Page 88 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 87

Pippin? Glimmer said as my heart started to beat way too loudly in my ears.

"What the hell are you playing at?” Draven said to Ada, as he appeared by her side. “I don’t know what you think is going to happen when your bloody husband and children are just sitting inside.”

“I have a present for you too, my prince,” she said with an impish smile and then pointed to me.

Pip—in? Glimmer’s voice sounded fractured inside my brain.

“Your mother sends her regards.”

“What?”

“I gave Pippin some traditional wedding biscuits, but these were made from a very specific kind of Kashian nut. They were fermented with?—”

“Fire weed,” Draven bit out before turning to me. My vision was starting to play tricks on me. It seemed that one moment he was standing next to Ada and the next he was standing before me, hands on my arms. But everywhere he touched me, it burned. “Gods, you’re trying to kill her.”

“The queen made clear that you were… struggling to do your duty. You’ve gone soft, Draven. But that’s alright, I can be strong for both of us.” And she reached out to him.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” he shouted. I watched Ada stagger back as if in slow motion, my head tilting to one side as she fell backwards. Draven gripped my arms, and it seemed as though his movements were sped up as he tilted my head his way when I wouldn’t look at him. “Stay with me, Pippin. Just stay with me. ‘Spire!”

His dragon lumbered forward, and I felt like he was bigger than the sun, his dark green scales glimmering phosphorescent under the moon. I crooned some such nonsense, and tried to lift my arm to touch him but it was as though I was stuck in molasses. Then a harsh squawking plucked at my consciousness.

“I know, little queen.” Draven’s voice was so gentle right now. It was as if he was rubbing it all over my body. Darkspire dropped down low and Draven hauled me and the small dragon up onto the big one’s back, Glimmer getting loose with an irritated snap. “Hold on,” he told the two of us and then the world began to move. When I looked down and squinted my eyes, I could see a shape that looked like Ada, flattened against the ground, as all five dragons rose and threw themselves into the air.

Riding had always been such a nerve-wracking experience before, especially with Draven, but now I was floating along with Darkspire. My hands reached out to trail through the clouds, but Draven slapped them right back down again. He was always so mean.

“Hold on, Pippin. For the love of all the gods, hold on. We’ll get you some bracken moss and a helluva lot of water and you’ll be right as rain, I promise.”

I couldn’t understand what he was saying, or what any of it meant. I closed my eyes but then I couldn’t remember what I was trying to work out. I could feel the fire raging inside me, and it flared so much hotter when he held me close, keeping me pinned to his dragon’s back, especially when we spiralled downwards.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said, sliding from Darkspire’s back with little grace, then cracking up laughing when I almost fell face forward. Draven was forced to haul me upwards, right as a harsh squawk had us turning around. “You’re beautiful!” I said to the little dragon, my mouth falling open as she launched herself at us.

“By all the gods…!” Draven was forced to let me go and put his arms out to catch the dragon, but as soon as she landed in them, she was up and over his shoulder chittering madly in a way that was just as funny. I laughed and laughed until tears fell from my eyes, unable to stop myself when the small dragon jumped to me, clawing her way up my tunic and peering at my face with intent eyes. “You can’t feel her?” he asked me.

“Yes, I can! She’s bloody heavy. Nice beastie,” I said, reaching up to try to touch the dragon. After a couple of wobbly tries, I managed to pat her and when I did something magical happened. The little dragon started to glow. But then Draven intervened.

“No!” he told her, and the glow faded away. She turned her head to hiss at him and then snap at his finger. “No, they want you weakened.” He jerked his head to stare at his dragon. What was his name? Darkmoire? Stupid name if you asked me, which they— “Tell her. Show her, ‘Spire.”

Darkspire! That was it. I grinned, my jaw feeling too loose, my teeth rattling with every breath.

“Bracken moss and lots of water,” the dark-haired man insisted, casting his eyes wildly around where we stood on the banks of a lake. “Tell the other dragons to look for it. Show them what we need, ‘Spire.”

