“Hey,” he said softly.
I nodded at him without looking up as I scrawled my name across the bottom of the reports. I was afraid to look up. Afraid that he was here to fight with me again. “Hey.”
“You busy?” He sounded cautious.
“A bit.” I looked up at him and then glanced over at the pile of reports I still had to go through. I wanted to spend time with him, but I had to be responsible, to be an adult. The running of an entire world fell on my shoulders, after all.
“Think you could take a break and go for a fly with me?” Winston asked, his voice cautious and unsure.
“I don’t…” I trailed off and stared up at him. I wanted to go hang out with him, I really did. We had barely had any time together this year, with the war and all, and I knew we needed to reconnect. I wanted to reconnect. But I had so much stuff to do that I wasn’t sure that I had time right now. We’d let too much stuff slide while we were hammering out my aunt’s surrender.
“Come on. I promise you’ll have fun. You need to get outside for a bit. Take a break. Now that your aunt is gone, you can take a little time off.” Winston grabbed my hand and gave it a tug, not pulling hard but still trying to get me to follow him. “We can spend some time together.”
I looked back to the pile of reports. I really shouldn’t go out. I had responsibilities. I needed to meet with the goblins that were finishing the last of the repairs on my palace. I’d told them to finish my tower last, to restore the rest of the palace first, and they were almost done with everything now. I was looking forward to finally getting back in my own bed again. Then, after I met with the goblins, I needed to start laying down firm plans for what we were going to do for the memorial we had planned but had never gotten around to starting. Not to mention all the reports I needed to review. I glared at the pile next to me. I had a lot of stuff to do and none of it was what I’d have called fun, but I still had to do it anyway.
I didn’t have time to go out for a flight with the big black dragon I called my boyfriend—no matter how much I wanted to do exactly that. I was a queen, and I had responsibilities. Lots of responsibilities. Probably more responsibility than anyone with any brains would normally give to a seventeen-year-old girl.
“But—” I started.
“Go,” I heard a deep voice say from behind me. I turned to find John of Leavenwald standing behind me, his hands on his hips and a smile on his face.
He was another thing I needed to deal with. After all these months of avoiding each other, we really did need to figure some stuff out. Like how to deal with the fact that he was my father. Or how we were going to come to terms with the fact that the Fate Maker had killed his son—my half brother, Eamon—before I managed to banish the wizard into the Bleak.
To be fair, if my brother hadn’t kidnapped me and then tried to sell me to the Fate Maker, he would probably still be alive, but I figured it was better if we all tried to forget about that part.
“Go on.” John waved toward the remains of the forest where the dragon’s aerie was located. “You need to get out of here for a bit. You’ve been working yourself to exhaustion each day. You deserve a small break. Both of you do.”
“There’s work still to be done, paperwork to go through. Military dispatches. I need to meet with the—”
“I’ll handle it.” John of Leavenwald waved at the doorway again.
“But—”
“Allie,” Winston cut in, and I turned to see him staring from me to John.
“All of these things are supposed to be my responsibility. I’m the queen. Keeping everything running smooth is my job,” I insisted.
“I said I’ll handle it.” John stepped close and tapped his finger against my chin. “I negotiated a peace treaty with your aunt in your stead. I think I can handle the construction workers and a meeting about the war memorial.”
“Then there’s the—”
“The briefings from everyone else can wait until you return,” Winston said.
“Exactly.” John nodded. “Now, as one of your royal advisors, I’m advising that you get out of here. Go have fun for a bit. Quit worrying about running the world and go be seventeen for a few hours. And while you’re out clearing your head, maybe you can think about the festival next week. The work will be here when you get back.”
“Festival?”
“To celebrate your birthday. We delayed it because of the peace treaty talks, but the people will want to do something. Now that the war is over, they’ll want to celebrate, and your birthday is a good reason for everyone to do that.”
