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“No,” he says, shaking his head. “They didn’t want to capture the Aerie, they wanted to neutralize it so they could go after their real target.”
“But what’s their real target?” I ask. “If they don’t want the Aerie, than what…” my voice trails off as I realize exactly what they could want. Or rather, who.
“They didn’t” I whisper.
He meets my eyes, and now I know for sure what they were after. “Oh no,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, his voice heavy with grief. “They’ve killed the Ancient One.”
He takes me to the cave in the helicopter. We are silent during the flight. I keep my hand clasped in his and he holds me close to him, but we say no words. There are no words.
Valentia is dead, slain by the kingdom’s enemies. Dragon has slain dragon. The war can no longer avoid escalation. If Aiden and his father don’t retaliate, then the other nobles will take matters into their own hands and all semblance of order will collapse.
Sooner or later, someone will be the first one to shift to dragon form and be caught by humans. When that happens, it won’t matter who’s winning the war against dragons. They’ll be wiped out within a year.
This is the war Aiden and his father feared. This is the war that prompted them to propose revealing themselves to humans as friends and partners. Dragons are powerful, and one dragon is more than a match for ten thousand humans.
But humans have bombs. Humans have missiles. Humans have aircraft that can fly as fast as dragons and target them from a hundred miles away. Humans are the dominant species on this planet for a reason, and dragonkind’s survival depends on humans remaining ignorant of dragons’ existence or having a favorable opinion of dragons.
And now that’s all in danger.
We reach the cavern, and I cry out in anguish when I see Valentia’s body. He doesn’t shift to human form when he dies. I don’t know if this is because dragons don’t follow the same rules as other shifters or if Valentia spent so much of his life in dragon form that he thought of himself as more dragon than human and that was reflected in his death.
I know that he fought like a warrior. Around him are the twisted and torn carcasses of a dozen helicopters and three dozen tanks. The hillside is scarred with the marks of his claws and teeth, and acres of forest are splintered and ruined by the force of the fight. Most tellingly, his is not the only dragon body present. A gold and green dragon lies nearby, its belly ripped open from throat to vent.
I suppose that answers the question about if dragons shift when they die.
I am still not well-versed in dragon expressions, but the face of this enemy seems filled with surprise. They expected Valentia to be weak. Instead, he fought like a warrior and took one of his enemies with him.
I walk up to the stilled body of my friend. His eyes are closed, and I’m grateful for that. I don’t want to see those powerful, wise eyes blank with the glaze of death.
Aiden is silent as we walk among the wreckage. In his eyes, I see pain and grief greater than I’ve ever seen.
I also see anger, and I know that Lord Brantley is about to see the true might of the Crown Prince of the Vipera family.
“Call my father,” he says to Petyr. “Tell him the Ancient One is dead. Tell him I will be moving directly against Lord Brantley this day. Tell him that there will be fire and blood once more.”
* * *
Aiden
As soon as I return to the ruined remains of my home, I realize for the second time what a cunning snake Brantley is. My father listens with me on video-conference as Lord Brantley addresses dragon kind.
Dragons have a private television network serviced by satellites the Viperas have commissioned in private. The signals are encrypted so that normal human television sets can’t access them. To humans, the channels appear only as white noise. Dragons learned long ago the necessity of mass communication.
Today, that works against us, or against my father and I, at least. At the moment, Lord Brantley is blaming us for the death of the Ancient One.
He stands dressed in bright gold and green robes. He wears a crown with jewels on the crest and a ring with an enormous emerald set in pure yellow gold. He’s styling himself as a king.
Behind him to his left stands Amelie, dressed in the black dress of a mourner, her hair loose around her shoulders, her head bowed and her hands folded in front of her. I feel an intense rush of hate for her. I still don’t know if she’s a pawn in her father’s game or a player herself, but I wish more than anything that I’d never seen her before.
“My fellow dragons,” Brantley says. “Today, we mourn the greatest loss in the recent history of our kind. This morning, forces led by the Vipera family robbed us of one of our greatest treasures. The Ancient One, the great Valentia, oldest of our kind, fell victim to a vicious assault from the Vipera’s forces.”
Next to me, Brooke gasps. “They can’t think they’ll convince people of that,” she says, “He enjoyed your family’s protection for years. How could they expect people to fall for that?”
Lord Brantley’s next words make that clear. “Valentia was long believed to have been the guest of the Vipera family. It was only after I and the true patriots of dragonkind rose up against the tyranny and betrayal of the Viperas that the Ancient One reached out to me for succor and informed me that he was not guest but prisoner. I have sent to your lords proof of the communication from Valentia begging me for rescue. I immediately sent forces to save him, but alas, the Viperas were aware of my coming, and we were too late to rescue the Ancient One.
“You will be proud to know, my fellow dragons, that Valentia did not meet death easily. He fought like a warrior, slaying many of the Vipera’s human vassals and taking the life of one of the dragons whose foolishness led him to believe that he could serve the enemies of our kind and win.
