The Dragon Queen (short story)

(The Dragon Queen is a short story I wrote for a contest, and I decided I might as well put it up here because what else am I going to do with it? Please be aware that this short story is mostly unedited, and will likely stay that way as I focus on bigger projects. I hope you enjoy it anyway!)

 It was an easy decision to make.

The countries to the east, west, and north were as tough as hers and too poor to make any lost lives worth the meager help they’d glean from the spoils of war. There was only one choice. Her scarred fingers brushed over the painted letters on the map, hooded eyes gazing down at the marked gold and gem mines scattered throughout the coastal country. Anglor. So beautiful, so wealthy.

So weak. Their highest-ranking general would never stand up to her most callous footsoldier. They relied largely on allies with military superpowers to protect them as their strongest men were sent to mines rather than armies, and other countries were desperate for the riches that they could leach from alliances with a country grown too soft to survive on its own.

She had the plan already. Soldiers would hide in merchant ships and caravans, posing as border guards, hiding in the woods, to surround the country and overwhelm them before help could arrive. Just one more surprise would be all it would take.

The young queen stood, alone in the council room now. The noblemen she’d fought so hard to impress as the first queen to reign alone had left once the decision was made, but she had stayed to think on her choices. Her eyes raised from the map to the portrait that hung across from her, where her parents’ painted eyes had watched the council’s meeting. Her mother had died years ago, so the young queen couldn’t blame her for anything, but she looked at the king with accusing eyes. Even if it was unreasonable, she couldn’t help but hate him a little bit for leaving her to inherit the dying country alone. The only child to be carried to term by her sickly mother, raised by a man grown too soft to make the same decision that she just had at only sixteen: to perhaps sacrifice the citizens of another country to save her own.

It was an ugly country, her Embrum. Brown and craggy, with precious few lots of land where anything but the hardiest crops could grow, prone to wildfires and droughts. The castle was ancient, scarred from war and flames, and too focused on protection to keep anyone within warm in winter or cool in summer. Hunters were just as likely to be gored by their prey as they were to bring back anything edible, but it was home, and she would save it. 

And she knew exactly how to do it. She turned on her heel, the scales that made up her cloak scraping against the flagstones. Perhaps it was risky to wear it where she was going, but it was also the surest protection she could bring.

###

The young queen hiked the mountain alone. Her golden braid whipped around her, far too long for practicality but she refused to cut the knee-length rope. It was part of what made people accept the first queen to reign alone. From her thick blonde hair to her mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—they said she was the First Queen reborn. The First Queen, who was the famed wife of the founder of her country, and whose name was lost to history. They followed the young queen because of her resemblance, and the hope it offered, but she knew that looks were cheap. If she were to emulate the First Queen and save her country, she had one more thing to aim for.

Her eyes fixed on the cave far above, teeth clenched to keep from chattering as she drew the dragonscale cloak tighter around her shoulders. It was heavy, and it scraped her skin, but warmth lingered in the scales. It gave her a little more of a chance to survive. She could come with no army, no guards, not even any significant weapon. Not if she wanted to avoid drawing the ire of the one who waited. She had no doubt they knew she was coming.

The mountain grew steeper as she approached the cave until she was clinging to the side of the mountain, dragging herself up with rocks and frozen roots. They had tried to talk her out of the gauntlets, and now she was glad she refused to go without them. Holding on was hard enough without her skin being torn by the rough stone that scraped against her steel armor.

Her lips were numb. Her cheeks tingled, not far from having the feeling whipped from them as well, and she cursed the one who made the cloak for not thinking to make a hood as well.

She didn’t stop climbing. Not as stones fell, not as icicles formed on her eyelashes, not as her handholds became more precarious, and not as the wind threatened to flay the skin from her bones. She wouldn’t give up. Not like those before her had.

She was not a pious woman. The priests and priestesses scolded her for her refusal to make an appearance at any of their ceremonies, but she still thanked whatever lingering deity bothered to listen as she hauled herself onto the floor of the cave, the ice that had gathered on her armor and hair melting as soon as she was out from the wind.

The sudden heat hovered at the edge of unbearable. She dragged herself to her feet and stared into the cave, all the darker after being surrounded by the pure white of snow and wind.

So another of your line comes.

The voice echoed until it could have come from anywhere. She resisted the urge to look behind her, knowing that the owner could only lie deeper into the cave.

“I come to seek a boon,” she called, squaring her shoulders as she marched further in. The cave curved, forcing her to leave the light behind and plunge herself into the void of darkness.

The young queen of Embrum, Ashen Stonehaven. First of her name. Last of her line.

