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“Spoken like someone who’s never gone hungry,” a voice thunders.
The coral dragon behind me stops whispering. A huge silver dragon steps onto the grass, and I take advantage of the murmuring crowd to slip a few steps closer to the little pine grove. The silver wire I’m following is nearly invisible as it threads through the closest branches. The crowd falls silent as the silver dragon describes the loss of his mate. I catch my breath, my heart thudding hollowly in my chest, my eyes circling the crowd and then returning, again and again, to the curve of Doshir’s neck, the gleam of his golden scales, the delicate folds of his wings.
“The treaties of the Iron Mountains protect us,” the great silver dragon finishes.
A dozen voices explode from the crowd. I turn toward the forest, using their noise to mask the sound of my final descent into the trees.
And something flashes in the shadows beneath the pines. Once, then again, and then there’s nothing beneath the pines but darkness. I freeze, one hand on the mountainside, the other resting just above the place where my dagger should be. Something very cold closes around my chest. It was just a flash, just two quick bursts of yellow light. It might have been fireflies, or the starlight catching on a falling leaf.
But it wasn’t. It was a signal, a Valgros signal sent from a Valgros lamp. Two quick bursts of light.
Attack.
Time slows. I feel like the very air around me has turned to ice. A thick twang rings across the mountainside, echoing off the boulders, and something hisses through the air. I turn toward the ridge as the cirque explodes into screams and the stars vanish beneath a hail of massive crossbow bolts.
My own voice drowns in the cacophony. Bolts clatter against stone; dragons howl; jets of dragonfire pierce the night sky. I’m moving again before I fully realize what I’m doing, stumbling across the stones, trying to see past the billows of smoke and jets of dragon fire as I stagger toward the little pine grove. Toward whoever, or whatever, just gave the signal. Two flashes. Attack.
And then he screams. By all the blessed kings, I hear Doshir’s voice above everything else. I twist, my heart smashing against my breastbone, and see Doshir on the grass.
He’s sprawled beside the silver dragon, one claw raised as if he’s going to press it against the nasty streak of blood on the silver dragon’s flank. One wing is unfurled above him, and the other—
The other twitches weakly on the ground, fluttering around a ragged, bloody hole punched through the center. And the thick wooden shaft of a Valgros crossbow bolt.
The world swims. For a heartbeat, I feel my dragon form inside of me, ready to burst forward, wings raised, fire rumbling in my core. I’m ready to attack, to rain death and dragonfire on those who have opposed me. But a voice rings through the chaos, a human voice as clear as crystal, and my vision snaps to the top of the ridge.
To the brave men of His Majesty’s Royal Army.
The smoke clears with a gust of wind, and suddenly I see them. The men I’ve lived with for my entire life standing on the crest of the ridge, tall before a field of stars, their faces grim, their swords ready. Someone raises his blade, and dear kings above, I know him. It’s Hobson, Captain Hobson of His Majesty’s Royal Army, who drank too much ale every night and was one of Eadberh’s many secret lovers, able to hide all the evidence of their relationship except for the way they looked at one another.
Hobson gives the signal. The men of Valgros pour over the ridge.
And into a bath of dragonfire.
The ridge vanishes in smoke and flame. Crossbows fire; a dragon screams above me. The jet of flame vanishes, leaving nothing but darkness along the top of the ridge. I search the mountainside for Hobson, his ruddy cheeks and stern frown, but all I see are blackened, smoking rocks.
But the advance continues, with the men of Valgros tumbling over the ridge, into the empty hole left by the dragon’s attack, and kings help me, I’m close enough to make out their faces.
And I know them. I know them all. Carlisle, who told me it wouldn’t be proper to box with me on account of me being a lady. Harris, who borrowed my dagger one day after training and never returned it. Tobin, who won every card game he ever played and we could never discover if he was cheating or not.
They run forward, these brave men of Valgros, leaping over the chaos of rocks and the still-smoldering destruction of the first advance, screaming with their swords raised. They run into the darkness, into the swirling chaos of air stirred with wingbeats and spattered with the blood of dragons whose scales or wings had been pierced. Even as flames erupt across the sky, licking the dark stones of the mountainside, they run.
Thunder splits the night. It’s followed a moment later by a tremendous explosion of flame, a white-hot jet of fire so incandescent it forces me to close my eyes. Lightning? My brain stumbles, stammering for an explanation as the suddenly silent battlefield sways before me. Another sound sweeps across the mountainside, a steady push and pull of air. The beating of massive wings. I follow the sound, my eyes pulled past the tarn and toward the cliffs.
To the massive black dragon rising through the night.
Rensivar. Kings help me, I hadn’t realized just how enormous he is compared to all the dragons spread below him. His wings seem to stretch across the entire ridge, to blot out all of the stars. The light of the sputtering fires burning half-heartedly among the rocks, remnants of the Valgros Army’s first attack, shimmers off Rensivar’s claws and streaks his ebony scales.
Fear twists in my throat, and I turn away, looking for Doshir. He’s standing on the grass that circles the little pond with his wounded wing folded awkwardly at his side. Blood etches a path down his golden scales.
Something else flashes in the little grove of trees that hugs the far side of the meadow, something I only catch in the corner of my eye. I turn back to the pines, but the flash of light is gone. It could have been another signal from the Valgros lantern.
But it was blue.
Another burst of white-hot flame splits the night, blinding me. I twist my head toward the trees, trying to make out another spark or perhaps even the mysterious General, but Rensivar’s dragonfire reduces the world to nothing but shadows. Above me, Rensivar screams something. It might bestop, orsilent, I can’t quite make it out. The stones ring with the echo of his voice.
And then the mountainside above me splits wide open.
Voices rise all around me, men and dragons screaming together. The coral dragon leaps into the air as the stones beneath her claws suddenly tumble backward, vanishing into emptiness.
