Toli thought of Krala’s sneer and knew she and Dral wouldn’t be waiting. She set her shoulders. No. There was no time for games, and no room for lies, even comforting ones. She would save them all—or die trying.
Her mother should be here, sitting on the throne where she belonged. Toli’s throat tightened as she closed the door behind her with a firm thud.
She couldn’t say goodbye to Petal and Wix, not with the dragon in tow. The ache in her chest grew. They would be mad, and hurt, but there was no other choice. She’d just have to explain it later, when she got back.
If I get back, she thought.
But there was only one person she needed to say goodbye to—one last thing to do.
Toli blew through the front doors of the Hall, hurrying back along the narrow paths, weaving around the small houses and outbuildings toward the far eastern edge of the Queendom. The lights danced over the ice, calling her to hurry.
The nine statues stood in a half circle along the back wall of the small building, four to either side of her father. Not for the first time, she wished the ice could have captured him better. His eyes had been green, like hers, and full of laughter. She remembered that, though the statue couldn’t show it. She remembered his shaggy red hair and his rough beard.
She remembered his voice as he would lean over her bed to put her to sleep. It had been his job ever since she had left her mother’s arms, and he continued to do so long after she was too old to need it. He tucked Petal in for the night, then made time for Toli, wrapping the blanket edges in tight around her. They talked about their day or their thoughts—asking questions, or posing them to each other, sometimes until long after bedtime.
“How far does the ice go, Father?” she had asked once, sinking her fingers into his crinkly beard. He pulled the furs close around her.
“The ice goes on for days … for forever, perhaps. It goes all the way to Dragon Mountain, and farther still.”
She stared up at the painted ceiling of her bed, frowning. “All that … nothing.”
His expression had turned serious. “You’re wrong. The ice is not nothing, Daughter,” he said, giving her cheek a stroke with the back of his hand. “You must respect it, as you respect all dangerous creatures. It is unpredictable—cruel as any dragon, fickle as any storm. It just holds its secrets even tighter than the dragons do.”
She shook herself, releasing the memory, and put one hand on the statue’s icy foot. It burned her skin, but she left it there anyway. “I should have listened to you,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes.
Her parents’ room had been warm that morning—their small fire singing with a merry crackle. He’d stared down into her face, her hands on his shoulders.
“What if something goes wrong?” she’d asked. “Why do you always have to be the one to give the tithe?”
His eyes had sparkled as he pushed her gently away. “Nothing will go wrong. The dragons have never hurt us before, Toli love, and they’re coming, one way or another. My hunters need me to lead them. Your mother needs me to do my part.” The black scales of his armor had caught the light, turning them deep blue.
“I can come too.”
“You will stay here,” he’d said, and she knew there would be no changing his mind.
Toli couldn’t explain the weight of her foreboding, but it tugged at her like deep water, heavy and unrelenting.
She’d moved to block the door. “I won’t let you go.”
“Anatolia, please—”
“You can’t.”
“Toli, I’m the queen’s companion. It’s my task to do. The herds are so sparse this year—we have a tithe, but nothing left for our people. Your mother’s doing her part. I must do mine.”
Anatolia had willed her feet to root to the floor as he lifted her up. She tried to make herself stiff and heavy as a stonetree as he gently moved her away from the door. Tears had filled her eyes, her heart a dull throbbing ache as he engulfed her in his arms. She’d caught the sharp, icy scent of hail. Then he put her down, and it was gone.
She should have stayed there—like he’d told her to. If she had, perhaps he’d still be alive. Instead, she ignored his instructions. She followed him, and he saw her, and the distraction got him killed.
They’d offered the tithe even though the herds were scarce. Why had the dragons attacked? The dragon’s hunger had always been the explanation for the attack, but something just didn’t add up.
Toli blinked away tears, getting colder with every passing moment. “I’m sorry, Father.”
She pulled her hand away from the statue and turned to go.
