Page 118 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 117

“When you were declared as queen-in-waiting, we were prepared to lay to rest any thoughts of war,” Skane told me, once we were all seated.

I clung to my glass of wine like it was a life preserver. I’d already had to wrestle Glimmer when she tried to clamber up onto the top of the table and access the food set out upon it. I put some dainty snacks on a table setting in front of her, as she sat up like she was just another girl. Although she looked at the size of the serves with a baleful eye, she plucked each one off the plate with her claws and ate them neatly.

“It didn’t have to be a Skanian girl,” he continued, although the other dukes scoffed at that, “as long as it wasn’t another bloody Harlstonian.”

Do we tell them? I asked my dragon, her eyes meeting mine as she licked her jaws clean.

Of what was done to me? There was a perilous edge to her voice. You can cry it from the rooftops and that won’t be loud enough to satisfy me. Her eyes slid to the men around the table. If these humans think they can help, then do so.

“The queen did her best to ensure Glimmer bonded with Beatrice,” I told them, then plucked one of the daggers from its sheath on my thigh. Soren hissed when he saw me giving away that I was armed. “These stones?—”

“Dragonstone?” Skane said, leaning forward. “What of it?”

“We believe it's a psychic amplifier. Those who bond with dragons must have the touch, be able to communicate mind to mind with their dragon.”

“Must be why you were never considered a candidate, Boris,” the duke of Cantlyn said with a smirk. He rapped his hand on the other man’s skull. “Thick as two posts.” Cantlyn shoved his hand off, but his smile was genuine.

“But these stones enhance what is already innate,” I continued. “We discovered that in our travels.” Don’t mention Dragon Home , I thought furiously. “And I believe the queen did as well. Perhaps from the dowager queen before her.”

“Another Harlston queen,” Skane said with a slow nod of his head. “Of course. The bonding of the queen dragon was always a lottery of sorts, until they discovered a way to skew their chances.”

“To ensure they are always the chosen ones,” I agreed, “and…” What I was about to say was the truly seditious part and if any one of the people at this table decided to turn around and inform the queen of what I had said, I was dead ten times over. “I believe she uses her stones to control the king. Not all of the time, and not overtly. He can’t be a puppet for her to speak through; I don’t think she has that level of control. But she can influence, coerce, manipulate.”

My fingers slid up the stem of my glass as I prepared myself to go on, and Brom took my other hand and squeezed it, something each one of my men wished to do, I was sure.

“I think Prince Felix was aware of that and that was why he had started talking to the three of you.”

That part was a hunch, but it was quickly confirmed by the expressions on each duke’s face. Boris seemed flushed, Clarence a little sheepish, but Flynn’s father? He just smiled slowly.

“He believed his mother was controlling his father as much as she dared and was ready to do the same to him, ensuring that Zafira birthed another queen egg when she was confident that she had him under control and then ensuring he married Beatrice. Draven was the spare and left to play at being dragon rider, not needed until…” I surveyed the entire table. “Until she discovered that you had been talking. Which makes me wonder what she will do to us when we return to the keep.”

“If we are speaking plainly, nothing overt. Raina may be a conniving bitch but she’s not an idiot. If the two of you,” Skane nodded to Glimmer and I, “go missing, suddenly, she knows the country will be thrown into civil war. We keep an eye on the border, deploy spies to look for signs of troop mobilisation, but we haven’t seen sign of it.” He nodded to his son. “Something to look for when on dragonback, my boy.”

Flynn rubbed his hands over his face, eyes wide. None of this was news to him and yet… Having had our fears acknowledged, suddenly everything felt a whole lot more real.

“We have reason to believe she has already tried to kill me twice, while we were at Rutherfeld,” I told the table. “Both times were through means which could not have been traced back to her, if they had been successful. The stableboy disappeared, but a local noblewoman is locked up in the basement of Brom’s family estate.”

“Will your father relinquish her to us?” Skane asked Brom. “This woman, she isn’t safe at Rutherfeld. The queen will have put two and two together?—”

“Will Ada be safer with any of you?” Brom shot back. “She is a kinswoman of sorts and it will be hard to convince Father that she would be any safer were she to be handed over to another duchy.”

“Try,” Skane said, then leaned forward. “We will guarantee her safety because it's in our best interests to do so. A highborn woman as witness to the queen’s treachery? You’d be lucky to find many more invested in her continuing to live.”

His sharp gaze took in the rest of the table.

“If we can collect enough evidence to prove the queen’s treachery, we can have her deposed; we can force the king to set her aside. The Duke of Harlston won’t like it, but with all three of us supporting the claim…”

“He’d be mad to take the lot of us on at war. It’d tear the country apart,” Boris huffed.

But the Duke and the queen had to already know that. The queen was arrogant, but she wasn’t stupid. She had to know a civil war was brewing and yet she continued. It made me think somehow that was all a part of her plan.

“So tell us how the queen intends to ensure the next queen dragon will bond with Beatrice where Glimmer refused,” Skane said, staring at my dragon. “How did Glimmer have the presence of mind to resist? I assume that’s how she came to bond with you?”

Tell me what to say , I said to my dragon.

You know.

Yes, but it’s your story, not mine. Give me the words and I’ll say them.

She let out a sigh, the whole table transfixed by her and then, she began.

At first all I could sense was heat and her, my mother. I heard the slow beat of her heart, felt the shift of her body, listened to the sounds of my brothers growing strong beside me. I was warm, cocooned up tight and safe. But then she came.

My fingers tightened around my glass as I repeated Glimmer’s words for the table to hear, the cool surface at odds with the heat of the memory shared. I could hear the slow lub lub of Zafira’s heartbeat, feel the sands.

