Page 49 of Lady Dragon

Logical thought cut off as Kirek swept Samansa up into her arms and spun her around with enough force to send her legs flying, the sword crushed precariously between them, before setting her back on unsteady feet, taking the hilt from her grip, and throwing the blade at the queen’s feet.

And then Kirek kissed her. In front of everyone.

There was no hesitation in her, not even slow deliberation.

She tipped Samansa backward, cradling her in her strong arms, and kissed her until the princess couldn’t breathe.

After she pulled away, Samansa could only stare at Kirek, marveling, trying to catch her breath and yet happy to never find it, if it meant holding on to this feeling like sunlight in her chest.

Absolute silence reigned in the courtyard around them.

Until the queen cleared her throat and said in her most diplomatic voice, “It looks as though the alliance between queens and dragons still stands. And you , Branon, will stand down .”

Branon only folded his arms. “And you, Tordall, what do you say?”

The queen’s razor attention cut to her first-in-command, who stood before his own guards.

“You’ve been arguing for peace—my peaceful surrender to Branon,” she said to him.

“Well, now that we might have peace without my surrender, then, indeed, what do you have to say for yourself? Why did you ever imagine I would bow?”

Tordall didn’t seem to be able to meet her eyes.

“After your husband died, I looked after your son like my own. Now my son is dead, killed by the dragon your daughter is so clearly infatuated with. I’m done with dragons, and done with your daughter as heir.

Because I yet have another son,” he said, looking at Branon, “one not of my blood, but who told me the truth—that dragons killed my son. And that under his leadership, they would bother us no more.”

Samansa opened her mouth in protest but her mother spoke over her, her voice as dangerous as the edge of her sword. “What else did he promise you?”

Tordall’s eyes drifted off to the side. “He said I could have my heart’s desire, even though Jamsens couldn’t have his.

” His eyes skipped over Samansa with no little hatred before he returned to the queen and held her gaze as best he could, gathering himself.

The princess had never seen him so wavering.

“Let your son—and perhaps my son through marriage—take the throne.” He lifted his gauntleted hand to her in offering.

“Live the rest of your days in peace… with me.”

“In a gilded prison, you mean,” the queen said coldly.

“You don’t have to see it as such. I would still treat you as a queen. Better, with the devotion only a husband can give.” His words were earnest, pleading. “I have loved you from afar for so long. Let me show you.”

The queen stared at him. “It was you .” Samansa thought his betrayal was rather obvious until her mother continued, her words even more chilling than her tone.

“ You made public the affair between Cenara and me, and forced me to exile her to maintain my husband’s honor.

Was it you who killed my husband as well?

You were on that expedition with him, when he fell. ”

Tordall didn’t answer, only clasped his hands together and looked at the ground, which was answer enough .

The queen shook her head in disgust. “Whatever the past, you would take away my future—my choice as to who I spend my final days with.” She looked at Cenara, her expression softening. “And it is her I choose, not you.”

Cenara, still as ferocious-looking as ever, gave the queen a winking, silver-toothed smile. “Allow me, then, Your Majesty, as you seem to be disarmed.”

And with that, she strode over to Tordall, whose sense of incoming danger must have been hampered by his shame, and smashed him over the head with the butt of her sword.

He fell to the cobbles in a heap, where he stirred feebly, so at least he was still alive.

The guards who had accompanied them didn’t seem to know what to do, looking frantically between the queen, Cenara, and their fallen commander, their hands frozen on their swords.

Cenara sighed in evident pleasure. “And I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time. Can I run him through now, my queen?”

“Mother,” Samansa said hurriedly, “for Jamsens’s memory, I would not have him killed.”

“Do not speak his name!” Tordall seethed, raising his head from the ground to clutch it in his hand and glare at Samansa through a sheet of blood.

“You never cared about my son. You let this dragon overpower your reason, while they abandoned the queen as allies! A man would not be so easily swayed, so fickle.”

“Yes,” the queen scoffed. “ So stalwart you have been as an ally. And yet, you could have betrayed the plan for Kirek and Samansa to go alone to the razed village. Only you, Merard, Jamsens, and Cenara knew of it. Samansa could have been killed or taken then, but it was only a misguided dragon who attacked her. Why?”

Samansa knew, now, that the dragon hadn’t been so misguided, that it had attacked on the previous Queen Mother’s secret order in an attempt to assassinate the princess and thus encourage Branon to break the Treaty and seize the throne, only so the dragons had an excuse to invade Andrath.

But she figured it was better for human-dragon relations if she didn’t mention that, and there was a new Queen Mother, anyway.

Maybe Samansa wasn’t so terrible at diplomacy.

“I didn’t act yet, for Jamsens’s sake.” Tordall spat blood out of his mouth. “For he was still alive then, and he loved her.”

Samansa could hold it in no longer. “No dragon killed Jamsens, you old fool! Branon did, and I know this because I was there! The brave captain of my guard”—the princess’s voice hitched, and Kirek put a hand on her arm—“tried to protect me from my own brother, my brother no more, who was trying to usurp me or kill me, whichever came first. Branon turned on his queen with merely a false promise from the dragons. Branon has no love in his heart for his family—not his mother, not his sister, and not Jamsens, who had once been a brother to him. And it was Branon who stabbed him in the neck right before my eyes.”

Tordall could only stare at her in shock from the ground.

“Jamsens was a good man,” Samansa continued, swallowing her tears.

“He resisted the temptation that you couldn’t.

” And that you couldn’t , she seethed silently at Branon.

One had wanted the queen, the other her throne.

“He didn’t betray me, not even when Branon promised him my hand against my will. ”

Jamsens, truly, had been a different sort of man .

Tordall started to weep.

The queen only regarded him coldly. “I will stay your execution because my daughter asks it, and because you actually haven’t— yet —raised a hand against me.

But you were plotting to do so, and for that you will live out the rest of your days in the dungeon.

” She raised her eyebrows. “It will be a less gilded prison than mine would have been, I’ll grant you that.

” Glancing up at the soldiers standing over him, she added, “Guards, seize him.”

“Don’t obey her!” Branon cried, cutting his hand through the air. “I am your commander now. Rally to me—fight! There’s only one dragon! Their queen promised me the rest would stand down!”

But the guards weren’t looking at him, or even at their queen or their downed commander anymore. They were staring in horrified shock at the sky, just as the troops behind Branon were beginning to turn, exclaim, and point.

At the massive swarm of dragons approaching the castle in battle formation.