Page 52 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Celestina

Leaving the princes’ safety in Amaya’s hands grated. Not that I didn’t trust her. While the clan often portrayed the midnight dragon as being unstable and dangerous, from what I’d seen she always acted with a single-minded focus and displayed unwavering loyalty to those she cared about. If she promised to get the princes to safety, I knew she’d do everything in her power to do it.

Still, I wanted to be the one putting my arms around the little princes. I wanted to be the one to reassure those precious imps that they didn’t need to fear dragons or vampires.

Those babies were mine to protect.

I growled.

“What is it?” Soren asked as I watched Amaya’s midnight black scales disappear into the night sky.

I glanced over to where Soren was standing beside me. He tangled his fingers with mine. “How do you do it?” I demanded.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Stay calm while sending those you love to fight in your stead?”

“I’m not calm.” He tightened his grip on my hand. “I’m dying with the thought that anyone I love will be out there fighting without me by their side.”

“I-I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and watch Amaya and Gray and Raya leave.” My voice cracked.

“It’s not like we don’t also have important roles to play in this plan, Sky Girl. You’re going to be the one confronting Queen Beatrice. I should be doing that. And I want to scream at the thought that you’ll be leading the wyverns into battle without me. This is my battle, and I’m letting the one person I love most in the world put herself at the greatest risk. We don’t know what powers Queen Beatrice is concealing. We don’t know what she might do when you go after her.”

“This is my battle, too,” I reminded him.

“I know. That’s why I’m not trying to stop you from fighting in it.” He shook his head. “The Fein have known for a while that this conflict was coming. We’d hoped to delay it by making an alliance with Queen Beatrice. But she proved too capricious of a ruler.

“When she’d enslaved you, I could barely keep myself from beginning the war with Earst right then and there. And once I discovered that you were the legendary moonlight dragon, with the power to call the other dragons, I had thought the Fein had found the perfect weapon to use against Queen Beatrice. But, Princess, now that I have you, now that I love you, I would rather chop off my sword arm than watch you fly into battle. And the thought of sending Amaya or any of the other dragons into harm’s way digs at my soul.

“The vampires and dragons have never been allies. Yet, when I look in your eyes, the only future I see is one where we’re together. As equals. Creating a country that’s safe for both our kind. Making decisions that protect the vampires from humans and allows the dragons to step out of hiding.” He heaved a deep breath. “And providing a place where our children and their children can thrive.”

I opened and closed my mouth several times before I could trust myself to speak. “I wanted to hate you for trying to use me, but I never have been able to.”

He framed my face with his hands. “I don’t know how I got so lucky to find someone as forgiving as you. Goddess knows I don’t deserve you, not after how I’ve acted.”

I pressed a kiss to his lips. “Your honor would have never let you hurt me.”

“But I have hurt you,” he countered.

“Not on purpose. And neither of us are ever going to be perfect. I’m sure I’m going to get cranky with you and burn down more throne rooms.”

He chuckled. “Just…don’t melt my parents’ thrones again. They’re still upset about that.”

“Gah! Your parents are never going to like me.”

“They’re going to love you after we save their kingdom.” He kissed me so hard I felt the tingling all the way to my toes. “Stay safe, my heart. And be ruthless.”

“I have the boys in the cave. They’re safe,” Amaya said. “ Are they always this squirmy?”

I slumped in relief. My wyverns were hovering all around me on the far side of the mountain waiting to be commanded. “ They have always been a handful. You are going to stay with them?” We hadn’t discussed who was going to watch the boys after they’d been lifted to safety. I simply assumed she would.

“Nope. I’m coming back to fight alongside you.”

“What? ” The boys were too young and too curious for their own good. They couldn’t be left alone, especially not high up in a cliffside cave.

“Don’t worry, Moonglow. Juniper and Gwen have arrived and have agreed to take over babysitting duties.”

“They’re here?”

“Apparently, they weren’t able to ignore your invitation to come and fight. Even though you didn’t magically compel them, they said their love for you was all the pull they needed.”

I was sure their love for Amaya also played a role in that decision.

“Are any other dragons joining us?” I asked.

“The others are too stubborn to leave the plateau.” Amaya’s answer came coated with frustration.

I shared her disappointment. I would have felt better knowing we had a larger aerial army with me as I entered my first battle. I didn’t know how well the wyverns could fight or how long their fires would last. Amaya had collapsed with exhaustion after pushing herself too hard on the battlefield. I hoped I would know when to pull back.

But now wasn’t the time for doubts or second guesses. I directed the wyverns to follow me to Queen Beatrice’s camp.

“Time for the queen’s final bloody spectacle to begin.”

The wyverns called out to each other as they flew. It was a high-pitched keening that sounded like the whistling cry of a windstorm.

