"Hey," Fin said in the soft voice he only used with her.
"Hi." Her voice cracked on the single syllable.
He crossed the room and crouched in front of her chair, his hands finding her knees, his eyes level with hers.
"Co ho with . You’re destroying yourself in this room."
"I’m okay, Fin."
"No. You’re not. The matebond has been carrying your exhaustion and your grief, baby. I’m asking you to let take so of it."
"I can’t leave him." The words ca out imdiately, reflexive, the automatic response of a woman who had already considered and rejected this option a hundred tis.
"Alaric is here. Hyran is monitoring. Tiberon has a rotation in place. He is being cared for."
"I know he’s being cared for. I need to be here when he wakes up. If he wakes up..." She trailed off. The sentence died in her throat.
Fin pulled her off the chair and into his lap on the floor in a single motion. His arms locked around her, one hand on the back of her head, pressing her face into his neck.
He held her. The way he had held her before.
"Hey... it’s okay. I know, baby. That ans I’m staying here then."
She pulled back enough to look at him. Her face was wrecked, blotched and swollen and streaked with tears. "You have a kingdom to run."
"I have a Beta and Gamma." His thumb swept under her eye, catching a tear she’d missed. "I’m staying, Serena. That is a decision I’ve already made. You don’t get to argue with it."
✦✦✦
Onyx executed the three-count intervals with a discipline that made the larger juveniles look like they were idiots. Thornton had even noted, privately and with visible reluctance, that the dragon’s spatial awareness was "exceptional for his developntal stage."
Thornton called the three-count. Onyx held. Two, three. Perfect.
On the release, every juvenile dragon stepped forward in formation.
Onyx stepped backward.
He took another step back, still facing forward, his gold eyes still locked on Thornton as if he were paying attention, his body language projecting obedience while his feet were doing the opposite.
By the fourth backward step, he was at the edge of the formation. By the sixth, he was behind the larger juvenile whose bulk blocked the handler’s line of sight.
Then he bolted.
He went low using the bigger dragon’s body as cover, and by the ti the handler realized what had happened, Onyx was past the periter.
"He used a flanking maneuver," Handler Cole said, his voice equal parts horror and admiration. "He used the bigger dragon as concealnt and executed a flanking maneuver. That is a third-year tactical exercise."
✦✦✦
The castle guards had been briefed. Tiberon Drakenfell had personally issued a mo after Onyx’s second corridor incursion, and when Tiberon Drakenfell issued a mo, the mo was followed with the precision of scripture.
The juvenile dragon designated Onyx is to be intercepted and returned to the Draken Forces training field upon entry to the castle.
The guard captain had positioned two n at the eastern service entrance, one at the main gate, and one at the kitchen corridor, which Onyx had used on day two with devastating effect.
The library window was latched. Onyx pressed his snout against the glass and made the keening noise. Inside, a mage-librarian looked up from a stack of scrolls and saw a baby dragon pressing its face against a window like a child outside a candy shop.
She opened the window because the alternative was watching him cry, and she had already survived one Onyx corridor incident this week and could not emotionally afford another.
Onyx squeezed through the opening, knocked an inkwell off a reading desk with his tail, skidded across the polished stone floor, and barreled into the corridor at speed.
Guard Matthias heard the claws before he saw the dragon. The sound was distinctive: rapid, clicking, percussive, the sound of sixty pounds of determination running on stone at a pace that suggested physics was a frawork and gravity was a suggestion.
He braced himself.
Onyx rounded the corner, saw Matthias, and did not stop, going straight between the guard’s legs.
Matthias stumbled. His hand caught air where a dragon should have been. Behind him, Corin, who had been walking from the opposite direction carrying a stack of docunts for the King’s study, saw Onyx coming and made the critical error of trying to block the corridor with his body.
Onyx went through Corin’s legs as well. Corin, who was taller than Matthias and therefore had more clearance, barely felt it. The docunts, however, caught the updraft from Onyx’s wings and exploded into the air like a paper grenade.
"THE DRAGON IS LOOSE," Matthias called, which was information the corridor already possessed.
"I CAN SEE THAT," Corin responded, on his knees, gathering pages.
Onyx reached the double doors of the private corridors.
He sat in front of it. He stared at the door. He made the keening noise, high and thin and broken, the sound of a creature that had crossed a training field, executed a tactical flanking maneuver.
His claws scratched the base of the door. Once. Twice.
The sound was so small compared to everything that had preceded it. A baby dragon, scratching at a door, waiting to be let in to see a man who could not open it.
Serena opened the door.
She looked down. Onyx looked up. His gold eyes were enormous, watery, and aid at her with the desperate sincerity of a creature who had broken every rule in the Draken Forces handbook to be here and was fully prepared to break several more if the door closed again.
"Oh, Onyx." Her voice broke.
He pushed past her legs, crossed the room, and climbed onto the bed with the scrambling urgency of an animal that had been separated from the thing it needed and had finally, finally found it.
He settled on Dexmon’s chest.