The wind outside whipped her braids behind her. She could hear the caves singing, half a mile outside the Queendom. Their mournful storm song rose and fell like the keening wails of a family when a loved one has died. Toli shivered.
White fog hovered just over the Queendom, getting lower, sifting over the edge of the black stone bluff to fall like water. Snow twisted down and around her. If she hadn’t known her way through the Queendom by heart, she could easily have lost her bearings. She growled at the wind. Another hail-blasted storm!
Her skin itched to leave, and every moment she stayed was another moment her mother was fighting for her life—another moment she wasn’t back on the throne, where she belonged.
She was prepared to brave the cold and the open ice wastes without Nya’s light, but halfway to the Southern Gate, she knew she couldn’t leave the Queendom. The air was thick with snow. It whipped around her head and eyes, blinding her. If she left now, she’d never make it to the deep ice, never mind all the way to Dragon Mountain. She had to be smart and consider each action carefully, as Spar had taught her. Leaving in this storm would be death. Another blasted delay.
Toli stomped toward the stables, leaning into the wind. The dragon shifted and rumbled. Perhaps it smelled the foxes, though they didn’t seem bothered by her. Toli grabbed a leatherleaf tarp from a high shelf in the stable and hurried back through the Southern Gate to throw it over the sled waiting just outside the wall. It was loaded with supplies now—ready to drive out onto the ice wastes. The cloth would cover it, and once the storm moved in, there would be a thick layer of snow and ice. The sled would look like just another drift in the storm.
Toli turned on her heel and, just through the Gate, spotted Spar pacing toward her—coming to check on the foxes, no doubt. She could barely see her mentor through the barrage of wind and snow, but Toli tucked herself behind the edge of the stable, unable to look away. Spar’s eyes were cast down, her forehead gripped in one hand as she passed, and Toli could see her lips moving as if she were talking to someone.
When the stable door had shut behind the hunt master, Toli slipped out from behind the building. She peered through the Gate into the storm until her eyes stung and her head began to throb.
“If you cause any trouble,” she hissed at the dragon, “I’ll have Rasca turn you into soup.”
The dragon’s only response was a low rumble as she shifted in the deep well of Toli’s hood. She couldn’t turn her into soup, of course—not if she wanted her mother back—but what the dragon didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Toli knew if she left now, she wouldn’t get far. The wind would tear her to shreds, and the foxes along with her, if the cold didn’t kill them first. A bitter taste filled her mouth as she turned away from the ice and trudged back toward the Hall.
The ice would not bend. She would break trying. She had to wait out the storm, but even the ringing of the ice caves faded away against the turmoil in her mind screaming for her to go—and go now—while there was still time.
CHAPTER TEN
With the storm raging, the quiet of evening settled in fast. Toli gave the fire in her bedroom a vicious poke. She had no choice. She could leave and spend the night huddled with a dragon and seven foxes under her sled, hoping for the best. Or she could spend it in her bed. Her heart gave a sharp pang. Where was her mother spending this co
ld night? Was she scared? Did she think they’d all forgotten her there?
Toli threw a brick on the fire. Wherever she was, one thing was certain: The queen of Gall wouldn’t give up.
Toli glared at the dragon curled on her pillow. She could see how someone like Petal might think there was something cute about her, with her wing tucked over her face like that, but Toli knew better. She was just another dragon—dangerous.
She stabbed the black peat with the poker until it broke apart, bursting into an angry glow.
With a dragon hidden in their bedroom, there was no way Toli could allow her sister to sleep in their room that night. She’d told Petal she needed time alone to think. Her sister, pale and weary, had accepted without question. It would be good, Petal had agreed, for her to sleep in their mother’s bed. “Maybe I’ll dream of her,” Petal added with hope in her voice. And maybe she would. Maybe her sister would wake from her dreams somehow knowing their mother was alive and well.
Toli’s heart had ached, powerless to help, as she watched Petal glide across the narrow ledge to the other side of the Hall, where the queen’s room looked out over the ice.
