Page 29 of The Dragon Queen (Ember: Queen Of Dragons #6)

EMBER

Come on, Ember." My cousin Brynn is pulling at my hand, urging me to move faster. We're walking through downtown Wynrath Crest, the sky above gloomy and the pavement gray, and--

How exactly did I get here?

I scrunch up my brows, suddenly confused.

This whole morning has passed in a blur, and that's not entirely unusual. I zone out a lot when I'm letting Aunt Helena boss me around. It's a coping strategy.

But this is different.

Brynn laughs, pulling me out of my daze. "Seriously, what's gotten into you today?"

I blink a few times, trying to shake it off--with limited success. "I don't know. Just...didn't sleep well, I guess. Weird dreams."

Shadow Dragons, purple lightning, black rock.

Shuddering, I push the remnants of my nightmare aside, but the traumatic little flashes are persistent little buggers.

"Sounds like you." Brynn rolls her eyes, and I frown.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, you know. You always let stuff like that get to you. Making a big deal out of nothing."

"Wait--" That's...not entirely untrue. And considering Brynn's my only friend, I do bitch about my life to her a lot.

She's never complained about it before, though. She's never made me feel like I was being overly dramatic. My stomach drops. Is that how she really feels?

"Oh, never mind." She's walking faster again now. "We're gonna be late."

Late to what?

There are more flashes--only they're not flashes of nightmares. Brynn bustled me out of the house, saying we had to go... Had to get...somewhere...

Everything's fuzzy. My head hurts.

I open my mouth to ask where we're going, but my vision blurs for a second, and suddenly we're approaching the town hall. Forget my stomach sinking. It's plummeting clear through the ground.

There's a flash of something in the distance. An old woman in a tattered black dress, and I know her, I recognize her--

But I blink, and then she's gone, and I can't even remember what I saw.

Prince Fury steps out from behind one of the columns framing the doorway of the town hall. "Oh look, it's our favorite reject," he taunts, and everything in me is going to ice.

"Move it along, whelp," his friend Sebastian snarls, and he's not alone.

Fury's whole cohort of assholes is there, materialized from thin air, and there are too many of them.

"You heard him." Fury's girlfriend Jasmine inspects her talons, her eyes flashing into glowing slits. "Move it." She laughs, and it reaches into my heart. "So pathetic."

Fight rises inside of me, but Brynn is still tugging me along, and it's as if she can't see Fury or Jasmine or any of them, but they're getting in my face. I can't move past them.

"You should just put yourself out of your misery," another of the mean girls jabs.

"Do us all a favor."

Jasmine's there again, closer this time, that sharp nail slicing into my cheek and drawing blood, and she's so close I can smell the brimstone and sulfur of her breath. "No one would miss you."

"Fuck off," I breathe, but there are tears welling in my eyes.

I've always tried to pretend that their bullying didn't hurt my feelings. I'm above it all. I don't care about any of them or what they think. It doesn't bother me that I haven't Emerged. My dragon is inside me, somewhere, and I'll find her someday.

Only everything within me is silent and cold, and oh Gods. What if this is it? What if I really am nothing? Rejected. Defective. Broken.

There's a ringing in my ears, and Jasmine's gone. I dart my gaze around, but Brynn is calling my name, and I take a step in her direction, only to scream.

The old woman I spotted earlier is standing right in front of me.

"What--"

The woman is pale and stooped, with disheveled gray hair and deep purple in her eyes. She beams and clasps her hands together. "Oh there you are, dearie."

"Come on, Ember," Brynn urges again, less patient this time.

"Don't pay her any mind." The old woman shakes her head, and I'm pretty sure I should be running away from her, but something makes me stop.

"Do I-- Do I know you?"

The old woman laughs. "Oh, dearie, you hardly know yourself, do you?"

Okay, never mind, I was right the first time. This lady is acting as kooky as she looks. I should go.

"Sorry." I start moving away from her. "I should--"

She darts out a hand, faster than she has any right to be. As she grabs my wrist, her tone dips, the friendliness fading to reveal an edge of desperation.

And maybe foresight.

"They won't remember you," she says grimly, and it's a warning.

My heart pounds. "Who--"

"Your mates, of course."

And I laugh. Who wouldn't?

I don't have a mate. I'm not even a dragon, really. I'll never have a mate, and there's a bitterness in my chest. The tang of bile.

Who could ever want you, without your powers?

I don't know where the question comes from, but it shivers right down to my bones.

And besides. Didn't she say "mates"? Plural?

It's ridiculous, impossible--unheard of.

So why does it sound so familiar?

I pull back, trying to tug my wrist free from her grip, but she's stronger than she looks.

"You must remind them," the old woman instructs me.

"Come on," Brynn grouses, and she's standing just beyond this old woman, tapping her toe in impatience, and why doesn't she just go on without me? I'm not important. I never knew why she put up with me in the first place.

The old woman digs her fingers into my arm, and I look down. Gray metal flashes in and out of my vision--like there's something wrapped around my wrist, but no. It's just this weird lady's bony hand.

"Leave me alone," I beg, but do I mean it?

"You must remember yourself." Her voice is creaking, but she finally releases me.

"Crank," Brynn scoffs.

"Yeah." But I'm not so sure.

Shaking off the unsettled feeling in my chest, I follow my cousin. Doubt nags at me, though, and I turn back.

