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The old tanner beamed. “M’lady has fine taste. Nothing like a good piece of leatherwork – and this is mighty fine, if I say so myself.” He patted Alpha on the flank.

The drake swung his head around and nudged at Amelia’s side just as Shadow so often did. She stroked his nose, and looked into his red-gold eyes, sharp and fiery and full of an eagerness she felt echoed in the back of her mind. He was ready for a good fight – and so was she.

~*~

“My lady, this – ugh – this is quite heavy,” huffed Miranda, her longtime lady’s maid, as she struggled with the mail skirt Amelia had had made to her specific measurements.

“Well, yes, it’s made of metal,” Amelia said, mildly, reaching for the wide, studded leather belt herself and buckling it around her waist, overtop of her padded doublet.

“I know, my lady,” Miranda said, fetching the sleek, black steel breastplate from the side table. Though her back was turned, her voice suggested she was rolling her eyes. She and Amelia had always gotten along well, when softer-spoken, gentler maids had quivered in the past; they could snark at one another like friends, rather than proper maid and prim lady. “It’s only that I worry about you flying around on a dragon.” She shuddered as she turned around, breastplate clenched in both hands. “There’s still plenty of men about – men like that Lord Connor who’s done nothing but hide away in the woods while his poor brother got strung up. I don’t see why they can’t be the ones to do the fighting.”

Connor had a long way to go before the other lords and ladies of Aquitainia respected him as a lord once more.

“Yes, well, the drakes offer us a distinct advantage,” Amelia said. “And they answer to me, so I think it’s only fair.”

She flicked a glance toward her mother through the full-length mirror she stood before, and once again, Katherine managed to surprise her. She lifted her nose to an imperious angle, plucked invisible lint from her sleeve, and said, “Besides: none of those men waiting downstairs are fit to lead a children’s parade, much less an expedition such as this.”

Amelia grinned, as Miranda helped her fit the plate over her breasts and torso and buckled it at the sides. If you’d told her a few months ago that her mother would ever sound so confident in her, she would have laughed. She had always felt Katherine’s disappointment in her: in the commands to sit up straight, and speak politely; in her protestations against her going out riding with the men, and wearing men’s clothes to do so; most recently in her vicious condemnation of her relationship with Malcolm.

Gods…Mal…

It was that grief, their shared grief, that had finally led them to a place of mutual understanding. To a place where Amelia had begun to realize that perhaps all her mother’s stiff, demanding behavior had been less disappointment, and more worry about her daughter’s future.

Now, no one’s future was secure. And Katherine trusted Amelia more than any of the men to lead the charge out from their home and toward the enemy.

After the breastplate came the black steel pauldrons, and small, padded steel bracers on her upper and lower arms. A matching helm awaited, black as well, with simple, clean lines, and a short, bristling horsehair plume dyed red with beets and pomegranate juice. Oliver’s sketches had given her the idea for the helmet: his own had a long, flowing length of horsehair, and she’d liked it, but decided to go a more aggressive route with her own.

She tugged on her gloves – smooth leather with lines of steel stitched to the back, so she would have spiked knuckles – tucked her helm beneath her arm, and surveyed her reflection.

Katherine stepped up beside her. “You look like the goddess of death,” she said, voice going a touch faint. “Hel astride a dragon. There’s a picture.”

Amelia twisted slightly side to side, and smiled at her reflection. “I like it. In fact, I might be rethinking my aversion to the lip paint you always wanted me to wear to balls.”

Katherine’s face paled.

Miranda appeared on her other side. “I wouldn’t advise it, my lady,” she said, touching at her throat. “It would…it would look…”

“Like the finishing touch,” Amelia said. “Is there any red left?”

~*~

When she returned to the conservatory, where the humans had come inside to warm themselves amid the crackling braziers and thriving palms, heads turned at the sharp ring of her bootheels across the flagstones.

Billy grinned, showing his gapped teeth.

Connor’s brows lifted.

Reginald actually gaped. Connor leaned over and knuckled his jaw shut, which earned a scowl.

She paused in front of them, posing a little, she could admit, hip cocked to the side. “What do you think?”

Connor made a show of give her a slow perusal. “I think you look terrifying.” He grinned. “In a good way.”

Reginald smacked him in the chest with the back of his hand. He said, “You look like you’re wearing a stage costume.”

“Have you seen your armor?” she shot back, and got to see him blush for the second time that day. It was terribly gratifying.

Billy said, “It’s a right smart bit o’ steel, m’lady, if you don’t mind me saying.” Considering he and his apprentices had been the ones to make it, she’d expected that reaction from him. What she didn’t expect was for him to step forward and offer her a tidy bundle of crimson wool trimmed in sable fur. “But I think it needs a cloak,” he said, with a wink.