Page 64 of Dragon Fight (The Dragon Queen #2)

64

T he queen looked the spitting image of my stepmother, with that same vicious smile, that same deadly intent to impose her will on a vulnerable being under her control. Her dragonstone glowed brighter and brighter, flaring in time with the beat of her heart, the crystal doing its job as an adjunct to power, enhancing the will of whoever held it.

But she wasn’t the only one who held dragonstones.

The egg that Cynane had given me appeared in my hand and suddenly all of Glimmer’s vague descriptions made sense. I needed to stop the queen, so I could. As I stepped forward, the fact that I finally had the ability to do something—a means to try and stop this abuse—was so welcome that my heart sang. And so did the stone. A curious high-pitched humming was emitted from it the closer I got, something I tried to tunelessly replicate. The queen didn’t see me, didn’t respond as I neared her, because she wasn’t here. Just as in my visions of Father, Cicely and Arabella, this was just a memory. Glimmer was locked down in the past. But I could rescue her.

Connection , Tanis said, though I didn’t look to see if she was there. All power in the world comes from connection. From the forming of alliances, to the development of the bond between parents and their children, sentient beings live to connect with others, need it for their survival, and that is where the power comes from.

I didn’t even know what that meant, but I dropped down to my knees, placing my hand on Glimmer’s flank, feeling her flinch. Then I reached out and touched her mind with mine.

You are not a hatchling anymore , I told her. You are a queen.

Glimmer’s eyes flicked open, unfocussed at first, but then they sharpened. And with all of the certainty she usually possessed she said the thing I’d found so hard to hear every time before.

And so are you.

It wasn’t anything she hadn’t said before. Every other time I’d side-stepped it or laughed it off.

But not now.

In this place, away from everything else, I couldn’t smile, move on, focus on the next terrible thing that demanded my attention. I couldn’t sink into my men’s arms, losing myself in them. The whole world narrowed down to just Glimmer and just me. Knowing she had my full attention, she said the words again.

Our view of things changed once more, and I saw those tall steps, that golden throne and the two of us walking towards it, the crowds cheering.

No, Glimmer, I’m just—

You are a queen , she insisted.

I could see the Dukes of Skane, Cantlyn and Tharfield standing behind it, Draven now in a Harlstonian uniform, his circlet that of a duke, not a king. Each one of them waited for me to ascend.

Being a human queen is a terrible thing , I said. It’s not something either one of us would want. We’d be hampered by royal protocol, by the petty jostling of the dukes for more power.

You are a queen , was all she would say in reply.

Tanis had said that for the future to be ensured the past had to be restored, but if this was the future, I wanted none of it. Living as a Royal Rider, working to keep the country secure, stepping in to right wrongs, to bring to justice those who were happy to step on others to get what they wanted…

You are a queen.

And then I dredged up the memories that showed I knew would show my dragon why this wasn’t true. Arabella appeared again, slapping me clear across the face, my head whipping to one side from the impact of her blow.

Her eyes were wide, shining bright with surprise, with triumph, when I didn’t fight back. I was taller than her, stronger than her, but she beat me like a recalcitrant child all the same, lashing out with her hands, her fists while I held to my father’s directive and tried to keep the peace. But even as I begged for her to stop, tears clogging my voice, she didn’t.

I am no queen , I said, my words tasting like ashes in my mouth and so my heart feeling cold and dead as I watched myself get beaten. I’m not sure I can even be a Royal Rider.

You are.

My memory shifted to show Glimmer more evidence of my incapacity for the role. There was my younger self sobbing silently, because I’d learned to cry without making a sound now, as I carried poor little wounded Lassie. I hadn’t even made a sound when the dog bit me, lashing out due the agony she was in.

I’m not. I watched, dully, from the future as Gerald took the dog from me, as he told me in a low voice what needed to be done. I’m not , I said again, jumping as he held her close and then broke her neck. That bloody sound, such a little yelp followed by a click that seemed too small to herald the end of a dog’s life. I couldn’t even save poor little Lassie.

The vision changed again, and this time Glimmer was in my arms, far too limp, and it wasn’t Gerald that stood there, it was Raina. Her smile spread slowly as she stared down at the two of us.

“You couldn’t even save a poor little dog. What makes you think you can take on a queen? At least you are aware of your failings.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “You will never be queen after me.” Her eyes dropped down to dwell on Glimmer’s prone form. “And your dragon will not survive either.”

My fist closed over the dragonstone egg, my grip tightening on it, the light within flaring to life, but she just laughed.

“You don’t even know what you wield nor how weak that egg is.” Her eyes met mine. “How weak you are. You haven’t the will to prevail. You let them beat you, steal everything that was yours and then, when you were exiled from your family home, what did you do? Left like a whipped dog, without so much as a whimper in response. You are weak, Pippin, perpetually a victim, and you always will be.”

Glimmer coughed, bright red blood splattering on the sands beneath us and that’s what it took for me to pull free of the vision world. I loosened my fingers from around the crystal egg I grasped, letting it roll free and that’s when Tanis, Raina, Glimmer, everything fell away.

