Tevian swallowed and fear flickered in his eyes. He took a step back and turned sharply on his heel. “Come with me.”
He pushed the wide double doors open and we followed as he stormed into a large room. The timbers that held up the wall were painted in the colors of the dragon clans—black, red, blue, silver, and gold—and the plaster between them was a stark white in contrast.
“So much for being friendly so that the dragons fight on our side,” Winston muttered as he followed me inside.
“Golden Rose of Nerissette,” a loud voice boomed from the far end of the room. “Enter and find you here the wisdom of the dragons.”
I straightened my shoulders before I let go of Winston’s arm and walked forward, trying to project nothing but self-confidence. These guys were nothing—just a bunch of dragons—and I was the queen. The queen of an entire world. The queen who had conquered them without a single sword being drawn. A queen that any one of them could eat in a single bite and not have to bother chewing first.
As I made my way up the aisle I saw that I was walking toward a dais like the one in my throne room, but instead of only one throne there were five ornately carved chairs. Two of them were empty. Tevian took the empty seat in the middle of the dais and placed a crown with curling silver horns on his head, the horns protruding from the front of his forehead. The other three men on the platform were wearing similar crowns, each with a different pair of horns.
“Black dragon, join your kin,” the loud voice boomed.
Winston looked from me to them. “I won’t sit in judgment of my own queen. I am her prince consort, and I would give my life for her.”
“You must choose,” said the old man. He was wearing a set of blue robes, and his white hair stood up around his head like a lion’s mane.
“Then I choose her. I’ll always choose her.”
The four men gritted their teeth as Winston straightened his shoulders beside me, every inch of him not just a soldier’s son but a warrior in his own right. His father would be proud of him…if he knew he existed anymore. I hoped again that I’d have the chance to set things right for Winston and his family.
“The Fate Maker has returned to these lands,” the old man said. “After you claimed you destroyed him, he returned.”
“I never said that I destroyed him, just that he was gone. He disappeared that day,” I said.
“Yet now he’s back. With an even larger army. An army filled with the troops of your aunt, the empress of Bathune.”
“I know. I was there when they attacked.”
“You chose to flee,” Tevian said.
“My castle was overrun, and we were forced to retreat.”
“A retreat was the best option,” Ardere said quietly from this seat. “It was better to give our troops a chance to regroup and fight another day.”
“You brought a wizard into Dramera,” said another man, this one in a red hat with curly black horns on it.
“My friends and I stopped two more before they could follow.”
“And that makes the one who found his way here acceptable?” he asked.
“The wizards are coming anyway,” I snapped. “One is now wounded. He’ll be an example to the rest of what they can expect when they come.”
“That you will flee and leave others to fight your battles? The wryen Kitsuna of the red dragon clan fought the wizard while you ran into the forest,” Tevian argued.
“She was trying to protect me.”
“One day soon, Golden Rose of Nerissette, it will be time for you to stop running and stand and fight.” The old man in the blue robes sneered down at me from the dais like I was some sort of kid he was punishing in the principal’s office.
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Just as I did the first time we faced him. Like I would have done today if our walls would have held.”
“Enough of this!” the man in red robes roared. “The Rose did what any of us would do. She is not to blame here.”
“She told us that he was defeated,” the man in blue said.
“She told us that he disappeared,” the dragon in red corrected. “We took that to mean he was defeated and most likely dead. We told her he was gone forever, and as an outsider, she chose to believe us—the elders of this world.”
“That’s—” the man in blue started.
“I told her that he was gone,” Ardere said, his voice even. “I told her that if he had disappeared into the light then he was most likely dead. I was the one who told her and the crown prince that a search for him would be pointless. John of Leavenwald and I convinced her not to send the men.”
“Then you were a fool,” Tevian snarled.
“I was,” Ardere said. “That doesn’t change the fact that the queen acted on my advice and now we are here, at war again—this time against a larger army.”
“The Fate Maker won’t wage war against us if we claim neutrality,” the man in blue said. “Even though the prince consort is one of our own. We can cut him loose, break our alliance with the world of men, and let them fight amongst themselves. When the war is over the Fate Maker will have no quarrel with us. We’ll live in peace as we did before.”
“Your loyalty to your own is touching,” Winston said drily. “But even if you cut me loose and do not fight, he’ll come here next. He’s not going to be happy living in peace now, not now that he knows there’s a chance for the dragons of Dramera to rebel against him. For him it’s all or nothing.”
“He’ll settle for what he can get easily,” Tevian said, his voice filled with razor-sharp anger.
“He wants the tear.” I paused as every single dragon on that dais sucked in a breath, their eyes wide. “He wants a relic that melts the walls between this world and the Bleak itself. Now, does that sound like a man who’s willing to take only what he can easily conquer?”
“No.” The man in blue shook his head. “But the tear doesn’t exist. It’s a legend.”
“Yes, it does exist,” I said loudly. “And I have it.”
All of them went silent. The man in the blue robe’s mouth was gaping open.
“Liar,” Tevian said.
“I have it.” I lifted the chain of the necklace up and let the crystal swing in front of my chin. “I have the Dragon’s Tear.”
“By the light of the Pleiades,” Ardere said, his eyes wide. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s the tear?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “It’s the tear. Timbago was its guardian.”
“Timbago?” Winston asked.
“He gave it to me. Before he…” I swallowed and didn’t meet his eyes.
“Can you bend the tear to your will?” the man in red asked and I turned to look at him, holding my tears in check.
“I don’t know. I haven’t exactly wanted to mess around with it. Not with the whole ‘melting the walls between us and the Bleak’ thing. It’s not like we can use it anyway. Everything we found says that you have to know where the weak spots are in the other worlds in order to move between them. So it’s not really a very good portal.”
“You silly girl.” Tevian stood and stepped off the dais, coming toward me. “The tear isn’t a portal.”
“It’s not?” I swallowed as he wrapped his fingers around mine, cupping the crystal.
“No.” He looked down at me and his eyes glittered. “It’s the key to the greatest prison in all of creation. It melts the wall between here and the Bleak and then it allows you to trap your enemies inside the nothingness for all time.”
“That’s why the Fate Maker wants it,” I said. “He wants to imprison me and put Bavasama on the throne.”