The voice now came right from before her, but the owner remained hidden until a pair of flaming red eyes opened in the darkness and a gaping maw opened, bleeding fire that lit up the massive black dragon.

The dragon was ancient beyond human comprehension. The Mother, the ancestor of every dragon who had come after her.

Queen Ashen didn’t know how the Mother knew her name. She rarely spoke the name herself, hating the sound, hating the meaning behind it. Ashen. The color of dead skin, the remains of burnt wood, the defeated dregs of coal and fuel.

“My country is dying,” she said. “I need your aid to save my people. I come to request a Great Egg.”

The tail of the Mother slithered past her, thick enough to bar her exit as the grand dragon lowered its head until Ashen felt her hair curling from the flames that still seeped from the Mother’s mouth.

As I have done before, she said. The voice vibrated from within the Mother’s throat, though her mouth didn’t move to form the words. Long, long ago. Before you began wearing the skin of the fallen.

Ashen gripped her dragonscale cloak, ready to duck behind it to stave off the Mother’s flames.

The scales had belonged to a lesser dragon, nothing close to the cosmic beast that Ashen faced now, but even lesser dragons could raze entire towns. For centuries, Embrum had given offerings to all dragons that threatened, because there was only one thing that the Mother never forgave. For those who hadn’t been blessed with a Great Egg before, it was hard to care, but the Stonehaven line had long been favored by the Mother. The first time she’d granted a Great Egg had been to the First Queen.

A famine had hit, worse by far than what Embrum faced even now. They had no offerings to give, so King Rhazien had taken it upon himself to kill the lesser dragon when it threatened his people. It had been well over two hundred years, but the Mother had not forgiven them.

Perhaps begging for mercy would have convinced the Mother to grant the egg, but Ashen had never begged in her life.

“I have made the plans,” she said. “I will conquer one country to save my own. Scouts and soldiers are poised to march. I only need one more thing: a Great Dragon. No one will counter my army if I head it with one of your first clutch. No one will defy me if I sit on the throne as the First Queen reborn.”

The Mother huffed a laugh. How naive for one so scarred.

She lowered her head, shining the light of her flames on a nest of bones and molten blades.

A single egg sat in it, nestled in feathers that shifted between red and black, the edges glowing and shimmering with fire. Phoenix feathers. They must have sat here in the darkness for thousands of years. The Mother hadn’t left that cave since her first egg hatched.

This is the last one, she said. The last Great Dragon. Why should I give it to you?

Ashen stared at the egg, speechless for a few rare moments. Her heart ached, the feeling unbidden and unwelcome. A dragon slept inside, fully aware of the world around it and unable to leave.

Her life may have been like that. If she hadn’t been the only-begotten child of her parents, if they’d had a son before her, she would have been locked away to await a prestigious marriage. That life had never come close to reality for her, but it was still one of her greatest fears. As soon as she learned the fate that other Stonehaven princesses lived, her dreams were filled with towers that had no bottom and windows that she could only stare out of.

Even the First Queen had been left in a tower when her dragon died in battle, her king gone mad with the loss of his first son.

You pity it now.

The Mother knew her thoughts. Ashen didn’t need to reply, but she nodded anyway.

“It doesn’t belong here,” she said, walking over to the egg and climbing into the gruesome nest. She knelt by it, removing a gauntlet to place a hand on the smooth, pearly surface. Warmth pulsed from within as if in response to her touch.

The Mother let out a long sigh. If Ashen didn’t know better, she would have said it was a sigh of pain.

Although, perhaps she didn’t know better after all because a crack appeared in the last Great Egg as she knelt with it.

###

The young queen returned to  the castle with a baby dragon in her arms.

The journey back wasn’t half as treacherous, as the Mother showed Ashen a tunnel that burrowed down the mountains and let her out in the foothills. The hours in the darkness still felt preferable to the dry, barren landscape. It looked even worse compared to the rich blue of the sky, the sinking sun just starting to color it with the tones of the sunset. It made the dead trees cast long, dark shadows that looked like cracks in the dead grass and hard soil.

The cold gray stone of the castle enveloped her. The first echoing of her boots on the flagstones drew the attention of the servants, who forgot to bow at the sight of her dragon. It watched them, raising its long neck to look at each of their faces in turn. Each scale was a deep, hard red, as rich and glossy as shards of garnet. Its small size didn’t fool anyone. Within weeks, it would be the size of a mountain. The Great Dragons grew at a speed unknown to any other creature. 

Ashen said nothing of their neglect to bow in her presence. She just looked at them, mimicking the dragon’s actions of meeting each of their eyes one by one.

“This stays here for now,” she said. “If rumors spread, they might be prepared before we attack. Don’t even tell your own families.”

