Page 52 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 52

Standing in the palace in my father’s clothes, the laces of my boots hastily tied, was not what I had hoped would happen tonight, or ever. Yet here I was. We stood within the throne room, which appeared even more cavernous due to there being so few people within it. Queen Raina stood at the foot of the royal dais, her hands clasped in front of her as we were brought forward, the two knights stepping back, but not away.

“You must be wondering why I have summoned you.” she asked me. Straight to the point, it appeared.

I dropped down into a bow, waiting for her to give me permission to rise before I answered.

“I am ever your servant, Your Majesty.”

“Are you?” Her voice had a sharp edge to it. “People always say that because protocol dictates they must, but… Let’s see how sincere you are about that, because you must serve your country in the way all women do.”

She came closer, taking slow, measured steps until she stood before the two of us.

“Something we rarely get a choice in. We marry specific men because our fathers wish it, because it will provide a useful alliance, because men in a room have decided this will be so, sometimes even before we are born.”

She smiled down at me, taking in my cropped hair, my clothing, even my loose shoelaces before meeting my gaze again.

“You might dress as a boy, but you aren’t one. Like every other noble-born woman, your choice of husband matters. Birds have been bringing messages from the four duchies to the keep at unprecedented numbers. And what do you think they all say?”

I knew what a rhetorical question was, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Marry the girl with a queen dragon. Tie her to our house. Give us this advantage. Allow us to create a new dynasty. One they hope will be founded on the eggs borne by the daughter of my dragon.”

I knew exactly why I was here now. Whatever else the day had been, this was the sharp, jagged edge of it, ready to cut me deep.

“Royce Harlston approached you today?” I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. “And you did not encourage his advances?” I shook my head. “Well.” Her lips thinned down before forming a disturbing little smile. “I am a woman, so I know the horror of being tied to a man you don’t care for all too well.”

I glanced at Draven then, wondering what this comment meant about his parents’ relationship, but he just stared steadily ahead.

“You’ll marry a Harlston,” she ordered. “That’s non-negotiable. It would be smart to go through the motions of letting others court you, making it look like you’ve considered all of your options, but?—”

“You asked for me, my queen?”

Brom strode into the throne room in a state of disarray. He’d obviously been ousted from his bed, his long hair in a loose tumble over his shoulders even as he tugged his leather jacket into place.

“Darling Brom…” Her voice was a feline purr and Brom looked somewhat surprised at her tone and her actions as she floated over to him with her hands out to take his, before looking over her shoulder at me. “He’s the son of one of my cousins, though I’m guessing he hasn’t shared that with you. He tends to keep quiet about it, but he and Draven grew up close as brothers.”

Brom’s eyes bore into his ‘brother’ as she drew him closer, like she was showing off a prize bull at the market.

Because that was what he was supposed to be.

I could almost hear his urgent tones, the slap of his hands on the stone as he confessed the way he felt about courting me. Then, worse, his arms around me as I ran from the Duke of Skane, helping me see the political realities of my impending marriage, no matter who I chose, listening to me whine as… I went very straight, very still, as he was brought closer.

“Not the prince, I admit,” she said, stopping so that Brom stood before me. “But you care little for these things, I hear. And his touch will not be as repellent to you as Royce’s.” Her smile was like a dragon’s, as if she had rows of needle sharp teeth. “Brom will make a gesture tomorrow in the mess hall, make clear his intent to court you and you’ll allow that, along with some of the others. Perhaps the tanner’s son. He’s lowborn enough that everyone will understand when you reject him for Brom. Not the Skanian lad though.”

The queen glared at her son then, for what reason, I didn’t know.

“The Duke of Skane’s ambitions need curtailing immediately. Stay away from him. Am I clear?”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t, my body frozen like a rabbit’s when an eagle has it in its sights. It knows, somewhere down in its little coney heart, that if it runs, it might have a chance to survive, and yet it doesn’t. The fear of it, the sheer certainty of the eagle’s claws and beak and then the speed with which it descends upon you, keeps you still as a stone. But one did not leave the request of a queen unanswered and while my throat worked, wanting to shout, scream, howl something, even as I stared into Brom’s eyes, she decided to repay that insult.

