by Liz Flanagan
Finn cursed in disdain. “You think you can fight now? You forget, I know you.” And he kicked out viciously, catching Iggie square on his leg wound.
The wound gaped open, right down to the bone: it gleamed palely through, making Milla feel sick.
Iggie bellowed in pain and curled up, a defensive instinct that allowed Finn to spring free.
Milla lifted Finn’s sword, but her arm was shaking. She would resist as long as she had breath.
From the corner of her eye she saw that Olvar was on his feet again, facing down Isak.
“You will not stop me now,” Duke Olvar was saying. “I will have my dragon.”
Despair rose, swamping Milla. The plan hadn’t worked. The other dragons hadn’t heard Iggie. Why had she believed they could win against the duke?
Suddenly, the room grew dark, as if a cloud had covered the sun.
Then, with a loud crash, it erupted in light and noise. The huge glass windows shattered into pieces. Everyone dove for cover. Dropping the sword, Milla rolled under the nest-bed. She looked up.
Through the shattered windows she saw Heral spin in the air, with astonishing control. Then he broke through, feetfirst, like a bird of prey, snapping the broken window frames like twigs and landing right there. Heral flapped his huge wings and roared at them.
“Get back!” Tarya screamed from Heral’s back, with an arrow nocked and pointed at Duke Olvar. “Get away from my brother!” Her face was spattered with dried blood, but Milla guessed it wasn’t hers.
Milla crawled toward Iggie, slicing her palms and knees on the broken glass that covered the rug.
“Ig,” she moaned. Her hands found hard black claws, scaly blue feet, slippery with blood from his leg wound. She pulled herself up, using him for support, hand over hand: his knobbly knees, his broad chest, the heat and gust of his smoky breath.
Aark, Iggie said, telling her he was all right.
Milla leaned on him gratefully.
“It’s over,” Tarya shouted.
The balance had shifted. Milla stood in a line with her friends: Isak nearest the nest, with Tarya and Heral by the broken window.
Olvar froze, the empty egg pannier still gripped in his hand.
Finn was on his feet again. He took one step toward the nest, crunching on broken glass, then paused as Tarya aimed at him instead.
A strange noise broke the tension, startling them all. It came from inside the velvet drapes.
A breathy, gasping tac-tac-tac, like a cat stalking birds.
Everyone listened.
Then it came: the light crack of an eggshell.
Duke Olvar moved first. He darted to the bed, pushing Isak aside, and drew back the velvet curtains, letting light fall on the nest.
Belara was shackled by a long chain, as Iggie had been. Weakened by her long brooding season, she lay curled on her side, giving the eggs air and space. They sparkled slightly in the sunlight: one was palest orange, like an apricot, but speckled with green dots; the other was creamy white, like parchment, covered in black lines as if someone had scribbled on it.
“Belara!” Isak called to her.
But the golden dragon only gazed down at her two eggs, near the end of her strength.
Duke Olvar fell on his knees in front of the nearest egg, the apricot-colored one. If they didn’t intervene, soon there would be a baby dragon seeking a human to bond with.
“No,” Milla cried, “you don’t get to do this. Not after everything you’ve done.” Her courage flooded back now, stronger for its absence. “Your men killed Serina. Kara’s dead. The city half-ruined … This is not your reward.”
But Olvar wasn’t listening. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all his life.
A larger zigzag crack split the egg in two. Soon the egg would hatch.
“Get back from there!” A new voice spoke from the doorway. It was Vigo and Petra, followed by a group of green-clad Sartolan soldiers.
“Arrest my father!” Vigo ordered.
“No! Let me see the dragon,” Olvar begged, on his knees. “Please! Just let me see …”
Now Milla was reminded of the night Iggie hatched. She squirmed uncomfortably, seeing the roles reversed. Hadn’t she begged to stay and see Iggie hatch? Hadn’t the duke let her stay? Just when she needed to be strong, she was moved with pity for him.
Vigo’s men approached.
In a blink of an eye, everything changed.
Olvar saw his final chance vanish. His face distorted with murderous rage.