They nodded. One maid finally curtseyed, though her legs shook so much she almost fell. Ashen walked past them and marched down to the dungeon. The dragon had to learn how to hunt, and she could think of no better prey than those pesky rats. For now, at least.

There was no place in the castle more miserable than the dungeons. They flooded in the rainy season, and prisoners had a tendency to pass out from the heat in the summer. Now, in the unnamed space between autumn and winter, the chill was comparable to the endless blizzard at the top of the Mother’s mountain. Ashen snatched an unlit torch from the wall and put the dragon on the floor, holding the pitch-covered top to its face.

“Light this,” she commanded. 

The dragon blinked at her, then looked at the torch. It opened its mouth wide enough for Ashen to watch the beginnings of fire spark at the top of its throat, blue and purple flickers surrounded by a flurry of brilliant gold sparks.

She flung the dragonscale cloak over herself a fraction of a second before the dragon released a barrage of flame larger than its own body. The scales protected her just as she knew they would, letting only faint heat from the fire through. The blast only lasted for a moment and she threw the cloak down to glower at the dragon.

“We need to work on that,” she hissed, lighting the torch instead on a bit of burning moss on the wall. The dragon just looked up at her with an expression that she could have sworn was a smirk. Ashen sighed and sat against a less-scorched part of the wall. “There are rats in here. I want you to learn how to hunt.”

No one quite knew how it was that dragons understood human language, but from the day they hatched they could understand any tongue someone spoke to them. Lesser and Great Dragons alike had this strange ability that no human ever possessed. Rather than listen, though, the dragon moved forward and shoved its head under Ashen’s hand. As much as that may have resembled the action of many a cat Ashen had known, she knew it wasn’t just asking for attention.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and let the pictures flood through her.

###

Darkness.

Darkness.

Silence.

Only warmth, and the constant presence of the Mother. The Mother didn’t leave. The Mother was always coiled around the egg. She spoke to the dragon through images, too, though hers were all of bygone times and the few glitters of treasures that her flames revealed deep in the mountain.

The Mother showed the sky. The yet-unhatched dragon yearned for it, and the Mother promised soon. When the time came. She said nothing of when that time might come.

Ashen saw herself through the eyes of the Mother. She looked so small in that massive cavern, next to the first dragon, and even knowing this wasn’t her memory she tried to look away. She didn’t want to see the desperation and hollow hunger in her eyes.

The dragon had gotten the memories through its mother and hadn’t seen or cared about those half-dead eyes. It saw a person, and even if the sounds of Ashen’s voice were muffled beyond recognition within the egg, it knew what she came for. The Mother had told it where the rest of her clutch went.

The Mother hadn’t wanted to grant the last egg to the young queen. She had tried to say no. The baby dragon disagreed. The baby dragon looked at the queen and saw freedom. It saw the skies.

Then everything shifted to darkness. The dungeon. Confusion. Why was it here, when the world was so much bigger? When the sky lay above the layers and layers of stone, why would anyone choose this?

###

Ashen opened her eyes and removed her hand.

“It’s ugly out there, little dragon,” she said. “Everything is brown. The plants are dead, and most everything else is dying. The lakes are shrinking, their waters turning to poison with stagnation… the only good things here are the castle and the river.”

The dragon’s head drooped as she spoke, only to perk up again when she mentioned the river. It shoved its head against her hand again, and even though she didn’t close her eyes, she knew what the dragon wanted.

She hesitated. Not just because it was dangerous, and she didn’t want the secret of the dragon to come out sooner than necessary, but because she was tired. Her bones felt as heavy as lead after her journey up and down the mountain. She wanted to sleep or to at least lie in her bed and try to sleep until she felt a fraction of rest.

She almost said as much before remembering her own worst fears. The tower with no doors and no bottom, only a window. Only a stone cage.

“Fine,” she sighed. “But I’m not going to a river in my armor.”

She stood and reached for the dragon again, only for it to leap into the air and fly to her shoulder, making little noises of joy. Ashen patted out the remaining flames with the palm of her gauntlet and set the torch back in its sconce before heading up to her chambers.

###

The river glistened gold and red with the shades of the sunset. They arrived with little time left before dark, but the dragon leapt into the air with a trill of excitement. It sliced into the water, bursting free a second later with a mouthful of small fish. They were far too little to offer any real sustenance to a human. Ashen knew this because she tried and found they were mostly tiny, needle-sized bones, and what little flesh they had tasted foul. The dragon, however, dropped them on the dead grass and tore into them with glee. Ashen sat on the ground, pulling the end of her braid into her lap so it wouldn’t get dirty. She gazed into the river and its shimmering light. It was Embrum’s main source of water. There were a few other rivers, but they were drying out. This one was fed by the snowmelt from the constant blizzard on top of the Mother’s mountain, and every major settlement lay somewhere near its banks.

