Dragon of Frost and Flame: Chapter Twelve

Unlike with Spark before, there was no time to shut down her flames, no time to attempt to intercept the dog.

In front of the wounded snowy white wyvern that had perhaps attacked the dog three years ago, Shade skidded to a halt. A mix of dead grass, mud, and a nugget or two of nigh melted snow puffed up around her paws. Much of it pelted the wyvern behind the dog.

Apology writ over her, Shade faced Snow.

The dog—Snow’s scared, timid, beloved dog—stood between Snow and the enemies that she must slaughter.

A brindle-and-white blur that was Spark joined the other dog.

Her Pyriebral flames boiled from head to toe, but her back knee buckled and the tension drained out of her like water out of a tipped pail. Snow stepped backward, and her hands fell to her sides. She no longer prepared to thrust her magic at her enemies, though her royal fire remained as strong as ever. She waved her arms up and down at her rebellious dogs. “Back. Come back!”

As usual, stubborn Spark didn’t listen.

But maybe if she persuaded loyal Shade to return, Spark would follow. After all, Spark hadn’t gone to the wyvern until Shade had.

“Shade, to me!” Snow commanded.

For the first time, Shade didn’t listen. She stared at Snow with a sad, liquid brown gaze.

Defeat embraced Snow, icy, cold, and lonely.

And disappointing.

She’d never hurt her dogs. She was too soft for that.

Her Pyriebral flames whirled faster. Their heat blanketed, seared, suffocated. They melted the snow that had begun to fall and the dirt beneath her boots. All around her, dormant grass blazed. Flames crawled up the blue-black ends of her wild mane, and the stink of that burnt hair tainted the clean, spicy scent of fire. The roars of her inferno drowned out any other sound. Already, she tasted nothing but death and ash.

With violence and destruction, her royal magic would prove her wrong. She was not too soft to kill or to murder. Yes, with the help of that banned magic, she could be the ruthless monarch her ruthless kingdom required. 

Beyond the shroud of her forbidden, bright, bluish-white burning fire, the world nearly disappeared.

Except for the hulk of the blood-and-burn-streaked, cream-colored, broken wyvern behind the defense of her dogs, the larger black as midnight and the smaller brindle and white. They were the one clear spot in the white-hot haze of a fire-filled world tinged sunlight yellow on the edges.

Her royal magic promised to leap over the dogs, to skip her pets to feast only upon the flesh of Snow’s enemies.

Snow squeezed her eyes shut.

She inhaled that scorching air.

She held that fiery breath.

She used that fiery breath to cool down. To smother. To shut down those forbidden flames. 

With a growl, the magical fire obscuring her world vanished, though it still pushed against her skin and against her control.

It still insisted it could kill the wyvern and her rider and no one else.

No matter its promises, releasing her Pyriebral fire that close to her dogs was too large a risk.

Snow would not risk her dogs.

And perhaps a tiny part of her that she refused to acknowledge sighed in relief, at this final decision to allow Nightsong and Daen to live, regardless of her birthright or her magic, regardless of what Stepmother or Pyrembri thought, regardless of the danger that was Nightsong and Prince Daen.

Regardless of what she was supposed to do or how she would regret this decision for the rest of her life.

And perhaps that tiny part dared hope, dared wish for a better life, for a better world.

It was foolish.

But Snow couldn’t stamp it out. No, she couldn’t kill that stubborn, rebellious part any more than she could kill Nightsong or Daen.

And that stubborn, rebellious part would not be denied.

So she had to let the wyvern and Prince Daen go. Her dogs gave her no choice and that tiny, awful part gave her no choice. Tears scalded her eyes.

This time, her flames did not burn them away. 

At least those hot tears did not spill over her lids. She had that much.

But it didn’t matter, not really. Stepmother would never relinquish the Pyrembri throne. In two weeks, Snow’s twentieth birthday would come and go, and she would not ascend to the throne that was her inheritance.

And Pyrembri would not rebel. With Snow’s birthday passing without remark, Stepmother’s coup would be complete. Stepmother would no longer be the Queen Regent of Pyrembri. No, Stepmother would simply be Queen.

And no one would notice.

No, the wyvern was wrong. Princess Kyara of the royal Pyriebral line was not lost, not in the eyes of her kingdom. She was forgotten, perhaps even discarded.

Yes, Princess Kyara might as well be dead.

The worst part was that Snow couldn’t blame her stepmother. The Queen Regent had three trueborn children to protect. Snow was nothing to her, nothing but her dead husband’s weak child.

But it would have been nice to think she was worthy of her throne.

I am not.

Snow straightened her spine and jutted out her jaw. She could pretend she didn’t care. “Fine. You may live. But you may not tell him who I am. And you must remember my mercy on this day.” Snow shoved her Pyriebral fire deep within its icy prison in her core. Once again, she became the weak, misfit girl in the Guard. Around her, the falling flakes no longer sizzled. When they touched her, they melted without a sound. Snow inhaled the crisp, clean, cool air of winter’s final evening, so cool it pricked her nostrils now.

