Krala hissed. “I lie, do I? Well, I will not waste my time convincing you of what time itself will teach you. The youngling may be fierce for some few hours yet, but not for long. You should have given me the chrysalis, Firstborn.”
“So you could kill her?”
Krala only chuckled. “There will be, as you say, no need.”
Wix tensed.
“The beetles will take their toll on her,” Krala said, flicking her tail toward Ruby. “And really … I should thank you.”
“Thank us for what?” Wix snarled.
“You’ve made it so much easier.” Krala stretched her neck and peered down at them. “When I gave the firstborn chrysalis to my brother and told him to destroy it, I thought to blame my brethren—those who are the Mother’s allies—for the youngling’s death. But now I think I have a better way. Once I tell the Mother what you have done, when she learns that it was humans who took her youngling and poisoned her, the brethren will see how foolish the Mother’s idea of consorting with your queen really is.” Her eyes lit up.
“But we didn’t!” Petal cried from behind the statue. “That’s a lie.”
Krala continued as if she hadn’t heard. “All will know she is not fit to rule, and there will be no more talk in the Mountain of making peace with people—not here, and not in the South. There will be no more of this stubborn resistance to destroying you all.”
“But we didn’t take her! You did!” Toli shouted.
Krala’s pupils dilated and she shot forward with a sneer. She was only twenty yards from them now.
Toli’s heart fluttered in her throat. She reached up to touch Ruby, and the little dragon curled her head into Toli’s palm.
“Clever child to guess my secret. I am not like this Dragon-Mother. I do not sit idly by and allow a threat to grow. If I were Dragon-Mother, we would take the South and make it ours alone.”
Petal moved out from behind the statues to stand behind them, listening. When Wix offered her a knife from the sheath at his ankle, she took it, her face grim.
Krala snapped her teeth. “My brother is weak. He hid the chrysalis away so carefully—expecting to return it and gain us the glory of its finding. Now, destroying the youngling falls to my tooth—and to my claw—as it should have from the start. But you have saved me that trouble too.”
The dragon ruffled her feathers and bared her teeth in a savage grin. “Once you and the other bone bags are gone, we can focus on the true threat—the only threat that matters.”
“There is no threat,” Wix snarled. “We haven’t done anything to you.”
“The South is always a threat. Our queen believes your mother is the key to making peace with the humans there. Can you imagine it? Peace. A true Dragon-Mother would never bend her neck,” Krala snarled. “When I am Dragon-Mother, we will have no more of this foolish talk of peace.”
Toli froze and Wix gave a too-tight laugh. “What are you even talking about? There are no people to the south. We’re alone—the Queendom is alone!”
Krala cocked her head at Wix, her eyes widening for an instant before she burst into a belly laugh that they felt through the soles of their feet.
“Oh, that is rich. That is perfect. You didn’t know.” She snorted and coughed a burst of flame next to them that slicked the surface of the ice. “Of course you didn’t. How could you, so puny, and wingless as you are? Ah-ha-ha.” She leaned forward. “Yes, little bone bags. There are many more of you. Many upon many puny bites, where the ice becomes the sea.”
Petal covered a gasp. “The old stories,” Petal breathed. “The people went south!”
Where the ice becomes the sea. Toli thought of Petal’s Memory of the Sea and couldn’t catch her breath. Gall was alone. Had been alone since the beginning—hadn’t it?
She heard Wix asking her if it was true, but the frozen air stiffened in her lungs and she couldn’t answer. At last, she forced words out, as if they were shards of ice.
“I don’t believe you.” The dragon was just trying to distract them. Right now, they had more important things to do than sift through a dragon’s lies. Krala thought she was going to get away with it too. “Does the Dragon-Mother know you’re a traitor?”
Krala laughed. “The Mother grows timid. My brethren are fools to remain loyal to her when she falls into the shadow of another—a stronger born.”
“Why take Ruby?” Wix called. “She’s just a baby.”
Krala hissed, crouching low. “She is young and weak. The time is right. She is a Frost.”
