Page 40 of Lady Dragon

KIREK

Kirek suddenly fell face down in the sand, the saddle landing on top of her and knocking the breath from her lungs.

Because she was human again. And the red dragon stood above her—all four of her legs planted around Kirek like blood-scaled tree trunks.

Kirek should have scrambled out from underneath, but she was too shocked and winded to move as Samansa bent over the old dragon.

The red dragon didn’t go for the throat, in her fury. Her jaws clamped down over the other dragon’s entire skull . The poor creature was trying to rise as it happened, and Samansa cranked her own head upward as if trying to help, in a sick way—or to snap a neck.

Instead, she blew fire. The gout came in a torrent of heat that even to Kirek felt like death ignited, as it lit the already bright sky.

She scrabbled away then, after a moment of instinct forced her to cover her face against the blast with an out-thrown elbow.

She dragged the saddle from her back and used it as a shield as she hauled herself farther from the flame.

Good thing, because one burst of fire wasn’t enough for the red dragon.

She slammed the old dragon’s head into the ground, still clutched in her teeth, and torched it against the sand with no reprieve.

Dragon scales were, of course, resistant to fire, as were their throats and mouths, but eyes were another thing.

And brains, or even flesh and bone with such direct, unmitigated assault.

Waves of flame billowed out, washing over the saddle that Kirek crouched behind.

She could smell her hair starting to singe even under cover… but then the fire was gone.

When Kirek looked up, coughing, throat burning, the red dragon had pulled away.

Leaving a blackened, sizzling lump where the other dragon’s head had been, with a ring of melted glass around it.

For a moment, Kirek couldn’t speak. The sight of the old dragon’s limp, stitched wings tugged at Kirek as if the ragged strips of leather threaded through her own heart.

Just like a sand head , the red dragon said. Care to try it?

Kirek shoved herself upright from the saddle, the surface hot against her fingertips, her disgust rising with her. “Cannibalism is as abominable to dragons as it is to humans.”

I know , the red dragon said, turning to look down at her. But you’re both dragon and human, just as I am, and dragons eat humans, so why not humans, dragons? You do like meat.

“I am not human in any part.” Although Kirek was feeling less and less convinced on that point. “You’re trying to insult me. Gravely,” she spat through gritted teeth. The smell was horrible. “Stop it, Samansa.”

The dragon blinked huge golden eyes. Samansa?

“You are Samansa,” Kirek snapped.

And you are weak , the red dragon snarled, her tail lashing behind her, her wings flaring.

You almost got us killed by not putting her out of her misery in the first place—out of empathy .

What does that tell you, especially since you failed to end her a second time, when you had the chance?

I—a supposed human—had to do it for you.

To be the dragon, while you were frozen in fear. Who’s the human now?

“I thought you argued that humanity isn’t a sign of weakness,” Kirek said, a humiliating heat threatening her eyes. She tried to tell herself it was just the smoke stinging them. “Not that I agree with that.”

Maybe I’m changing my mind.

“Or Raka is changing it for you.”

Do not speak her name! the dragon snapped—with her actual teeth, flashing near Kirek’s face.

“Am I not worthy?” Kirek taunted, her shame spiraling into anger. She needed to be careful, or Samansa might turn her new penchant for killing on her .

You just proved you are not.

Suddenly, Kirek was shouting. “I couldn’t kill her, not out of fear, but grief .

Which is an emotion dragons possess, by the way—one that Raka supposedly died of, so even she should be able to understand!

When I needed to act, all I could see was my mother, getting killed again before me.

Or have you forgotten about that already?

You were only just so desperately trying to remind me.

” She shook her head and swatted her reeking hair out of her eyes—quickly dashing away her shameful tears.

“Well, I haven’t forgotten her death so soon, and the Samansa I know hasn’t, either. ”

The red dragon considered her. Maybe I’m not the Samansa you know anymore.

“I wish you were!” Kirek cried, waving a hand at her. “I wish you were the Samansa I recognize—even as a dragon!”

You think I recognize you , like this? The dragon’s lip quivered as though she wanted to bare her teeth again. To bite down. You grow softer with each sun’s passing. Just as you couldn’t end your mother, you couldn’t end this shriveled husk. It’s pathetic, Nakor.