“What happened?” Brom demanded, one hand on my shoulder, the other pressing another handkerchief to my nose to try to stem the flow of blood. “Pippin, you just… faded away. Glimmer has been unconscious making sounds of distress the whole time. Half the dragons in the peak are in an uproar.” The muffled sounds of their roars finally filtered through, but I was desperate to make sense of what I had seen.

I grabbed at Brom’s arm and stood up. As I found my balance and stepped away from his supporting hand, I saw that the dragonstone egg was rolling on the floor at my feet. But that wasn’t what I was focussed on. Glimmer opened her eyes, just as she had in the vision, not seeing me for a second at first. Her eyelids fluttered as I picked her up and then set her carefully down in my seat before I turned to the others.

“What hope have we of preventing war if I do not master the ability to control the eggs, to wield the same power as Raina?”

My voice was steady although my heart rate wasn’t, with each beat my heart felt like it skipped and lurched inside my chest. But the way the three of them looked at each other first didn’t give me any sense of hope.

“We might be able to stage an uprising within the Royal Riders,” Brom replied. “But we’d have to be cutthroat in ways we’ve never even considered before.”

“Royce and the other Harlstonian loyalists would have to be executed in their sleep, and their dragons, too,” Soren said. “Otherwise the beasts would go on a rampage, destroying everything in their paths to get to those that killed their bondmates.”

“Draven could assassinate the bitch, smother his mother in her fucking sleep,” Flynn bit off.

“Matricide?” Brom frowned at that. “The prince is capable of many things but…”

“That’s a hard thing, killing your own bloody mother,” Soren added. “We can do as the dukes asked, build a case against Raina and force the king to set her aside.”

But I knew how that would go. I’d never know what the hold was that Cecily had over my father. It was far less tangible than what Raina had over the king. But the results were the same, each man powerless, made impotent by the ambitions of these grasping women.

And that’s what made what I was going to do so hard.

Their eyes turned to me—as I knew that all of those who wanted peace would—but I knew what I had to tell them.

“I… can’t do what you need me to.” I reached down and grabbed the stone egg off the floor and tossed it to the nearest man, seeing it go flat and dull as soon as he caught it. “I couldn’t even free myself from a stupid bitch who sought to steal all that was mine.” I smiled, but it was a wretched, jagged. “I had to wait until you swept in, seeking the truth, then dispensing justice with your dragons.”

“You were there, too,” Flynn said urgently. “You forced the truth out of her and then sent the lot of them to their maker, and determined their sentence. You weren’t passive in all of this.”

“But I couldn’t do it on my own.” I stepped back then, from them, from the stone and all that it entailed, even from Glimmer who still lay there weakly.

Pippin…?

Our bond felt shaky, fragile, as if talking to Tanis had weakened it rather than made it stronger.

“So it’s all on me?” My voice cracked, and my feet widened the distance between us as I took another step away, then another. “I’m the only one—”

“We are with you, Pippin,” Brom said, taking a step towards me, but his attempt to follow me just made things much worse. It triggered something inside me, an old impulse I had relied on for too long.

When my father had refused to hear my pleas, it had killed something in me. I’d felt like I couldn’t reach out, ask for help, for justice. Instead I’d had to tolerate the intolerable, and my apathy had boosted my abuser’s power. I had never wanted to do that with Raina, but she was queen. Her political might hammered me and everyone else down, her position made unassailable by her birth, her abilities, her dragons and her… connections.

Tanis had told me our strength came from them, but I…? Right then I just saw everyone in this room and all those outside of it who would be hurt by my inability to wield the same damn power. And that thought fed that same broken thing inside me. The Pippin who sought to stand up to such injustice was a new version of myself, not quite fully formed, and so she was something I pushed to one side as I edged towards the door.

“If I’m in some ways supposed to be the answer to this situation then we are doomed because I am…”

I hadn’t dared say this to myself, back when I looked after pigs, because to do so would’ve been the killing blow to my desire to survive. But I could now, in this unfamiliar space.

“I’m… nothing.” That both hurt and helped to say. It was like there’d been a poisonous thorn that had been festering inside me and now it was pulled free. Pus and virulent blood rushed out and that was such a relief. “I am nothing.”

I said those words to my wide-eyed audience, nodding at the truth of them.

“I’m not going to be any use to the general in this fight,” I told Soren. “Report back to him about that.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have left them, but my legs, my feet were moving before I could even think twice about it, the door to the training room slamming shut behind me as I ran. Upstairs and down hallways. A couple of times I heard my name being called as I passed, but that just had me running faster.

Left, right, straight and veering off, I ran and I ran until there was nowhere left to go. I reached a dead-end, a corner of the keep. I slowed my pace and stumbled into a little alcove that had been set there, with a tall slender window, perfect for giving a view of the capital beyond, but not so wide as to be a target for enemy projectiles. I stared down at the city, wishing for the first time that I was back at my estate. I would have curled up in the window seat in my bedroom, pulled out a book and buried my nose in it, following someone else’s adventures until I could stop thinking about my own. I settled against the sill of the window, and leaned my head against the glass to stare out, instead.

Which was perhaps why I didn’t see him coming.

“Hello, love.”

My head whipped around to discover I had been found, just not my husbands or my dragon. Marcus Lighthands stood before me, a wicked smile on his face.