But the old woman is gone. "Wait, where did she--"

The world wiggles, like static on an ancient television set, and my head aches, my stomach going queasy, and I close my eyes.

When I open them again, everything's shifted. Brynn's dragging me inside a building, and it's--

The Air Dragon King's mansion.

All the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end, ice and dread flooding my veins. I shouldn't be here. No one goes here--not unless they're guests of the royal family or dignitaries or--

In my disoriented state, I walk right into a brick wall. Only it's warm, and I step back.

Prince Storm is glaring down at me and--

A thousand memories flash through me in an instant. Storm holding me, Storm's body wrapped around mine in protection, Storm laughing.

Storm's face, in the instant before he first kissed me.

I flush from head to toe, some of that icy fear fading away.

"Storm--"

His handsome face instantly goes hard. "You will refer to me as Your Royal Highness."

Oh, shit. I've never been to his home before. We always met in his garage, or we drove to random places where nobody would see us. The one time we so much as touched in public--

Was at the Emergence. That last, awful Emergence when I didn't even have the chance to face the flames, because we were discovered, and he--

He rejected me. He told me I was nothing.

I recoil. There's no softness to Storm's expression, and my heart is cracking in two.

"Sorry," I mumble.

He sneers, like I'm a maggot, or worse. "What's your name?"

Okay, that's laying it on a little thick. "I--"

"Your name," he spits.

"Sorry," Brynn says, stepping between us, pushing me back, and that's smart, I shouldn't be crowding the prince.

But...

My head aches, the dull throb growing sharp.

"This is Ember," Brynn supplies. "We were summoned to a meeting in the Throne Room."

I blink, so confused. "We were?"

"Oh." Storm's mouth flexes, his nose flaring, and I feel like even more of an insignificant speck. "You."

But he knows who I am. He does--he knows the very heart of me.

What the fuck is going on?

"I--"

"Give it up," another voice says, and it's hard and cruel, but I recognize it.

I turn around, and somehow we're in King Zephyr's Throne Room. My heart beats out of my chest, panic starting to claw at me, because this is more than sleep deprivation. I'm not drunk or high--not passing out between one breath and the next, only to wake up someplace else.

With someone else.

The man standing over me now is tall and gorgeous, with deep umber skin and imperious brows and brilliant, aquamarine tattoos, tracing arching lines over his arms.

"I will not repeat myself," the man says. "Surrender it. Now."

"You know you don't deserve it," another man says. This one is suddenly standing beside the first. Asian, with buzzed short hair and black eyes and an imperious look to him that I know.

"Malik," I breathe, glancing between the first man and the second. "Jianyu."

My heart is cratering, a vast, black pit gaping within me.

"I told you," Storm interrupts, his voice harder than I've ever heard it before. "You address royalty by their title."

"Maybe she needs to be taught a lesson."

I whip around, and there's another man--burly and beautiful, with flame red hair and eyes that could see into the very soul of me.

If only they could be bothered to look.

And there--

Behind him--

A flash of black and gray and purple. The old woman from earlier--she's there and then she's not, flitting in and out of my vision like some sort of apparition.

Am I losing my mind?

I laugh, hysterical, tears forming in my eyes.

I'm falling apart.

The old woman's warning floats back to me. They won't remember you. Your mates.

Because that's what they are--what they were. In another life. Maybe in a dream.

Or a nightmare.

I flinch, reality dissolving for a split-second. All I see is black rock and purple flames and that awful, hideous, rotting-fleshed face, and then I'm back in the throne room, but there are glowing, violet fissures in the walls.

A hand comes down on my cheek with a crack, slapping in the same spot where Jasmine already drew blood. I jerk my head up, and Rafe is towering over me, the fire in his eyes dark with disdain.

"Are we boring you?"

"No--no..."

Whatever I thought I saw is gone, the throne room as real as the earth beneath my feet. But so is the tie I feel to these men.

"Then kneel," Malik orders, and I'm dropping to my knees without even meaning to.

Tears stream down my face. "We're--I'm--Don't you remember?"

Jianyu scoffs, one corner of his mouth curling downward. "Dragon princes do not make a habit of remembering commoners."

"Defective commoners," Storm reminds me, as if I could forget. "Or have you finally managed to summon your beast?"

And I have---I see it so clearly in my vision. Great black wings erupting from my back. I feel the wind rushing over my scales and the rolling power of purple flames rising from my maw.

In this moment, though, there's only emptiness in my chest.

My breathing tightens. My dragon--she's--

Where is she? Even in my darkest, most despairing moments, I've felt her stirring deep within me. But right here, right now, I'm utterly alone.

"I didn't think so," Storm sneers.

"But we're..." And my voice is nearly a whimper now. A plea. "I'm..."

There are more flashes. Malik holding my hand in a sacred pool, Jianyu laying me out on a platform of stone. Rafe grasping onto me as we join forces and ignite. Storm gasping as we float into the air.

All four of them, connected to me via tethers made of pure light. Around me, in me, their mouths and hands, the ultimate union of our bodies and hearts, and the product...

I put a hand to my abdomen. There was a faint echo. A presence.

A life, born of our love.

You must remind them.

You must remember yourself.

"I'm your mate," I whisper.

And the entire room erupts into laughter.