Page 179 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 178

"I don’t really need to bathe,” I said as Ged slid off Cloudy’s back. The red dragon’s head turned around and he sniffed the air. Could a dragon look disgruntled? Apparently, he could as he jerked back. “The mud is drying. I can just brush it off.”

“Take the opportunity while you can, Pippin.” Soren appeared at my side and held out his arms to help me down. “We’ll be living off the land until this damned conflict is resolved. Who knows when we’ll get another chance to bathe.” He produced a bar of soap wrapped in printed paper, the smell of lavender drawing me closer. “I even brought some of that soap you liked with us.”

“From the palace?” I brought the bar to my nose, breathing in the sweet scent. “Gods, Soren, you did this for me?”

“Of course, lass.” Moving towards me took some effort. It was as if the roles we’d been given were standing in the way of us, but he pushed past them. “While these idiots were clowning around and not getting their bags packed, I made sure to include a few special things.”

A loofah of all things emerged from his jacket.

“And you can come and scrub my back with it, Pippin,” Flynn said, now naked and plucking it from Soren’s grip as he ran past.

“You little…”

I grinned at the sound of the sergeant’s growl, but their energy was infectious. I started to pull my soiled uniform off when a strong pair of hands knocked mine away.

“Let me.” Ged stood before me, completely naked, goosebumps standing up all down his arms. “I won’t get an opportunity to do this once we’re back at camp, so let me now.”

I stood still, my heart feeling like it was threatening to burst out of my chest, it was beating so hard. His fingers brushed my sternum as if to ensure it didn’t. Then I was just as cold, just as naked.

“C’mon.” He held out his hand. “I want to say that this will be warmer, but…”

It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. Cold water snatched the breath from my lungs as we plunged in. Flynn was already frantically scrubbing at his skin, all while shivering. Glacier seemed to take that as his cue, lumbering into the water with a groan. Glimmer threw herself off Cloudy’s neck, wings outspread and then she worked them hard, actually gaining altitude. I forgot all about the water, the cold, as I walked along, tracing her path, arms outstretched and ready to catch her if she fell.

“You don’t need to do that.” I turned to see Soren standing there beside me, the moon illuminating every scar hard won on his chest. “Young Glimmer, she knows what she’s doing.”

She did indeed, landing on Glacier’s back with a satisfied chirrup.

See. Her tone was one part queen, one part petulant child. I am a dragon. I fly well.

That you do, I replied. But can you swim?

Glacier put her to the test, dunking the two of them under the water only to emerge seconds later, my bondmate spluttering. We all started laughing, right as Glacier shook himself and showered the lot of us with water.

“Bloody water dragons…” Draven hissed. “Now, where’s that soap?”

We all scrubbed ourselves down thoroughly and then emerged from the lake, teeth chattering, as we wrapped ourselves in drying cloths. Brom crouched before a fire he had built, the flames flickering. Logs were drawn up, stones too, forming a ring of seats that we each claimed once we were back in clean uniforms. Soren unwrapped a bundle from his saddlebags, something that had the other men groaning.

“Travel rations,” he explained, handing me a strip of dried meat and a chunk of cheese. “It’s not exactly fresh.”

“Or savoury,” Ged added. “It pretty much tastes like shit.”

“But it’s food we share together.” Brom noted that he had all eyes on him and then raised a tin cup that was identical to the ones we had. “Each time we manage to have a meal as a wing, that merits a celebration. To the wing!”

“To Pippin,” Flynn added to the toast, his eyes shining as he stared at me. Glimmer prowled closer, intent on the meat in his hands, so he tore off a piece and gave it to her. “To the little queen as well.”

“To Brom and Obsidian.” Everyone went still at my toast. “For making a sacrifice no one asked them to make, and yet I don’t know where we’d be if he didn’t.”

“Probably wearing Harlstonian colours.” Ged shook his head. “And I’d look terrible in red and black.”

