A Shade of Dragon 3(58)

“Let’s go!” Altair cheered, bounding into the room. “Do I have to rip the blankets off of you?”

“No,” I growled, glowering. “How early in the morning is it? It can’t be that late.”

“It’s going to be ‘afternoon’ shortly,” Altair replied with a smirk. “The two of you slept for almost fourteen hours. But I suppose you needed it.”

I turned back to Nell, on the verge of shaking her shoulder and calling down to her, but she was already peering up at me, blinking sleepily. “Morning,” she cooed, still warm and foggy with slumber, “King Theon.”

The coronation traditionally occurred in the garden, but it was still too damn frigid—and apparently it would be for the next several weeks. We opted instead to adorn the throne room with garlands and banners and hold the event there. It was open to the general public of The Hearthlands and we stood before Einhen, the court priest, to hear our reign blessed and to kneel for my mother to grace our heads with the royal crowns. It was a brief ceremony, but it seemed to me to be never-ending. I had prepared for this my entire life, and Nell, straight and elegant in her robes, looked as if she had been born for it… regardless of the gods.

When we turned, our congregation of remnants—roughly twenty percent of whom were born from ice dragon lineage—bowed and clapped and called out for our long and healthy lives. Although the windows remained frosted, crusted in snow, it seemed to be spring all of a sudden, and I took Nell’s hand and led her down the aisle, bowing to the citizens as we passed.





Nell





You never know which visit to your hometown will be the last, so to speak. I was only nineteen still, and yet I felt as if I’d crossed some boundary which could never be uncrossed. Whether that line led into queendom or just womanhood, I wasn’t sure.

Theon and I stayed in The Hearthlands' castle for another week or so, during which time a concerted effort toward reconstruction and infrastructure had been launched. There was also much talk of ratification to the law of the land, although Theon thought, naturally, that the laws were very fair and always had been. “Maybe it would help,” Merulina had suggested starchily, “if we looked over them with fresh eyes when you return from your voyage to Earth?”

We packed lightly, for the visit would be a short one, perhaps of one day. Altair and Merulina had already begun to prepare for their own wedding day in the coming week, and I’d been drafted into her bridal court. After the fall of The Hearthlands—and the brief rise of Everwinter—there was a silent consensus throughout the castle that some new life was awaiting, and we all dove into it as if from off a springboard. There was no one untouched by the tragedy, no one who had not experienced some loss, except maybe me. Unlike humans, the dragons had no desire to discuss the horrors of war, to hold vigils or to form support groups or to even erect monuments to their fallen. They were singularly, almost superstitiously focused on their future, and the sentiment was contagious: there was just so much still to be done.

But I couldn’t just leave my parents again without saying a proper goodbye. It was part of the barrier I had crossed into this new place. I needed to return home and bow to them one final time. There was a part of me—the girl in me, a tiny sliver, almost a ghost—which wrung her hands together and sweated at the notion of bringing Theon to this meeting with my parents. As if I had something to fear from them, whether it was disapproval or misunderstanding or something else an adult could lord over a child. But I knew that he needed to be there, and so did he. We weren’t just saying goodbye to them as adults, as king and queen. We were saying goodbye to them, with all due respect, as man and wife.

And so, on the front steps of the palace, we bade farewell and good luck to the court which remained behind to continue to work during our departure: the former Queen Aena, Altair, Merulina, and Lethe, among others loyal and sworn to the kingdom, such as Einhen and Charis. We received our bows, and kisses to our hands, and Theon shifted, the black scales coursing over his skin, the talons sprouting from his fingertips and toes, and nudged both his satchel and myself onto his back. I no longer ever feared that I might fall, but was beginning at last to be elated by the fingers of the wind running through my hair—and I was no longer surprised by the casual way with which dragons viewed nudity before and after a transformation.

We tore off into the sky, the crust of The Hearthlands’ snow below us, the bright blue sky above, and when we dove for the portal which would link us to the rock island, and from there to Beggar’s Hole, I pressed myself low to Theon’s shoulder blades and grinned with anticipation.