Page 8 of The Dragon Queen #3

“So His Highness wants a full inventory of our current stocks of dragonfire, does he?” Stefan threw himself down into a chair at the head of the table, then gestured for us to take a seat. No maids appeared with wine and food. Instead, some of Stefan’s men produced a few bottles and a chopping board with some good coarse-grained bread and crumbly cheese, nodding to us to help ourselves. Soren added to the spread, dragging out the food we’d been given for our journey. “Doesn’t want much.” Stefan shook his head. “As if I don’t have enough to do right now.”

“That includes travelling back with us to the capital,” Brom added smoothly.

Stefan let out a frustrated hiss but another man with the same dark hair and blue eyes shook his shoulder.

“Going to leave me in charge, Brother?”

“I’m older than you, Callum,” another man said, sitting down beside us, then shooting me a rakish smile. “By a few seconds.”

“Shut up, Caden.”

“You’ll all have to pull your weight with me gone.” Stefan bent over the letter, reading its contents much more slowly this time. “ Looks like all our time mouldering out here is finally going to pay off.” He looked up and surveyed the table. “War’s coming.”

“Who the bloody hell would be stupid enough to take on a Nithian?” Callum asked.

I sucked in a breath to answer, but Stefan got there first.

“The Duke of Harlston. They’re idiots, that lot. Da told Magnus not to marry another one of them, but that snake, Raina, had to bond with Zafira.” I stiffened, something Stefan noted with all of Draven’s keen eye. “And something tells me there’s a story there too.”

“The Harlstonians had worked out a way to influence the way queen dragons bonded while still in the shell,” I replied.

“But not you.” Stefan looked me over like a man might a horse at market. “You don’t have that funny pinched look that lot has.” He gestured to his face.

“Pippin is Skanian.” Flynn’s arm slid along the back of my chair. That was unwise in the extreme, especially as each brother noted it.

“They aren’t such a bad lot,” Stefan said. “The duke’s a bit of an idiot.” I shot Flynn a warning look, catching the moment his jaw locked down tight. “You’ve got a bit of the same look. Is it something in the water in your end of Nevermere?”

Before Flynn could reply, Ged leaned forward, his impressive forearms resting on the table.

“Do you want to fence all afternoon or can we get down to business?”

All three brothers moved, drawing closer in an echo of Ged’s pose.

“Considering this is the most fun any of us have had for some months, I’m pretty content to keep on prodding the lot of you.” Stefan’s focus shifted around the table. “Each time I do, it tells me more about you.”

“You may be so bored, locked away in this… backwater.” Flynn was every inch a duke’s son as he wrinkled his nose at the room’s rudimentary decor. “That you need to ignore the laws of hospitality and taunt us, but if I’m not mistaken, that is your cousin’s seal on th e letter. In the morning, we’ll ride for the capital and you’ll see for yourself what true hospitality is.” The muscles around his mouth were tight as he smiled. “I may even direct you towards some of our more… accommodating ladies of court.”

“Screwing high-born women.” Stefan jerked himself to his feet. “Apparently, that’s incentive enough to show you the family’s stockpile.” His focus shifted to me. “Hope those flying leathers are warm, lass?—”

“Queen,” Soren snapped. “Queen-in-waiting or Your Highness, at the very least.”

Stefan’s eyes slid down, catching the way Soren’s hand went to his belt knife. My hand moved of its own accord, covering Soren’s and giving it a squeeze before pushing it away from the knife sheath.

“Don’t like to visit the capital unless I have to.” Stefan stared fixedly at my hand and Soren’s, still linked. “But this… My cousin has a story or two to share, I’m thinking, but right now we’ll do as he asks. Callum, Caden.” His brothers shoved themselves to their feet, with us doing the same. “You better come along for this ‘inspection.’ You’ll be looking after the citadel in my absence.”

“Finally…” Callum muttered under his breath, winking at me when I noted his response. Brom pulled me close, which had Callum’s eyebrows heading towards his hairline.

A story or two, for certain, but we were about to discover one for ourselves.

“So you’re about to see the sole reason the Nithians’ claim to the throne outweighed anyone else’s.”

Stefan stood outside a stout metal-bound door deep below the citadel. It got colder and colder the deeper we went, hence why he stopped to pull on a furred robe left hanging on a hook outside the door. Callum and Caden did the same, rubbing their hands together. Our leathers were keeping us warm, but still, I could feel the icy fingers of the cold threatening to steal our warmth.

Not here… Glimmer had followed me down, but her claws now dug into the stone floor. Her eyes, when she looked up at me, were wide and staring. We shouldn’t be here.

Perhaps you should go back to your mates , I told her. Low muffled bugles let us know the male dragons agreed. Glimmer, you don’t need ? —

“Come if you’re coming,” Stefan said, as if he could hear our conversation. He produced a large ring of keys, inserting one into the door with a flourish. “Stay if you’re not.” He spared Glimmer a sidelong look. “That little beastie might be better left behind.”

