by Mary Auclair
The desert night, surprisingly cold, wrapped a surreal silence around the assembly. It was as if nature itself understood the solemn ceremony that was about to take place, and even the native great horned owls refused to hoot. It was a familiar kind of silence, the same forsaken void that had begun to take hold of Endora’s house as Tallie’s sickness deprived their lives of laughter.
It was a silence filled with the languishing death of hope. A silence where anguish and sorrow had their place, ready to fill the void with a blanket of absence so sharp it felt like a blade running along the flesh of her heart.
Endora stood beside her mate—wearing his regal High Lord clothes made of pure white dragon scales—in front of Rhyl. The man and the beast were strikingly similar, clad in white, and proud, unmoving. She felt awkward in her shimmering moonstone white dress but as she looked around, she saw that most of the other women were wearing similar colors, while their mates were all wearing the same colors as their dragons. The few women who were linked with dragons wore their beast’s color.
In the center of the platform was a cylindrical altar, standing as high as a man’s waist. On the platform were two tiny forms, covered with a veil.
A sudden wind of anticipation traveled the assembly as a huge blue dragon landed in the center of the platform, its shadow eating away at the diminutive altar. A man appeared in front of the beast, clad in a vest that seemed made of pure sapphires. He was too far away for Endora to see him clearly, but she could tell that he was tall and proud, holding himself straight as he walked in front of the altar.
“Where is the mother?” Endora whispered to Aldric. It seemed so cruel for the man to be standing there alone in front of the bodies of his child and the dragonet.
“She died in childbirth.” Aldric didn’t take his eyes away from the Mourning but his hand tightened momentarily on her arm. “Now he’s lost everything.”
Endora’s gaze caught on the pitifully small figure and she felt the rip in her soul deepen at the sight. There it was: her ultimate fear, the monster that slept under her bed, crawled under her sheets at night to grip her heart in the middle of her nightmares. Those small bodies, so still, covered by a simple veil. They would never move again.
Tallie would look just as small.
The intrusive thought slithered inside her mind, dragging behind it the chill of a void from which nothing could escape. Her hands began to tremble.
I shouldn’t be here. I should be with Tallie.
Panic wrapped its hands around her chest, preventing the air flow to her lungs, making small specks of darkness eat at her vision with increasing speed. A hand wrapped around her upper arm, its heat penetrating her skin in the chill of the air. Endora turned and met the liquid ice of Aldric’s eyes. His cold grip on control penetrated inside her mind, and slowly, she controlled her breathing, forcing the air flow to return to normal. The dark specks receded, then disappeared. She was back in control.
“Thank you,” she managed to whisper.
“They’re about to start,” he whispered back. “Don’t worry, just follow my lead, and whatever happens, don’t say a word.”
Endora stared at him, then nodded. Yes, she could trust him.
A low music started, a melody enveloping the air around them. Endora turned her head and was startled to see that it was the dragons. They were singing—or more precisely—humming in unison. Her eyes latched onto Rhyl, and her mind became a blank. His wings were wide open, interlocking with those of his neighbors, and his throat was vibrating with a breath that came from deep in his belly, making a hollow, rolling sound, not unlike the chant of a lark. The song went on, its intensity slowly increasing, painting a picture of a grief so profound, only music could describe it. No words or images could come close.
Then, as abruptly as they’d started, the dragons stopped.
“The dragons paid tribute to their dead,” Aldric’s voice came close to her ear, but her eyes were riveted to the small figure under the veil. “Now it is time to mourn.”
As Aldric said the words, the first Draekon turned and reached for his dragon’s chest. A single glowing scale was removed, then the Lord and his Lady walked up to the grieving father, who wordlessly accepted the dragon scale and placed it on the veil near the child’s feet.
“Draekon and dragons are similar in many things,” Aldric’s toneless whisper reached her ears. “Our lives are long and blessed with incredible power, but our births are few and far between. It takes a Draekon child’s conception for a dragon egg to be laid. Without one, there is no other. We are linked in our deaths and our births. When we lose one of our own, so do they. This is how deep the bond runs.”
