Page 23 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 23

Every part of my body ached. The other riders had tried to make me understand just the effort it took to stay in the saddle of a dragon, but I hadn’t understood it, not like I did now. All of my muscles, my joints… Gods, even my bones themselves seemed to ache with the effort of it. Of resisting the relentless buffet of the winds, trying to tear us from the dragon’s back, of keeping my knees pressed into the dragon’s sides, of gripping tight to the spine that kept us in place, even as we began to spiral downwards. But when I saw the expanse of the capital spreading before me, my aches dissipated briefly.

Wyrmpeak.

Named for the tall mountainous spire on which the dragon keep and the castle were built, the rest of the city ringed it, going further and further down until it reached the bustling port below, the bay currently full of tiny ships, looking like a small child’s bathtub. But it grew larger as we circled closer, something that drew a whistling breath from me and a squeak from Glimmer.

She shoved her head out the top of my jacket and stared at the approaching city. The pleasure the little dragon took at our arrival was infectious, catching at my lungs, making it hard to take a full breath. Because somehow, she felt like she was returning to something. I wanted to puzzle that thought out, but Draven pressed his body against mine.

“We’re going to drop hard now!” he shouted, his words only just audible over the loud rush of the winds and, just as I gripped Darkspire’s spine tighter, the beast angled his wings to one side, throwing us to the right, pressing me against Draven’s arm as it felt like we made a death dive towards the city.

I could hear the whoops of the other riders as we evened out, the size, the detail of the city becoming clearer now. But with that came a pressing pain in my ears, something that just grew and grew, Glimmer scratching at my jacket, my dress in response.

“Swallow!” Draven barked, forcing my spine to tense against the press of his body. “Swallow or your damn ears will pop!”

My body obeyed before I could consciously, my throat convulsing, over and over until finally I felt the pressure equalising. Glimmer crooned to me, the little dragon doing her best to soothe me. But while I managed the pain inside my ears by swallowing, swallowing until my mouth felt bone dry with it, it didn’t alleviate the sense of foreboding I felt as Wyrmpeak grew closer.

We landed on the roof of the dragon keep, people climbing the stairs to meet us, and as I watched them rush over to greet each one of the riders, my eyes stung and my jaw locked tight, something that only increased when I saw the state of my dress. Sue had worked around the clock, trying to do the best she could in the small amount of time, and she’d managed to make something quite pretty. Silver beading had been embroidered all over the hems.

Had.

As I had suspected, being in the saddle for hours, my dress flapping in the breeze the entire time, had made a mess of that. Beads hung limply from pulled threads or had been whisked away entirely. As had half of the hem. I stared down at the ragged silver fabric, feeling a hot, hot flush of shame. Sue had worked so hard… And I had looked… I sucked in a breath, then another, them coming faster and faster as Glimmer crawled out of the jacket and looked down at the dress, not understanding the source of my distress. But whatever sartorial emergency I was in the middle of, her interest was quickly displaced by her pangs of hunger. She began to creel piteously, as if someone, anyone, might come forth with some meat.

Gods, Glimmer…

I pulled some of the jerky I’d given her on the journey from my pocket and she snatched it rudely from my fingers, gnawing at the tough meat, then making a sound of distress at the unsatisfactory nature of it before attacking it again. I looked around at the many milling riders, wondering if someone, anyone had some meat for a small dragonling.

“Now, now, little lass.” I turned towards Ged’s warm voice like a flower would the sun, and both of our eyes went wide at the waxed fabric package he was unwrapping. Then she launched herself at him, landing on his arm and pecking at the fabric. “Ho! Someone’s hungry. Don’t worry, my queen. Mind your claws now.”

My hands shook, with the need to snatch the meat away from Ged, to hold out a scrap and stuff it down Glimmer’s throat, anything to soothe that ravaging hunger. But he did just that in a much more measured way, shooting me a knowing look when she started tearing into the meat and gobbling it down.

“Thank you, Ged. I…”

I didn’t know what to say, and ended up staring at him mutely as he just nodded, feeding my dragon more food.

