Lord Sackmoore leaped in front of us. “What trickery is this? You disturb our holy occasion!” He thrust a hand out. “Give it to me.”
“No, Uncle. It belongs to Prince Arden.” She took the smaller crown from the priest’s satin pillow and replaced it with the true one.
“Thieves!” said Sackmoore. “Arrest them both.”
“Wait,” cried Lady Adela as the knights surrounded us.
“Please, Your Royal Highness,” I pleaded, “hear the lady out. She brought the true crown for your coronation in good faith. Your brother promised your crown would come in time and here it is.”
“On my word, I promised you,” Prince Bion called from below, rain streaming down his face. He was wet as a dog and smiling up at me.
“Will no one offer Prince Bion shelter?” I said. I was ignored. But Arden waved his knights away from us.
Then he stepped a little closer, not to touch his king’s crown, but to brush back Lady Adela’s hair. “You wear it the way you did as a girl,” he said.
I was close enough to hear the fond remark.
“I had no time to put it up and…” She paused, blushing. “Thank you,” she said. “Please, if I might speak with you,” she added.
“Soon, Adela.”
“Now, please,” she insisted. “It must be now, before you are crowned.”
“What can be so needy of attention?” He frowned. Still, he didn’t sit again to continue the ceremony or wave the lady away.
“It is just this. My uncle was the one who ordered my kidnapping. He had me maimed so you would no longer want me.”
“That is a lie!”
“Shut up, Sackmoore!” He pointed at the man. The knights moved in.
Arden asked, “You are sure this is true, Adela?”
“I know it’s true. My uncle imprisoned me on Black Swan. I only now escaped with the help of this girl, Tess, and the dragon, Eetha.”
Sackmoore’s mouth twisted. “Prince Arden… Sire. Witches attacked my niece, poor girl. She’s not been the same since. I tried to warn you in my letters. Feel sorry for her as I do, but do not let yourself be fooled. She has lost her mind.”
Prince Arden whipped round, drew his sword, and slashed Sackmoore’s cheek.
I jumped back as the man hunched over, face in hands, blood dripping onto the stage. The prince wiped the bloody weapon, then held the clean blade in the air for all to see as the knights dragged Sackmoore from the stage.
The crowd cheered. Handing the sword to one of the remaining knights, he went down on his knees before the bishop. The bishop anointed the future king with holy oil. All seemed to hold their breath as he placed the crown on Arden’s head.
Trumpets sounded. Shouts went up. “Long live King Arden! Long live the king!”
I pulled the scepter from the velvet bag. The cheering heightened to a roar when I passed it to the king. Standing with his arm around Lady Adela, he held it high. King Uther Pendragon’s daughter, our first Wilde Island queen, brought the scepter here nearly seven hundred years ago. Here was proof of our sovereign’s Pendragon bloodline. The fist-sized golden dragon perched atop the staff was ruby-eyed and diamond-toothed.
Even in the rain, I caught the sound of dragon wings. Lord Kahlil and Ore flew over the stadium bearing a great bundle between them. Skimming in lower, they dropped the bundle on the stage with a thump. It landed at King Arden’s feet.
“Our treasure, brother,” Bion called from below. “Protected by the dragons until you were crowned.”
Lord Kahlil and Ore circled over stage and treasure bundle as the new king untied the knotted cloth and peered inside. From where I stood I saw golden gleams and silver. Red stones that must be rubies, emeralds, sapphires, more. But the one I thought of was the smallest of these, and the plainest. Where was Queen Lucinda’s pearl?
“The king’s treasure is returned!” Arden shouted.
All was pandemonium. The cheering crowd, the lashing rain on tarpaulin, stage, and amphitheatre, the heavy gusting wind: All ran together to one resilient roar. Lord Kahlil and Ore landed next to Eetha at the foot of the stage. Three dragons raised their heads and spewed blue fire up into the rain. Flame and water sparked overhead like fireworks. Shining blue light filtered down in fizzling sparks on the crowd below.
On Bion’s right, Onadon and Elixis gazed up at the flames. In that moment of distraction Poppy made her break. Deserting her fey father, she raced, screaming joyfully, into the revelers who swarmed down to the ground level. She grabbed a brightly dressed man waving a pole adorned with colorful ribbons and held on as Jyro dropped the pole to spin her round and round.