Endora looked up at him, seeing his proud profile standing out against the blinding white of Rhyl’s scales, his hand reaching for the dragon’s neck, absently stroking it. She hadn’t noticed before but she saw it now: how the man and beast almost constantly touched. How there was always an invisible thread attaching one to the other. They didn’t need to talk or even be in each other’s presence to be connected.
Any child she might bear him would have that same link.
For a long time, the endless procession of Lords and Ladies paying tribute to the dead with a single dragon scale went on. Finally, the couple standing to Endora and Aldric’s left moved and left their offering, then came back. The small forms of the dragon and child were nearly covered with shimmering, precious scales, their bright hues melting together in a tapestry of grief and beauty that made her chest constrict.
Aldric reached for her elbow, his hand steady and warm on her naked skin. Together, they turned to Rhyl, and Aldric reached for a single brilliant white scale from the dragon’s throat, then pulled it free. A drop of blood caught the low light, shocking against the white of the dragon. She was transfixed by the sight, unable to move.
“Endora, we have to go. It is our turn now.”
Aldric’s words brought her back to reality and she blinked the hypnotic fascination away. Aldric stood, Rhyl’s scale in his hand, wrapped in the blinding suit made of white dragon scales. He was so regal, so magnificent.
I shouldn’t be here.
She stifled her impulse to turn and run away. She owed it to Aldric, for all he had done for her. Endora straightened and slipped her hand around Aldric’s arm, then stepped along with him as he moved toward the lonely shapes of the man and his dragon, standing in the center of the platform. At his left, a step behind him, the altar, with its small veiled figures, seemed to scream in agony.
I don’t want to see this.
Avoiding the veiled figures of the child and dragonet, Endora’s eyes latched on to the Lord of Balka, clad in blazing blue High Lord clothes, as regal as his sapphire blue dragon. The man and his beast watched her and Aldric approach, no emotion visible on their stony features, only this permeating sadness, like a lingering smell of broken dreams in the air.
Finally, Aldric and Endora stopped in front of Lord Emeril Fyr of Balka. This close, Endora could see the red tint in his eyes offsetting the deep, dark blue metal of his irises. He was a young man, much younger than the lines of grief on his face would lead one to believe. His skin had the ashen shadow of lack of sleep, and dark circles underlined his eyes. His black hair was cut short, exposing his pointed ears, but the unruly strands fell over his forehead unattended. His square shoulders hung down under the weight of his loss. Lord Emeril was a man who had lost everything and whose life hung about his frame, like it didn’t understand it wasn’t needed anymore.
“For your grief and the loss to us all.” Aldric extended his hands, his open palm cradling the precious dragon scale. “May your son and his dragon fly together in the Night Lands.”
Lord Emeril stared at the proffered scale for a long time, then lifted his eyes to lock gazes with Endora, ignoring both Aldric and the offering.
“Your new Draekarra is ravishing, congratulations, Aldric.” Lord Emeril’s eyes remained on Endora. “I’m sorry I seemed out of sorts a
t your Mating ceremony, but my son’s health was deteriorating, and with his dragon’s disappearance, I was quite distracted.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Endora said with what she hoped was a polite smile. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
“He had his mother’s laugh, always such a happy boy.” Lord Emeril glanced at the veiled body and his eyes gleamed dangerously, then he turned back to Endora. “You are human, and no matter how much the Draekons need you, there will always be those who see you as a threat. The snake in your house is not always the one you know. Never forget this.” He turned his suddenly sober eyes to Aldric. “The Knat-Kanassis killed my son.” He looked around at the Lords assembled around the Mourning altar. “They have a reach we could never have suspected. My own captain of the guard betrayed this house, and my son paid the price.”
“Captain Rohan?” Aldric frowned so deeply his eyes were lost in shadows.
“His sister came of age a year after I mated Helene. It appears he never forgave me for refusing to repudiate my human mate for a Delradon one.”
