heard tell of the moon dragon, now extinct.
I was never able to find a moon dragon mate, so no heir to their kingdom remains.
Soon, they will be forgotten, nothing but a legend told to hatchlings as a cautionary tale. ”
I remember the lesson about moon dragons Sinetar taught, though it wasn’t my favorite, since it didn’t seem to affect the world of today.
I was more interested in learning that some humans and other supernaturals hate the queen, accuse her of hoarding riches while so much of the world suffers in poverty.
I approach the queen, but the tawny dragon raises its head to stare at me, and I stop. “I still don’t understand why I’m here. Whatever you want, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m a human.”
“No, child,” she says. “You are a dragon. You will soon take your dragon form for the first time.”
A hysterical laugh bursts from my lips. “What kind of joke is this? I’m obviously human. Look at me. I must have hit my head and I’m hallucinating.”
“I assure you, this is all quite real,” she says, a sympathetic smile on her wrinkled lips. With a snap of her fingers, the pure white dragon races across the floor, stops at her side, and turns to me. In one smooth, swift motion, it sweeps up into human form. A very familiar, human form.
“True,” I whisper, stumbling back in shock.
“My time as queen has reached an end, my daughter,” the queen says, snapping my attention back to her. “Your time has come.”