“To everyone in this wing.” Draven was king, so it made sense that he would have the last word. We all watched him stand and regard each one of us in turn as he held up his drink. “I never wanted to be king, never wanted to fight a war against my own kin, but if I have to? Then I do so knowing that I have the best of the Royal Riders at my back. Tomorrow, we will ride out and find the hostages, return these women to their rightful homes. Perhaps that will be enough to turn the tide against my uncle. If the only way he can gather support for this ridiculous war is by coercion, well then, we need to make sure he fails every time.”

But how? That was the unspoken question asked as we all drank. Harlston and Skane were the largest duchies, and so the women could be anywhere, even held at the ducal seat somewhere. Much later, I wondered at that as I nestled down in my bedroll, the blankets supplemented by their warmth. There had been a little scrabble about where I would sleep, but right now my face was pressed into Soren’s chest, listening to his heart beat slowly as I felt Ged pressed into my back. Gods, hear my plea, I thought dimly, as exhaustion smashed into me. Whatever you want, whatever you need, just help me find the hostages.

I was safe. I was warm and held tight in the arms of men who loved me. I was dimly aware that Glimmer was nestled in a ball against the flanks of her mates. I had everything Pig could’ve dreamed of, and yet as I fell into sleep, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hostages were going through at the hands of men who didn’t care if they lived or died.

Perhaps that’s why I dreamed this.

I was flying through the air, something I often dreamed of, but never with such authenticity. I could feel the way the air held my massive span of wings aloft, the pressure of the air competing with the pull of gravity. My body was sore from the effort of staying aloft for so long, but now we had returned. Down, that pulsed inside my mind, spiral down and then eat and drink, rest because tomorrow I would be required to ride again. Past exhaustion, past good sense, past the niggling feeling at the back of my mind that something wasn’t quite right. A pulsing white light dispelled these thoughts, and I fell back into compliance, making our slow descent until my wings flapped out as my claws hit the ground.

The stink, that’s what caught my attention first. It was sharp, acrid like that of urine, and it cut through the haze I hovered in. Prey smelled like that, right before I tore them apart with my jaws, and that had me looking up, searching the site. Not the soldiers. Their armour stank, but for different reasons, of unwashed flesh and food refuse. No, there. Hidden away in tents of white flapping canvas, their bodies casting shadows against the fabric. Prey? I thought again, but quickly corrected myself.

I knew exactly what was contained in those tents, and that had me stiffening. My muscles bunched, my claws digging into the earth as my rider slid free of my saddle. I was ready to surge forward, to find them, to protect them, the women.

Women…

Me, Pippin, shifted in her sleep, but my mind wouldn’t pull free of this dream. I had sought answers and I wouldn’t wake up, not until I had them.

“No, lad.” He came into view then, someone I knew well. The lines of his face, the shape of his eyes, they’d been impressed upon my mind since the moment I cracked free of my shell. He was James, my rider, my bondmate, and for a moment I was distracted by all of the memories seeing him conjured. Of being a lad and his hatchling, rambling across the hills behind the keep. Of him bringing me delicious scraps of meat and feeding me, much like a mother dragon would. Of learning to fly, the sheer terror and exhilaration of taking to the skies made all the better because he was on my back.

So why did he hold this metal amulet out in front of him now?

I didn’t like it, I remembered that for just a second, then the world went quieter, stiller. I heard his voice as if from very far away, my eyes falling half closed as the tension left my body. I nestled down into the ground, glad for the rest, my body getting heavier and heavier until?—

Her scream was what woke me from my dream. Not in reality. The part of me that was Pippin murmured something, making distressed sounds while trapped inside the mind of a dragon. But that scream… It woke us up far more effectively than anything I could’ve done. The dragon, Jade, I now realised he was called, jerked to his feet. Human distress was a sound he was well attuned to. He’d discovered the man who was beating his wife and children in the village that they’d visited and made sure he was brought to justice, helped identify a ring of young men who had brutalised a woman on her way home from work. Human women brought out a protective side in Jade, because he knew how vulnerable they could be. So when his eyes snapped open, when he saw the jeering soldiers all clustering around a woman that was dragged from the tents, he started moving.