How was I going to navigate Wyrmpeak? Draven had been right, we’d had some lovely, lazy days at my estate, where we’d learned more about each other, all of us, at the gentle pace of the farm. But here was different. I looked around me, seeing all the riders streaming onto the platform, clapping arms with the prince and the others of the wing. Some even came and clustered around Ged, drawn over by the sight of the baby dragon. Attention that had her preening when her belly was half full.

“So where’s the queen-in-waiting?” one man asked, looking around him. I felt myself stiffen when his eyes met mine, my spine growing even more rigid as his gaze moved on again. I reached up to lift the goggles from my eyes, then watched the man’s gaze swing back and his eyes widen. “Gods above! Highness…”

He went to drop down to one knee, his elbow shoving into his fellows’ ribs, but then in the scrum of people vying for his attention, Draven seemed to sense the focus of some of them was diverted towards me. He spun around with a frown.

“Find your wig,” he snapped at me. “Mother and Father will be?—”

“Highness.” A massive man in full plate armour pushed his way through the crowd, several other men who were similarly attired doing the same behind him. “The king and queen have been alerted to your return to the capital and have requested your presence at the palace immediately.”

“Thank you, Baldur,” the prince said with a nod, the knight performing a small bow before stepping back. Draven turned back to me with a frown. “This is why you needed to be dressed and ready to present yourself as soon as we landed.”

“About that.” I pulled the hem of my dress out, alerting him to its current state, something that had him frowning. Brom came forward, so now I had two sets of eyes looking at the wreckage of my dress.

“You…” The prince’s eyes narrowed then, becoming chips of ice as they bored into me. And they stung like ice pressed for too long into tender flesh. “You knew?—”

“And you wouldn’t listen to me. You wear thick leather, which is impervious to the ravages of a long flight. Women’s clothing is rarely that hardy. A lady’s dress is made to be decorative first, durable doesn’t come in even second as a consideration.”

“We can find a dress, Highness,” Brom said in a low voice, speaking fast, as if that would be enough to hold the prince off. No such luck.

“She can’t be presented at court like… this, looking like some kind of rag and bone girl.”

“Why the long faces?” Flynn asked, joining us, his eyes jerking down as the others stared at the mess of my dress. “Oh.”

“Oh indeed,” Draven snapped. “Bad enough that I’ve had to haul some minor noblewoman from a backwater to the capital, but this?” His fingers twitched, as if he wanted to rip the dress from me, and not in the way some of the male leads did in the penny novels I picked up from time to time. Either that or slap me. “I can’t hide this.”

“So don’t.” The three men looked up at my flat reply. I stared openly at each one of them, not willing to shrink down, to make myself small so soon after landing in Wyrmpeak. I had a feeling if I did now, I wouldn’t be able to stop doing so. “Give me a room and a minute and I’ll divest the dress and go into the throne room in armour. We’ll pass it off as if we knew this would happen and didn’t want to delay answering the king and queen’s order by fussing over getting me dressed in a frock.”

“She’s right,” Brom said, shooting me a long look. “It’s the only way. We can’t find a dress in this short a time. The lasses in the keep would have one to spare, but few are as tall as Lady Pippin.”

Of course, they weren’t.

Perhaps if I’d just lived as Lady Pippa, I wouldn’t have had this reality shoved into my face, over and over, of all the ways I was not like other women. Of the way I didn’t fit these arbitrarily decided ideas about how a woman should look and act. But I had been affected, and it still stained my skin, just like the mud of the pig pens. But just as when I had been Pig, I could either let these perceptions shape me or I could cling to what I knew was true. That I had a right to exist, to be shown respect, no matter what the rules were. As if on cue, I felt Glimmer land on my shoulder, climbing down and curling in my arms that moved automatically to cradle her.

“Fine.” Draven bit off the word, and then we moved.

I didn’t get an introduction to the keep. Instead, I was hurried down stone steps, along a corridor, then down another set of stairs before we came to a heavy wooden door. Brom produced a key, unlocking it and then ushering me inside.

“Ignore the mess, milady,” Ged said, following me inside and looking around him with a sheepish grin. “We weren’t expecting visitors.”

“And you can’t be in here right now, lunk head,” Flynn said, grabbing him and dragging him out by the collar before slamming the door behind him.

Which just left me and Glimmer.