She pulled out her sword and a whetstone, sharpening to pass the time as the dragon finished its meal and started flying, turning loops and rolls in the air around her.

Joy. That was what it flew with. The emotion seemed foreign to her, even seen in another creature. She hadn’t smiled since she was a child when a blade was put in her hand for the first time and she learned the harsh truths of her existence.

As the first female heir, she had to prove herself. She had to fight twice as hard, be twice as brutal, as anyone around her. She learned to cauterize her own wounds without flinching to laud her power over the soldiers. She learned how to fight dirty, shove her emotions back and hide any crack and chink in the armor she’d built around herself. She knew how to stare down men twice her age with twice her experience.

The first time she’d spilled blood was the last time she smiled. He’d been around her age, a soldier in training. He hadn’t died and was even one of the footsoldiers serving under her today, but she remembered staring at the blood on her sword and knowing that was her future.

At first, she’d had no choice, but after a while, she started choosing violence. It was easier to start with it rather than to wait to be pushed to that point. It resulted in fewer bruises from the boys who tried to prove she didn’t belong there and didn’t care that she was the heir to the throne.

They were lucky she was too tired to get her pound of flesh from them.

“Queen Stonehaven.”

The voice came from behind her, and she would have already been on her feet, sword brandished, if the voice wasn’t more familiar than her own father’s had been.

“Speak, General Sharpe,” she said without turning to him.

“The guards reported that you returned. I didn’t expect to find you here, though.”

Ashen gestured at the dragon, who was diving in and out of the water. “I took it to the dungeon first. It didn’t want to be there. I figured fish were as good a prey to practice on as rats.”

General Sharpe came to stand beside her, watching the dragon. “If I may be honest…”

“You never hesitated before.”

Sharpe chuckled without joy. “That was before you were crowned queen. If I may take that as permission, though, I have to say I didn’t expect you to come back with a Great Dragon.”

“The last Great Dragon.”

A beat of silence followed. Ashen could almost feel the realization sink into Sharpe’s mind.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Ashen nodded. “I saw the nest. There was only one egg left, and the Mother had no reason to lie to me. Plus, she was… sad when this one emerged from its egg for me.”

“It almost feels like a sign. This dragon was meant to be yours, and it was meant to lead us to victory.”

“Maybe.”

It didn’t feel like that to Ashen. It was more like a condemnation, to look at the creature, know it was the last of its kind that would ever be born, and still risk taking it into battle. Great Dragons were fearsome beasts, with scales harder than steel and the strength to level mountains, but they were still mortal. A well-placed spear or sword could still take them down. It was how all Great Dragons had fallen so far, and, Ashen was sure, why the Mother had hesitated to let her last child go.

She shoved the thought out of her head. Her people needed this. The Stonehavens had never sat back and watched Embrum suffer. When their people starved, the Stonehavens starved alongside them. When they marched into war, a Stonehaven headed the army. As soon as they had an heir, that child became more important than the king himself.

Ashen had no heir. She wasn’t yet betrothed and hadn’t taken time to think of it yet. From the moment the crown had been placed on her head and she’d pledged service to Embrum, she’d had only one goal. It ate her from the inside out, stealing her sleep and leaving her skin burning, constantly burning, with fear that she might not succeed.

Save Embrum. Save her people from the famine that was coming with the harshest seasons in recorded history. The poor harvest and preserves from years long past might get them through the winter, but not until the next harvest season. The coffers, if broken open, might give them a few more weeks if they bought out the food supplies of every merchant they could find.

That’s why she had to take the risk. It was a choice, technically. Everything was a choice, but it was between letting a whole country starve and risking the life of the last Great Dragon…

Neither were great if she was being honest. Both made her ill, though she hid it behind her stony expression. As callous as either choice was, she hoped she was at least choosing the least callous one.

“You can go back inside, General Sharpe,” she said.

“If it’s all the same, I will stay. It’s getting dark. Even if you weren’t my queen, I knew you when you were a child, and I want to keep you safe while I still can.”

He’d been the one to put the first sword in her hand. Her father told her to be tough, but Sharpe actually showed her how to do it.

Stone heart or stone face. Either feel nothing or show nothing. She chose the latter because no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t purge herself of emotion. Her father hadn’t followed either path, which perhaps was why Sharpe worked so hard to make sure that Ashen was stronger than the late king had been.

The dragon landed in her lap, dripping water all over her pants. Ashen cursed and picked it up, frowning as she looked into its eyes.

“I suppose I should name you,” she said. “I can’t keep calling you the dragon and it.”