The melody of the plain erupted. With the sun hovering over the peaks of the golden-hued castle and beginning to paint that western sky pink and orange behind her, birds sang and rodents chirruped. A few newly hatched insects chirped. 

All recognized the danger had passed.

All recognized Snow was no danger to them.

That shameful part smiled.

In Snow’s mind, Nightsong croaked, “Agreed.”

Standing on the muddy trampled grass near the clawed tip of Nightsong’s intact wing, Spark turned her head toward the wyvern. With that serpentine neck, Nightsong lowered hers to the dog. Spark began licking the pearly scales behind the slit of the wyvern’s ear. Nightsong leaned into it, that purple gaze half-closed in pleasure. 

Well then. They are great friends already.

Not that it was surprising. Unlike Snow, Spark found friends wherever she went.

In front of the wyvern and Spark and with the evergreens of Shadowmist behind them reaching for the Breath brighter than an apple’s peel against the darkening sky, Shade whined. She shifted her weight between her paws, an inch from pacing.

“Yes, Shade, I know. We’ll have to get them somewhere safe before the next patrol hits. Somewhere they can heal.” Hold on, didn’t Snow have her own grave wound to heal from that ice spear? And didn’t Stormfyre too? How had she forgotten? Snow’s hand brushed over her left thigh.

Her fingers scraped over the dried blood edging the hole in her fur-lined pants.

No pain and no puncture nor cut met her. Only smooth flesh slipped past her fingertips with not even the memory of a scar.

That’s new. If her secret royal magic healed her this quickly, it would be a problem in the Guard. How would she hide it? 

And why this sudden new power, this sudden new complication?

Above her, Stormfyre circled, ready to fight and without a hint of an injury despite that same ice spear punching through the dragon’s rib cage earlier.

At least Snow and Stormfyre almost always ended up in the back of the Guard where they were unlikely to get hurt.

Where no one paid attention.

Regardless, I cannot worry about that now. Now she had to conceal, aid, abet her sworn enemies.

The cabin. It was the only answer. She would have to give them her refuge. The book in its special pocket in her cloak beat against her hip. She’d already lost this entire afternoon, with no reading and no playing with friendly monsters. Now she would drag these maybe-real monsters into her safe haven in Shadowmist, betraying her country and losing the sanctuary she treasured in one fell swoop.

Good thing she was nobody.

With a sigh, Snow raised her right hand into the air. She held it there until Stormfyre looked. Then she slashed it toward the ground, the Guard’s signal for the dragon to ground herself.

Like they sensed the suppression of her fire, those falling flakes tumbled down faster, thicker. They nearly blurred her dogs protecting the wyvern who in turn protected her prince of a rider. Above, a dense gray cloud lowered like a blanket to warm a cold child, and the Breath dulled to a hazy orangish-red streak. Ragged, jagged strips of snow began to outline the deep green of even those uppermost boughs of Shadowmist Woods. The world hushed as the animals of the prairie hunkered down. The snow deadened the sound of anything but gusts of wind and those dared not interrupt the heavy silence pressing upon her ears.

On this last night of winter, a blizzard descended.

We need to move before it worsens.

The tiny snowflakes melted on and stung her bare hands, laced the raven black waves of her hair, and dotted her russet cloak, breeches, and boots. Were it not for the emblem of the Guard over her heart, right thigh, and calves, for that eternal dragon-and-rider team spouting flames at an unseen enemy, no one would guess at the fire streaming through her veins, both forbidden and not.

Until now. Her voice both regal and fierce, she stabbed her chin toward Nightsong and Prince Daen invisible behind the wyvern. “You say you can survive Shadowmist Woods? Excellent. I know somewhere you can hide there. Stormfyre should be able to carry you both, though I imagine it will be neither easy nor pleasant.”

Indeed, the larger Stormfyre could carry the wounded, half-broken wyvern and her rider too.

And Stormfyre’s fire and Nightsong’s ice would likely bicker the whole time, not to mention the dragon and the wyvern themselves. Dragons and wyverns never got along, similar to their respective kingdoms.

And here Snow was, forcing it.

Wonderful.

“Mmmmph,” Prince Daen groaned from behind the wyvern.

In a fluid movement that shouldn’t have been possible with him having been unconscious for so long, he pushed himself up into a seated position. A pained grimace erased the happy laugh lines of a face used to charming others. His eyes opened halfway, their irises a stunning reddish brown like the bark of the giant redwoods in a dazzling ray of sunshine on Pyrembri’s western coast.

In Snow’s stomach, a butterfly’s wing twitched.

Those stunning eyes shot open all the way.

In another fluid movement that shouldn’t have been possible—and this one beyond swift—Prince Daen surged to his feet, vaulted over Nightsong, somersaulted once, and grabbed Spark. One muscular arm wound around the poor dog’s neck, the other around Spark’s kicking, struggling haunches.

From somewhere in his sleeve, a dagger glided into the palm over Spark’s neck.

Prince Daen slid that deadly blade through the dog’s fluffy ivory fur, to her throat. Full of malice, its wicked edge shone in the gilded light of the setting sun.