Page 159 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 158

“Death…” I hissed, not seeing the field or the riders, or at least not these ones. I was back in the head of the woman who had witnessed this atrocity, but this time, it was different. I was in control and she wasn’t allowed to take one last look at her lover, right before her world exploded.

Her focus was entirely on the dragons.

Not on their wings, shining like jewels in the sunlight. The glitter of their scales hurt my eyes as I, we, stared. Past the riders, ignoring the scream building in my throat, to the bellies of the dragons.

“A handle…” I barely rasped that out, then repeated myself more clearly to ensure the riders now heard me. When my hands moved, hers did as well, mimicking the grip the dragons had on their deadly burdens. “A handle, and… something.” I frowned, eyes burning with the effort of keeping them trained on the dragons. “Something round that links the handle to the pot. It moves… but the pot does not?”

It wasn’t perfectly still, but there was considerably less movement. Whatever connected the handle to the pot compensated for the sweep of the dragon’s wings, the sway of their body. It kept each dragon from being blasted from the sky by their own burden.

But it didn’t save them.

I had what I needed. I could talk about what I saw with the other riders, discover how our ancestors had gotten around this issue, but by forcing the woman to watch the destruction of her home, she in turn made sure I stuck around to witness it again.

I knew how this story ended, in blood, in screams, and perhaps that’s why my throat tightened. Breath was sucked in as my eyes went wide and unseeing, only able to watch this again.

“No…” My protest was pitiful. This was history. I could not go back and change it. “No…”

“Either dragon and human,” another voice said, rich and melodious, I knew who it was as soon as I heard it. “Or no dragons, no humans.”

“Tanis?” I asked in a thin voice, sounding like a child begging for her mother.

“Pippin?” That voice was wrong, too male, too insistent to be ignored. “Pippin!”

“Dragon and human.” Tanis appeared before me at first as just a long stream of golden scales, blocking the massacre beyond. The dragon was too immense for me to take in this close, but she took pity on me, pulling back and staring down at me with eyes just as golden as her scales. “Dragon and human, Pippin. We fled the continent, thinking that our survival depended on isolation from humankind, but instead came to realise that it is only in collaboration with humans that we’ll survive. Dragons can lay waste to the land, burning and scouring it until there is nothing more than raw earth. Humans take that raw earth and make marvels from it, but…”

I knew what she was going to say before she did so, having seen the evidence of it.

“They are capable of great destruction as well. We keep each other in check, but problems arise when that fragile balance tips too far to one side or the other.”

“Pippin!” I came back to the world with a snap. Draven’s hands were on my shoulders, shaking me, even as Brom stepped forward and wrenched the egg from my palm. “Are you well?”

Draven’s hands went to my cheeks, tracing the shape of my face and reminding me I had one, that I existed here, now. I blinked and looked over his shoulder, seeing how pale Brom was right now.

“I…” How did I answer him? How did I form sentences to explain? I couldn’t, I quickly decided, but then my eyes landed on the pile of pots. The queen’s dragons, their deaths, their unwitting sacrifice was what preoccupied me right now. I needed to save our dragons, the ones we had and the ones we’d lost, and that’s why I spoke. “The dragons transported the explosives with a device that compensated for their movement. Their claws were wrapped around a bar, a handle of sorts.”

“We heard that much,” Draven growled, “but I think that’s enough for today. We can send that information to the keep engineers and?—”

“You saw the queen’s dragons drop the explosives, Highness?” Rex asked, pushing forward, his eyes dropping down to Draven’s hand. “You can see the past in dragonstone?”

“I—”

“Need to rest.” Draven whirled around, putting himself between me and the general. “My queen has been through much and?—”

“Yes.” I said finally and that’s when everyone went quiet. “It’s not as simple as pulling a book from a shelf and flipping through the pages, but… yes. I saw a mission one of the queen’s sent her dragons on.” I stepped clear of Draven and regarded the crowd. “One they didn’t survive. Stefan has it right. Dragonfire is a double-edged sword that’s just as likely to kill you as your enemy.”

Draven’s cousin nodded, seemingly gratified that I would confirm his judgement.

“What I saw…” I swallowed, feeling it, seeing it, hearing the screams of dragons and humans if I didn’t focus on what was happening right now. Dragons and humans, the echo of Tanis’ voice in my head got me back on track. “The queen’s riders had mechanisms for transporting dragonfire. There was this round… thing.” I let out a frustrated huff as my words failed me, so I gestured with my hands. “Below the handle. It moved but the pot didn’t.”

“Like a gimbal?”

It took everything in me not to rush towards Ged when he spoke up. I knew what it would feel like if he wrapped his arms around me. The persistent cold, colder than Aisenbran’s blood, would be dispelled and I could finally take a full breath. Instead, Cloudy appeared beside him, turning his flank towards his rider so Ged could paw through his saddlebags. He pulled out a small leather pouch and then produced a strange piece of equipment.

I knew what a compass was, having been taught how to use one by my father, but this… He wrapped his hand around some kind of handle and then demonstrated what he meant.

“Ohh, that’s a nice bit of kit,” Stefan said, moving towards Ged. The rider handed it over and Stefan experimented. No matter how he moved the handle, the compass remained flat. I now understood its purpose. A dragon rider needed to know where north was just as much as anyone, but on dragon back as the beast banked and veered to one side, that could throw out the compass’ accuracy, making it useless. It needed to stay true no matter what angle you were at. “Cousin?—”

“Already seeing it.”