“No! If I can’t have it, no one can!” The duke grabbed Finn’s discarded sword from the glass-covered floor. He stood and lifted it high, poised to bring it down on the eggs.
“No!” Milla screamed in warning.
Isak was closest.
He threw his whole weight at Olvar and pushed him aside. The blade buried itself deep in the wood of the bedpost. Duke Olvar pushed Isak away, sending him staggering backward. Then he tugged at the sword with both hands.
Milla watched from the edge of the room. It felt like a recurring dream, where everything turned horribly slow and deliberate, unfolding with awful inevitability. She had to do something.
She thought out for Iggie, for her friends, for their dragons. She felt the bonds connecting them, humming with life and strength. She saw bright tendrils of colored light—blue, yellow, red, and green—swirling out from each dragon and each of their people. Like a rainbow, it bound them together, all eight. She sent out a wave of love and protection and saw it pass from her, like bright blue fire, into Iggie and Belara, Heral and Petra.
Duke Olvar pulled the sword free. He lifted it again.
Mraaa! Iggie bellowed.
The dragons knew. They always do.
Finding new strength, Belara drew herself up tall, kindling … Her golden chest blushed orange with heat.
“Get back!” Milla yelled. “Get back!”
Everyone except Olvar and Finn obeyed.
Then Belara acted to protect her brood of eggs. She blasted Duke Olvar with a massive stream of fire. Olvar caught the worst of it, but Finn’s clothes also burst into flame. He fell to the floor with a hideous shriek.
Milla grabbed the edge of the thick crimson rug, wrapping Finn’s burning body in it and rolling him back and forth to put out the flame.
“You stopped the fire spreading,” Vigo said, as he bound Milla’s burned hands in the dragonhall afterward. “How did you know what to do?”
“Working in a kitchen, you learn to douse flame,” Milla said. “Your father?” she asked, though her throat felt raw and skinned.
She was leaning on Iggie: his leg had been treated first. She found she was unwilling to be apart from her dragon, even for a moment.
He shook his head.
Milla only felt numb. “And Finn?”
“He might live. He was the spy in Nestan’s house,” Vigo said. “My father suspected Nestan’s loyalty: he was paying Finn to report to him. So when the man brought the eggs, Finn was there, ready to strike, and steal them. Except the man hid them first. As you know.”
So Finn killed Josiah. Finn was the cloaked assassin. Piecing it together, Milla realized Finn must have circled around the Yellow House and climbed back up the wall to the practice yard, using Tarya as an alibi. Only Milla and Tarya knew he’d been late to Tarya’s sword practice that day. She shuddered, suddenly cold, as she understood he’d been there all along, so close to those she loved, like a snake under the bed. She’d even left Iggie in his care.
She half closed her eyes and leaned back on Iggie, keeping her injured hands outstretched. “Did you see it?” she murmured. “Did you see the light? The connection between us? Like a rainbow.”
“What light?” Vigo frowned in concern. “You mean the fire?”
Why hadn’t he seen it? It was so bright. But she whispered, “Never mind,” and promised she’d ask Tarya and Isak later.
It’s over,” Vigo said firmly. “We are safe now.” He was gentle as he ti
ed the ends of the bandages.
She watched him work, remembering what Serina had said about all the times her son had tended to her injuries. She didn’t ask how Serina had gotten those injuries. She didn’t need to.
“What do we do now?” she asked her friend. The task ahead of them seemed overwhelming.
“Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing …”
The dragonhall doors opened then, and Tarya walked in, arm in arm with Isak. Her face was clean of blood. “Word came from my father: he and Josi are alive. They’ll be here soon. Rosa and Thom are with Simeon: hurt, but not badly.”
Milla found relief more overwhelming than fear. She sank down and turned her cheek to Iggie’s scaly back to hide her tears.
“We’d just reached the big question,” she heard Vigo telling them, “of what we do next.”
“For the hatchlings or the island?” Tarya asked shakily.
“Both.”
“Belara’s tending them well, but the hatchlings need people. The books say they should bond within a week,” Isak said. “They can wait longer than our dragons because their mother is alive. So do you fancy organizing a bonding ceremony, Milla?”