I didn’t have my bag with me, which perhaps excused what happened next. I set her down on a rumpled bed, watching her nestle down into the sheets and blankets, tail to nose as I undid the jacket toggles. I worked fast to get it off and then tore the dress up and over my head, then just tore it when the fabric caught on the helmet that was still on my head. I wrenched and I wrenched, full of anger at myself, at the dress and mostly at what we’d put Sue through to make the damn thing, only for it to be good for nothing more than being torn into cleaning rags. The silver satin fell to the ground, leaving me shirtless, chest heaving.

It was then that I realised that because I hadn’t brought my bags down I had no shirt with which to replace the dress. I could’ve just put on the jacket with nothing else under it, but the way the toggles were attached it would become apparent to anyone who stood close to me that I was bare-skinned underneath.

“Hurry up, Pippa!”

My eyes roamed around the room until I saw a shirt hanging off the back of a chair. I had it in my hands and over my head without a thought, then I pulled on the jacket. As soon as I went to do up the toggles, though, I smelled it. Him. Musky, woody: the scent of clean male filled my lungs and stilled my fingers. I was stealing a man’s shirt, that was sin enough, but suddenly this felt insanely personal.

“Pippa!”

Any sense of a quandary I was feeling as to the right or wrong of the situation was quickly shoved to one side at that harsh tone. I removed the helmet and the goggles, throwing them down on the bed before donning the wig, attempting to get it to sit straight before collecting a sleepy, protesting Glimmer up, right as the door opened.

“And if I was still getting dressed?” I asked as Draven stood there, pale as milk, eyes filled with a demonic blue fire.

“Then we’d treat my father to the sight of your tits.” His hand clamped down on my wrist and, to the sound of Glimmer’s indignant squawk, we were dragged down the many stairs of the keep, the other riders in tow.

I sat with all five men in a rocking carriage as we were whisked towards the palace, the feeling somewhat soothing, especially in the face of the overwhelming silence. A tense one, I quickly realised, because they were all out of the door the moment the horses’ hooves came to a stop, a hand held out for me as I crept out.

“Try not to worry, milady,” Ged hissed as we walked through the grand halls of the palace, past gilt-framed paintings and across polished marble floors. “The rich and powerful are still just bastards like the rest of us.”

But before I could whisper anything in response, Draven walked up to the bewigged servants standing in gold and red livery by the grand doors of the throne room. The men bowed low to the prince, then hauled the doors open, revealing the throne room beyond.

Draven’s father, King Magnus, sat atop his throne, his hand slowly tracing the shape of a gilt goblet that was perched on the arm. He seemed the picture of the indolent king, with no tension in him that might have warranted the desperate hurry with which we’d been escorted to the palace.

Then there was the queen.

Queen Raina was everything I wasn’t. Elegant, petite, yet radiating a kind of deadly beauty, her blue eyes and dark hair reminding me of someone else.

“Your Majesties.” Draven dropped down to one knee and the other riders did the same, leaving me to drop down into the deepest of curtseys and hold it for several seconds before either of the royal couple responded.

“Rise.”

Magnus’ order was said in a diffident tone, as if he had little interest in whether or not we obeyed. Rise we did, standing before the two of them as they looked us over.

“Your Majesties, I return with—” Draven started to say, stepping forward.

“Girl.”

Raina’s voice cut through the air and, just in case I hadn’t worked out who she meant, she pointed imperiously to me, then waved me forward. Glimmer crawled out of my jacket, coming to rest on my shoulder, her claws pricking at the tough leather. She started making nervous little chitters in response, but that quickly devolved into sneezes as the dusty strands of the wig got in her way. The riders moved apart, opening up a space for me to walk forward. I did so, then dropped to another deep curtsey, not sure at this point if it was required, but feeling like I needed to perform one anyway.

“And you are?”

No greeting. No recognition, no being given leave to rise. I straightened up anyway, never having been able to hold a curtsey for long, and then spoke.

“Lady Pippa Wentworth, Your Majesties.”

“A Wentworth?” Magnus’ voice rang through the silent hall. “They’re one of the cadet branches of the Aster family, aren’t they? One of the Skanians.”

“I’m sure they are, my king,” Raina said. “So this is the girl that wishes to take her place beside us as queen-in-waiting?”

No, I don’t! I wanted to shout. I really, really don’t.

“Tell us about how you came to be in possession of the queen dragon.”