One fey princess gone into the arms of another, the second was on the stage with Lady Adela. Onadon looked up at me. He did not point a finger; still, I was bound by his powerful gaze. His eyes said, You betrayed me. I saw no love or forgiveness there. My father didn’t know how carefully we’d worded the demands in Lady Adela’s letter. That I’d made her swear if she was queen she’d protect Dragonswood. If she failed to win her man, Bion would step in to guard the sanctuary.
Father’s cool green eyes were hard. I held him look for look. I’d been his choice, his champion. I’d wanted to love him as a daughter loves a father. But he had not seen me for who I was. He still did not see me.
A child raced through the crowd. I caught sight of Alice’s dimpled face as she bounded toward the edge of the stage, her curls bouncing even in the downpour. So Meg and Tom had come to the coronation! I spied Meg below, chasing Alice in her sodden cloak. Tom ran behind. Both parents shouted through the boisterous mob.
The audience had given the dragons a wide berth at the foot of the stage, so the small area was open enough for me to see Alice speeding toward Bion, holding her doll up as our new king had raised his scepter. She held it in the air to Bion, for he was its maker.
I guessed from my place on the stage the doll was broken. The child had a second wooden piece in her other hand.
Dragon’s blue fire overhead, the revelers still cheering, I saw Bion go down on his knee before the little girl. He kept his hands behind his back and did not take the doll Alice held out to him. I wondered at it until I heard King Arden calling down, “Guards, release my brother.” And I saw the knight slit the cords on Bion’s wrists.
Once unbound, he brought his hands round to Alice. The child’s back was to me. I could see Bion’s dripping hair and earnest face as he spoke to her. The tumultuous crowd moved in waves, the wind and rain were deafening, but the world went still for me and silent in the eye of the storm where Bion knelt with Alice.
I am a girl who has known mostly the back of a man’s hand, and not the front of it. My heart filled with a terrible crushing ache as I watched him touching the doll so and so with his forefinger, showing Alice where he might mend it. The child nodded, listening to the words I could not hear. By now I had stepped out from under the awning, though I did not remember moving out. Slanting rain pelted my face. There was no wounding in it, only a wildness as raw as any hard November rain that swells rivers and crumbles hillsides.
Bion stood with Alice in his arms and handed her back to Meg. My shoes were at stage edge, my heart somewhere outside of me in the rainstorm. Bion was free now to live as he chose. All I truly want is to live year-round with my sister in the modest castle on Dragon’s Keep. Was that all, truly all?
I leaned out, wishing to be drenched as Bion was drenched. The sky letting down all its fury and celebration on us, the water slapping and clapping and taking the last traces of Sackmoore’s blood from the stage.
“Tess?” he shouted up.
“Bash?”
“Come down.” He waved his arms, laughing and stomping in a puddle. I jumped from the stage, and stomped. Freezing water splashed up my legs.
Mud and rain and glorious shouting all around, still we were yards apart. Stepping up, Lord Kahlil drew us closer together with his wing. Under this broad tent, Bion cupped my face. His wrists were raw with rope bur
ns. I encircled them with my fingers to cool the sores. His sleeves were rolled back. I kissed the dragon scales on his left arm. He drew me closer. His hands cupped my cheeks. Open hands. The front and not the back.
KING ARDEN AND Lady Adela were wed a few months later and there was much celebration all over Wilde Island for the new king and queen. But Prince Bion chose another way.
In the enchanted woodland wild,
The Prince shall wed a Fairy child.
In the woodland we were wed, surrounded by the fey folk and three dragons: Eetha, Ore, and Lord Kahlil. Lord Kahlil himself married us. A night wedding in the glow of bonfires set by dragons. The pearl ring set in gold was the one Bion first showed me at the window, the one Ore swung over a carpet of blue fire, the smallest jewel in the king’s treasure that was his mother’s pearl and mine.
Dragon, Human, and Fairy,
Their union will be bound by three.
If the prophecy came true that night, our union binding three races together at last, I could only wonder at it. Vows said in such a magical place are binding. But the true moment of union for me was a silent one when Bion held my chin, his thumb resting lightly on my scar; a hand I knew would never strike, but gently touch a scarred girl both human and fey. Lifting my chin he gave his kiss both long and sweet.