It tilted its head at her. She realized she didn’t know if it was male or female, but it didn’t matter. Names in Embrum weren’t confined to genders.

She stroked its little head as she thought. Nothing she thought of seemed bold or grand enough to fit the last dragon. She’d met or read about at least one human with every name she could think of, and a human name felt too common. She didn’t want to name it after any previous Great Dragon, either.

“Zytena,” she muttered. It wasn’t a name so much as a word from the oldest, now-extinct language Embrum had never known. Few words were still remembered, and they were recorded in stone as well as paper, so they’d always be safe. Ashen had memorized them. Zytena came to mind unbidden, and was both too meaningful to pass up, but too meaningful to give lightly.

Zytena had no direct translation in the New Embri language. It was the last desperate measure that continued after hope died. It encompassed perseverance, the last light in the dark, the hand that grasps at straws and still refuses to give up.

She tried to take it back, but the dragon bumped its head against her as Ashen blinked. The short connection was enough for the dragon to convey that it was pleased. That was the name it wanted.

“Zytena it is, then.” Ashen stood. “But we’re going back now. I’m not sitting here after you dripped water all over me.”

“A fitting name,” General Sharpe said.

“Don’t even start, Sharpe. Not yet.”

###

Zytena grew and eventually managed to convey to Ashen that she was female. In one week she went from the size of a cat to the size of a deerhound. In two, she was as big as a draft horse. Three, she could no longer fit in the castle.

At four, Ashen was fitted for special armor for riding. They didn’t even start measuring Zytena yet, but they could make designs. Armor that would strap onto her saddle so Ashen would never fall off no matter how turbulent the flight got. Two small circles of glass to be strapped over her eyes to protect them from the buffeting wind and any storms they might fly into. The armor would be lined with fur on the inside to protect from the cold.

Ashen tested it when it was finished. It hugged her to the point of constriction, but there wouldn’t be much movement on dragonback. All she’d have to do was direct Zytena, throw the occasion spear, or fire the occasional arrow.

By then, two months after the day Ashen went to get the egg, Zytena was too big to hide. Ashen knew that news of the dragon had spread, and the whole castle braced itself for what might come. With any luck, Anglor would never guess that they would be the target. They’d never clashed with Embrum before, but there were others that had known the bite of Embrum’s steel and might try a preemptive strike.

Ashen slept even worse than before. She tugged at the neck of her armor. It was clear of her skin by at least an inch, but she could still swear it was pressing on her windpipe as she looked in the mirror, examining everything but her eyes.

She tore her gaze away from the mirror and walked to the balcony, leaning over the railing to look down at Zytena, who was curled up below.

“Zytena,” she called. The dragon raised her head. Her neck was long enough that the top of her head reached the balcony all the way up at the fourth floor of the castle. “It’s time for you to be fitted for armor. Are you going to let the armors measure you peacefully, or will I have to sit and pet you the whole time?”

Zytena was a capricious creature, growling when anyone but Ashen came too close by themselves. That alone was enough to send most scuttling away in fear, much to Ashen’s annoyance. Not because a dragon growling wasn’t a terrifying thing, but because Zytena had no ill will towards any of the people. She just thought it was funny how they ran. Zytena offered her head, letting Ashen place her hand in the massive space between her eyes. The feeling of reluctant compliance flowed between them.

“Good. Remember, as soon as you have your saddle, we can try flying together.”

The joy that replaced the reluctance was so overwhelming that it made Ashen dizzy. Zytena had been waiting for this. Every time they’d made contact since she was big enough to ride, she’d asked when Ashen would join her. She loved to fly, and she wanted to share that euphoria with the one who finally took her out of the cave.

Ashen removed her hand before that happiness could overtake her, leaning heavily on the railing as she watched the armorers leave the castle with the ropes they’d use to measure Zytena. The strips of fabric with their regular markings that they’d used to fit Ashen were far too short, so they needed to improvise. She watched just long enough to make sure Zytena wouldn’t cause any trouble after all, then turned from the balcony and headed back inside to strip off her armor and sit at her desk to work on strategies.

There could be no weaknesses.

###

Zytena’s saddle was ready a week later.

Ashen had watched the armorers work tirelessly. They’d made her armor ever since she was first fitted for a leather suit, but they now worked with a different fervor. Where she’d once only seen the grim determination of people doing a job, she watched them work the leather and steel with an impassioned vigor. Hope that she tried not to see glowed in their eyes like embers.

She couldn’t just not see it, though. It began to light in the faces of everyone around her: The shared desperate belief that perhaps Embrum had hope after all. Maids hummed as they scrubbed floors. Guards whistled as they patrolled. People who had once watched her with wary compliance due solely to the face she shared with the First Queen began to bow and curtsey with smiles.

