Chapter 33
Zenevieve
Stesha is pacing up and down the dragongrounds, his normally smooth hair rumpled from pushing his hand through it. He’s been like this for hours, and nothing I say or do can persuade him to rest or go up to the Great Hall to eat. Today is the day. He’s certain of it.
Nilak is curled serenely around her clutch of eggs.
Every now and then she nudges them with her snout or bathes them in gentle flames.
She’s found shelter at the base of the cliff because she’s too big to fit inside the nesting caves.
All the Beta females have gathered around her, both to watch and to protect the Alpha female who has always protected them and their hatchlings.
Esmeral has come as well, and beyond the beautiful Omega dragon, her feisty hatchlings romp about.
I sit resting against Omaira, a beautiful raspberry pink Beta dragon with shining rose gold eyes and talons. She’s timid for a battle dragon, but she’s proven again and again that she and her rider, Menelope, can hold their own in a fight, and they’re as swift as a wingrunner.
During the Battle of Lenhale, they worked with the wingrunners to protect the populace from the undead that managed to get inside the city.
Omaira suffered a fractured back leg early in the battle, but despite the pain, she never gave up, and she and her rider saved dozens of lives.
Stesha and I set the broken bones, and we check on her every day.
He has every hope that she’ll make a full recovery.
Because of dragons like Omaira, Zabriel and Isavelle had a home to return to after they finally defeated the lich.
When they told us about it, it seems as though the lich put them through an even worse ordeal than Stesha and I suffered.
It was determined to make the queen agree to her own possession, but Isavelle was able to drive it out of her mate and his dragon only because her crone managed to gasp its real name with her dying breath.
Caraxmorenas.
That’s the name of the so-called Shadow King whom Emmeric welcomed into his cold heart, and held Maledin in its cruel, bony grip for five hundred years.
Names are powerful tools in magic, so we’re told, and the people of Lenhale have taken up the habit of saying, “Caraxmorenas,” as a curse, and then spitting on the ground.
Stesha kneels down in front of Nilak and feels the eggs. “It won’t be long now.”
I smile to myself because he’s been saying the same thing for hours.
This time, however, he’s right. One of the eggs is shaking slightly, and small cracks appear in the surface. Nilak, Stesha, and I watch with rapt attention as the baby breaks its way out of its shell.
It’s a perfect white hatchling. When it opens its eyes, they’re a sparkling blue.
“It’s a male,” Stesha exclaims, taking the hatchling in his hands and examining him, gently fanning out his wings and checking his teeth.
“Look how big his feet and wings are. He’s the image of his mother, and he’s going to be an Alpha by the looks of him.
Well done, Nilak. He’s perfect.” Stesha places the hatchling carefully among the trembling eggs.
Nilak is making purring sounds deep in her throat, and with delicateness that’s unusual for her size, she drops a sliver of meat close to her baby.
At first the hatchling doesn’t notice, but as soon as his nose catches the scent, he takes an awkward step in that direction, pauses as if to gather himself, and then pounces on the meat and swallows it down whole.
The next hatchling is white with yellow eyes, and Stesha announces that it’s a female.
“I think one of Nilak’s ancestors was a yellow-eyed dragon. Many of the dragonmasters’ records didn’t survive into New Maledin, but I will check when I have a moment.”
The next hatchling struggles furiously inside its broken shell, hissing and complaining that it can’t get out. Stesha breaks off a small piece of the shell, and it’s able to wriggle out. She’s a small black hatchling with yellow eyes.
Stesha frowns. “A black dragon? Now that is strange. I can’t think who could have fathered this dragon, but sometimes there are random variations. Perhaps the father has black eyes or is distantly related to Scourge. Though that wouldn’t explain the yellow eyes.”
The next hatchling is the most confounding of all. A yellow dragon with black eyes. Stesha cups it in his hands with an expression of utter confusion. We’ve seen dragons who look just like this one. Just not in the king’s flare.
I look at Nilak, who’s proudly nuzzling at her little family and greeting the hatchlings with chirrups and feeding them slivers of meat. “Nilak,” I ask her. “The father of your hatchlings, it couldn’t be…Auryn?”
Stesha stares silently at his dragon, but I know they’re anything but silent in their minds as they talk to each other.
“During the Dragon Games?” he suddenly exclaims at Nilak, while the yellow-scaled, black-eyed dragon is gnawing on his fingers and beating his wings. He’s a strong hatchling, and the biggest one of all. Just as I imagined.
