Page 11 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 11

But the life of a queen is not all pageantry and theatrical displays. A queen must rule if she is to hold her place in the world, and I was about to get my first taste of dragon rider justice.

“Get your hands off me!”

My head whipped around to see my stepmother upbraiding one of the farm workers as she was dragged forward, arms bound. But she at least came forward in a semi-civil way. Arabella was a whole other story.

Whatever devil plagued her, it was out in full force right now. Her arms were bound, and the men beside her looked flustered enough to make me think that hadn’t been an easy feat, especially as right now she kicked out wildly with each stumbling step, trying to lash out at her captors, then shrieking when one of the boys gave her a hard shove, pushing her forward.

“For the sake of the gods, Arabella, have some decorum.”

George snapped out the criticism as he walked forward, also tied up, but somehow dignified with it. His father frowned as he was pushed forward as well. Then the four of them came to a standstill, their eyes flicking from one dragon to the next, their mouths falling closed in the saurians’ presence.

“You’ve been found guilty of fraud and blackmail,” Brom said as he stepped forward. “Of theft of property. Of falsification of documents. Of…”

“We’ll be here all night if you list each sin separately,” Ged said with a smirk, but it wasn’t a happy thing. His arms crossed his broad chest as he regarded the four of them.

“You know what you did. So do we,” Soren said. “Now a judgement must be made.”

I’d expected that, but what I didn’t anticipate was the four of them turning to me.

“You have the capacity to commute their sentence if you wish,” Brom told me. “They can be sent to His Majesty’s jails to rot for the rest of their lives, if that’s what you want?”

At that, the four accused all began to talk at once, their voices a strange combination of high pitched protest and much deeper sounding imprecations. They implored, they demanded, they requested then, finally, they begged.

“Please, Pippin,” George said, using the pet name my family had always used with me. “I was just going along?—”

I didn’t listen to all of it, any of it, really. I just stared at them, watching their faces transform in desperation, just as they had stared at me when I had pleaded with them for some kind of leniency. My hand moved of its own accord, reaching up and touching the cheek Arabella had splattered with the clod of mud, almost as if I could feel the unctuous wet slide of it still.

“There’s no point in begging,” Arabella said, her head jerking up as her eyes flashed unrepentantly. “ She has the whip handle now, not us, and she’s going to use it.”

I smiled then, not as an expression of amusement, but rather of disbelief.

“Is that what you think is happening?” They went to reply, to say something, because it seemed that that indeed was what they thought would happen. When they looked at me, they saw something that made them think I was an easy mark, and because of that they thought they were still in a position to try and control me. “That it was always just some tug of war between us? That it was either I had the power or you did?”

I stepped closer, not wanting to, but unable to stop my feet.

“If you had honoured my father’s actual will, you would’ve all received something. Correct?”

Harry Kensington seemed to deflate then, casting the others a sidelong look before nodding.

“You would have received your fees as the family solicitor. George would’ve gone away to university and studied, learned his own profession. Arabella and Cecily were provided for in the original will, weren’t they?” Henry nodded again. “The problem is they wouldn’t receive everything. Each one of you saw the riches of this estate and thought, ‘Why not me? Why shouldn’t I be the one controlling these lands, those purse strings? Why should I let Pippa inherit?’”

I let out a long shuddering breath, the tremor going through my body waking the little queen. When her head raised, when she regarded me sleepily, suddenly I was done with all of this. The truth had been revealed. Everyone now knew the depths of their crimes. Now there was only the ritual bloodletting to bring an end to all of this.

“Let the dragons decide,” I said, met instantly by a chorus of their cries. “You say they can see into a person’s heart.” I looked at the individual faces of the people who had betrayed me, one after another. “You have a way out of this. Show the dragons that you are truly contrite, that you’ll never do something like this again. Not in words.” The idiots had turned to the dragons, going down on their knees and babbling pleas to the beasts whose giant heads swung back and forward. “Not in deeds, but in your hearts. If you can do that, you can be sent to jail instead, to pay for your crimes that way.”

“Well done, lass,” Soren said with a wink, turning to face me.

Flynn ambled over and he and Ged herded the four of them to face the dragons. Knives were produced, ropes were slashed and they were left there to face down the four beasts. I half expected Arabella to make a run for it or something, but I think even she had realised she faced down a power greater than her own. They stood there, staring up at each dragon, words dying on their lips, a moment of perfect silence filling the air.

There was a moment when I felt a little hope. The four of them still stood. Perhaps they could be rehabilitated. Perhaps they would— My train of thought was abruptly cut off as the dragons struck as one.

They were so massive it was like watching a goose gobble down a worm. One moment their necks had curved upwards and then next each person was gone, swallowed by a dragon’s cavernous jaws. I just stared as their teeth crunched down again and again, reducing each person down to just flesh.

“It’s a hard thing to watch, lass,” Soren said in a reassuring voice, reaching out to grab my shoulder. “Look away now. There’s nothing more to be done.” But I planted my feet, refusing to stop looking until the dragons were done, before I’d meet his eyes.

Soren’s eyes were a deep dark brown, containing a world-weary warmth that I felt I could sink into, something I wanted to do with every breath. I stroked the little queen’s head as she chirped, not speaking until I felt her relax again.

“They were never going to change, were they?”

They said I was supposed to be a queen-in-waiting, but I sounded like a little girl right now, plaintively pleading with her father for answers.

“People rarely do,” he replied. “When they show you who they are, believe them. This was a quicker end than those bastards deserved, but at least the world is free of their malignant influence now.”

I nodded, my head bobbing, feeling too loose on my shoulders as we walked back into the manor. Life and death, they were realities I’d become intimately aware of what with raising pigs, but now? I’d seen a side to each I’d never expected to see and my mind struggled to keep up.

Something that was only exacerbated as I walked upstairs with Nadia.

I drifted towards my old room, but when I opened the door, I saw that Arabella had claimed it in my absence. There were other, bigger, better rooms in the house, but it seemed that something in her hadn’t been able to let any mark I’d left on the house stay.

“I’ve made up the old master’s room for you,” she said. “Her ladyship…” She smiled at her mistake. “That old bitch, Cecily, took your mother’s rooms for her own.”

“Remove all of their belongings in the morning,” I said, feeling my teeth clamp tight. “Distribute what’s there between the needy, because tomorrow we are going to eradicate my stepmother and stepsister’s influence on this house, starting with those they employed in my absence.”

Nadia’s eyes flashed with a dark amusement before she dropped me an overly formal curtsey.

“Of course, my queen-in-waiting.”