I am a dragon. If I had been born as I was supposed to be, my egg and the eggs of my brothers would have been laid on a nest of dragon stone. The memories, the culture, the ways of my kind would have been transmitted to me while still in the shell, so that when I emerged, it would be as a citizen of the dragon nation, sentient. Instead you create this Gathering process.

My voice took on an acid edge as I told her story.

Rather than the wisdom of my kind, the intrusive thoughts of humans are pushed into young dragon minds. That’s what happens during the familiarisation process. You concoct rituals like the Gathering to legitimise it, but it is a form of brainwashing. Your thoughts push against our still forming minds, putting up boundaries, creating barriers to our true nature before we are even born. You create biddable, obedient dragons. But I…

Her voice cracked inside my mind and my throat made the same sound. I didn’t feel like I was separate from her, Pippin, right now. I was her voice, her throat moving to say the words.

I resisted. I don’t know why or how.

We didn’t then; we did now. But I would be damned before I’d share that with these men.

But when they pushed at me, I pushed back. Girls cried, their noses ran red and their heads ached when they surrounded my egg, alerting the false queen to what I was doing. So she stepped in. Away from the Gathering, from anyone else, she came with that blasted stone.

Glimmer stared at my dagger, as if the dragon stone on its pommel personally offended her.

The same power she uses to impress her will upon those humans around her was deployed against me. She made clear who I was to bond with, her will crushing mine, attempting to coerce me to bond with this Beatrice human. She showed me just what would happen if I didn’t. My egg crushed, my body torn apart and tossed to the winds, my blood seeping into the sand. She did this as my mother watched and waited, too docile, too domesticated to do anything but watch. I was a means to an end. And if I refused my fate, I would not live.

How did you come to me? I asked, realising I’d never bothered to pursue that. How did you come to Deepacre?

Draven , she replied. He dressed it up in tradition but he was the one who took my egg and handed it to his wing. He asked them to take my egg out into the world to find my bondmate, to find you.

A heavy silence fell over the table and I realised then I hadn’t relayed the last part. I summarised it quickly and then charged on.

When Pippin held my egg, I knew. I felt a soul as raw and ragged as my own, one who would survive anything the world threw at her and knew she would do the same for me. I needed a protector at first, and she was. Then I needed… Her eyes shone so brightly, my own aching with unshed tears as she spoke. A partner. Know this, cunning men with your secret cabals, I am a queen and so is my rider. We will not be a puppet in any of your schemes.

I didn’t want to say that last part but Glimmer insisted, so out the words came, slow and forced from between clenched teeth. But when I looked around the table, I didn’t see the outrage or fury I expected. That catlike smile of the Duke of Skane’s had only widened.

“A queen?” he said. “I couldn’t agree more, Lady Pippin, Glimmer, both. You were born to become the next queens of Nevermere, regardless of how that role was stripped from you needlessly by one woman’s ridiculous ambitions. Draven will see the sense of it, just as his brother did. The Nithians need the duchies support to rule and we will give it…”

Skane had the same blue eyes as his son, but there was none of Flynn’s impetuous heat, nor the warmth. There was something very cold about his gaze, like a knife blade made from ice.

“…as long as Draven is willing to put an end to his mother’s insane schemes and remind his uncle of his place.” The duke’s focus shifted to Brom. “You’ve always been close to the prince. Perhaps you can be the one to deliver our message?”

I’d walked into the duke’s residence at the start of the evening feeling both elated and nervous: uncomfortable in my own skin wearing this dress, but excited to try on this new aspect of myself. As we walked to our carriage, some hours later, all of Eloise’s hard work meant nothing to me. The tension of the evening had been debilitating.

“Well, we got out of that in one piece.” Flynn tried for a joke but even he didn’t manage to summon a laugh.

“But for how long?” Soren asked. Reaching the carriage first, he opened the door and pulled down the step. Then he helped me and my skirts up before assisting Glimmer. “The dukes have made it clear we are to play a role in this… treason. It is treason, any way you look at it. And what if you can’t get Draven onside? What then?”

“I’ll deal with Draven,” Brom said, then flushed as he looked up at me. “ We will.”

“The most important thing I took from it was their advice about Pippin,” Ged said. “All the politics and war bullshit doesn’t mean anything compared to that. They said you need to learn how to use those stones, to develop the same powers as the queen. You have that stone egg and we know where more are. If they are the key?—”

“They’re just weapons. Only as good as the skills of the one handling them,” I said. “Give me a master swordsman’s blade and I’ll still manage to stab myself with it, rather than the enemy.”

“So we work out how to train you.” As Soren warmed to the idea, Ged let out a groan. “We need to work out how to use those stones properly, but once we do… The queen stumbled upon their use, somehow, but you…”

I settled Glimmer on my lap as my men entered the carriage. Pulling out the stone egg Cynane had given us, I held it up, watching the iridescence shift in the moonlight that filtered in through the window beside me. The dragons had said these stones contained all the memories of dragonkind. Surely this one would possess some sort of instruction manual as to their use. And if not this one, then another, or another: the eggs we’d found at the ruin Flynn had taken us to, or the other just outside of Emberly. They might be what we needed to possess the answers we sought.

Once we were all settled in the carriage, Ged rapped on the roof to get us going. There was only one way to find out and that was to try.

The carriage slowed and drew to a stop. But when we opened the doors, it wasn’t the familiar sight of the keep that greeted us. Brom stepped down from the carriage, followed by the other men, all looking cautiously around them. As I leaned forward, I smelled a very distinct odour. Although it was much fainter than around the tanneries, it was still one I would forever associate with Marcus. As though my thought had summoned him, he strolled into view, tossing our carriage driver a coin. The man took off before we could say otherwise.

“Hello, lovers,” he said, with a smirk. “I had word that you were all busy little bees tonight. I’ve some information to share about your boys… if you’re willing to do a trade.”