I stood there, wavering back and forth, feeling like the whole world was swaying around me with each breath, growing smaller on the inhale, then expanding on the exhale. The man and the dragons crawled over the hills and lake banks like bloodhounds with a scent in their nose. Then the purple one threw back his head and roared and the entire world shook in response. I stumbled backwards, landing on a soft hummock. The man pulled out a knife from his belt and as I stared at the glimmering metal, something on the edge of my memory pricked at me about the blade before I shouted out, “Don’t hurt the dragons!”

“What?” The man looked at me with a frown that had me crawling backwards, wanting to get the hell away from his disapproval, because it was like I could feel the sting of his gaze against my skin. “I can’t hurt the bloody…” He waved me off with a huff and then went sprinting towards the purple dragon, but my attention was caught by the small golden one who had glided to the ground near me when I’d fallen over.

She was so beautiful. I felt like I could gaze upon her for the rest of my life and I told her that, the words coming from within and just flooding out. She seemed to listen. That didn’t seem possible, but she crept closer, her head tilting from one side to the other so I mimicked her movements, the two of us caught in some kind of strange dance. Next thing I knew, the man had reappeared. He held out a wad of luminescent green moss and a waterskin.

“You need to eat this and drink that,” he told me.

“What?” But I still reached out for both things, the certainty in his voice prompting me to act. I looked at the moss, then sniffed it.

“It’ll taste bloody awful and you are going to be very sick when you eat it, but you have to, Pippin.”

“I have to?”

“Yes, lass.”

He dropped down then so he was squatting in front of me, the little dragon taking a seat by my side and chittering as he closed my fingers over the moss and then brought it to my lips. I gagged at the smell: it was too earthy, too slimy—like the stink of a stagnant pond.

“No, no, no… I can’t!”

I went to shove the moss away but he grabbed my hands and pushed them back towards my mouth, but rather than shoving it down my throat, he let go of them and reached out and smoothed his hands over my cheeks. My skin burned wherever he touched me but he just rubbed his thumbs over my cheekbones and said, “For me? Please Pippin, don’t let her win. I’ve been trying so fucking hard to stay one step ahead of her, but of course, she has minions everywhere. That stable lad who left the devil’s burr under your saddle blanket. I whipped him within an inch of his life and then sent him on his way.”

I flinched at that.

“And now bloody Ada. Of course, Ada. Vain, destructive, wilful, Ada who’d step over her own grandmother for the offer of more. She’s given you poison.”

“Poison?”

I didn’t know what that word meant but, somehow, I knew it was a bad one.

“Poison. It will kill you if you don’t eat the moss and then drink as much water as you can, to purge it.” He grabbed my hands again, stroking and rubbing them as he brought the water and moss up to my mouth.

The first bite was dire. Bile filled my mouth, my eyes filling with tears at the taste of it, but the blurry shape of the man nodded encouragingly as I squinted at him.

“That’s it. That’s a girl. Good lass. Good lass.”

The experience was bitter and sweet. His voice was so rich and warm, it was like a great big hug and, as if sensing that was what I needed, he shifted behind me, enclosing me in his arms as I chewed. The little dragon crawled in my lap, letting out a strange humming sound as my teeth worked. The feeling of them both was the sweetest. But the bitter… Gods above, was there ever anything as foul as this? Too slippery already when I bit into it, it became this viscous, vile tasting gel that coated my mouth, my teeth, my tongue until the man held out the water. I drank from the waterskin greedily, but that didn’t help much either. The goo seemed resistant to the flow of water, clinging on like, well, moss until finally I swallowed some down. And when I did? It was as if a lead weight had landed in my gut. I let out a low groan, but the sound came out kind of bubbly, almost like a burp and then the gassy sound was followed by an eruption from within my stomach as it all came out.

When I next became aware of what I was doing, I was on my hands and knees, vomiting so hard my vision went entirely white. I had long since ejected everything in my stomach and yet still my guts clenched and then jerked, trying to expel something that wasn’t there.

“Some more,” Draven insisted in gentle tones.

“No, no, please…!” Tears streamed down my face but his hand just rubbed big circles on my back.

“I know, sweetheart. I know. It’s fucking awful. I’ve had to chew the bloody stuff myself.”

