Strong arms wrapped around my waist, and I could smell both Kitsuna and Rhys behind me, her holding me up and him with a supportive hand on my shoulder. Kitsuna helped me stand upright again, and I looked at the soldier standing in front of me, his face a mixture of shock and disgust, his nose scrunched and his mouth turned up in a grimace, whether at the vomit or the body I wasn’t really sure.
Either way, it was probably better if I apologized. “Sorry,” I muttered, feeling my cheeks burn.
“It’s fine, Your Majesty.” He swallowed, and I could see he was trying not to look down. “Can’t say I blame you.”
“Right.” I nodded weakly.
“Men,” John said loudly. The soldiers all turned to him instead of staring at me as I tried to keep from vomiting again. “Find the wounded and finish them.”
“What about me?” Mercedes asked, her voice high pitched and sounding strangely excited.
“Do you have arrows?” John asked.
“No.”
“She can have some of mine,” another voice, rough-sounding but still young, said.
“And mine!” a second voice chimed in, older and deeper this time.
“I’ll share with the Dryad Sapling,” a third young man said, his voice cracking on the ing. The others all laughed softly.
“Fine then,” John said. “Hunt well, Sapling. You’ve earned your share of our meat.”
“Ugh.” I wrinkled my nose as my stomach roiled, and I tried to keep from losing my dinner again.
“Your Majesty?” Kitsuna gently took my elbow, and I had to fight not to flinch even though it was my best friend touching me.
“I know.” I nodded. “The ceremony.”
“The ceremony,” she said quietly as I swallowed.
Dragons had elaborate rituals when it came to war, and one of their most sacred were the ceremonies surrounding a dragon warrior’s first battle and his first kill. Both dragons were honored—the one that had done the killing and the dragon who had given its life.
Every time we’d had to fight the Fate Maker, I had taken part in ceremonies just like this one, but that didn’t make it any better. Every time someone showed me a dead body, I still wanted to run away and hide, pretend this was all some sort of insane, never-ending nightmare.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath before turning back to where Dravak was standing, shifting from claw to claw with the head still in his teeth. “Go for it.”
Dravak dropped the head in front of me so that it was resting at my feet and lowered his head, wings outstretched. I lowered my head in return, my eyes closed so that I didn’t accidentally catch a sneak peek at the lump resting against my toes like some sort of zombie soccer ball, and bowed to him.
“Thank you for protecting me,” I said as I tried my best not to gag. “I will never forget the things you have done in my name.”
There was a roar, and Dravak and I both jerked upright, watching as the six dragons that had been left to guard the aerie flew back into sight and swooped low, circling as they looked for a clear space to land. The first, a large, gold dragon, dropped down behind Dravak and the others, two green dragons, a blue, a red, and a smaller black dragon all landed behind him, clumping together.
The gold dragon peered down over Dravak’s shoulder and snorted once, smoke curling out of his left nostril, before he nudged the younger dragon’s snout with his own and looked at me.
“He fought bravely to protect me.” My voice wavered, and I could see understanding flash in the gold dragon’s eyes as he lowered his head to me once and then lifted it again, nuzzling Dravak’s pointy left ear. The dragon’s wings spread out wide and then wrapped around Dravak and the head, tucking them out of my sight. The gold dragon turned and hopped over to where the other dragons had formed a circle, herding Dravak along with him.
“What are they doing?” I asked Kitsuna as she let go of my shoulders and grabbed my hand instead, tugging me back toward the aerie. I’d been presented with heads before, but usually the dragons just let me say my lines and then they took the head and disappeared. They’d always performed the rest of these ceremonies in private—in a place where only other dragons could see.
“Allowing our enemy his final rest,” she said, her voice low, as we both watched the clutch of dragons drawing closer together, their wings outspread so that none of us could see what was happening inside their tight knot.
The gold dragon lifted his head and roared once, the sound this time a high-pitched wail rather than a scream. The dragons flapped their wings, joining together to let out a howl that made my blood turn to ice. I couldn’t help but shiver.
“Are they…” I didn’t know what I was going to ask. Are they celebrating? Are they crying?
“They’re waking the Pleiades,” Kitsuna said. “Calling for them to open the gates so that a fallen warrior can enter the hunting grounds of the blue dragon clan. They’re calling for the nestmates of his clan to come and retrieve him, to embrace him as one of their own.”
“Why?” I asked. “He’s the enemy.”
“He was the enemy.” Rhys reached over and took my other free hand, wrapping it around his own shaking one. “Now he’s just a dragon that’s died far from his home and his nestmates. This is their way of showing his spirit mercy, even if he did try to kill one of their own.”
The gold dragon howled again and lowered his head, a long, steady stream of flame pouring from his open maw. The other dragons joined him, and we watched as brilliant flames leaped into the air between them.
The flames crackled, and the dragons roared again, shifting, moving in a counterclockwise circle around the bonfire and the body in its center, all of them still breathing great bursts of fire into the blaze.
