Page 27 of A Matter of Dragons

A scent caught my attention. I swung my head around. Yes, there it was again, faint and subtle but utterly unmistakable. Dragon. I pulled in my left wing, dove out of the weakening thermal, and headed straight toward the mountain. The pass lay before me, a flat, pale slash against the mountainside with a cliff above and a cliff below. Across the chasm and nearly hidden by a limestone bluff was a dark crack in the stone that opened on one of the few habitable caves in the Knife’s Edge.

I stretched my claws, landed gently on the bluff, and tucked my wings behind me. My nostrils flared as I took in the scents of the mountain, which were so much more pronounced in this form. A bear slept beneath the roots of an ancient pine somewhere downwind. A pack of wolves was moving in the distance, far enough from Cairncliff that their presence would not be noticed.

And, yes. The scent of dragon was all around me, pouring from the innocuous crack in the mountainside. She hadn’t bothered to advertise her lair with bones or grotesque displays of dead bodies like some of the more dramatic and asshole-ish dragons I’d known. So, she might well be mad, but she wasn’t trying to draw attention to herself. If it weren’t for her scene tonight, I could almost believe she’d come here to hide.

I let out a slow breath. Smoke rose from my nostrils and curled around my horns. What did I actually know about Mad Scarlett? Next to nothing, really. The gossip said she’d been a cruel and unimpressive dragon before a dark wizard had stolen her newborn daughter. Now, she was reportedly a cruel, unimpressive, and insane dragon.

My gaze moved from the discrete cave in the mountainside to the dragon circling my city. Perhaps she was hiding, or perhaps she was lying in wait. Her intentions didn’t really matter; she was a threat to Cairncliff, and she was a threat I had to clean up.

Well. Time to get her attention.

I took a deep breath, pulling oxygen into my second heart, the inferno resting inside all dragons. Heat spread through my body like a shot of dwarven whiskey. I opened my mouth and sprayed an avalanche of flame across the mountainside, igniting several of the tall old pine trees that had clung to these rocks since time immemorial.

That ought to get her attention.

A furious squirrel began hurling curses at me from a nearby tree. Ignoring the insults, I turned to watch Mad Scarlett. Her dark form whirled around almost instantaneously; flames poured from her mouth and swallowed the thin crescent moon. She tucked her wings into her side and dove toward the mountain.

“Here she comes,” I whispered to no one.

My talons dug into the rock and sent a spray of pebbles down the mountainside. The first squirrel was joined by another, and then a third, and all three of the little bastards began insulting my mother in the hideously clever ways that only squirrels have mastered.

Fire exploded all around me, turning the night sky incandescent. I closed my eyes, the only part of a dragon that might be harmed by heat, and let Scarlett’s rage wash over me. Trees popped and hissed as they exploded into flame around me. I felt a brief flicker of sympathy for the squirrels.

“Doshir,” a voice hissed above the sudden roar of flames.

I opened my eyes to find a massive red dragon hovering in front of me. The beat of her wings fanned the flames all around us. Smoke and fire completely obscured the mountainside.

“B’shelath Ygtishla,” I replied politely, addressing her by her Draconic name and not her presumably offensive nickname, Mad Scarlett.

We stared at each other in silence as smoke rose in a thick column to blot out the stars. Rage simmered in her narrowed yellow eyes.

“You are burning down my mountain,” she said, her voice acidic.

I refrained from pointing out that she’d just set fire to all the trees around us.

“Cairncliff is my town,” I replied.

Her laugh was like glass shattering. She circled higher in the sky, then pointed her snout at Cairncliff as though she’d just noticed the little walled town nestled against the sea.

“Your father had no right to claim that town,” she growled. “And neither do you. You have no honor, no accolades. You both hide among the lesser beings like cowards. You bring shame to all of us.”

Whatever. Mad Scarlett’s insults were just a rehash of what I’d heard every single time I’d allowed my mother to guilt me into joining some dragon council or another before I’d finally grown into my scales and abandoned the Iron Mountains altogether.

“B’shelath Ygtishla,” I said again. “Why are you here?”

Her eyes narrowed again. “As if I’d share my thoughts with you, Doshir. You defile yourself with humans, you scum. You traitor to our race—”

“Is it your daughter?” I asked, interrupting her.

Mad Scarlett howled, a rush of pain and rage so ferocious I inched back on the flaming hillside. She spiraled up, shooting flames at the stars, and then fell so suddenly it looked like she’d been yanked out of the air. I watched as she plummeted from the sky, waiting for her wings to extend, to pull up.

She fell past me, her wings tucked tight against her side, her belly to the stars, her claws open and grasping at the night air. Her eyes were closed.

“Scarlett!” I cried, forgetting to use her proper name.

There was a tremendous crash of exploding branches and skidding, falling rock, and then all was still. Fires crackled all around me. I inched forward, peering down at the hillside where the enormous red dragon had fallen. A great pine had been sheared off at the crown, leaving a white flash of exposed wood. Beneath that, I could just make out a ragged black tangle of fallen limbs and leathery wings.

“B’shelath?” I called, remembering this time to use her proper name.