“The queen dragon?” Brom said. “The future mother of the next generation of royal dragons?” When he bent down, my dragon moved towards him and he hefted her up into his arms. She was far too heavy for me to carry anymore, but just like Obsidian, he bore her weight easily. “I think not.”

“This little thing?” Stefan leaned forward as if to chuck Glimmer under the chin, but a snap of her jaws had him rethinking that. “I guess I see it. Into the heart of an ice dragon we go then.”

Was that what this was? Ice clung to the walls, snow crunching under our feet as we stepped inside, but I saw no source for it.

“That’s what caused this?” Flynn looked around in wonder. “I don’t think Glacier could manage anything like this.”

“A dragon, or several of them, did this a long time ago, well before people came to Nevermere, or at least that’s what the cave carvings seem to indicate.” Stefan gestured carelessly to images inscribed into the wall, but we didn’t get a chance to inspect them. “No time for archaeological curiosity. You can only spend so long here, so let’s get this over and done with. Processing plant.”

We walked past a series of workbenches, pots and tools lying unused upon them.

“No real need for that anymore, though.” Stefan quickly walked through the room and towards another door to reveal a staircase that led further down. “Watch your step. Stairs have been scored and salted, but they’re still slick with ice.”

With painfully slow, mincing steps we climbed down. Air hurt to breathe, being exhaled in great cloudy gusts, but suck it in we had to until our goal was revealed. Snowflakes fell in lazy spirals, partially obscuring the heavy wooden shelves and all the pots lined up along the cave walls.

“What is…?” Soren asked, drifting closer, but I knew. I’d seen those same pots suspended beneath the bellies of the dragons that flew into the dragon city. His hand went out, ready to touch, but Glimmer and I were of the same mind.

“No!” we both barked, inside his head and out of it, freezing Soren to the spot.

“Know what that is, do you?” Stefan looked me up and down with renewed interest. “Saves me an explanation then.”

“Humour us,” Brom growled.

“Dragonfire is a funny thing. Stable at this temperature, dangerous as all get out when warmed. Drop it and you’ll have an explosion the likes you’ve never seen. Shoot it at someone and they’ll be meat confetti moments later. Breaks stone, bone, glass, metal, you name it. Everything but ceramic for some reason. But if the ceramic breaks…”

I sucked in a breath, wondering what the hell he was doing as he strode over to the shelf, picking up a tiny ceramic vial.

“Well, you better bend over and kiss your arse goodbye, because you won’t be doing much more seconds later.”

Why? How? What the hell produced the ice this deep in the earth? Questions teemed in my mind, but they weren’t about to get answered.

“Do the inventory my cousin asked you to complete, and fast,” Stefan said. “I’ve got my own tally, but you can check if it’s correct when you’re done. You’ve only got a few minutes before you start to go into hypothermia, so better work together on this.”

So they did. Not me, not Glimmer. Brom was forced to put her down and she moved away from the jars of dragonfire. I followed.

“Looking at the old artworks?” Stefan’s tone was conversational. “Used to fascinate me when I was a kid. I snuck down here often enough to earn myself a beating or two when my father found out, but…” He nodded to the inscriptions. “Never really found out what they meant.”

I was dimly aware he was rubbing his hands together, blowing on them despite his thick gloves.

Ice… Glimmer’s voice was like a whisper inside my mind, prompting my hands to sink down into my pockets, the crystal eggs a cold, heavy weight in my gloves.

I’d heard the sound of dragons singing each time I found another crystal egg, but it was different here. Like comparing the thin warbles of children against the deep basso of a male opera singer. It was resonant, rising up from the stones themselves, something that had Stefan swearing, but it didn’t stop us from moving. Towards the friezes, painstakingly carved by dragons at some point, now with shelving shoved in front of it, we drifted closer, Glimmer’s head rising as my hand did. I traced the shape of dragons, still and stylised, and yet somehow I knew they were far larger than the ones that lived now.

And more powerful.

An egg had been carved into the wall, the perfect size to fit into my palm. Stefan cursed, his eyes whipping around as the earth itself began to shake.

“What the…?”

His hand shot out, grabbing mine, trying to haul me backwards, but that was never going to happen. It had been hidden in the wall for years, centuries even, for just this moment. The cut Soren had cleaned so well broke open on my fingertip, smearing the carving with blood. That caused it to glow. I heard it then, the slow, rhythmic pulse of a heart. Boom… boom… boom… It felt like years, decades passed between each beat, as his heart beat on long after he’d fallen.

Aisenbran…

I heard the name inside my mind as Stefan’s hand encircled my wrist, the minute my fingers went around the egg. When he wrenched me backwards, the egg came with it.

We have to get out of here! Glimmer’s fear hit me hard, as if she’d been battering at my mental defences and only just got through. We disturb his rest. He must not wake!

“Get this fucking witch out of here!” Stefan snarled.

His brothers, my men, they all surged forward, but I couldn’t fend any of them off. The egg felt cold, far too cold in my hand, sending ice crystals surging through my blood. I lost feeling in my hand, in my arm, that terrible coldness creeping faster and faster until…

The world fell away, replaced by perfect whiteness.