Perhaps it should have made her smile in return. Instead, it added to the weight of the crown on her head and all she had to respond with were solemn nods.

She put her flight armor on alone, her skin itching with nerves so potent she almost checked for bugs crawling over her. One deep, shuddering breath after another, she chased them away. There was no time for her worries.

She looped her braid around and around, pinning it into place at the back of her head with every hairpin and leather band she had in her vanity. She envisioned them trapping her emotion in place as well, holding them where they couldn’t get in the way. It pulled on her hair to the point of pain, but she turned it into a focal point as she strapped on her weapons and headed out of the castle to where Zytena waited, saddled up.

She kept her eyes ahead so she wouldn’t have to look directly at any of those hope-filled eyes. Escaping the stone halls was a relief, removing a vice from her chest that she hadn’t even known was there. The dragon lowered her head as Ashen approached. Ashen had taken to touching Zytena’s forehead with her own rather than her palm if only to give her head a short rest.

Infectious joy again flowed through from Zytena. Ashen didn’t have to pull away to avoid being tugged in this time. She was too tired, too anxious, to feel it like Zytena did.

She raised her head from Zytena’s. “Time to fly,” she said. The dragon knelt in response, letting Ashen climb up into the saddle and strap her legs down, tightening each leather belt that had been fitted flawlessly until she couldn’t budge them any further than the straps could bend. Zytena waited, shifting restlessly as Ashen checked and double-checked that everything was secure.

“This will go faster if you hold still,” Ashen said. Zytena huffed in response, smoke rising from her nostrils. Ashen almost rolled her eyes but caught herself. Even if she was very much an informal queen, there were limits to what she could do while maintaining her stoicism. “All right,” she whispered, lowering her flight goggles. “I’m ready.”

Zytena needed no other signal to start running, extending her wings as she raced down the open plain. Each loping bound took her a little higher off the ground, rattling Ashen until she had to clench her teeth to avoid biting off her tongue. She narrowed her eyes in determination, gripping the saddle for all she was worth as Zytena gave her wings one massive flap, buffeting the dead grass with the wind.

Two massive leaps and two wingbeats later, and Zytena’s feet didn’t touch the ground again. She only drew higher and further from it, legs tucked under her as Ashen watched the dead plains fall away. Shivers ran through her, but she wasn’t cold, and she definitely wasn’t scared. She raised her head, looking at the sky that didn’t change no matter how far up Zytena flew, then back to the ground that shrank until her castle was nothing but a sprawling gray flaw, the river just a vein of silver in the brown landscape.

The wind whipped her braid free of all of its bindings. It streamed behind her like a rope of gold, pins and leather cords flying away into the air. Ashen barely noticed, her breath catching in her throat and her mind scrambling for control over the swirling emotions that build within her at the sheer feeling of it all. Her heart ached. Her head was light. Her skin no longer crawled with anxiety.

Laughter bubbled up, unbidden and without warning. She raised from her crouch, opening her arms to the wind and feeling it beat her skin until she was sure her cheeks were red.

This was the opposite of her fear of the tower. This was freedom. This was the endless possibility of choices.

This was the joy that Zytena had wanted to share. Ashen tore off a gauntlet to place her bare hand on Zytena’s neck. The dragon’s giddy euphoria joined hers, weaving and mixing until Ashen couldn’t tell where her mind ended and Zytena’s began. Zytena roared her delight, dropping into a deep swoop that had Ashen mirroring her with a shout of wonder. There were no words to describe it. How her body loosened, how her heart lifted and her mind rested for the first time in years.

She could have stayed up there forever. Perhaps she might have if she had no one and nothing else to take care of.

An arrow whistled up, bouncing off of one of Zytena’s spindly wing bones and missing her delicate membranes by a hair’s breadth. Shock washed elation away like a bucket of cold water as Zytena reeled, Ashen’s body jerking with the sudden erratic movement. She shoved her hand back into the gauntlet and squinted through the goggles.

A warband waited below. They were small, likely just a group of scouts and a few warriors for safety, but they couldn’t pass up the chance to fix this dragon problem before it started.

Their last mistake would be not aiming better. Ashen whipped her own bow from her back and yanked an arrow from the special quiver she’d commissioned just for flight.

“Zytena,” she growled. “Dive and fire.”

There was a second of hesitation on Zytena’s part. Ashen could feel it even without their mental connection.

“Do this or we might die!” she shouted. “They’re going to kill us!”