His small body rose and fell with Dex’s breathing. His chin pressed into Dex’s shoulder. His tail curled around Dex’s forearm. His wings tucked tight, covering as much of Dex’s torso as his sixty-pound body could manage.
His eyes closed.
Serena stood in the doorway and pressed her hand over her mouth, because the sound that wanted to co out of her was too big for the room and too raw for anyone to hear.
Behind her, Matthias arrived, breathing hard.
"Your Highness, the dragon, we tried to intercept, he went through the library window and there’s a gargoyle situation in the courtyard and Corin’s docunts are, the dragon is very fast."
Serena looked at Matthias. The weight of days without sleep and seven days of holding vigil had carved hollows into her cheekbones that the guard could see even in the dim corridor light.
"He’s staying," she said. "Tell Morholt."
"The King issued a mo, Your Highness."
"Tell the King too."
Matthias hesitated. Telling the King that a baby dragon had outmaneuvered his entire guard rotation and was now sleeping on the unconscious prince’s chest was a conversation that no guard in the history of Drakenfell had been trained for.
"I’ll... relay the ssage."
"Thank you, Matthias."
He left. She closed the door.
✦✦✦
Morholt received the ssage via a runner who arrived at the training field still out of breath.
"Colonel. Onyx has reached the royal quarters. He is... on the prince."
"On the prince."
"On his chest, sir. Sleeping."
Morholt looked at his clipboard: Tactical awareness: exceptional. Evasion skills: beyond developntal stage. Obedience: selective. Motivation: singular. Conclusion: this dragon is smarter than most cadets.
He paused. Added a final line.
Recomnd reassignnt to royal guard detail. He is going to end up there regardless.
He closed the clipboard.
Across the field, Thornton approached. "Colonel. What do we do about the formation gap?"
"Fill it with a regular dragon. One that follows orders."
"All dragons follow orders, sir."
Morholt looked at him. Thornton reconsidered the statent.
"Most dragons follow orders, sir."
"Onyx follows orders until sothing more important overrides them. That is a dragon with a priority structure, Thornton. We didn’t teach him that. He arrived with it." He tucked the clipboard under his arm. "The interesting question is what he thinks is on the other side of that door that matters more than everything on this side of it."
Thornton had no answer. Morholt didn’t expect one.
✦✦✦
Day four brought the incident that would beco legend in the Draken Forces.
Morholt, having accepted that Onyx would spend the majority of his ti in the royal quarters, negotiated a compromise with Serena. Morning training, four hours, after which Onyx would be escorted to the castle by a handler and allowed to remain with Dexmon for the rest of the day.
The compromise lasted two hours and seven minutes.
At the two-hour mark, Onyx completed a flight drill across the foam pit that Thornton described as "textbook." Wings steady. Altitude consistent. Landing clean.
At the two-hour-and-three-minute mark, the formation shifted to combat positioning, which placed Onyx at the far end of the field, maximally distant from the castle.
Onyx evaluated the distance. Made a decision.
He ran a full speed across the formation through the legs of a dragon four tis his size. Past two handlers who lunged and missed. Past Thornton, who didn’t even try because he had watched enough of these escapes to know when the outco was predetermined. Across the open ground between the training field and the castle wall.
The eastern service entrance was guarded. The kitchen corridor was sealed. The library window had been latched and reinforced after the gargoyle incident.
Onyx climbed ivy on the wall up to the top of the chimney, then entered from the top.
The kitchen staff heard the scraping first. Then the soot started falling in clumps. Then a pair of gold eyes appeared in the fireplace opening, blinking through a cloud of ash.
Onyx erged from the fireplace trailing ash across the kitchen floor, sneezed twice, accidentally ignited a basket of bread rolls, and bolted for the corridor before anyone could react. He arrived at Dexmon’s door. Scratched once.
Serena opened it. Looked at the soot-covered, ash-trailing, bread-slling dragon sitting at her feet with his tail wagging and his gold eyes enormous.
He chirped. Proud. Accomplished. Covered in soot.
She picked him up, pressed her face into his neck despite the ash, and carried him inside.
She gave him a bath, which he absolutely enjoyed. For the first ti in days, she laughed. It was small and broken, and Onyx lifted his head at the sound and chirped once, as if to say: See? I fixed it.
He settled on Dex’s chest once he was cleaned off. Sa position. Sa chin on the shoulder. Sa tail around the forearm.
✦✦✦
That evening, when Fin entered, Onyx lifted his head. His tail twitched once in acknowledgnt. Then he put his chin back on Dex’s shoulder and closed his eyes.
He crossed the room, lifted Serena from the chair without waking her, and sat on the settee with her in his lap. She made a sound in her sleep, small and protesting, and then her body found his and relaxed with the instinct of a woman who recognized safety by scent.
On the bed, Onyx opened one eye. Confird Serena was being held. Closed it.
The dragon slept on the prince’s chest. The king slept with the princess in his lap. The prince dread of ten thousand years.
The night held all of them, and for one quiet, fragile, impossible mont, everything was still.
User Comments
0 comments from readers