We crested the mountain peak to find Queen Beatrice’s camp alight with torches. Soldiers were running around, preparing to defend themselves. Warning shouts echoed through the valley as they spotted me. A glowing, moonlight dragon wasn’t the best creature for stealth attacks. Archers started firing almost immediately. A few of my wyverns were hit in that first wave. I cried out in rage and fear as they spiraled out of the sky.

The remaining wyverns moved as a unit. They descended on the camp, burning everything in their path. While they destroyed the camp, I flew toward a wide ledge where a line of archers was targeting my wyverns. They needed to be stopped. I sent my dragon fire out across the ledge as I streaked like a comet over the archers’ heads. The side of the mountain lit up from my blaze.

Panting from the effort, I hovered near the steep mountain ledge, gazing down at the destruction I’d caused.

I’d never killed before. I didn’t like the sick feeling twisting in my belly at the sight of my handiwork. I didn’t know those archers. But certainly, some were honorable men born to a capricious leader. They didn’t deserve the death I’d given them. Not one of the two dozen men had survived the heat of my flame.

I kept hovering there, staring down at the dead.

“Moonglow! What are you doing?” Amaya transmitted as she swooped down from somewhere off to my right. She bumped me in the air with her massive head.

“I-I can’t—” How did I explain to her that I couldn’t do this? The prophecies had been wrong. I wasn’t a creature built for war.

“Save the panic attack for after the battle, Moonglow .” She’d circled around and was flying toward me again. “ Your friends will die if you don’t pull it together .” She bumped into me a second time. “ Come on. The undead army should be rushing to the queen’s rescue any moment now.”

That had been the key to our plan. We needed the undead to return from their battlelines to the camp so we could trap the queen’s entire force in the valley and roast them.

The Fein troops guarding the exit routes out of the valley had been instructed to allow runners to escape so word could get out to the undead, warning them that the fighting had shifted to the camp.

I tore my gaze away from the ledge and back toward my wyverns. Heavy smoke had filled the air. The quick-flying wyverns had set fire to all the tents below us. I followed Amaya as she flew low in the valley surveying what little was left of the large encampment.

Still, the undead weren’t rushing back to the valley.

Where were they?

“‘Kill the conjurer of the spell, and the undead will fall…at least that’s how it should work,’” Cullen had told us at one point during our planning session. Did the absence of the undead mean Queen Beatrice had been caught in the wyverns’ firestorm? Was she already dead? I hoped she was. The thought of confronting her, of killing her no longer sounded like a task I could stomach. Hopefully, the undead had returned to their dead state as Cullen had promised they would.

Amaya was flying through the camp, roasting what had already been burned to keep the dead from rising again.

I followed her lead, burning the already dead soldiers, reducing their bodies to ash, while searching for Queen Beatrice.

Where was she?

Had victory really been this easy?

“Cullen says the undead are holding their lines!” Amaya shouted in my head. “They’re attacking the Fein with renewed strength. The Fein are being overrun. He says we need to cut off the snake’s head. Now.

“Cullen? Talk to me. What does cutting off the snake’s head even mean? Oh! He says we need to find and kill Queen Beatrice. Sheesh, why didn’t you say that in the first place? We’re looking for her.”

“But where is she?” I asked.

Had she somehow slipped out of the camp and past the forces Raya and Gray were leading? Or perhaps Soren had overlooked another escape route.

“Are Raya and Gray still in place?” I started to fly toward the narrow pass where Raya should have stationed her warriors.

Amaya flew in the opposite direction. “ I’m going to kick undead butts.”

“Take some of the wyverns with you.” I sent an order to most of the wyverns to follow Amaya out of the now silent valley while I concentrated on searching the destroyed encampment more closely. How did the queen evade us? The escape routes had been sealed off before Amaya had gone in to rescue the boys. I scanned the steep mountains that surrounded the valley. The rocky cliffsides were intimidating. But they were also pitted with deep crevasses and caves. The queen could be hiding anywhere within them.

I discovered I could see further in my dragon form, focus easier on small details. And the longer I looked at the mountains, the more I saw. It was as if I could focus on all the small details within my entire range of vision at once.

There! A flash in the darkness. Like a piece of metal reflecting a bit of moonlight. It had been visible for less than a heartbeat. Just long enough to notice and long enough to start to question whether it had been a figment of my imagination.

It’s probably nothing , I told myself as I shifted the position of my wings. Like sails on a ship, my leathery wings altered my course, and I flew directly for that little flicker of light.

If there’s someone hiding in there, it’s not going to be her , I told myself as I landed on the ledge in front of the small cave’s opening. But still, I needed to see for myself that Queen Beatrice hadn’t sought shelter inside the small space.