I heard a high, plaintive call from above and looked up, watching as Balmeer flew above them, keeping up with the gold dragon beneath him and crying out at the same time as the dragons, taking part as if he were one of them. The bird cried out again and then circled once before swooping low to land on Rhys’s shoulder again.
The flames burned higher, and from far away I could hear the matching cry of other dragons, howling as they approached, gliding around the aerie and taking stock.
“One of the patrols,” I said quietly.
“Black dragons,” Rhys said, looking upward. “I don’t think its Winston’s patrol, though. He was part of a mixed group of dragons that went north.”
“I know. He’ll be back soon enough,” I said. I tried to sound calm, as though I wasn’t worried about him even though I was terrified. “We’ll need to call together the nobles now. There’s no way that we can even pretend to negotiate after this.”
“So much for stealth.” Rhys shook his head. “Looks like we’re going to just have to use brute force instead.”
I heard another loud howl and looked up as more dragons poured into the sky around us, racing for the aerie. There, among the rest of the teaming mass of dragons, was a familiar black one, and I watched as he swooped down, scanning the ground, and I lifted my hand to wave.
The dragon let out a loud snort, smoke curling from his nose, and then jerked upward, pulling away and heading toward the landing area so that he could shift from one form to another.
There was a roar behind us, and I watched as the flames of the blue dragon’s pyre crackled, climbing higher as the blaze grew hotter. The dragons around him beat at the flames with their wings.
“How long will they…?” I asked, letting my voice trail off.
“They’ll stay with him until dawn,” Kitsuna said quietly. “Once the sun rises, he’ll have reached his final rest.”
“Should we…stay?”
“No,” she said as she led me away from the pyre. “We’ll leave this to the dragons.”
“Okay, then let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got a war to plan, and after tonight, I don’t think we have a week to plan it. We’ve got to make our move now.”
Chapter Eleven
“Allie?” Winston called o
ut from the far side of the clearing, and I looked up, my eyes filling with tears. He was alive. There was a dragon body being burned to a crisp not ten feet from me, but I didn’t care because the dragon that mattered most to me was still okay.
“Winston!” I pulled away from Kitsuna and Rhys, sprinting for him. “I thought you flew north.”
“Oh, thank God, Allie.” He pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine, not bothering to be gentle as he let his fingers tangle in my hair. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m okay. We saw the dragons attack, and we came as fast as we could. There wasn’t much I could do. What are you doing here, though?”
“There are more fires in the White Mountains,” he said. “Bavasama’s soldiers are leading raids. Ardere and I came back to report it and get more soldiers. What happened here?”
“They just attacked us,” I whispered. “This dragon flew toward the aerie and started breathing fire, and then the sky was filled with dragons. Mercedes shot at them as quickly as she could but—”
“Is she okay?” Winston asked.
“She’s fine.” I pulled him close, more to hide my own shaking than to comfort him. “She’s with the Woodsmen and John now, making sure that there aren’t any more dragons in the forest. But while they were shooting things, the rest of us just sort of stood there, waiting for something to attack from the ground. But nothing came and then Dravak…”
Winston’s head jerked up, and I saw the flames from the dragons’ fire glowing in his dark eyes as his shoulders slumped. “Oh no.” He winced. “Not Dravak. He’s just a—”
“No, he’s fine.” I grabbed Winston’s shoulders and gave them a quick shake. “He’s fine. That’s not him. Well, it is him. Not the dead body, though. He’s just over there with the rest of them. He’s the one that killed the enemy dragon… Actually, Mercedes shot it in the wing and brought it down, and then Balmeer fought with it for a bit, but then it started for the aerie, and Dravak just went after it. He charged at this huge blue dragon even though it was at least three times his size, and Win—”
My knees buckled, and he grabbed for me, pulling me up before I could completely fall apart, and wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me against him. “He ripped off the other dragon’s head. He ripped it clean—”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I took a deep breath and pushed away from him. “It’s just all the adrenaline. I’m fine.”
“You’re in shock.” Winston tried to tighten his grip on me, but I stepped back, steadying myself and then straightening my shoulders and lifting my chin.
“I’m a queen,” I said, “and someone just declared war on us. I don’t have time to go into shock.”
“Allie—”
“I have to keep moving, Win.” I swallowed and looked up at him. “I can’t crumble right now. I can lose it in private later, but right now I have to keep going. People have to see that I can keep going.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. Where are the rest of the dragons you were on patrol with?”
“They kept moving north. They should be back by morning. The thing is, we hadn’t made it any farther than the Forest of Ananth before Ardere and I turned back. We should have seen the other dragons as they came over the mountains. How did they get past us?”
“They came from the south,” Kitsuna said. I looked up to see her standing in front of us, her eyes hidden by the shadow of night. “The black dragon that we saw first, he came from the south. From Dramera.”
“No.” Winston shook his head. “Allie?”
“Yeah.” I nodded as he stepped away from me, and I felt my heart sink. “At first we thought it was you. That you had gone for the Dragos Council to bring them here. I thought it was you…”
He pointed at me, and I could see his finger shaking. “You and Kitsuna stay here with Ardere. Stay with the others. Help them protect the aerie.”
