A Shade of Dragon 3(46)

“I’m not a queen here!” Michelle called back.

“Yeah, well.” The next words came out of my mouth without my really meaning them to. They just popped out because they were true. “You’re not really a queen anywhere anymore.”

The next thing that I felt was a wrenching at my waist where Michelle had been clutching me for balance. Suddenly, my stiff, cold fingers were forced to scrabble at Lethe’s scales for a better grip—but I was too late. I hadn’t seen it coming. Somehow I had thought that Michelle, in spite of being shallow, and self-centered, and cold, and manipulative, was not capable of the greater evils we saw perpetrated in our world. I did not think that, as much as she could steal or lie, she could murder. But she proved me wrong the moment her thighs clutched to Lethe’s shoulders for balance and she dug her fingers into my hips, tilting and shoving me from his back.

I let loose one long shriek—it really didn’t end until the breath in my lungs was exhausted—as my legs thrashed in the whipping wind and I toppled toward the ocean. It’s going to be so cold, I thought, screaming again and shielding my face in anticipation of the impact. I’m going to freeze to death. No… no, I’m going to drown, just like I did the night that Theon and I met. How… fateful.

I slammed into something cool and solid, yet spongy and yielding beneath my weight, what little oxygen I had left after all the screaming was pushed from my lungs immediately upon impact. I bucked and clawed against the scales which enwrapped my torso, peripheral vision swimming in dots. Don’t lose consciousness. Don’t lose consciousness. I don’t think he could catch you again.

Who had caught me?

Blinking, I raised my head. My legs hung loose in the air, my arms instinctively looped to clutch the length of skin which now cradled me. The scales were chilly to the touch, and pale blue… and up, sitting at the base of Lethe’s shoulder blades, I saw the shadow of Michelle’s back. I glowered at her. She had tried to kill me. She really had.

And Lethe had saved me… with his tail.

It was from this vantage point, dangling behind Michelle, Lethe, Vulott and the leading harpy, advancing onward toward the shore, that I was able to see another scaled creature in flight behind us. Behind us, and so low to the ground his belly might have been skimming the water. He was as large as a small house, a shimmering black dragon with golden embellishments.

Theon.



I was shuddering uncontrollably and beginning to lose sensation in my extremities when the five of us finally touched down in the heart of Beggar’s Forest, though I remembered that the winged woman had not called this land by that name. She had called it the forest of Thundercliff. I knew this land well; the Ballinger lake house was not far from here, nor was the famed Beggar’s Hole itself: the mysterious whirlpool which sucked everything into its depths, never to return. I remembered fantasizing in my less mature days that Michelle, on certain days, would get sucked down there. But then… she’d never tried to kill me before.

There was snow here, but it was a thin crust of the stuff, bright silver in the moonlight. The harpy touched down first on the beach, surrounded by the thick, snow-clotted foliage so customary of Maine. Vulott and Lethe landed directly after her, transforming back to their human selves. Michelle also looked cold, but she was of a thicker build than me. “I wish there was some way that I could warm you,” Lethe commented to me, off-hand.

Michelle’s expression soured, though she said nothing to Lethe and instead directed her thoughts, naturally, to his insane father.

Dragons of a feather, I thought acidly, wrapping my arms around myself.

“I have a family home not far from here,” Michelle informed Vulott sweetly. “It could serve as a base of operations… temporarily, anyway. As I mentioned, my parents are never there.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and smiled like a model in an ad. “There’s no reason to think that we’ve lost Everwinter, you know,” she went on. God, she did sound like some terrible queen, a villain fit for a fairy tale. “The fire dragons don’t know about this place. We could make a plan… regroup… enlist the harpies.” She cast hopeful eyes toward the harpy, who had now been joined by two others of her kind; one raven, one dove.

“Your queen is fierce, Lethe,” Vulott commended her. Michelle smirked, and I wished that I could remind everyone that this was the man who allowed his unwilling son to take the crown because he was losing his grip on a little thing called sanity.

“But our people fled the city,” Lethe reminded her. “Much like we did. No one stayed behind to defend it. And now we’ve scattered.”