Epilogue
DRAGON’S KEEP
Month of August AD 1195
TESS?” BASH CALLS from below my tree. “Will you come down? The birthday feast is almost ready.”
The last light of the summer’s day spreads tangerine across the cliffs and ocean. I am reluctant to climb down my favorite pine, but I see the blankets and food baskets on the beach to celebrate our son’s second birthday, the bobbing wine casks chilling in the river. Jackrun toddles up to the base of my pine. He tugs his father’s hand, wanting him to come back to the beach and play.
“I’ll join you soon,” I call down.
Bash takes Jackrun up in his arms and crosses the sand to meet the fey folk who have stepped out of the wood to join our celebration. I breathe the tangy sea air. Far off on the flat rocks dragons bask alongside seals in the fading sun. Lord Kahlil used to summer here when my husband was a boy and live the rest of the year on God’s Eye; by this he stayed close to the princes as they were growing up. Now Lord Kahlil lives with us on Dragon’s Keep year-round. Jackrun’s birth brought him here, contention between him and the Wilde Island fey keeps him here.
Elixis and Onadon know he supported my love for Bion, and Poppy’s choice in Jyro, and didn’t press either of us to fulfill the prophecy as the fey envisioned it. They are angry, firmly unforgiving. They mislike Queen Adela and do not trust her. In that one thing, I’m in agreement with my father, Onadon. My suspicions of her remain, but so far she’s kept her promise, the boundary walls have not been breached.
The sun’s warmth fades. Near the old dragon, Eetha’s orange-scaled mate, Shiraz, sleeps on the flat rocks with their pips.
The back steps running from our castle to the beach are overgrown. I spy Jyro bounding down them with a wooden cradle. Poppy follows more slowly, their infant son snugly wrapped in her arms, and Tupkin, as ever, at her heels. I climb down the tree barefoot, race through sand, take up my son, and swing him around, shouting his name aloud. He screams with delight. I hug him close to my chest. The feisty little boy protests. Jackrun thinks he is getting too old for such cuddling. This saddens me some, but another child is growing in me and will, by God’s grace, be here by winter’s snow.
Princess Augusta races up the beach in her little copper-colored party dress made of shed pip scales and tugs my son from my arms. She is seven, just five years older than her nephew, Jackrun. He is heavy for her and she stumbles a little. But I stand very still now that my child is in her arms.
A wonder comes on me. Here is my fire-sight come to pass. Long ago in the flames I’d seen myself on a beach, holding a child, seen the dragon-faced girl snatch the child from my arms. I stand so still my feet root deeper in the sand as the waves suck away from my ankles.
So many things I feared have come true. They have not destroyed me. Princess Augusta shows Jackrun the sack of walnuts Cook gave her for our feast. Her scaled forehead and golden dragon eyes have never bothered Jackrun in the least. My son takes a walnut and throws it in the sea.
“No, they’re not to throw, Jackrun!” Augusta scolds. Both laugh as they try to fetch the walnut tumbling shoreward on a fresh wave. I splash in, catch it, and give it to the princess. Her dragon eyes are even more golden in the fading daylight reflecting up from the water. Taking the walnut from me, she races back to Jackrun. King Arden’s come just once to meet his little sister. He and Adela haven’t sailed to Dragon’s Keep since the birth of their first child. If they shy away from our rough life here, Bion and I revel in it.
We lived in the lodge when we were first wed, but try as I might, I couldn’t stay in Dragonswood. The fey shunned us for going against them. I felt the blacksmith’s anger all my life; I will not live under Onadon’s. Some fairy folk left to join us on Dragon’s Keep. No boundary wall around us but the sea.
In the damp sand, Bion and Jackrun are building a sandcastle with Augusta. My grandfather comes slowly down the beach steps, leaving his map room to join us for his great-grandson’s birthday. I walk along the shore to where Eetha stands at the water’s edge. She flicks her tail in worried irritation as her most daring pip, Babak, wades in the water. Everyone knows dragons hate to get wet, so she is endlessly surprised by Babak’s interest in the sea.
“He is only in knee-deep, Eetha. He won’t drown.”
“I cannot understand it,” she says, cocking one eye my way and keeping the other firmly on her son, who splashes happily in the shallows. “His brother and sisters are sensible dragons. They do not like the water any more than their father or I do. Where does Babak get this fixation?”