“What about you?” I grabbed his arm and turned to look at him. “Where are you going?”
“Allie, we have all the dragon warriors that can fight here. The Dragos Council is here. All of them but Mysanthe”—he nodded toward the gold dragon still circling with the others, flames pouring from their mouths as the fire between them rose higher—“are on patrol with their clans. Dramera was left with only a small guard to protect the weak and those with hatchlings.”
“Oh God.” I felt my knees start to tremble. “You think they…”
“I have to go check.” He let go of me and took a step back. “I have to check on the ones we left behind.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Allie—”
“I’m going.”
He opened his mouth to protest again.
“Don’t make me order you because I will. I’m going with you. I won’t let you go there alone.”
I wasn’t going to take that chance again. Not after Mercedes. I’d seen too much death since we’d arrived in Nerissette to send him out into the unknown alone.
I thought about the sound of Mercedes sobbing into my back earlier that day when we’d found her. I remembered the sound of her broken voice telling us that she was alone now, and I knew I couldn’t take the chance of Winston going through the same thing. I just couldn’t. “Please.”
“No. You have to stay here. You have to raise an army, and if Bavasama’s soldiers are in Dramera, I can’t guarantee that I can protect you.”
“But—”
He shook his head and then brushed past me, making his way into the aerie so that he could shift in private. I watched him go with my arms wrapped around my own waist and tried not to tremble.
“Allie?” Kitsuna reached for my arm, and I stepped away from her.
“Take care of Mercedes for me,” I said, my voice no more than a whisper. “If something happens to me before all of this is over, I need you to take care of Mercedes. She’s not really there right now. I mean she’s not crazy or anything, but she’s not herself. Our Mercedes would have never—”
“I know.”
“She isn’t a killer. She doesn’t hunt things. I can’t even believe that she knew how to shoot that stupid bow. I mean, I know she was learning but actually killing things?”
“She’s a dryad,” Kitsuna said. “They may love peace and nurture life, but they have been trained for war, Your Majesty. Mercedes would have been trained to defend herself and her tree along with her sisters.”
“We were never supposed to learn how to do this stuff,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the top of the aerie where I could see the faint green glow of Winston’s change taking place. “This isn’t the life that we were supposed to live. This isn’t her world. Or Winston’s.”
“You’re all fighting to keep Nerissette alive. I’d say that gives the three of you just as much claim to this world as the rest of us.”
“Maybe.”
“Your—”
Winston roared, and I broke my gaze away from Kitsuna’s, looking up at him instead as he launched himself from the roof of the aerie’s tower and climbed higher as he turned to the south, toward Dramera.
“Be safe.” I whispered as I watched him disappear into the night. “Please be safe.”
Chapter Twelve
The next morning I paced in the dew-drenched grass of the Crystal Palace’s back garden as the sun came up over the darkened plain where the labyrinth had once been, waiting for Winston to return. I could see what was left of the mermaid’s pool—empty, forgotten, drained—and clenched my hands around the Dragon’s Tear hanging around my neck. The necklace was one of the Great Relics, and it would never leave me again. I wouldn’t let anyone else take it—and the power it possessed.
“Widric the Headman from Kavallaro,” I said slowly, keeping my eyes focused on the lightening horizon. “Jesse. Heidi. Timbago. Mistress Tibbs. Twenty-four helpless mermaids. The three thousand soldiers lost fighting in the battles of the Fate Maker. My
half brother, Eamon. Darinda and the Dryad Order. Esmeralda. My mother, the rightful Golden Rose of Nerissette—”
“Allie?” John asked quietly. I didn’t bother to turn around. I heard the rustle of his footsteps across the grass and swallowed. “What are you doing?”
“Remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“All the people we’ve lost, the ones who’ll never get the chance to see what Nerissette can be like when it’s brought back to its former glory, when it’s beautiful again.”
“Hey.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“I’m their queen. It’s my job to remember them and what they gave their lives for.”
He didn’t say anything, but I felt two brawny arms wrap around me as he gave me a brief hug. “It’s good to remember them, but you can’t forget the living while you make your apologies to the dead.”
“I know.” I nodded but didn’t turn to look at him.
“Come on, then.” He loosened his embrace and instead wrapped one arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go get some breakfast. I remember your grandmother used to say that it was the most important meal of the day. And on a big day like today, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
“Why?”
“The last of the Council of Nobles have arrived with their troops. And we’ve had reports from the patrols that went toward the deserts of the Firas.”
“And?” I asked, my heart clenching. I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t actually want to know if the things we’d heard had been true. Could all of the Firas be gone? An entire civilization that had once stretched across the entire bottom half of Nerissette and Bathune just gone as if it had never existed?
“They found a small group that managed to escape,” John said quietly. “Seven of them. The great Firas…reduced to nothing but four tradesman, one woman, a six-year-old boy, and a king.”
“None of their Fire Dancers survived?” I asked, my heart sinking as I tried to remember what few details I knew about the Firas culture.
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