“I don’t—”
“People need to see that we’re getting back to our normal lives here in Nerissette,” John said. “And celebrating our holidays is a way of doing that.”
“He’s got a point,” Winston said. “Everyone could use a good party to show them that things are safe and stable again.”
“Besides,” John said. “It’s tradition to hold a festival to celebrate the Golden Rose’s birthday. Before the Fate Maker’s reign, the festival for the Rose’s birthday lasted a week each year. Some of the happiest memories of my own childhood, those festivals were. I won my first archery contest at one when I was only eleven years old. Your grandmother’s fiftieth birthday.”
“Right.” I tried not to sound disappointed that the only reason my absentee dad wanted to hold a birthday party for me was because there was a shooting tournament attached to it.
“Now, go on.” He nudged me toward Winston. “Leave the responsibilities of running this place to me. I can handle it.”
“Okay,” I said, grudgingly conceding the point that John of Leavenwald could probably do my job better than I could while standing on his head.
“When I get back, we’ll go over everything again,” I said as Winston started to lead me away.
“Of course Al—Your Majesty.” John nodded at me, and I could see the side of his mouth twitching upward in an indulgent smile.
“Oh, and Prince Winston?” John called out as Win started to tug me away. We both stopped to look back at him.
“Yes?” Win asked.
“Have we ever talked about sparrow hunting before?” John of Leavenwald said evenly, his face blank.
“No…” Winston shook his head, a confused look on his face. “Do you want to talk about sparrow hunting?”
“Not really.” John smiled at him, but his eyes were still flat and emotionless. “I just thought I’d mention how good I am at sparrow hunting. I can kill a bird on the wing no bigger than your dew claw from over a thousand paces.”
“That’s—” Winston’s voice cracked, and he coughed, trying to clear his throat. “Rather amazing, sir. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you. Now, like I was saying about the sparrow hunting,” John said smoothly, as if Winston hadn’t even opened his mouth. “I can kill a bird on the wing from a thousand paces, so just imagine what I could do given a larger target.”
Winston’s ebony face drained of blood, and I felt his hand begin to tremble in mine.
“John!” I snapped. What made him think he had the right to threaten Winston? He hadn’t been around for years, and now he was just going to start making trouble with one of my friends? With my boyfriend? Like Winston and I weren’t already having enough problems with him being gone all the time and the war and everything else?
“Allie.” Winston squeezed my fingers and gave me a pointed look. “It’s fine.”
“No it’s—”
“Have a good flight,” John of Leavenwald said before turning on his heel and walking back toward the remains of my palace.
“Wait a second.” I started toward him, but Winston kept his hand in mine, holding me close. “You can’t just—”
“Allie,” Winston said as we made our way down the stairs. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. John just threatened you. You’re the Prince Consort. He doesn’t have the—”
“He’s your father,” Winston said, tugg
ing me closer and then letting go of my hand. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders instead and pressed a kiss against the side of my head, just above my ear. “He has every right. Threatening your boyfriends is part of his job. Besides, it could have been worse.”
“Worse?” I leaned my head on his shoulder, and we started to meander toward the aerie. “How could that have been worse? He basically threatened to shoot you.”
“When we were back in Bethel Park, my uncle Carl pulled a gun on my cousin Amelie’s first boyfriend,” Winston said.
“What?”
“The poor kid wet himself and then ran off down the street. Amelie didn’t go out with anyone else until she was in college. All the boys were too afraid to come around to pick her up.”
“I bet she was furious.” I snickered at the thought of Winston’s portly Uncle Carl, with his sweater vests and wire-rimmed glasses, holding a gun on anyone. “Was it even a real gun?”
“Of course it was a real gun. Dad wouldn’t have given him a fake gun. That would have been beside the point.”
“Your dad gave your uncle a gun so he could scare off your cousin’s boyfriend? Isn’t that, I don’t know, against Marine Corps regulations or something? Not to mention being dangerous.”