“You have?” I asked in a small voice, my vision a hazy morass.

“I got poisoned by a visiting ambassador from the continent. My mother laughed the entire time I vomited, but she made me eat a whole handful before we were done and I need you to do the same. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise?”

He reached over and brushed my tears away, so I caught his expression for a moment before it was blurred away. He looked so very worried. His skin was far too pale, his eyes far too bright and his whole face was screwed up in an attitude of pain.

“Otherwise you’ll die out here and your dragon with you and everything will have been for nothing.”

Pip—in? Pip—! Mus— Eat it ? —

An insistent little voice inside my head had my hand moving, even as I sobbed into the moss. Those salty tears didn’t wash the taste away. If anything it made it slimier and harder to chew. But chew I did, then water, so much water, then out it all came until it was hard to know what the point was. We did this a couple more times until it felt like I was scoured clean like an old cooking pot.

Pippin? My head jerked to the side, my jaw locked tight, wanting to hold back the waves of nausea that were coming.

Glimmer?

Pippin!

My dragon moved like lightning, scrambling to get into my lap, her momentum shoving me backwards so that my head hit the ground behind me with a thud.

“Gently now. Gently now, lass,” Draven said in a soft voice to Glimmer and she shot him a reproachful look and growled before huddling in my lap. “And don’t go scowling at me. I brought your mistress here and made sure she is well.”

“Draven?”

I blinked, staring up at him but unable to move for the weight of my dragon, but that wasn’t the only reason I was motionless. He looked so… different.

“You can’t be completely well,” he told me with a snort, then thrust the waterskin my way. “You’re not looking at me like I crush puppies’ skulls for fun. So you need to drink more.”

“What’s… happened?”

“Drink first and I’ll tell you,” he ordered.

“Tell me and I’ll drink the lot,” I said, then winced as my stomach grumbled in protest. He watched me clutch at it with a frown and then sighed.

“My mother wants to kill you, Pippin. She sent me to do it and I hoped by hanging around on your honeymoon I could persuade her I was working on that, but of course, she couldn’t entrust this task only to me.”

He shot me a look and I started drinking from the waterskin even as I felt my stomach lurch.

“She is nothing but thorough.”

I heard the other dragons all humming as he spoke, the five of them creeping stealthily closer, as if they weren’t massive apex predators.

“I interrogated the stable lad who put the devil’s burr in your saddle blanket. He wasn’t especially helpful. Just said that Ada had given him a task to do and a bag full of coins to complete it. I thought I had her pegged, sure she’d try something tonight once everyone was asleep. I was going to catch her in the act and then make clear the error of her ways.”

I sucked down more water and then he kept on talking. “She gave you some biscuits?” I nodded, remembering it all now. I felt simultaneously water-logged and empty, but my mind was clear.

“Kashian nut is a heavily controlled substance both for its value and its lethal qualities. The hill folks used to distil a concoction from it into something newlyweds would drink to ensure good fertility and the favour of the gods. But if not done correctly? The natural toxins in the nuts can be amplified with fire weed, leaching into the person’s body to kill them. Of course, our assassins’ guilds make good money from just such powders and tinctures. And who else would have easy access to this but my uncle and my mother?”

He stared at me, then nudged the waterskin, prompting me to drink again.

“Ada created a traditional wedding gift, but one she wanted only you to consume. You’d have gone to Brom tonight, to all of my riders, in a heightened mood, torn their clothes from their bodies and indulged in an orgy of sensation, but in the morning…”

Draven didn’t need to say it. We both knew. I’d have been dead, stiff and pale on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“And Glimmer?” I asked, not wanting to know, but I had to ask.

“I suspect Ada or one of her flunkies would’ve tried to kill the little queen while you were all rutting madly.” He glanced down at Glimmer, but despite his soft gaze, she hissed and snapped from where she was perched in my lap. “She’s the obstacle Mother has to eradicate if her plan to overthrow my father and take over the country is to succeed.”

I turned then and vomited up all the water he’d forced me to drink and somehow that seemed to be a most fitting response to everything that had happened today.