We watch Babak, whose scales are a complex pattern of copper and green patchwork like a calico cat’s. His unique coloring differs from his brother and sisters, who are all copper-scaled like their father.
Eetha’s brother Chawl spirals down with Ore. The rest of our feast has arrived. Lord Kahlil and Shiraz light the bonfires. The dragons roast wild boar on their talons to share with all. I back away from the smoke. Bash runs his finger down my neck. I feel a brushfire cross my skin. We never tire of touching each other. I run the back of my hand across the dragon scales along his arm. We will sneak off to our tree house when the feast is over.
The fey have brought fine cakes with elaborate icing all on shimmering glass trays. Will-o’-the-wisps flit overhead. Tupkin leaps up trying to capture one. I hear their laughter, flying down lower and lower to tease Tupkin, only to flit away.
Babak shakes sea water from his scales and joins his brother and sisters, cracking walnuts between their tiny black talons. Jackrun tries to do the same with his pudgy fingers and screams with frustration.
“Try this,” Grandfather says, smashing a walnut against a rock. He hands Jackrun another walnut. Jackrun hammers. Bang. Bang. Bang. The nut will not crack, but he does not give up. Bang. Bang.
Grandfather raises his tufted brows, giving Bash and me a quizzical look. We laugh at our determined son and shake our heads. Poppy nurses her babe under her shawl.
“This is what you have to look forward to, Poppy.” Her son’s head pokes out from under the wool, revealing a shock of hair as fiery red as Jyro’s. I think of Alice’s curls and ache. Meg died last winter. Tom said she passed a week after the fever took her. I try to imagine Tom and Cackle raising Alice alone at the lodge. It isn’t right. The child should have women about her, a playmate in Princess Augusta, who is just a year older than Alice. I invited Tom to bring his daughter here. No word back yet.
Mother too won’t visit. I’ve sent her invitations and a sound ship to escort her. The blacksmith will not let her go. Poppy places her sleeping babe in the wooden cradle. She hums as she rocks him. I painted vines and will-o’-the-wisps aro
und the cradle’s top, and a dragon encircling it.
Most of my gowns are splattered with shades of yellow, green, and crimson. I painted murals on the inner castle walls, and adorned furniture like this cradle, but I like working on dragon scales the best. We are in good supply here, since the dragons shed them often.
A short letter from my mother was tucked inside the cradle along with a handmade blanket. I read it again and again, and know the words by heart.
My Dearest Tess,
How good to hear that you are well and happy. Our son, Paul, is two years old now and a blessing to us. John Blacksmith has crafted him a small hammer. Paul pounds everything with it. He dents our pans and furniture and makes his father laugh. Your Jackrun sounds a strong lad too. We cannot journey to Dragon’s Keep this year, but hearing your good news that you expect a second child, we send this cradle.
God’s Blessing, your mother
No words from the blacksmith, but was this cradle word enough?
We sing a song to Jackrun. After the meal we all partake of the birthday confections, trying the fine sweets the fairies brought. Jackrun chooses a little round cake, shoves the entire thing into his mouth, and laughs, spewing crumbs. After a few more pieces, Jackrun’s clothing is smudged in decorative icing as colorfully patterned as his friend Babak’s scales.
My son strips off his shirt and trousers. I see the familiar dragon scales running down the back of his plump right leg.
And when these lovers intertwine, three races in one child combine. I wonder this part of the prophecy should come to pass in our son. He is not a king’s son as the fey had hoped. Nonetheless, he is the first to combine dragon, human, and fairy in his small frame. Lord Kahlil says our story is not over. I’ve seen his thousand-year-old eyes taking in our little boy. There is pleasure and concern in his look, but when I ask him what he sees, he does not speak.
Jackrun races down the beach after Babak. Eetha follows them, her long tail making serpentine marks in the sand. Babak trots up to a smooth driftwood log and shows his newest dragon power, blowing a small orange flame. The flame is too short-lived to light the log, but his mother slaps her tail in approval. I shout, “Good for you, Babak,” and clap alongside Bion. Not wanting to be outdone, our son roars at the log as if to produce his own fire. We laugh at his attempt, but I swallow my laughter seeing a small, bright flame shoot out of Jackrun’s mouth.
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