Zytena circled, a quiet keening emanating from her throat. It wasn’t until another arrow flew, this time tearing right through her wing that she roared with pain and dove. The warband scattered like dropped marbles. Ashen narrowed her eyes on a single warrior, her face twisted into a snarl as she nocked an arrow and pulled her bow into half-draw, waiting.

A spear flew right into her hands, knocking her bow into the air and forcing a shout of pain from her lips. Her fingers were spared by the gauntlets, but pain throbbed from the impact.

Zytena bellowed with rage and swooped until her belly almost touched the ground, releasing a barrage of flame on the members of the warband still in range. She landed with a crash that had Ashen gripping the saddle despite her aching fingers. She flung off the straps and rolled out of the saddle, unsheathing her sword as she jumped to her feet, but there was no point. What remained of the warband was gone, having fled the dragonfire.

She still stood there for a few moments, sword leveled, legs bent in a fighting crouch before a high, keening wail from Zytena made her throw down her sword and run to check on her wing.

It had missed the veins, but just barely, leaving torn skin that released a few beads of blood instead. Ashen let out a sigh of relief for a moment before Zytena whined again. As much as Ashen knew the wound must have hurt, something wasn’t right. She looked up from the wing with a frown.

Zytena’s neck was bent over a stretch of still-smoldering earth, shaking her massive head and still making high-pitched sounds that Ashen could only assume was the dragon’s form of sobbing. She slowly walked around Zytena’s wing to find what the dragon was leaning over.

It was a body, burned beyond recognition. From the looks, the victim of her flames had died too quickly to feel any great pain.

Ashen paused, kneeling on the cinders that had once been grass. She’d hoped to at least get an idea of where this warband had come from, but there was nothing left to identify that. Just a burnt husk in scorched armor.

She looked up at Zytena. “Why are you crying?”

The dragon lowered her head again. Ashen stood to lower her forehead to her scales.

Agony ripped through her, emotional pain so great that a sob broke out even though it wasn’t hers.

Zytena was mourning the people she killed. Ashen jerked her head back, furiously wiping her tears away.

“They were going to kill us!” she snapped at the dragon. “You can’t go to war if you’re going to do this over every damned footsoldier that dies!”

Zytena only looked at her, golden eyes dull, and bent over the body again.

“What is wrong with you? Your predecessors razed whole cities! They helped protect Embrum for centuries, and you need to do it, too!” Ashen fisted her hands in her hair, shaking her head violently. She couldn’t dislodge the pain that Zytena had shared with her. “My people are starving! They’re dying! I need to save them, and I don’t care how many enemy soldiers die in the process!”

She sank to the ground. “Why are you mourning someone who tried to kill us?”

Zytena moved, her massive form coming to curl around Ashen until her scales brushed the queen’s wet cheek.

It was a human life, and Zytena loved humans. She could kill, perhaps, and she would. She was enraged when one of them hurt her rider. She let that rage overwhelm her. Even though the result was both of them alive with minimal injury, she mourned the deaths, as she would mourn every soldier she killed in the war.

Ashen only turned her head, breaking the connection and ignoring Zytena’s sigh. The young queen stood and climbed out of the ring the dragon made around her.

“We should go back,” she said. “We’re walking. I don’t want you flying until that wing is stitched.”

She picked up her sword and wiped it clean on a leather piece of her armor before sheathing it. She left her bow to wherever it fell and started her trek back across the dead planes.

They weren’t so pretty up close.

###

Ashen lay awake, curled on her side and watching the door.

She never slept or sat with her back to a window or door. It was the first lesson taught to any Stonehaven. Never leave your back open, but she wasn’t watching it because she thought someone would come through it. It was because someone had just left.

She’d gotten the healer to take care of Zytena’s wing. For once, Zytena put up no fuss when the stranger approached, and then Ashen returned to her room.

And she cried.

She collapsed on her bed and sobbed, gripping her head and trying to force the tears back as they spilled over her cheeks in a torrent of every shred of sorrow she’d felt and beaten back for the past ten years.

Zytena’s anguish still hadn’t left her, and it had broken the damn that Ashen had built around her own suffering.

She missed her father. Weak as he was, he’d still loved her. She missed her mother, as hazy as her memories of the woman were. She hated the fact that she’d lost her childhood to violence. She hated that every princess before her had been confined, locked away, while she got to roam free just because she was an only child.

She sobbed because she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t risk the country by going to war without Zytena, but all the same, she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she took Zytena to battle and the dragon lost that joyful spark.

The thought of the hope she’d brought fading came to mind. Despite the stress, despite the weight it put on her shoulders, that hurt the most. It felt like she’d rip her throat out from the crying, each ragged breath only bringing on a new terrible thing that might come down either path. It continued until a maid came in with an armful of freshly washed linens. She was older, at least sixty, and had paused when she found the young queen crying.

