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But they weren’t just one color—they all had a metallic sheen to their scales, the way Ari’s Drake was purple with an emerald luster. It reminded me of that fabric you see prom dresses made out of sometimes—that looks one color when you look at it a certain way and another color when you look at it another.
The other thing that struck me about the dragons, was that they all had intelligent, almost human expressions on their faces. You could tell these weren’t just dumb beasts—they were thinking and feeling sentient beings with intelligence and wit.
The vast marble hall had room for many more tapestry portraits but they ended when we were only three-fourths of the way down. The last two portraits struck me as special—maybe because they looked newer and fresher than the others.
The next-to-last portrait showed an absolutely enormous Drake who had scarlet scales with a golden sheen. And the last tapestry portrait of all showed a royal purple Drake whose scales had an emerald luster. His large, golden eyes looked out of the portrait right at me and I realized that it was the Drake I was riding on now—Ari’s Drake.
“I am your Drake too, now,” the Drake informed me as he moved steadily down the hallway. “Do not forget it, L’lorna.”
“I won’t,” I said in a low voice and stroked his soft hide as I felt a surge of protective devotion come from him. What had I done to earn the love of such an amazing creature, I couldn’t help wondering? Why had he picked me out of all the possible choices in the world? In two worlds, really, since the Sky Lands were a completely different realm.
The Drake didn’t answer my question, he only sent me a sense of love and protectiveness and four more words.
“You have my heart.”
Then we were at the end of the hallway at last and I saw an immense set of wooden doors bound in brass slowly swinging open.
Crap. It was time to meet the parents.
73
Kaitlyn
The immense doors swung open slowly but if anyone was working the immense wooden panels manually, I couldn’t see them. Maybe they were hidden or maybe the doors were automatic. But would they have automatic doors in a place like this? Somehow the Sky Lands felt like a place where magic would work better than science or technology.
Or maybe I only got that feeling because we were in the middle of a freaking palace.
As the doors opened, they revealed a throne room bigger than a football field.
And it was full of dragons.
Though it hadn’t clicked before, I finally understood why this palace appeared to be built for giants—because it was. The Drakes gathered at the far end of the room were all massive—though only one was bigger than Ari’s Drake, I noticed.
The strange thing was, most of these Drakes didn’t seem to have the two-tone skin which all of the portraits in the hallway had shown. They were strictly monochrome—I saw sky-blue, brick-red, bottle-green, and lemon-yellow dragons, but their scales were dull without the metallic sheen I saw on my own Drake.
Oh dear, should I think of him as my Drake, though? Was I about to lose him when Ari’s parents no doubt told him I wasn’t in any way a suitable person for him to date?
I felt a rumble from the Drake under me and he sent a sense of certainty and protectiveness. I was his and he was mine, he assured me. No one could change that.
Feeling a bit reassured, I watched as he slowly crossed the vast, black marble floor which was polished to a high, mirror-like gloss. It was so shiny I could see his reflection in it—as well as the reflections of all the other Drakes.
There were a few humans in the room as well—dwarfed by the vastness of the immense chamber—but none of them seemed to be people of importance. In fact, I got the impression that they must be servants, waiting on the Drakes’ needs by the way they bustled and scurried about, tending to the huge creatures by bringing them vast ewers of water to drink from or sometimes big round platters of steaming, fresh meat.
As we got closer to the Drakes, who were all congregated at one end of the massive space, I decided that it must be a kind of throne room. The biggest clue to this was the way all the other dragons were clustered around one central Drake who stood on a slightly raised dais which appeared to be made of solid gold.
It was the Drake from the next-to-last portrait out in the entry hall, I realized. The one with scarlet scales with a golden sheen. Out of all of them, he alone was bigger than Ari’s Drake—than my Drake, I reminded myself. His head was several feet higher and he looked down at us with golden, inscrutable eyes that conveyed no emotion—at least, none that I could read.
