Dragon of Frost and Flame: Chapter Eleven

The wyvern’s words sliced into Snow like Stepmother’s hidden stilettos had thrice early on, carving their memories and their threats into her mind and body alike. Her world tilted on its axis. 

Her true name, spoken aloud for the first time in five years. Her true identity, laid bare beneath the beautiful cerulean sky on this final day of winter.

And Snow—Princess Kyara, the last of Pyrembri’s royal Pyriebral line—stumbled backward, away from the wyvern and away from the forbidden truth the creature dared speak aloud.

She never should have shown off her powers. She was supposed to stay hidden in the Guard as the forgotten heir to the Pyrembri throne. That was what Stepmother wanted.

And what Stepmother wanted, Stepmother got. The ruthless Queen Regent of Pyrembri accepted no less.

This wyvern knew too much. And when he woke up, Prince Daen of enemy kingdom Wyndaerya would know too much.

They both needed to die.

With a shaky breath, Snow pieced herself back together, not for the first time. Then she pulled herself up to her full—average, unremarkable—height, steeled her spine, and lifted her chin, all royal now. With her permission, the sun-hot Pyriebral flames that were her birthright swelled again, from head to toe. Bluish white, they flowed over her in a hazy dance, happy to be nearly free.

Snow narrowed her dark blue eyes, eyes that were lighter than any of Pyrembri save those with the amber irises marking their owners as the best of potential dragon riders. Her chin stabbed through the air toward the wyvern surrounded by melted snow and trampled purple-brown grass and whose cream-colored rainbow of a body screened Prince Daen from Snow and her flames. “Not lost. Forgotten.”

“Not by us. And I doubt by your country.” The wyvern’s eerie, deep violet gaze with those ebony vertical slashes for pupils gleamed. 

From between Snow’s chapped lips, a bitter laugh erupted. “That shows how little you know of Pyrembri.” 

But that hope from earlier tickled her veins.

She smothered it. There was no hope in this world.

The sweet but sharp scent of ozone after a storm’s worth of lightning had cleared the world of winter and prepared it for spring’s new life swirled around her.

Behind her, Spark whined. The dog begged Snow to go play with her new wyvern friend.

Above her, Stormfyre whined in that dragon way that was more a high-pitched grunt than a true whine. She begged Snow to allow her to destroy their enemies regardless of the possible effect on the dragon.

What did it matter if the wyvern knew who she was? No matter who—or what—she was in the past, Snow was nothing now. Only another body in the Dragon Guard of the Crown to be used and discarded and one that was thoroughly mediocre at that.

No one knew she’d fought Prince Daen’s magic and won. The Guard thought they’d outrun that magical blizzard, that they’d outrun Prince Daen and his royal wind, snow, and ice. They did not know she’d spent almost every last thread of her own royal magic to counteract his. If not for Stormfyre’s support, she might have died to save the Guard from him.

No one would ever know.

That was as it should be. As Stepmother told her five long years ago—and anytime they saw each other in secret since—Snow was unfit to rule Pyrembri.

Snow would prove Stepmother wrong now, no matter the consequences.

No matter how this would change nothing about her or her status as the forgotten princess of Pyrembri.

No matter how this would change everything about how she thought about herself and what she valued most.

It’s what I must do. Snow summoned all that royal Pyriebral fire. Around her and over her bespelled winter garb, an inferno raged, and her bluish-white flames sang, an intoxicating melody of cracks, pops, and sizzles. Deadly and beyond hot, they whipped through the air out to a dagger’s length—no, out to a sword’s length away from her body. Again, her vision turned bright yellow on the edges, and every inch of her skin burned. Excited shivers cascaded up and down her limbs. The cleansing scent of fire wound around her and roasted her mouth and nose. Every inhale singed her throat. 

She drew her arms back as if she drew back the string of a bow with each hand. Tension built, in her biceps, in her shoulders, across her upper back. Her body shook with it. 

Part of Snow hoped Stepmother watched in her magic mirror, hoped Stepmother witnessed Snow—Princess Kyara—slay their enemies.

The other part dreaded the punishments Stepmother would rain down if she saw Snow now.

Snow aimed for Nightsong, the snow-white wyvern gashed and slashed and burned and broken but nevertheless bracing herself to take the brunt of Snow’s attack to protect her rider, the powerful, dangerous Prince Daen of Wyndaerya. 

Stormfyre would do the same for an unconscious Snow.

But neither Nightsong nor Daen could survive her Pyriebral magic, not without Prince Daen’s own ice magic to defend them.

In that crisp orbit above, Stormfyre’s wings cleaved the air. The dragon would defend the dogs behind Snow, should it become needed.

It wouldn’t.

This is it. Snow or Princess Kyara or whoever she was now leaned back on one boot. She prepared to lunge forward and launch all her fire at her enemies, to incinerate them both as she should have done the moment their frostnado failed. Between them, dormant grass swished in a breeze promising spring’s warmth. In the distance, those snow-dipped evergreens of Shadowmist Woods reached for the blaze of the Beloved Breath lashing the sky deepening to azure above them. Behind her, the snow outlining the mountains and the towers and turrets of the silvery castle in which Stepmother currently resided—despite it being nowhere near summer—would glitter golden in the last of the afternoon’s light, a beauty at odds with the darkness of this deed that she must do.

Shameful tears pricked her eyes.

Her illicit flames burned them away.

An ink black blur darted forward, past Snow. 

Shade.