Kirek felt ready to erupt like a volcano, but that name iced her over. “ Nakor? What under the skies do you mean?”

The red dragon blinked those golden orbs.

“I’m not Nakor,” Kirek said, shaking her head, “no matter how much you think you might be Raka. Besides, Nakor was never a human, and Raka was supposedly bound and devoted to her.” A hiss escaped her own teeth. “I’m not feeling the devotion.”

The red dragon still didn’t say anything, only sat completely still.

“I understand what you’re doing, Samansa—or whoever you think you are,” Kirek ground out. “You’re trying to turn me against you, so you can lose yourself more readily. Well, I am not going to lose you. I’ve lost too much already. Not you.” Her voice caught. “Never you.”

The dragon turned away as if she couldn’t hold Kirek’s gaze any longer. Then get on my back while I’ll still let you.

Kirek glanced down. “What about the saddle?”

I’m half-starved, and it’s extra weight we don’t need.

“But what if we turn again?”

The red dragon looked over her shoulder with one great golden eye narrowed to a molten slit. I’m not planning on it. And if we do, I’ll be dead anyway, where we’re going.

As night fell and they flew closer to mountains that rose like blackened teeth to bite the already dark sky, some sending up plumes of smoke that streaked the air, the ground lit up beneath them, cut with veins of orange fire.

The acrid tang of hot metal and sulfur soon invaded Kirek’s nose in an invisible assault that grew stronger and stronger.

They traveled in silence, for the most part.

Once Kirek’s stomach had settled enough after rebelling against the smell of roasted dragon, she chewed on the last strips of meat she’d taken from the abandoned saddlebag and swallowed the final sip of water from the skin at her belt.

At least she still had her daggers and her sword.

She wondered if either she or Samansa would be coming back from this. She rather doubted it.

They continued flying toward the highest of the active volcanoes. Kirek half wondered if the red dragon intended to fly them directly into the maw of its crater and incinerate them both.

Her concern over the volcano became especially acute when it erupted.

Kirek felt it in the air first; a subtle vibration, the quivering of a held breath.

And then a rumbling took hold of the earth like a growl rising from within a massive dragon’s chest. Then the mountain spat fire, except far beyond any dragon’s reach.

A colossal bloom of orange-white flame ate the dark sky, followed shortly by the all-consuming roar that hit them next with the force of a sandstorm.

It threw the red dragon off course, tossing her in the air as easily as a leaf in a gale, and Kirek clung on with all her might, her thighs clamping down without the benefit of a saddle, her grip holding on to Samansa’s spikes like a lifeline. Because if she fell, she would surely die.

The red dragon righted herself before they hit the side of the mountain, but had to dive as a piece of rock half her size came streaking down from up above, trailing fire like a comet.

Then she almost landed directly in a stream of lava, rippled in a charred crust cut with cracks of blazing orange—the deadliest, if slowest, current on earth.

She barely swerved away from it, coming down hard in a scree of basalt and kicking up a wave of black rock before her claws finally caught and she skidded to a halt.

They both just breathed for a moment, the red dragon’s heaving sides making Kirek rise and fall with her shoulders.

It took even longer for Kirek to be able to unclench her fists and thighs from their death grip and give them a moment of release.

And yet another moment for her to realize it wasn’t only rock formations looming in the smoke and shadows around them between braided rivers of molten earth.

Skeletons. Massive skeletons, with ribs like the husks of half-sunken and rotted boats and hollow-eyed skulls the size of… well, a dragon’s. Because they were dragons.

They’d landed in a dragon graveyard.

If dragons didn’t dwell where they hunted and fed, they didn’t live where they went to die, either. None of her kind wished to rot where scavengers and insects could eat them. They wanted to perish with their pride intact, if not their flesh, cleansed by fire.

To Kirek it felt hotter than an oven. As hot as a… forge.

Of course, this was where a forge used by dragons would be.

Even for a dragon, it wasn’t terribly welcoming. Not for a living dragon, anyway. Miraculously, she and the red dragon were still alive.

And they weren’t alone. Some loose scree tumbled down the hillside from above. It could have just been the earth settling after the eruption, but Kirek heard skittering accompanying it, and the red dragon hissed in warning. Could another dragon be here? Certainly no human…