Meanwhile, the rest of the eggs are hatching. Three more dragons in various shades of white, blue, yellow, and black. They’re beautiful little creatures. Perfectly formed hatchlings with sharp little teeth and shiny scales. Perfect little replicas of Nilak and Auryn in various color combinations.
My mate doesn’t seem displeased, but he is thoroughly floored as he stares at the little brood.
As a memory comes back to me, I touch Stesha’s arm.
“Do you remember that during your final battle with Kane, he was goading Auryn to attack Nilak, but he wouldn’t?
Auryn was about to rip Nilak’s belly open.
That dragon already made it clear a while back that he had no problem attempting to incinerate our fledglings.
So why show mercy to Nilak, unless…” I leave Stesha to fill in the rest.
“Unless Nilak was carrying Auryn’s eggs, and he knew it.
” Stesha looks up at Nilak. “Were you? Had the two of you already mated? Kane was angry that you were flying over his dragons at night. Were you secretly meeting Auryn in the dark?” Nilak must answer him, and Stesha turns to me.
“She was. The two of them went flying together several times.”
I burst out laughing. “Nilak, queen of the flare, the most dutiful and responsible of all the dragons, has a taste for bad boys.”
Stesha is sunk deeply in thought, still struggling to get his head around this revelation. “It makes good breeding sense, to bring new blood into the flare. Nilak is doing her part to make Maledin’s dragons even stronger.”
“Maybe,” I muse, still smiling. “I think she just enjoys a big, fierce Alpha. And who can blame her?”
The black-scaled dragon with pretty yellow eyes patters over to me, and I gently play with her.
Stesha watches and reaches out a finger and strokes the hatching under its pretty chin, and then along her gleaming scales. “What a lovely little dragon.” He glances around. “All of them are perfect. Well done, Nilak.”
It’s been a long day, and I yawn. A moment later, the hatchling does as well. I settle down against Nilak with the hatchling curled up in my hair, and a moment later, it falls asleep. I smile as I stroke its scales. Our beautiful family is getting bigger.
I realize that Stesha is looking at me with a strange expression on his face. “Is something wrong?”
“The way you both yawned like that. You and the hatchling. I was suddenly struck by a memory.”
“What memory?”
He scoops up two of the hatchlings and sits down next to me, and the little pair play fight on his chest, as weak as kittens but determined to be the winner.
“A long, long time ago, before your fifteenth birthday, I saw a very lovely rider-to-be sitting in the Flame Temple before the font. A fierce, pretty girl who wanted to be a rider more than anything in the world.”
He speaks in a low, soothing voice, and I smile as I see myself through his eyes. “But first she needed a dragon.”
“Indeed she did. I had noticed that among the young dragons, one had taken a fancy to her, and so I went and collected her and carried her to the Flame Temple. She ran straight to the girl sitting before the font, and they played together all afternoon.”
I breathe in sharply. “I remember that day.”
“Of course you do.”
“You brought her to me?” I ask, tears welling up in my eyes. “You knew she was my dragon?”
“I thought she probably was. I watched the two of you for hours that day. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. You were turning your heads to look at the same things. Moving at the same time. Yawning at the same time, just as you did with this one. I think this one is an Omega, aash’lin.”
I look down at the little dragon sleeping on my chest. I can hear what he’s saying, and what he’s not saying. That this dragon might be my dragon. One of Nilak’s precious hatchlings might choose me.
“I would like to bond with a dragon again one day,” I whisper, choosing my words carefully. It would be painful to get my hopes up again, like I did with Shar, only to have them dashed.
Several days later, both King Zabriel and Queen Isavelle visit Nilak’s hatchlings, proclaiming them seven of the most beautiful little dragons they have ever seen.
“Of course only Nilak could tame a heart as wild as Auryn’s,” Isavelle says, holding two of the hatchlings. She asks Stesha, “Are they mated now?”
“Nilak is not inclined to formally mate with anyone, and there’s no need to involve Kane and Auryn in this. As far as my dragon and I are concerned, Auryn’s part is done.”
Isavelle and I exchange an amused look, and I tell her in a loud whisper, “Another male wouldn’t dare come between those two. I am lucky that Nilak approves of me as Stesha’s mate.”
Zabriel laughs, and scoops up two of the biggest hatchlings.
“Nilak has always held you dear,” Stesha says, entirely missing the joke. “Remember that she offered herself to you for your very first ride.”