“Where is he now? He must know more. There has to be a Lord—or many Lords—behind them.”
“Nemyr got to him before I had a chance to stop her.” Lord Emeril tilted his head towards the towering blue dragon. “She lost her only dragonet to his betrayal. I doubt there was anything I could have done to steady her talons once she caught his scent.”
Silence fell between the two men, a silence heavy with the weight of a tragedy, and with the threat of a tragedy to come.
“So you have no clue who is behind them.”
“They have power and reach, of that you can be sure.” Lord Emeril looked again at Endora, then turned to put Rhyl’s scale on the last free space on top of the veil. The large, shimmering white scale was directly beside the sapphire blue one, both covering the heart of the child and dragon. A place of honor, of great trust.
“For our old friendship’s sake, I tell you this.” Lord Emeril turned his head sideways, his hand still above his son’s unmoving chest. “Your home is not safe. Your people are not who you think they are. Keep your family close to you and don’t trust anyone.” He returned his attention to his son’s body, consumed by his grief once more. Endora watched as his hand stilled on the child’s heart, like he couldn’t give up the hope of feeling it beat under his palm. Her throat closed up, a lump settling just at the base of it, and her eyes rapidly filled with tears.
Was that the future for her children? For Tallie and Shari? Lying under a veil, covered in dragon scales?
Her breathing accelerated but there was no oxygen in the air, and all of a sudden, she wasn’t sure she could stand.
Aldric’s hand closed on her waist, and she turned her face to him.
“Look at me, little Dora,” he said in a low voice. “Just look at me, and breathe.”
She latched on to his pale eyes, allowing him to anchor her in place. He was her shelter in this dark, dangerous night, and she knew he would die before allowing her or the children to be harmed.
Slowly, she forced the air back into her lungs, and her legs steadied. Half carrying her, Aldric turned and walked back to where Rhyl stood, his ever watchful eyes on them like he knew what she feared. And shared her terror.
As Endora and Aldric turned to face Lord Emeril and his dragon, an undercurrent of tension traveled through the assembly. Aldric’s hand on her arm tightened.
Her eyes locked on to Nemyr, the dragoness who had lost her baby to the Knat-Kanassis’ violence. She stood on her hind legs, her wings wide open, reflecting the light of the moon like droplets of pure gemstones. Lord Emeril turned to Nemyr then, with an agility borne of long collaboration, he quickly climbed on her back, sitting at the base of her neck in a small saddle. The beast bucked and screeched, the sound shrill and piercing through the hushed silence of the assembly. Then she shook her head violently, her shining golden eyes tracing lines of light through her movements. Smoke rose from her nostrils, dense and black. Dangerous.
Then she bent down over the circular altar where both her dragonet and the Delradon child lay, two columns of dense black smoke still rising steadily from her nostrils.
Out of her mouth came a sound that felt like a lullaby on the wind, the words lost but filled with a tenderness that could slice flesh. She opened her mouth and a blinding light escaped, the searing heat from it warming Endora’s face like a bonfire. For a long time, Nemyr spread her intense heat over the remains of the children then, finally, just when Endora was beginning to fear she would never stop, the dragoness closed her mouth.
The blanket of dragon scales covering the remains had melted into a shell, shining with life from within, the dragons’ colors fused together in a mesmerizing rainbow of hues. Even from a distance, Endora could see the outline of the child, his dragon in his arms, bound together in death as they were in life.
With a tenderness that ripped at Endora’s heart, Nemyr cradled the bodies in her talons, still singing her low, melancholy song, then disappeared into the night.
A long moment of silence followed the dragoness’s departure.
“Where is she taking the bodies?”
“No one knows where the dragons take the dead.” Aldric turned to look at Endora, his features solemn and his voice soft. “The beasts are there at the beginning of our lives, and they carry us to their secret world when we leave.”
One by one, the Lords and Ladies climbed onto their dragons and took to the skies. The Mourning was over, at least for them. For Lord Emeril and Nemyr, the grief would last and last, until it consumed their entire world.