The cave was too tight for my dragon form. I had to shift into my human body before I could enter. Unfortunately, I still didn’t know how to use my magic to conjure clothing during my transformation, which meant I had to enter the cave naked, cold, and relatively defenseless. Well, I could still breathe fire in case any thrones needed destroying.

I stepped softly, straining my ears as I listened to the muted drip, drip, drip of water at the back of the dark cave.

“Finally.” Queen Beatrice stepped out from behind a large rock. She was dressed in black trousers with a purple surcoat with Earst’s coat of arms stitched in gold. An elaborate golden circlet adorned her blonde head. She walked toward me as if greeting an old friend. She held a fist-sized black box in front of her like it was a shield.

“Queen Beatrice is here in a cave!” I shouted through my connection with Amaya.

Queen Beatrice didn’t look at all like the young queen who had damned me to be a slave to the most fearsome general on the continent. Her cheeks were sunken. Dark bags hung under her eyes. And her skin was as wrinkled as a silk gown that had been balled up and discarded in the bottom of a wardrobe. I sucked in a quiet gasp at the sight of her.

“Does this shock you?” She ran the tips of her fingers across her wrinkly face. “I’ve not fed from a vampire today. I’d hoped to feast on your prince. But he escaped before I could taste his sweet blood and restore my beauty. Blood magic comes with a cost. I have to drain several vampires dry every week just to keep going.

“But it’s worth it. And if not for you, I wouldn’t have been able to create my undefeatable blood army. I learned of the healing powers in vampire blood through your eyes, my little spy. Such a delicious secret, isn’t it? An entire continent living in fear of vampires and their hunger for blood, when in fact, their blood holds the cure for us. And how convenient that they live in one kingdom instead of in nests scattered throughout the continent. It’ll make enslaving them that much easier.”

“I won’t allow it,” I said.

“Once I defeat their little uprising, I plan to take your vampire prince and keep him for myself as my special pet,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I watched what he did to you. How he touched you. How he rode you like a whore. I can give him what you never could. Beauty, talent, refinement. And his cock will give me daughters with powers beyond our imaginings. Natural blood magic that doesn’t corrode.”

I growled. The rumbling sound caused small stones to fall from the ceiling.

“Growl all you want, dragon. You’re no threat to me.” She tilted her head to one side as she appraised me. “I was beginning to doubt you were even smart enough to find me. Felt like I’d been waving that polished coin in the moonlight for ages.”

“Amaya?” She should have answered me by now.

I stretched out my consciousness, searching for her. All I found was silence. It felt as if someone had stuffed cotton into my head. My thoughts were sluggish.

“Amaya!”

“Oh, dear. Are you just now realizing no one will be coming to rescue you?” her soft voice belied the violence she was capable of. “That must be a horrible feeling, to find yourself alone and friendless. But then again, you never were able to attract more than a small handful of fair-weather friends. My mother had to pay your parents to put up with you.”

“I don’t need friends to end you!” In my rage, I opened my mouth to scorch her with my dragon fire. All that emerged was a frustrated scream.

Queen Beatrice laughed. The demented sound echoed off the damp stone walls. “You could never do anything right. You couldn’t even die when I needed you to.” Two burly warriors wearing Earst’s purple leathers emerged from the deep shadows at the back of the cave.

“I won’t let you use me ever again,” I swore in a panicked rush as one of the men roughly grabbed my arm. I tried to swipe at him with my dragon talons like Amaya would often do, but my hands remained frustratingly human. The second man grabbed my other arm. They dragged me, as I kicked and struggled, deeper into the dark cave. “You’re a monster who killed your own mother.”

The queen stumbled back a step as if my words had physically struck her. “That was…I didn’t…” She straightened. Her chin rose as she drew in a steadying breath. “You were her weakness,” she said, her voice sharper than before. “My mother had started to care about you. I had no choice but to cut the rot from my family line. Soft sentiments from a leader could destroy a kingdom. Certainly, even you can see that. This is a handy box, is it not?” She rubbed the small black wooden container she’d been holding in front of her against my cheek. The magic coating it stung. “This ancient relic dates to the War of the Magics. A secret weapon my family has been keeping, waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. It’s the magic the vampires used during the Great War to best the dragons. You see, this box gives me power over your abilities. And I think the first thing I’ll do is take control of those pesky wyverns you used to destroy my camp. What do you think? Should I have them kill all the Fein warriors blocking the two trails leaving the valley?”

I struggled against the men holding my arm. “No! I’ll never allow you to do that!”

But without my consent, I could feel my magic already flowing through me as an order went out to the wyverns. I could feel the queen’s commands blooming in the wyverns’ minds, telling them to kill Soren’s army. I could sense them shifting their flight patterns, feel them targeting Soren’s warriors. Raya! Gray!

No! I struggled against the men holding me.

I could feel the attack happening through my connection with the wyverns, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.