Alone in the bedroom she and Petal shared, Toli managed to hide the sleeping dragon between a wall of blankets and the shadows at the back of her enclosed bed, just in case. She supposed she should be grateful that between hatching and all the mischief in the Hall, the creature seemed to have worn itself out.
Toli moved to sit on the edge of her bed and scowled at the dragon. “I’m not lying down next to a dragon,” she muttered, gritting her teeth. She reached out and picked it up. Its scales were smooth and warm against her skin as she moved it to the floor under her bed.
The dragon squawked a protest as Toli dumped it on the ground and flopped into her bed with a sigh. Maybe I should just put it back in the sack.
Toli’s eyes flew open at the sound of claws scrabbling against the stonetree boards.
Fast as wind, the dragon zipped herself back up onto the bed, curling up on Toli’s pillow.
“Get. Off,” Toli growled, shoving it off the pillow and flopping over on her side.
The creature gave a hiss. “Friend,” she insisted.
Toli froze. Great, it was talking now. “I’m not your friend,” Toli ground out. “I’m not your anything.”
A few minutes passed before the soft pressure of talons told her the dragon was back on her pillow. Toli shoved it off.
The dragon waited, then climbed back on, curling in a tight ball next to Toli’s head. She stretched one wing, her feathers reaching down to tickle Toli’s nose.
Toli growled and shoved her off again, yanking the pillow to her side. The dragon curled up a little farther away, her eyes hooded, waiting.
Toli’s eyes grew heavy.
* * *
She woke to a faceful of feathers and the dragon’s long neck stretched out across her chest. Its heavy head was tucked up under Toli’s chin, the sharp, electric scent shifting with her breath.
Toli could feel the dragon’s heartbeat pressed against her own. Her hands itched to push the dragon off, but for a moment she paused. It wasn’t hurting anything. Not really.
Thin green moonlight spilled into the room. Morning—or close enough and the wind had died. She shifted the dragon off her with gentle hands. All she had left to do was throw on her cloak and she’d be racing across the ice toward her mother with a dragon to trade.
Time to go. At last.
No sooner had Toli thought it than Wix threw open the bedroom door with a laugh. “Wake up, sleepyheads. Let’s go collect some—”
He froze.
Toli shot up, shifting to block his line of sight. “Wix! It’s not what you think.”
Wix looked like someone had struck him with a rock. His eyes shifted from her to the baby dragon and back again. He lifted one hand to point at Toli’s bed. “It’s not a dragon?”
“A what?!” Petal appeared behind him. She stumbled into the room, one hand raised to point at the dragon. “Toli?”
“Okay,” Toli raised her palms. “Okay, it is what you think … a little bit, but you don’t understand.”
The dragon scrambled up onto Toli’s shoulder, despite efforts to discourage her, and gave her a wide-eyed look as if to say, “Yes, how did we come to this?” The narrow end of the dragon’s tail wrapped around the front of Toli’s neck like a necklace. Smooth scales warmed against her body. The creature sighed.
Petal shuffled forward. “Toli,” she whispered. “There’s a dragon on you.” She stopped. “Why is there a dragon on you?” She mirrored Wix’s crossed arms.
“Look. Both of you. I was on the ice early yesterday morning before Nya rose, and I found a chrysalis, okay? It hatched unexpectedly, and now it’s a dragon. Easy. Done.”
Petal blinked.
Wix rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh.”
“Don’t worry. I’m getting rid of it.”
Petal came closer, her fingers reaching out to touch the dragon’s tail. A small smile played across her face as she looked at Toli. “It’s soft,” she said. “And warm.”
The dragon lifted her head, her golden eyes heavy.
“Petal,” Toli warned.
“Right.” Wix spun around. “I’ll go get Pendar. He’ll sort this out.”
“No,” Toli shouted. The dragon rose to crouch on her shoulder, arching her neck at Wix to cough a short burst of flame.
“Stop that,” Toli snapped at the creature as Wix stumbled back. The dragon snorted and curled up again, shooting her a glare.