“Like you,” Toli ground out.
Krala stretched her wings. “Not like me. I am wise. I am strong.”
“But the Dragon-Mother is your sister,” Petal began, her voice catching as she tried to look Krala in the eye. “Why not let her rule—any of the first three can take power.”
“Can. CAN!” Krala roared, shaking the ground. “But they do not. They do not DARE. Until this Mother it has been the firstborn. A Frost had ruled across our living memory.” Her eyes were lit with fury. “It should have been me.”
Wix gave a tight smirk. “You didn’t just let her become the Dragon-Mother, did you? If your thirdborn sister became the Dragon-Mother instead of you, then she must have beaten y—”
“Wix, shut up.” Toli hissed as a flood of alarm heated her veins.
Krala peeled her lips back, baring her teeth. “We were younger then. I am wiser now. And stronger. She will not beat me again.” The dragon’s smile widened.
Toli sensed a shift, felt Krala’s focus change. The dragon had made a decision, and it wasn’t in their favor.
Toli’s hands twitched for the bow hanging from her shoulder. “Petal, get behind the statues,” she said through clenched teeth.
Petal looked at the short hunting knife in her hand and swallowed, edging backward. Krala watched her go, amusement in her gaze. Wix must have felt it too. He moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Toli in front of the dragon.
Krala leaned closer. The dragon’s hot breath smelled of blood. “Brave little bone bags. My brother is loyal to me, but he is weak. When I have killed the youngling, I will be the only Frost of age to rule. Once she is dead, there will be no other firstborn threat. There will be no more talk of peace. When I tell my brethren that your people took her—and poisoned her—all will turn against your queen … and mine.”
Toli rested her palm on Ruby’s tail. “She’s not dead yet.”
“Toli,” Wix whispered. “Are you sure about this?”
Krala’s low rattle rolled across the ice.
Toli gave an imperceptible nod. Krala didn’t plan to let them leave. Toli saw it in the dragon’s eyes. But maybe she could gain some advantage—goad Krala into making a mistake.
She drew her bow. “You took her,” Toli sneered. “And you could have killed her, but you were a coward. A weak coward.”
Krala’s eyes narrowed to slits.
Wix huffed his breath and nocked an arrow.
Smoke surged from Krala’s nostrils, and Ruby rose into the air above Toli with a sharp cry. Krala lashed the ice with her tail and lurched forward, snapping at Toli.
Wix grabbed her arm, yanking her backward out of reach. Both of them fell to the ice.
Krala stalked around the sled as they scuttled to their feet. Ruby shot a plume of fire that burst over Krala’s eyes, and the larger dragon let out a roar of outrage.
Toli rose from the ice and took up her bow again, planting her feet next to Wix.
Krala rattled and lunged, forcing them farther back. She aimed a blast of fire at Ruby, but she aimed too high.
She fixed her gaze on Toli.
Toli heard Wix’s breath catch.
Krala grinned. “I will kill you both where you stand. After I kill you, I will kill the youngling. Then I will hunt your sister among your frozen dead. That will make a pleasant day.”
Toli remembered Spar’s lessons. She took a deep breath, centering herself. Then she fired.
Besid
e her, Wix’s bow twanged.
Both arrows soared, straight and true, piercing Krala’s shoulder and chest, one just behind the other. Ten times as many arrows would still be unlikely to kill her, but perhaps they would slow her down—make her think twice.
The dragon roared in pain, shaking the ice under their feet.
Toli’s throat went dry, but though she braced herself, the dragon didn’t attack. Instead, Krala fell back—considering.
Blood trickled down Krala’s shoulder. Toli reached for a second arrow, and Wix shifted his grip on his bow, but they didn’t look away.
The dragon shook out her wings. “I have bigger battles ahead of me than this one—battles of importance. I should not waste my might on such puny bites. Your lives will come to a close faster than a snap of my teeth once I tell the Dragon-Mother you took her firstborn. While you are breaking your bodies against the sheer cliffs of our mountain, I will be whispering in her ear.” Krala chuckled, snapping both arrows out of her body with yanks of her teeth. Drops of blood, black as old ice, fell to the ground.