She looked at him, through her tears. She sniffed, sat up and wiped her face against her upper sleeve, trying not to get tears in her burns. Had Tarya told him everything?
“I mean, down in the marketplace of course,” he added quickly. “Like Kara told us.”
Iggie rumbled his approval and Milla felt some of her fears dissolve. “Like in the old days?”
Isak nodded and flushed. “We’ll invite the whole island this time.”
“Time to do things differently,” Tarya said.
“We’ll work it out between us”—Vigo put his arm through Tarya’s—“using the old books as a guide.”
The three of them stood there in a row, waiting.
Iggie growled impatiently, so deep and loud, she could feel it reverberate through her ribcage.
Milla smiled at her friends through a blur of tears, feeling the salt sting her burns. “All right. Let’s get to work.”
The second Hatching Ceremony fell on a warm spring morning, and the air was clear and fresh. All six eggs were already tapping eagerly. Under the watchful eyes of Petra and Heral, with a full complement of guards in their new uniforms, the eggs were slowly transported down to the marketplace in a special carriage.
Milla stood in the front row, behind Iggie, ready to listen. She had helped Vigo write his speech, but Milla could see him shuffling the parchment sheets anxiously. She might be the most trusted of his elected councillors, but she still felt a mixture of nerves and excitement. Her fingers played restlessly with the gold chain around her neck. The golden pendant dangling from it was a mixture of both she’d lost: on one side it had a leaping fish, and on the other, an outline of a dragon and a full moon.
She put the other hand out, touching Iggie to calm herself. His peacock-blue scales shone brightly—she’d spent the early morning polishing them. As she stroked his gleaming back, the sun’s warmth soaked through the fabric of her blue jacket.
The young duke stepped up to the wide, open space where the eggs waited on their cushions, circled by the six dragons of Arcosi, enclosed in turn by a huge audience.
“Citizens of Arcosi, our guests from Sartola”—Vigo nodded around at the combined crowd—“I welcome you warmly and most sincerely to our Hatching Ceremony.”
Milla spotted her aunt Josi and Nestan in the crowd.
Josi was lifting up Joe, her small restless son, so he could see. Now that he could walk, he wanted always to be in motion. He had bright blue eyes like his father, Nestan, and a shock of thick dark hair that stood up in a tuft at the front like the tail of a duck.
“Egg?” Joe asked loudly. “Egg?”
Milla laughed, glad the tension was burst by her little cousin. She had a cousin! Joe was the link between her family and Tarya and Isak’s, and she adored him.
“Go!” Joe threw himself right out of Josi’s grasp. He tottered unsteadily across to his half sister, Tarya, who scooped him up.
“Yes,” Tarya whispered. “Eggs! You’re right. They’re going to hatch today. That’s why we’re all here.” She lifted Joe up and showed him the gathered crowd, dozens of rows deep, using the streets above the marketplace as a kind of amphitheater so everyone could see. “And you see those big boys and girls?”
Milla looked to where Tarya pointed at a queue of nervous teenagers in their best clothes, half of them Arcosi, half of them Sartolan, all aged between eleven and eighteen. Any child of the right age—from either city—was eligible, and today that meant there were thirty of them, Rosa and Thom among them.
Rosa looked anxious. Milla winked, and Rosa flashed her a quick nervous smile. Thom had his eyes fixed on the eggs.
Good luck, she mouthed silently.
“They’re the Potentials, Joe,” continued Tarya. “Six of them—we don’t know who—are going to bond with the hatchlings.”
After the bonding, the six hatchlings would return with their humans to the new dragonhall in the palace gardens. And once the dragons were fledged, there was another building waiting for them. Today it still smelled of newly sawn wood and fresh paint: the Dragon School of Arcosi, where the dragonriders would instruct the newest six.
“Eggs?” Joe said again.
“That’s right, Joe. Dragon eggs! When they have hatched, the baby dragons will choose their people. Like me and Heral.” She pointed to each in turn, moving round the circle. “Like Vigo and Petra. Like Isak and Belara. Like Milla and Iggie. Like Luca and Caithas. Like Lanys and Ravenna.”