“Uncle Carl wasn’t actually going to shoot the guy,” Winston said. “I mean, yeah, probably still not a good idea, but it did keep Amelie from dating, so I guess they figured it was worth Dad possibly getting court-martialed over it.”
“I bet Amelie didn’t agree.”
“Well, aren’t you glad your dad didn’t do that? He could have actually pulled out a bow and pointed it at me. Or shot me—by mistake, of course. There’s no one here that would actually stop him. Even the dragons would have understood the ‘Dad protecting his long-lost daughter from going out with her boyfriend’ defense.”
“Yeah,” I said as he let his arm slip away from my waist once we reached the clearing with the tall, stone tower where the dragon’s had built their aerie. “I guess he could be worse.”
“He could definitely be worse,” Winston said.
“Whatever happened to the guy Amelie was trying to date?” I asked. “After he ran away, I mean?”
“He ended up becoming the grade-school choir teacher. Now keep your back turned, and I’ll be right back.”
I felt my face flame, and I closed my eyes tight, trying to ignore the sounds of my boyfriend stripping all his clothes off so that he could shift from human to dragon without destroying anything in the process.
I heard the thunk of his sword belt landing next to his boots, and then there was a sharp crackling sound. Suddenly it felt like I was standing with my back to a bonfire. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I spun around, my own green tunic flaring around my waist and my long brown hair whipping against my face. It tangled in the vines and thorns that decorated the crown I’d taken to wearing pretty much all the time now, and I tried to calm it. But, there, only a few feet in front of me, Winston, in full dragon form, arched up on his enormous back legs and flapped his wide, pitch-black wings, his claws so close I could almost touch them.
Winston threw his head back, and I watched as smoke curled out of his muzzle before he let out a quiet roar. Well, quiet for a dragon anyway. The black flames burned hotter, and Winston stood up on his hind legs, his wings beating faster now, and opened his mouth again, letting out a small burst of fire that he promptly swallowed before it could light anything accidentally. I watched, sort of sickeningly fascinated, as he sucked in the black flames that had been surrounding him and then let out a rather large, fiery belch.
I’d seen Winston transform probably a dozen times, but except for the first time when the Fate Maker had controlled his change, I had never been close enough to really watch. It was beautiful. Absolutely terrifying to suddenly find yourself face-to-face with a ten-foot-tall dragon with scales the size of dinner plates but still amazing.
Not that I was going to tell him that. God knows he and Rhys didn’t need anyone else helping inflate their egos.
“Was that supposed to impress me?” I put my hands on my hips and shook my head, trying to act like I was anything but awestruck by what I’d just seen.
Winston lowered his head toward me in what I thought was supposed to be a nod. Or possibly a “yeah, obviously.”
“You’re seriously going to have to up your game, Carruthers, if you think that little display got you anywhere with me. I’ve seen hatchlings manage a more graceful transformation than that one. Weak. Totally weak.”
My dragon just snorted before he dropped down in front of me and stretched his neck out, giving me a way to scramble up onto his back without needing a boost. Not that climbing up the spikes on my boyfriend’s back like some kind of kid on a jungle gym was any less mortifying or anything.
I grabbed one of said spikes and started trying to climb, balancing my feet on one spike while I used the next as a handhold to lever myself upward. When I finally reached his shoulders, I shifted my body to turn and sit, using the space between spikes like a weird sort of saddle.
Winston looked back at me, and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t speak. I could tell he was trying to figure out if I was done wiggling and whether or not we could go.
I narrowed my eyes at him and squirmed once more before lifting my heels and giving him a not-so-tender thwap with my heels. “Giddyap.” I thumped my feet against his shoulders again.
