Chapter Eighteen #2
“And as soon as I ‘hatched,’ I was hidden with humans who raised me, fully believing that I was their own daughter,” I say, my throat aching a little at the thought of my parents. They feel a world away now.
Shynia’s eyes move to my side, fixing on True.
Her sudden annoyance is replaced by a flash of recognition.
“It was you, wasn’t it, Captain True?” she asks, her tone accusatory.
“I’ve seen you with the queen many times over the years, whispering secrets, and now you’re by the heir’s side. You were the one who hid her egg.”
True’s head dips almost imperceptivity, but I can’t tell if it’s a nod or a bow. His ghostly blue eyes never waver, staying that pale, frost color that’s as impenetrable as arctic ice.
I turn to him. “You? You hid me for five hundred years?”
He straightens. “Yes, your majesty.”
I was hatched from an egg. I still can’t believe it. Until a couple days ago, I’ve always been human, and the fact that I’m not keeps smacking me upside the head with a new wave of disbelief. I shake it away and try to stay grounded in this moment, in what’s happening with the porcelain bitch.
“Why didn’t you become queen?” I ask her. “Why me and not you?”
“Master Sinetar,” Shynia grits out, her jaw clenching as she looks down at her nails, encrusted with jewels and sharp as blades. “How can she not know this?”
“You’re the strongest heir,” Master Sinetar says to me. “You have the purest dragon blood of all the surviving children. Therefore, fate chose you to be the next queen, not Shynia. And so it is.”
I still don’t get it. The dragon world had a perfectly capable queen for years, just sitting here at court, waiting to become queen, and they saved the position for some dumb egg.
Then I hatch and eighteen years later, poof, I’m queen.
It makes me wonder how long Shynia actually spent in the Sun Court.
I assumed that she’s eighteen or so, like me, but shifters don’t age for centuries.
“There are many theories to why one princess hatchling supersedes another,” Shynia says with a sniff, sounding almost bored.
“Perhaps you have the purest dragon blood of all the surviving children, like your tutor says, or perhaps your magic developed the strongest and most royal because of whichever prince happened to fertilize your egg during that mating cycle for the queen.”
“So, after True saved our eggs, we were separated in case he was caught,” I surmise. “He kept watch over mine. Where was yours? Did you grow up in the ice kingdom with your father?”
She scoffs. “My father? How pedestrian.”
“Okay then, not your father…”
“I was moved around too,” she says. “First as an egg, and then as a hatchling. I was never at any one court too long—but I was raised in royal courts, not out there with humans like a beast.” She wrinkles her pretty nose before looking down it at me.
“If it pleases your grace…” True mutters.
Shynia clicks her diamond-encrusted nails together. “I’ve lived with tutors who trained me to take the throne in case I was the fated queen for almost a century. Turns out, I’m just the spare. You’re the heir.”
“Lucky me.”
“You are lucky,” she snaps. “With me here, you won’t have to worry about our people.
You can rest easy knowing dragonkind will be well led if something were to happen to you.
Our queen hasn’t had that luxury for centuries.
She was thousands of years old when her oldest sister died.
That’s why she’s had to be so cautious and hide away so completely while she waited a thousand years to leave the kingdom in capable hands. ”
She looks me up and down with an arched brow that says, “And look what she got.”
I can’t really blame her. Shynia has felt the pressure to measure up for a hundred years now, only to learn that the queen has been hiding another egg this whole time. I almost feel sorry for the princess.
“The queen is thousands of years old?”
“Three thousand, eight-hundred and forty-three,” Sinetar informs me.
“That’s a long time to be responsible for dragonkind.”
“As I said, you won’t have to live under that type of pressure,” my sister says with an artificial smile. “Now that the queen’s heir has matured, the Sun King lost. He didn’t succeed in kidnapping you or killing off all the other eggs, so now we can secure the throne for another thousand years.”
The next thousand years. Suddenly, my breath comes shorter. I don’t know if I can do this. The whole kingdom is looking to me, and I don’t even know if I can shift into the dragon I supposedly am.
I clear my throat, suddenly exhausted by this exchange with my so-called sister. “It’s been interesting meeting you, Shynia. However, I need to get back to my studies.”
“Mama wants me, so I’ll be attending the queen,” she says after a long moment. Her chin lifts even further, and she glares down her nose at me like I’m a commoner trying to usurp the throne from a real princess. It’s kind of true, even though my only other choice is probably death.
With that, the porcelain princess turns and steps through her line of guards, which parts for her like a field of grain. They follow her back through the door from which she appeared.