“Brother, bring the little beast forth.”

She waved her hand to summon another man, one who had the same piercing blue eyes as the queen and Draven, and carried himself with an air of command. When I saw who he had with him, I wondered at how I had missed her presence in the room.

Glimmer.

My soul cried out her name, a scream that went on and on and didn’t stop. Not when the duke stood before me, not when he held her wings pinioned under his arm. But they needn’t have bothered. Her eyes were wide open and glazed over, empty of intelligence, of everything.

And that’s when I realised.

I was right back where I had been before, standing in the dirt and the shit while those with evil in their hearts sought to show me just how powerless I was. But it wasn’t lies and blackmail that the queen deployed. We could’ve found a way to fight that. Which meant she was using other weapons.

My eyes slid to the necklace around her neck. A dainty filigree of gold and precious gems, but only one of the gems was lit up, glowing in a way that was very familiar.

The central stone in her necklace was an iridescent moonstone, much smaller than the egg I’d seen in the place Flynn had taken me to, but mined from the same vein, I was sure of it.

“I don’t believe you have met my brother, the Duke of Harlston.” The duke nodded his head but I was in no mind to pay heed to courtly gestures.

“I brought your bondmate into this world and I can take her out of it with just a word. Brother?” As if to emphasise that point, the duke’s grip tightened around my dragon, around my heart.

My eyes whipped around the room, looking for allies, for someone to step forward and tell her what a fucking abomination this whole conversation was. Draven’s eyes remained resolutely forward, not showing an ounce of emotion. And Brom? He’d seemed like a tower of strength to me up until this point, but now? His expression, one of sheer horror, was a twin of mine, but even that small sense of support gave me some relief.

“Don’t look at them,” the queen snapped. “Look at me. Listen to me . Brom or a Harlston rider that I approve of: they are your only options, otherwise the one thing that makes you so palatable to powerful men can be taken away.”

The duke let go of Glimmer then and just as before, she went tumbling to the floor, her wings moving slowly, too slowly to prevent her fall. I threw myself across the space and was there to break her fall.

As I always would.

Pippin… Her voice was weak and disoriented in my head. Pippin…!

Here, my love. I’m always here.

And just as she had when she was tiny, she curled into my chest, burying her head there, dislodging the pendant Christian had given me in the process.

What happened next was stupid, so bloody stupid. I knew the pendant was important, yet I’d hung it around my neck like a sign, one the queen all too readily noted now. Because as Glimmer tucked herself into my chest, as our minds, our souls touched, the stone in the pendant came to life, just like the queen’s.

She just stared for several moments at the offending item, her mask of queenly hauteur visibly cracking. Her blue eyes became glowing chips of ice and I don’t know what she would have done if right at that moment, Brom dared to interrupt her.

“My queen, the hour grows late. We have heard your orders and will, of course, do as you say. I’ll take… my intended back to the keep and we’ll discuss how best to follow your instructions.”

It wouldn’t make a difference. I knew that as sure as I knew my dragon’s heart. But as Brom offered me his arm, I took it while I held Glimmer close. I kept my hand in the crook of his elbow as we went outside, right up until he helped me up into a carriage and we were headed back to the keep.

“Pippin—”

“Don’t.” I ground out the word, making very clear what would happen if he didn’t listen. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t breathe… Just don’t.”

“We will need?—”

“I don’t need to do a damn thing. Find a priest, buy the rings. I’ll marry you and do exactly as you require, as the queen requires, but no more than that. There’ll be no conversations over breakfast or…” I forced myself to continue, “pillow talk.”

He sighed, throwing himself back against the opposite carriage seat.