“I will show her my wounds and she will believe me. So I thank you again, Firstborn. While the youngling dies, this nonsense of yours will serve me well. It will distract the Mother until I can challenge her, with all my brethren behind me.”
“We won’t let you,” Toli said with a calm she didn’t feel. She drew her bow. “We’ll tell your queen the truth about you.”
Krala grinned. “Try, little bone bag! How will you climb the Mountain, wingless as you are? What route will you choose? You can go around to the west. It will take you a week at least. Climb the sheer cliffs of the western slope? The sheer cliffs to the south? Climb it! I insist! With a sick dragon on your back and the brethren I have won to my side hunting you—climb it!”
Wix, tense beside her, nocked another arrow. “We’ll take the pass.”
Toli blanched at Wix’s words. The pass was the one place Spar had told her hunters never to set foot. It skirted the sheer rock walls of Dragon Mountain and could save time, Spar had said, if they had wanted to travel so far to hunt. According to Spar, though, the risk of the pass was far too great, especially with only uncertain results on the far side of the Mountain. The hunt master hadn’t offered more information, and everyone had known better than to ask.
Krala’s eyes dilated, one tearing and raw from Ruby’s scorching. “Ahh. You know about the pass. It will take less time—that is true. There are no cliffs. But there are … other things.” She let out a low rattle. “Go, then,” she said with a snarl. “Die in the pass.”
Krala beat her wings once. The force of it knocked them all to the ice. On the second beat, she lifted off the ground, dragging her black talons over the surface as she rose. Long gouge marks followed her in the ice. She pulled her claws up, just missing the sled.
Toli watched Krala rise, her head crowded with thoughts of her mother. Even now, as they stood watching, her mother might be facing an entire mountain full of those creatures—alone. And there was no telling how much time Ruby had left. They had to get to the Dragon-Mother. If Krala got what she was after, Toli’s mother would be only the first to pay the price. In spite of Spar’s warning, they would take the pass.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The dragon’s black scales gleamed as she turned in the sky and moved away, lifting into the thick blanket of color-streaked clouds. Wisps chased her in vain, like hopeful children.
The hail had stopped. Nya had risen, her light competing with that of Father Moon.
Petal ran back out from the field of statues and threw her arms around Toli’s neck. Toli hugged Petal tightly as Wix leaned into them. None of them spoke. They clung together for a breath—then two.
Toli stepped away first. “We’re going to do what we have to. That’s all.” Toli’s whole body was shaking as they silently righted the sled. None of them spoke.
Wix did his best to calm the foxes. He climbed in next to Toli as she took the reins.
Toli risked a glance at him. She knew only two things about the pass that led to Dragon Mountain: She knew it was a huge tunnel that passed through the glacier beyond the Necropolis, coming out at the far side of the Mountain, and she knew Spar had told all of her hunters never to set foot in it. Wix’s expression reflected the question in hers: What is in the pass?
The tunnel cut through a sheer bluff of glacier that rose up from the ice just to the east of the Mountain. Spar had traveled there once to scout for hunting grounds, long before her quarrel with the dragons. Toli remembered the hunt master striding into the Hall where her hunters waited. Toli and her father had been seated by the fire.
The fear written across Spar’s as-yet-unscarred face as she passed made her a stranger, and for a moment, Toli hadn’t recognized her. The huntress had stormed past, pointed one finger at the pack of hunters where they gathered around another hearth, and uttered only five words. “Stay away from the pass!”
If her father, or anyone else, had ever asked why, no one had shared the answer with her. As far as Toli knew, no one had set foot out there since.
Until now.
The fact that they had no choice didn’t do much to ease her mind.
Toli thought of her mother, inside the Mountain. She thought of Ruby, dying without ever meeting her own mother, and her thoughts jumbled. She tried to find words, but they shifted in her mouth like stones.