Win glared at me, then huffed once, his forked tongue flicking out to blow the dragon version of a raspberry before he turned his head, stood up, and launched us both into a straight-on vertical, which meant, if I was going to stay on his back, I had to throw myself forward and cling onto his neck, careful to avoid the blunt-tipped spikes.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I yelled, tightening my grip and hanging on for dear life as we flew higher. Instead of leveling out though, Winston kept climbing, still stretching for the sun. Just when I thought we couldn’t go any higher before we ran out of air, he stopped, letting himself tilt forward, flattening. No… He wasn’t leveling out…
“Oh crap!” I screamed as his nose dropped, and we fell into a dive. It would have been scary enough if we’d been over water or something, but considering we were over a big, hard expanse of bare dirt, it was downright terrifying. “I hate you so much!”
Instead of answering, Winston tucked his wings into the sides of his body and continued to dive, leaving me clinging to his neck and afraid to close my eyes because it might’ve made the ground seem like it was coming at us even faster than it really was.
The instant his snout passed the top leaf of the nearest tree he pulled himself back up to a flat position, and instead of falling, we were gliding just over the tops of the forest. Leaves brushed against my toes, and when I looked down, birds stared up at us, almost looking confused by why a dragon with a queen on top was disturbing their nests.
Winston glided us into a smooth turn that put the sun to our backs and then opened his wings, letting the wind lift us higher as we soared across the skies of a kingdom that was somehow mine.
I shook off the thought, sat up, and threw my head back, bringing my hands out to the side and letting the wind rush through my fingers. My heart pounded , and all I wanted to do was laugh like a kid on a Tilt-A-Whirl spinning too fast.
I was riding on the back of a dragon. A dragon! My boyfriend the dragon, in fact, and for the first time since we’d opened the Chronicles of Nerissette back in the normal world and tumbled through that magic portal the book had opened in the library, I wasn’t flying because we had an army to fight. We were just hanging out for once. Flying and having fun. Like going out for a drive, Nerissette style. Like nothing bad could happen to us.
I dropped forward and wrapped my arms around Winston’s neck, a hug this time instead of a desperate attempt not to fall to my death. “Thank you for this,” I said into his side, unsure if he could even hear me. “For everything. I know the past year has sucked
. Thank you for sticking it out with me.”
He turned his head to look at me, and I watched as his mouth opened slightly, curving upward at the sides in what I thought looked suspiciously like the dragon version of a smile. Then he swiveled his head to the side slightly and nuzzled against my hand. He shifted his gaze forward again and started to flap his wings, taking us higher before turning us south, flying us toward the forests and villages near Wevlyn Lake.
Maybe, if we were lucky, we’d be able to find the dryads, including my best friend Mercedes, as they started to make their way back to Neris. Sorcastia, a farming community on Wevlyn Lake, was the last place the dryads had planned to stop before they came back to the palace. I hadn’t seen Mercedes, or her mentor Darinda, the head of the Dryad Order, for almost a month, and I missed them both. But as we neared the village of Sorcastia, I saw smoke coming from the trees.
“Win!” I pointed at the smoke.
He dropped his head and started to flap his wings harder, going up but at the same time moving us toward the trees.
Smoke was not good. Smoke meant fire, and the dryads never used fire. It could have been smoke from a farmer’s chimney, but I knew that none of the farmers in Sorcastia made their homes outside the village, preferring to cluster together instead—an age-old defense against the trolls who used to hunt these woods.
The closer we got to the trail of smoke, the more I saw that it wasn’t one tiny curl of smoke—it was a plume. A big plume. And underneath all the smoke I could see the red-gold of crackling flames.
I nudged Winston with my knees and then leaned closer so that my mouth was pressed against his ear. “Take us lower. We need to find Mercedes.”
There was nothing left, nowhere for them to hide, nowhere safe where they could have escaped the flames without us seeing them already. I clung to Winston’s neck as he dropped lower and watched as miles of burning trees passed by underneath us. He shifted direction, going toward Wevlyn Lake, and I kept my eyes peeled, looking for the green women down below. They had to be in there somewhere. We just had to find them.
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