“I rode a dragon,” he gasped, voice still giddy. “It was like flying, but with more laughing!” He looked up at me, face gone serious. “You should try it, Mama. It feels better than pizza.”
I ruffled his sweaty hair. “Maybe later. How’s the playground?”
He shrugged, then wriggled free. “There’s a tunnel. It goes everywhere. And if you scream into the tunnel, the castle screams back.”
“Sounds like your kind of playground,” Jax said.
Flint grinned at him, then ran off, immediately tackled by two more hatchlings, all of them rolling in a blur of claws and limbs and laughter.
My vision blurred at the edges. I told myself it was just the exhaustion or maybe dehydration. I didn’t want to name the real feeling. I didn’t want to admit that every minute Flint spent here, he became less mine and more theirs.
Adalinda drifted up beside us. Well, more like towered over us. She was in dragon form, but somehow smaller than usual, her wings tucked tight, her scales muted in the soft light.“A dragon child grows into his mind,”she said, telepathy gentle as breath.“He will always be your son. But you must let him fly, or he will never learn to land.”
I nodded. I couldn’t answer. The words felt too big for my mouth. Jax squeezed my hand again. I tried to picture Flint in ten years, or fifty, or a thousand. I tried to see him as a dragon,ancient and wise, maybe even gentle. Instead, all I could see was the boy, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.
“He will come back to you,”Adalinda said.“Even the strongest wings return home.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was not if I lost him here. I didn’t say it, but I knew Adalinda heard it anyway. She spread her wings, turned away, and left us to watch.
I stood in the archway, the sweat cooling on my skin, and tried to memorize Flint’s voice, the exact pitch of his laughter. I let the sound wrap around me, the way his arms had, and for the first time in forever, I was afraid that loving something this much might break me.
Jax let go of my hand, but only so he could pull me into his arms, the two of us braced against the doorframe, watching our kid become a part of this impossible, dangerous world. He held me, and I let him. I watched Flint, and I let myself love him, even knowing how much it was going to hurt when the time came to let go. That was the cost of flying, I guessed. The price of landing. I promised myself and him that I would be here when he did.
10
HAILEY
It’d beentwo days since Jax, Adalinda, Flint, and I had arrived in the dragon realm. Today I was shadowing Adalinda, who was shadowing Solenne. I found it fascinating because it wasn’t every day that I got to watch a queen, or in Solenne’s case, a regent, hold court like we were all in a fantasy novel.
The dragon throne room was a cathedral built by and for the creatures who occupied the very top of every food chain. The ceiling arched higher than a cathedral’s nave, ribbed with stone vaults so precisely joined that a drone could have flown between the seams and never found a gap. The walls bore murals etched by claw and inlaid with precious metals. Battles, rituals, coronations, and, in more than one panel, a full-on massacre or three. It was history as interior decoration, and it was breathtaking.
I stood in the back, wings folded tight, tail wrapped around my back feet. Every scale on my body itched with the need to move, but I forced myself to stand still and watch as the day’s first petitioner, a dragon with bright ruby scales, moved to the center of the floor.
He stopped exactly three tiles from the dais, dipped his head in a gesture that fell just shy of actual humility, and addressed the throne.
“Most radiant regent Solenne. I come as the representative of the Garnet Clutch, bringers of light and keepers of the Red Hill. We would lay our case before you if it please the Court.”
Every dragon in the room turned their attention to the dais, where Solenne perched with the loose-limbed grace of an apex predator resting between meals. Her scales were a living flame, orange and gold flecked with sunbursts, and when she blinked, the light of the braziers seemed to follow. At her right stood Adalinda, regal in a way that had nothing to do with the crown etched onto the wall behind her and everything to do with how she inhabited space.
Solenne acknowledged the petitioner with a slow nod and a telepathic flourish.“The Court hears you. Speak.”
The ruby noble, Lord Dazulan, unfurled a pair of scrolls with preposterous delicacy.“We contest the boundary of the eastward hunting grounds. The topaz clutch has repeatedly ignored the terms ratified at the last convening. This trespass cannot stand.”
A ripple of amusement flickered down the line of court onlookers. I counted at least two dragons who used the moment to preen or scratch an itch.
Solenne’s gaze flickered to Adalinda for a microsecond. If I hadn’t been watching, I would have missed it. Adalinda, for her part, kept her face inscrutable, but I caught the slightest shift of her talons against the marble, three taps, then stillness.
Solenne processed the cue, then responded.“The last ratification was, in fact, four cycles ago. Since then, the migration of wind-stags has altered the feeding patterns of the central ridge. The boundaries may be due for review.”
The topaz matriarch, who had been pretending to nap three dragon-lengths down the bench, now raised her head, eyes sharp as nails. If she’d been napping, I was a bunny, not a dragon.“If the Garnet wish to contest, they should at least bring a competent tracker. The stags haven’t migrated. The Garnet have simply grown lazy.”
A wave of snickering ran through the younger dragons, which Lord Dazulan ignored with the poise of someone used to being mocked.“I challenge the topaz matriarch to present a formal survey or yield.”
At this, Solenne’s voice was velvet-sheathed steel.“The matter will be settled by joint hunt, at dawn tomorrow. The claimant who returns with the largest stag will receive temporary dominion until next convening.”
Lord Dazulan bowed, the motion a few degrees deeper than before.“The Garnet will not fail you, Regent.”
He retreated, and the topaz matriarch flashed a grin, all teeth and venom, before tucking her head beneath a wing as if the matter was already settled. Back to her “nap.”