She closed her eyes and sent a fervent prayer soaring out to the Daughter Moon to keep Ruby alive, and to help them get to the Mountain in time to save her mother and stop Krala.
Petal wrapped Ruby in a small rabbit-fur blanket, tucking her down inside Toli’s hood. As her sister stroked Ruby’s head and peered closely into the little dragon’s face, worry flooded Toli’s mind. She didn’t want Ruby to die, and not just because she needed her to save her mother.
She cared about a dragon.
She had no energy to wonder how it had happened; she only knew that it had. “Is she okay?”
Petal pressed her lips together and took her seat in the back of the sled. She didn’t answer, but her face was as fierce as Toli had ever seen it.
“Let’s go,” Toli growled as she snapped the reins.
The wind bit at Toli’s cheeks and hair. Though it was almost afternoon, Nya’s light was dull. Reflections of the aurora lights chased across the ice alongside them, so bright now that there was no horizon—only streaks of color in the mirrored darkness, above and below. They skimmed over the surface like a dragon flying, fearing nothing.
Petal curled into the belly of the sled. Toli could feel Wix watching her, but he didn’t say a word. Not about their choice to take the pass, and not about Krala, or her mother, or about Ruby’s illness. They all knew what had to be done. There was no time to waste.
The wind wailed across the empty ice.
Wix said, “I’ve been thinking about Spar. She might be going to the Mountain too.”
Toli had been trying hard not to let thoughts of her mentor into her head. It was already so crammed full of worry, she didn’t have room for anything else. “Why would she?!” she snapped.
Wix gave her a sidelong look and shrugged. “To get the Queen? To start a fight? I don’t know. Maybe she just finally lost her dragon-blasted mind and took off.”
“No.” Toli’s voice was firm.
His gaze sharpened. “No? That’s it … just, no?”
Petal sat up and picked her way forward, gathering Ruby out of Toli’s hood. “She could be out hunting.”
Wix scoffed. “Hunting what?”
There was no good answer to that question, and Toli knew it. She gritted her teeth and thumped the sled with her fist. Ruby gave a halfhearted rattle from the belly of the sled, where she had settled into Petal’s lap.
Wix sighed. “Listen. You might be right. Maybe she’s gone into the forest or…”
“Or maybe she really has lost her mind and is on her way to do something stupid.” Toli sighed. Like start a war with the dra
gons.
He paled. “That’s what I’m afraid of too. You know her best. What do you think she might do?”
She met her friend’s honest face. “That’s just it, Wix. I have no idea what she’s capable of.”
Petal cleared her throat. “We know she hates the dragons.”
Toli considered. “We know Krala wants to be the Dragon-Mother, even if it means starting a war between the dragons—and another between humans and dragons.” It made her heart ache to think that the truth might be that Spar wanted the same thing.
Petal nodded, pressing her lips together in a determined line. “We know the dragons took our mother, and that Krala thinks that makes the Dragon-Mother weak.”
Wix shook his head. “It wasn’t taking her that makes the Dragon-Mother look weak, it’s that she wants her for something—some kind of help. And Krala said she isn’t the only dragon that has lost faith in the Dragon-Mother,” he added.
Toli chewed the inside of her cheek, the iron tang of blood on her tongue. Somehow she had to fix this. She’d gotten Wix and Petal wedged in the middle of some kind of dragon war. The whole Queendom was counting on her. Even Ruby. “And Ruby’s dying,” she whispered, her voice catching.
An image of Spar handing Toli her gift with her eyes full of pride flashed in her mind. “You don’t give up,” she had said.
Toli snapped the reins. “Right now we just have to try to get Ruby back to the Dragon-Mother. We know Krala is planning to blame us for taking her—”
Wix shook his head. “We can’t outrun Krala.”
“Then at least we can survive! We can keep Ruby alive!”
Petal nodded. “We can explain to the Dragon-Mother.”
Wix dropped his face into his hands. “If we can get there alive, we can try. We’ll have to warn the Dragon-Mother about Krala too.”
“Maybe she’ll believe us,” Toli said, trying to sound confident.
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