Draven took the compass from Stefan and held it out as if taking a measurement from the horizon. I knew what he was thinking. A mechanism to carry the pots of dragonfire that would adjust for velocity, angle, any kind of movement, keeping it stable as the dragon moved.

“We could weight the pots at the bottom, making it harder for them to move.” Rex’s words came out faster and faster. “Like a plumb line, gravity would keep it stable, the gimbal would help counteract the natural movement of the dragon.”

“It’d need to have some sort of hook attached to it,” Stefan said. “Something that could be released by the rider.”

It felt like everyone started talking at once. Voices, so many masculine voices, competed for attention and that had me stepping back. Males protect. I could almost hear Glimmer’s voice inside my head as I turned to look at her, still sleeping on Darkspire’s shoulder. One golden eye opened for a second in acknowledgement. Queens let them.

“Where the hell can we get gimbals made en masse at short notice?” someone asked. “My man took months to complete my compass.”

“Mine didn’t take months, but it was definitely weeks,” another rider said.

“Months? Weeks?” Ged snorted. “My dad made me mine in a day. It’s not as fancy as some of those ones, but it does the job.”

“‘Does the job’ is exactly what we need right now.” Everyone went quiet as Draven spoke. “Ged, can you take Cloudy and talk to your father about a royal contract? I’ll agree to whatever terms he sets if he can start manufacturing these for the war effort. Men, gold, whatever he needs.”

“Of course, Majesty.”

Ged remembered to tack Draven’s title on at the last minute, nodding before turning towards his dragon.

But I didn’t want him to leave, not without me.

I felt hollow and lightheaded, my gut turning. This wasn’t what normally happened when I touched a crystal egg, but that one… It was as if it was cracked for a reason. The poison within it had to leach out and I needed to get it off me.

“I’ll go with Rider Ged,” I said in a decisive tone. Draven’s eyebrow jerked up as if he knew exactly what I was doing. “The sun, the vision, they’ve left me feeling out of sorts.” Draven’s eyes started to shine with a dangerous light, the warning clear. “He can drop me off at the palace so that I might rest.”

“Of course.” Rex was all business now. “The training field is no place for a woman. Straight to the palace, Ged. Ensure Her Highness gets to her chambers and don’t let yourself get distracted by the maids this time.”

A little snicker from the crowd made clear this was a customary complaint of Ged, but that was before. I hadn’t seen him notice another woman, not since the moment I made him mine.

“Yes, sir.”

Ged held out a hand for me, ready to help me climb on Cloudy’s back, when Draven appeared by our side.

“Look after my queen.” He said that between gritted teeth. “As if she was your own.”

A meaningful look, there and gone again, made clear what he meant. He was stuck here, training the dragon riders for war, but Ged… He could delay speaking to his father and take the king’s place, if that’s what I needed. I thought about that as I climbed into the saddle. Glimmer had already scrambled up and onto Cloudy’s neck. I reached out, trying to smile, as I scratched the spot at the base of her skull that she struggled to reach. Reassuring myself that these dragons, our dragons, were fine helped dispel some of that godsawful cold.

Ged settling in behind me got rid of the rest.

I felt hot, not cold as he leaned forward, gripping the horn of the saddle, his body pressed into mine, but if he feared someone would make comment about manhandling his queen, that was quickly dispelled by Cloudy launching himself into a run, then up and into the sky.

Cloud Raker’s rider is worried about you, Glimmer informed me. He doesn’t like to see you in pain, and it was clear you were suffering as you revisited that vision.

Up in the sky, there was no one to watch and tut-tut as my hand pulled away from the horn and covered Ged’s. They couldn’t hear the sigh of pleasure I felt as I leaned back into his chest. We rode Cloudy like Royal Riders, keeping our seat through the strength of our thighs, not gripping on like limpets to a rock.

“Pippin…”

I felt my name rumble in his chest rather than hear it, the whistle of the wind too intense. His arms went around me and he cradled me close, making me feel like nothing bad could ever touch me.

But it could.

The Duke of Harlston was a threat to dragons and humans, and I think that was the message Tanis was trying to send. Only by working together could we hold Nevermere, and that’s what we needed to do. Right now, I’d steal this moment for just me, just Ged, as I closed my eyes and saw only him, not the horrors of the past.

We landed outside Cheapside, not far from the place Cloudy waited last time we visited this part of the city. Glimmer flew down from the big red dragon’s spine and settled on the ground beside him, making clear what she intended to do.

The sun is warm here, she said, and that place stinks. I do not wish to get any closer to it.

I couldn’t dispute that. The rank stench of Cheapside burned my nose, getting worse as we walked through the crowds and over to Ged’s father’s workshop.

“Back again, son?” Roland said, looking up from the leather skin he was working. “Usually you go months before dropping in to see your old da.” His eyes twinkled as he took me in. The creases around his eyes made clear he was the elder, but I could see his son in his mischievous gaze. “That got something to do with yon girl you keep bringing around here?” His focus slid to my stomach. “Not got any news you want to share?”

“Some.” Ged nodded to me. “Her Highness is the queen-in-waiting until such time as the king has a moment to marry her.”

After I signed divorce papers, after I agreed to a life of pretending that Draven was the only one that owned my heart. I didn’t say a word of that, watching Roland’s mouth fall open.

“Her…” Roland yanked his cap off and then dropped his head. “Apologies, Your Highness.”