“I had no idea what the queen planned until that moment. I had my own… intentions?—”

“And she pre-empted them?” I snarled. “I am so sorry your romantic ambitions were curtailed like that.”

“Pippin—”

Pippin…?

My dragon’s voice was thin and weak, but she was coming back to herself, freed from the queen’s poisonous influence.

“Shut up,” I told him, then tightened my hold around my dragon.

What, my love? What the hell happened to you? I should never have left you behind! I’m a bloody fool. And what happened to Ged and Soren? Did they just hand you over like a sack of potatoes?

Pippin… My name was a sigh, a plea and a rebuke, all at once. She lifted her head to blink at me, then lowered it again. Pippin…

I crooned her name to her as she dropped down into sleep. When we reached the keep, I carefully cradled her in the crook of my arm so that I could get out of the carriage without Brom’s assistance and I ran inside.

Brom called my name several times but I ignored him as I raced up the stairs, only slowing down when I reached the door to the suite. Opening the door much more circumspectly, I tiptoed in, using that stealth-walking technique Draven had taught me so well.

When I reached my room and stepped inside, I closed the door, then locked it, moving toward the bed when I heard the doorknob twist, then rattle.

“Pippin…”

Brom sighed my name, exhaustion and pain plain in his voice, but that wasn’t enough for me to open the door. I sank down on the bed and stroked my dragon’s scales as I stared at the doorknob, prepared to do something if he forced his way in, though what, I wasn’t sure.

In the end I didn’t need to work out a plan of action. It appeared that he was respecting my unspoken message and leaving me alone.

I woke up late the next morning to the sound of Glimmer’s plaintive cries of hunger. I blinked, then rolled out of bed, listening to her make animalistic whines of the sort she used to make before we’d found the crystal egg. I opened the door to find the suite empty, so, holding her tight, I dashed on bare feet to the mess hall to find her something to eat.

The hall was always noisy, but I noticed a difference to the pitch of it as I entered. I flagged down the nearest serving woman, begging for food for Glimmer, then, finding some meat scraps left on a table, I sat down and fed them to her as we waited.

“Pippin.”

My head jerked up at the sound of my name, to see Ged standing there. I liked that he’d combed his beard and oiled it, and he wore a smart shirt and pants, but that wasn’t what first caught my attention. It was the massive bunch of flowers, the riot of colour making my eyes widen.

“I didn’t know which ones you’d like so I got a few of every kind of flower the florist had. Soren said it looks like a dog’s breakfast, but…”

He abruptly thrust them into my arms, something I could manage as Glimmer had crawled onto the table, eating crusts of bread and the crispy edges of fried eggs from the abandoned plates. I held the flowers and just stared at them.

“Look, love, if they’re too ugly… Maybe don’t worry about them.” He went to take the bouquet back from me, but my hands tightened around it. He smiled then, a sheepish thing that appeared and then was gone again. “I want to declare my interest, Pippin, in courting you, in making you my wife.”

If he’d just said those bloody words yesterday, my heart would’ve been fuller than it ever had been before, I suspected. Even so, I felt a flush of pleasure that coloured my cheeks and he grinned at the sight of it. The serving woman deposited a big bowl of meat in front of Glimmer and my dragon buried her snout in it, gulping bites down like her life depended on it.

And perhaps it did.

But before I could say a thing about it, Draven came storming through the mess hall, heads turning to follow his progress as he walked right up to me.

“Hold on…!” Ged said, throwing out an arm to stop the prince from confronting me, but Draven knocked it away with an angry hiss.

“Did you do it?”

I was being accused of something. Something serious if the look of the general and officers muttering by the door were anything to go by.

“Did I do what, my prince?” I asked with a thinly veiled sneer.

“Come to my room after… after I returned to the keep, and glue the door shut?”

I didn’t expect to smile today, but here I was, my lips twisting into a curve as easily as breathing. I tilted my head to one side, then considered both men, one at a time, because my answer was the same in both instances.

“Yes. My answer is yes.”