Then she’d set the linens aside and brought Ashen a glass of wine from the cabinet she’d inherited from her parents.

“I have long served the Stonehavens,” she had said. “But never have I seen one of you cry. My heart would break to see my own children in so much pain, especially when they were so young.”

Ashen had only swallowed her tears and looked away, drying her eyes and saying nothing.

“I heard what happened. Someone overheard when you were telling the healer, and… well, word spread. For what it’s worth, I believed in you even before the dragon.”

With that, the maid had left, and Ashen just lay on the bed, watching the door after it closed. The wine lay untouched. She’d never liked it. The bottles were only there because she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them.

She swung her legs out of bed and walked to the balcony, shouldering the doors open to look down, but Zytena wasn’t there.

Ashen never felt more alone than she did at that moment.

###

Two more weeks passed. Ashen didn’t fly on Zytena again, but the dragon spent more time in the air than ever before. She still mourned. It could be seen in the way the dragon sighed, how she stared at her reflection in the river, and how she watched Ashen duel with dull eyes.

The soldiers were sent out to where they’d surround Anglor in their hiding places. They wore the disguises of dockworkers, merchants, and vagabonds, weapons under sacks of hard, grainy root vegetables that were technically edible in small doses. The war ticked closer with every second, and try as she might, Ashen couldn’t regret it.

At least, not until she looked at Zytena.

It was the night before she would have set out on dragon back that Ashen walked to where Zytena sat by the river.

She said nothing, just held out her bare hand, and Zytena lowered her head. Ashen pressed her forehead between her eyes again, resting her hands on the dragon’s warm scales.

Zytena didn’t want to go, but she would. Sad resignation ran through her like a venom that dulled her scales and gripped her heart.

She feared the battle. She was scared of what she’d be if she came out on the other side with no more care for the humans she loved so dearly now. She’d do it for Ashen, in return for being freed from the egg, though. She loved Ashen the most.

Ashen shook her head without breaking contact. Even as the dragon gave Ashen credit for her freedom, it wasn’t true. She saw that now. Perhaps she was the reason Zytena finally hatched her egg, but Ashen had become the chain that held her down. She was now the tower that bound her in place, trapped in a life she didn’t want.

“I can’t make you do this,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “I will not hold you here. I release you from your duty, Zytena, final daughter of the Mother. Fly. Fly far from here.”

Concern ran through the bond. What would happen to Embrum?

“We’ve survived worse. We’ll muddle through, one way or another.” Ashen raised her head and stepped back. “I won’t force you to leave, either. The choice is yours, but… choose freedom, and remember me as you fly.”

Zytena watched Ashen for several long moments before backing away.

“I’ll miss you.” The words came out with no input from Ashen. Tears spilled again, but she was used to them by now. They had become harder and harder to hold back. She scrubbed her eyes with her sleeve. “I hope this is the right choice. I hope you live as long as your mother… maybe even longer. I hope you’ll visit me. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Even if she wasn’t going to battle, Zytena had shown Ashen more than she’d asked for.

Zytena bowed her head, let out a quiet, sad whine, and bounded off. Her winds cooled the tears on Ashen’s cheeks as she flew away.

“Wait!” Sharpe shouted, running over. “Where is she going? She should be resting for tomorrow!”

“She’s leaving,” Ashen said. “And I hope she doesn’t come back, for her own sake. I released her from her duty.”

Sharpe stood there, face twisted in despair. “Why?”

Ashen looked down at her hands. They were clean, but she remembered every speck and spot of someone else’s blood that had ever marred them.

“I chose this,” she said. “I chose war. I’ve chosen violence almost every day of my life. Perhaps that makes me a good queen for Embrum. Maybe that means I can lead us to victory. But Zytena had no choice. She hatched for me, not knowing what I would lead her to. I couldn’t force her to fight.”

Silence lingered after her last word faded into the air. She looked up at the sky, realizing that she hadn’t seen Zytena disappear into the gloom. Her heart broke, wondering if she’d ever see the dragon again. She’d deserved to be watched until she turned into a speck in the sky.

“What… what do we do now?” Sharpe asked. He’d never sounded so lost for as long as Ashen had lived.

She closed her eyes and turned to him, squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw. She drew in breath until her lungs hurt and let it out before opening her eyes and meeting his.

“What we’ve been planning to do all along,” she said. “We win.”

When she first met his eyes, they’d mirrored everyone's from all those months ago, before the dragon. Dead, hopeless, sad.

But as she spoke, forcing confidence and authority into every word, that glow of hope returned.

Sharpe slapped a fist over his chest and bowed.

“Tomorrow we ride.”