Petal stared. “Toli, what is going on?”
“Close the door,” Toli instructed Wix.
Wix did as she asked. “Okay, the door’s closed. Talk, he demanded.”
Petal had moved closer and dropped her face down to meet the dragon. “She’s beautiful … aren’t you?” she purred, stroking the dragon’s tail. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing.”
Toli’s jaw fell open. “Are you … baby talking to the dragon?”
“She’s just the sweetest.” The dragon gave a contented hum that vibrated her throat like a purr. Petal laughed. “Yes you are. Look at your pretty golden eyes. Yes, Petal thinks you’re beautiful. Yes I do. What are you going to call her?”
Wix’s eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline. He looked at Toli, the question “Aren’t you going to do something about this?” written all over his face.
“Petal, I’m not going to call her anything! It’s not a fox pup. It’s not some kind of pet. It’s a dragon! It … it’s dangerous.”
“She doesn’t look dangerous to me. She slept on your head all night, didn’t she? And your hair doesn’t even look worse than usual. I think she deserves a name.”
Toli threw up her hands. “Fine. Name her. Just don’t get attached. I’m giving her back—I’m trading her—for our mother. You remember her, right?” A stab of regret lanced through Toli at Petal’s stricken expression. “They’re not our friends, Petal. They can never be our friends.”
“Friends,” the dragon whispered, dropping her chin into Petal’s palm.
Toli froze. Great. Now it was talking to them too.
“She’s just a baby,” Petal said. “She didn’t kill Father. And she didn’t … She didn’t take Mother.”
“Well,” Wix said, joining them and watching Petal closely for any sign of impending implosion. “I guess that’s true…”
Petal wore a smug expression. “Two against one. So. Her name’s Ruby.”
Toli tugged at her braids to keep from taking hold of Petal and shaking her sister’s head loose from her shoulders. “Ruby didn’t do those things, but her … her people did. I’m using her to get Mother back, Petal. The end. Now stop patting her—both of you. I’m supposed to protect the Queendom. And as your sister, I’m doubly responsible for you, Petal.”
Petal frowned. “You can’t protect me, Toli. Not always. And besides,” she added, cocking her head, “you’re worth protecting too, you know.” S
he rested her hand on the dragon’s muzzle. Ruby rattled in her sleep. “Wix and Ruby and I think so, anyway.”
Toli sputtered but couldn’t think of a response.
“So,” Wix began. “You’re going to Dragon Mountain to get your mother back?”
“Yes. I told you. No matter what it takes.”
The corners of his mouth drew down, threatening to fall right off his face. He stepped closer and reached into his pocket to pull out an ice beetle egg. Holding it up, Wix waved it slowly through the air until Ruby’s nostrils flared and her eyes shot open. Her crescent pupils dilated when she saw what he held. Wix watched as her head wove back and forth, her gaze locked on the food.
He tossed it into the air. Ruby shot forward, snatching it before it could land. Wix stumbled back. “Whoa.”
“Fast, right?” Toli smiled with unaccountable pride. The dragon’s speed, after all, had nothing to do with her.
“Yup. She’s fast, all right.” He met her eyes, frown intact. “Now, what else aren’t you telling us?”
Toli worried at her hair, considering.
Petal watched, her face guarded.
Wix huffed his breath. “All of it.”
With a sigh, Toli told them about the twin dragons, Krala and Dral and how they were looking for Ruby, and about their offer. When she was done, the room fell silent.
“So,” Wix began, eyeing Ruby, “why aren’t they all out looking for Ruby?”
“Maybe they are,” Petal whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Toli scowled. “I think those two took her.”
Petal shook her head. “What did you say she called herself—the female?”
“Krala. Krala Frost.”
Petal’s eyes widened. “Like the poem Mother made us memorize? Remember, Toli?”
“What poem?”
Petal folded her hands in front of her. “‘When at last a seethe is born, some have feather, some have horn. Of royals there are only three. One fights to lead, the others free.’”
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