Milla recalled that first Hatching Ceremony, here in the marketplace, among the wreckage of the city. How nervous they’d been, inviting everyone in. How relieved Vigo had been that the little dragons, Caithas and Ravenna, had chosen two people from the different tribes—one Sartolan; one Norlander. It helped the rebuilding of the city and the reconciliation process.
If she was honest, she still couldn’t believe that Ravenna had chosen Lanys. Out of anyone on the island? She sighed. She couldn’t even avoid her: the dragons saw to that. So Lanys and Milla still clashed, with depressing regularity. Milla was trying very hard to respect the way she and her little black dragon did things differently, she really was. It didn’t seem to help.
Milla watched Isak exchange a glance with his new friend, Luca, Vigo’s cousin, seeing the warmth and reassurance that passed between them.
Everyone waited in hushed silence. They’d waited this long for a new brood—no eggs were laid at all last year—and when it finally came, it was a healthy size. She took it as a good omen: that this peace on the island would last.
Milla patted Iggie, sending a wave of affection toward him.
He looked up, and asked if she was all right, with a soft Aaark?
“I’m fine,” she whispered. “We’re ready.”
This morning she’d woken from a vivid dream with tears on her face. She guessed it’d be the last time she ever dreamt of Karys Stormrider. It felt like a farewell and she was grateful for the chance to say goodbye.
Karys sat on the dry sand at the top of the beach, wiggling her feet deeper into the warm golden grains. She squinted out to sea, where they’d left their boat tethered, dancing on the sparkling blue. How she loved this bay. It would be hard to say goodbye. Not yet, she told herself. Let the dragons heal. Let us heal. Just a little longer.
Aelia and Cato were basking near the caves. They’d hunt at dusk, when no one could see.
She closed her eyes against the hot sunshine, letting one hand fall slack, while the other rubbed her belly idly. She lifted her shirt, letting the sun fall on the round dome of it. From deep inside, she felt an answering blow against her palm. From inside and outside, both at once: she knew this baby already.
“Ha! Feel this, Gallus. It’s a strong one, this child. There—put your hand there. Feel it?”
And he did: she saw the incredul
ous grin spread across his face.
“I felt her! I did. Karys, that’s amazing. Our daughter is strong.”
“How do you know? It might be a son!” she teased, but she felt he was right. It was a daughter. Dragon daughter. She would call her Kara. She closed her eyes and prayed for the day Kara could return to Arcosi on a dragon of her own.
Milla wished Kara could see this. She was glad she hadn’t had such a crowd for her bonding. Or maybe, in the moment, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She studied the faces of the Potentials: some were calm, some looked terrified, one or two were grinning with pride and waving to family in the crowd.
Crraack! The first egg broke in two.
A little nose appeared, pushing away the top of the egg. Then the shell fell clean apart, leaving a small damp wriggling creature.
“Ohhh!”
Hundreds gasped as one.
The children lurched forward, in spite of their training.
Petra growled, ready to step in, and they drew back. As soon as the ceremony was over, she’d collect the hatchlings under her and keep them warm and safe. The dragon-bonded would live near them in the new quarters.
Isak gestured to the children. “Come forward, Potentials. Slowly, calmly. Remember our practice or you will be excluded.”
Milla watched as the young people filed carefully forward, eyes fixed on the new hatchling. They sat in a perfect circle around the hatching cushions, no one nearer than anyone else, in total equality with one another.
Who would it be? she wondered, looking from one eager face to another, hoping it would be Rosa or Thom.
“You may call quietly. Or sing. Or whistle. As your heart instructs,” Isak reminded them. Serious but kind, he was the perfect person to be the first official Dragonguard of Arcosi, training up several apprentices. He and Belara flew together now, but Isak made it clear he never wanted to fight.
The baby dragon stretched and yawned, drawing a long breath. Like Caithas, Luca’s apricot-and-lime dragon, this one had two colors. It had a red back and a yellow underside.
Isak leaned in and tossed it a piece of shredded chicken.
The hatchling growled and bit the scrap of meat, shaking it to and fro like a terrier with a rat.