Page 100 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 99

I saw Draven’s pained expression in my mind’s eye for the rest of the evening. The men each prompted me to eat and drink, something that made me smile, but not for long. I’d take a bite of something and then lose track of it, reliving the image of the prince walking away with Cynane.

“You know that we’re sorry,” Ged said, coming closer as I chewed woodenly on whatever I’d bitten into. “We didn’t feel like it was our story to tell.”

“I know.” My voice did little to reassure him, though, as it was quiet and empty. I forced myself to look up and smile at him, and the others as they clustered closer. I put down whatever it was in my hand, possibly a sandwich, and I looked at them all. “It was the shock more than anything, I guess. I…” I gazed at each of them, searching their faces for something, though what, I wasn’t sure. “I guess part of what drew me to you all was that I felt like each one of you was open and honest with me. Ged told me all about his various liaisons.”

“And what a brilliant move that was,” Flynn said with a grin. “Every time you blurted out something stupid like that, I secretly cheered, because I was sure it was just putting you further out of the running.”

“Got me a nice little interlude in the shower,” Ged replied with a wink. “Where I got to show Pippin just how her body worked. And mine.”

Flynn’s smile faded then as his eyes began to flash.

“If you need any further tuition, come to me,” he insisted.

“There’s more to learn?” I asked and apparently that was exactly the right thing to say as Flynn’s grin turned slow and sly.

“Oh yes, dear Pippin. Quite a lot more, if you’ve a mind to.”

“But not now.” Soren shot the two men dark looks before searching my face. “And not tonight, I’m thinking.”

“No,” Brom agreed much more circumspectly before staring at me. “Pippin, I’m sorry for putting you through this.”

“No, I—” He silenced my attempt at a response with a wave of his hand.

“I thought… I wanted to believe that this wouldn’t be an issue, that the past was going to stay in the past. Draven led me to believe it would be…” Brom shook his head. “I should’ve known better than to trust him, but… My parents, my mother, Ada… You were confronted with my entire family history not long after tying yourself to me for expediency’s sake.”

“Not just expediency,” I corrected.

I saw hope flare in Brom’s eyes and he moved forward, not to sit down beside me, or flop down and draw me into his arms. Instead, he sank down onto one knee and pulled something from his jacket pocket.

“Oh gods…” Flynn hissed as Brom held out a ring.

“Mother and I sorted through the family jewels and we thought this might be a fitting wedding ring, if you still want it.”

I was a dragon rider, a woman wearing leather armour, but at that moment I felt like I was any girl, with her hand coming to rest over her heart as she felt it lurch forward at the sight of the man she loved offering her a ring. It was curiously delicate, made of sweeping tendrils of white gold, and inset into the setting were leaf-like petals of five sky blue sapphires and an acid green peridot.

“If it doesn’t suit, or you don’t want to wear?—”

I silenced him by dropping down in front of him, covering his hands with mine as I pressed a kiss to his lips.

“Of course I want to wear it.”

“Really?”

I never expected to see that kind of surprise on the wing commander’s face and I grinned in response.

“Really.”

When I held out my hand for him to put it on, some part of me expected the ring to be too big or too small, but it wasn’t. We knelt there together as he pushed it up to replace where his old signet ring had been, and I found that it fitted perfectly.

For a moment I stared down at it. We’d been married in such a hurried ceremony, still feeling the aftershocks of Zafira’s heat, so this moment felt more real than the whole wedding had. Brom was watching me so closely, as if he wanted to catch my every response. I leaned up to him, the movement feeling somewhat tremulous, but it needn’t be. The shock of his admission, of his past with Draven, was starting to wear off and I felt ready to make my own declaration.

“I made a much bigger deal of the whole situation than I should’ve,” I admitted.

“No, Pippin—” he started to say.

“How did you all reconcile yourselves to this arrangement?” I asked. “To sharing me? Is it something you’ve done in the past?”

“Remember how you teased me about my previous confessions?” Ged said in a choked off voice. “Because in the spirit of honesty, I can divulge more right now…”

“You fucking idiot,” Flynn said with a shake of his head.

“So you’ve shared women before.” They didn’t reply to my question. They didn’t need to, the air in the room making the answer apparent. “This wasn’t an entirely foreign scenario.”

“It wasn’t that.” Soren nodded as he stared down at me. “Whatever came before doesn’t matter, Pippin, not to us. We talked and we agreed if you were open to things with any one of us?—”

“We were going to pursue that,” Flynn cut in. “No one was prepared to step back and we had to keep working together, lest the wing be broken up and we were all reassigned. We didn’t want that and we all wanted you, so…”

“So, here we are.” I glanced down at the ring, letting my thumb work it around my ring finger. “And we are still learning how that will work.” I glanced up at Brom. “Soren and I talked and?—”

“Pippin, there’s no need,” Brom assured me. “Anything… I might have felt died the moment I heard what Draven had been doing. You?—”

“But it won’t stay dead.” I had no idea where this certainty was coming from, but there it was. “Just as you won’t stop caring for me if I make a mistake. Even a heinous one.” I stared into his eyes and he raised an eyebrow as he stared right back. “That’s not who you are, nor what you’re like. Once you care for someone, you don’t stop, right?”

Brom nodded slowly.

“So once you’d stopped being angry or scared, you’d find your way back to me, right?”

He snorted then, a small smile forming. “Right.”

“And even if I was a totally high-handed bastard with apparently little care for those around me, you’d still love me, right?”

Brom let out a sigh, then clasped my hands between his, using them to draw me closer. And when he did, something settled in me, like a cat that allows its fur to be smoothed down, and I snuggled into his chest.

“The one thing that can be said of me is that I am constant.” When he ran his hand over my scalp, my eyes fell closed. “I’m yours until you don’t want me anymore, Pippin and…” His sigh matched mine as we both let out a long breath. “And, gods help me, I’m still Draven’s.”

“Then we find a way forward with this.” My tone was far stronger than I felt, as if I was trying to convince myself first and Brom second. “Together.”

“Just keep saying that over and over.” Ged settled behind me, pressing his chest to my back. “When you find out more of our shitty flaws, just keep promising to find a way around that together.”

Dreams are always airy, unsubstantial things, but without them we would be crushed by grinding reality. In light of Draven’s admissions, the enormity of the danger he’d put us in and his unrelenting arrogance in the face of criticism, it was difficult to see how anything I described could become possible. But that’s what dreams are for. If our eyes are trained on the ground, all we can do is walk the tracks set before us, but if we lift them to the sky? We can dream of futures we would never have thought were possible.