Chapter 19
The seven hour flight back to Darragon castle was spent in silence, both cloistered in their own thoughts, consumed by their own fears. Endora leaned against Aldric’s chest, savoring the warmth of his body against the raging cold of the February morning. The images of the previous evening ran through her mind in a never ending reel. The grief of it stuck to her skin like paint the color of sadness, invisible but still there, covering her limbs, her neck, her face. Lord Emeril’s loss was a deafening echo of her own worst fear: losing her own child whose life still hung at the edge of a precipice from which not even Delradon medicine could bring her back.
There, in the distance, lounging against the snow-covered top, was Darragon castle, sculpted into the rock of the mountain. She smiled in anticipation, and she was surprised at the joy she felt at seeing it.
Home.
In such a short time, the stone castle had become her home, where she could seek refuge from the world. Where those who mattered were waiting for her.
“We’ll be home in less than an hour,” Aldric told her, breaking his own thought-filled silence. “Tallie and Shari will have missed you.”
“They will have missed you, too.”
He glanced down at her, then the corners of his mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile. His eyes filled with tenderness, and she was mesmerized at the sight. There, so close she could almost touch him, was the man she was beginning to see under the layer of control from the High Lord. He was warm and kind to those he loved, fiercely protective. A man she could love back, and who would never abandon her.
“I missed them too.”
Endora reached up and ran her fingers along Aldric’s cheek. The beginning of a beard prickled her fingertips, and she chuckled. “I never saw you with a beard before. I like it.”
“You do?” He glanced down, his smile turning wicked and sexy.
“It’s scratchy and manly. I like it. A lot.”
He bent his head and kissed her lips lightly, then smiled again, close to her mouth. “And would you like it still, all scratchy and manly, if I kissed you somewhere else? Somewhere much, much more sensitive?”
She gasped and chuckled as Aldric pulled her closer, then took her mouth more deeply, fully.
“I can’t wait to have you all to myself.”
Heat spread in her belly, reaching down between her legs. Images of t
heir bodies, of flesh against flesh, need and satisfaction melting side by side, invaded her mind. Yes, she couldn’t wait to be alone with him too.
Glancing down at Rhyl, she caught the dragon’s stare. His head was twisted around on his large powerful neck almost completely, like an owl, and his large, pale blue iris was fixed on her. She was sure she saw genuine tenderness there, tenderness and amusement. The beast understood their exchange, she was sure of it. He understood what they said, and what they would do as soon as they were alone together. She made a face at him, and wasn’t surprised when the dragon lifted his scaly brow, then returned his stare to the world in front of him.
Endora shook her head, then snuggled close to Aldric again. Home, she was almost home.
Rhyl landed on the stone floor in a graceful flurry of white wings. Aldric didn’t lose any time, he stepped down from the dragon and helped Endora join him on the landing. Rhyl grumbled and shook his head, folding his wings neatly on his back in apparent satisfaction. After the long flight, he had earned his rest.
“Lord Aldric! Lady Endora!” Junco ran toward them, flustered and out of breath. “You have to come. It’s Myral!”
Something happened in the next few seconds. A blur of white and cold air brushing her skin like a hurricane, Endora wasn’t sure. Then Rhyl’s tail disappeared behind a corner as he ran to his mate.
Aldric’s hand closed on hers in the next heartbeat and they ran, leaving Junco behind with a stricken look on her face. She called out, but her words were lost in the whispers of the wind. Endora ran behind Aldric, trying her best to keep up with him, not to trip over her own feet as she followed.
After a long run through the deep, dark hallways leading to the dragon’s lair, they finally arrived. Rhyl was at the back of the room, unmoving and silent, staring at the prone form of Myral.
Aldric stopped running and Endora followed suit. He walked at a steady pace but Endora could feel the tension coursing through his veins, all the way to the beating of his heart, fast and strong. He was scared of what he was about to see. Scared for Rhyl. Scared for himself. It was the same: the man and the beast shared life and death, joy and grief in equal measure.