“Control your beast!”

The perpetrator snarled that at my rider as he held a woman’s wrists clasped tightly. Every time she thrashed, fought his hold, his grin just got wider. It excited him, being in this position of power. He felt like he was striking back for once, against all the bitches who had dared to disrespect him. This was a pleasure he’d long been denied, and he would not allow an overgrown lizard to take it away from him.

“Jade!”

That moment of betrayal, when I felt the dragon’s heart break, nearly killed me. My own chest ached in sympathy, my breath coming in sobs as his rider stepped forward. The amulet held a sizeable chunk of dragonstone and the rider tried to use it then to regain control of his beast.

No, enslave him.

It had appeared the night they left the keep. His rider had told him then that Zafira had left the eggs behind, rejecting them as some mothers did, and left them to care for them. They needed to fly the eggs to the Duke of Harlston’s to be cared for properly. That hadn’t felt right, we had fought that order, right up until the amulet was produced. All thought was driven out of our heads bar the order we had been given. Take our rider, take the eggs and go, and so we had.

That didn’t explain how we had gotten here.

“You won’t get away with this!” The human woman sounded just like a queen, authority ringing in her voice, but with that came fear. That had us moving forward. Males protect and queens let them, we knew that like the beat of our own heart, and this man…

This man was not protecting.

Human males were hard to understand. They had such capacity for cruelty. We saw it over and over in their hearts, when our rider sat in judgement as a magistrate, when we passed into the city. So many fantasies about hurting others, too many for the riders to act upon.

But there was nothing stopping James from stepping in now.

They were armed, these soldiers, but we were rider and dragon. We could burn them whole with one blast of our fire breath. They would run screaming and we would protect this female and all the others in the tents. As if summoned by that thought, the other soldiers started moving in their direction.

We let out a low, rattling growl of warning.

“Down, lad,” James insisted, wielding the amulet like a whip. “Down!”

But that wasn’t right. We could see it in his mind, what he wanted us to do, but that didn’t make sense. We would never keep the women safe if that’s what we did.

“Save it!” James hissed. “You can’t pull this kind of stunt in front of a dragon.”

“Keep your beastie in line,” the first soldier growled, tugging the woman’s neck to one side at what we knew to be a painful angle, placing one kiss then another on her skin, even as she sobbed.

It was the fall of one tear, glowing bright in the firelight, that caught our attention. We followed its path down her cheek, even as she begged for help. We were pinned to the spot, unable to do a thing until it rolled free and then dropped.

Now, Jade! I said. Now!

We lunged forward like a cur on a leash, snapping and snarling with all of the ferocity of one. James shouted something, but he couldn’t be listened to now. It was as if a hood had been torn away and we saw everything now. What the men intended to do to these women, whether their menfolk did as the duke asked or not. James’ resignation, that hit us like a punch to the chest. We saw all the acts of violence he had committed thus far, the broken shell of one of the dragon eggs, forcing us to pause for just a second, though not for long. We couldn’t mourn the hatchling, not until we got her free.

Take the amulet! I ordered.

Jade snatched the piece of metal from James’ grip and then flicked his head, sending the piece of jewellery flying across the treetops, lost forever. The rider backed up, arms outstretched. But he wasn’t our prey. They stink of fear, deer, sheep, pigs, cows. Whatever we hunted, we caught that stink in our nostrils as we flew behind, ready to strike. Piss went dribbling down the soldier’s leg as he threw the woman away, leaving her to collapse to the ground like a discarded handkerchief, as his hand slapped down on his sword hilt.

Pitifully small, that weapon would do nothing.

We couldn’t burn them all in the manner they deserved. The women were too close, these vile creatures using them as shields now rather than playthings, so we would despatch them in a more direct way. Our head reared up, swinging like a snake’s does, right before we struck.