“Allie?” Winston called out from the far side of the clearing, and I looked up, my eyes filling with tears. He was alive. There was a dragon body being burned to a crisp not ten feet from me, but I didn’t care because the dragon that mattered most to me was still okay.
“Winston!” I pulled away from Kitsuna and Rhys, sprinting for him. “I thought you flew north.”
“Oh, thank God, Allie.” He pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine, not bothering to be gentle as he let his fingers tangle in my hair. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m okay. We saw the dragons attack, and we came as fast as we could. There wasn’t much I could do. What are you doing here, though?”
“There are more fires in the White Mountains,” he said. “Bavasama’s soldiers are leading raids. Ardere and I came back to report it and get more soldiers. What happened here?”
“They just attacked us,” I whispered. “This dragon flew toward the aerie and started breathing fire, and then the sky was filled with dragons. Mercedes shot at them as quickly as she could but—”
“Is she okay?” Winston asked.
“She’s fine.” I pulled him close, more to hide my own shaking than to comfort him. “She’s with the Woodsmen and John now, making sure that there aren’t any more dragons in the forest. But while they were shooting things, the rest of us just sort of stood there, waiting for something to attack from the ground. But nothing came and then Dravak…”
Winston’s head jerked up, and I saw the flames from the dragons’ fire glowing in his dark eyes as his shoulders slumped. “Oh no.” He winced. “Not Dravak. He’s just a—”
“No, he’s fine.” I grabbed Winston’s shoulders and gave them a quick shake. “He’s fine. That’s not him. Well, it is him. Not the dead body, though. He’s just over there with the rest of them. He’s the one that killed the enemy dragon… Actually, Mercedes shot it in the wing and brought it down, and then Balmeer fought with it for a bit, but then it started for the aerie, and Dravak just went after it. He charged at this huge blue dragon even though it was at least three times his size, and Win—”
My knees buckled, and he grabbed for me, pulling me up before I could completely fall apart, and wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me against him. “He ripped off the other dragon’s head. He ripped it clean —”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I took a deep breath and pushed away from him. “It’s just all the adrenaline. I’m fine.”
“You’re in shock.” Winston tried to tighten his grip on me, but I stepped back, steadying myself and then straightening my shoulders and lifting my chin.
“I’m a queen,” I said, “and someone just declared war on us. I don’t have time to go into shock.”
“Allie—”
“I have to keep moving, Win.” I swallowed and looked up at him. “I can’t crumble right now. I can lose it in private later, but right now I have to keep going. People have to see that I can keep going.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. Where are the rest of the dragons you were on patrol with?”
“They kept moving north. They should be back by morning. The thing is, we hadn’t made it any farther than the Forest of Ananth before Ardere and I turned back. We should have seen the other dragons as they came over the mountains. How did they get past us?”
“They came from the south,” Kitsuna said. I looked up to see her standing in front of us, her eyes hidden by the shadow of night. “The black dragon that we saw first, he came from the south. From Dramera.”
“No.” Winston shook his head. “Allie?”
“Yeah.” I nodded as he stepped away from me, and I felt my heart sink. “At first we thought it was you. That you had gone for the Dragos Council to bring them here. I thought it was you…”
He pointed at me, and I could see his finger shaking. “You and Kitsuna stay here with Ardere. Stay with the others. Help them protect the aerie.”
“What about you?” I grabbed his arm and turned to look at him. “Where are you going?”
“Allie, we have all the dragon warriors that can fight here. The Dragos Council is here. All of them but Mysanthe”—he nodded toward the gold dragon still circling with the others, flames pouring from their mouths as the fire between them rose higher—“are on patrol with their clans. Dramera was left with only a small guard to protect the weak and those with hatchlings.”
“Oh God.” I felt my knees start to tremble. “You think they…”
“I have to go check.” He let go of me and took a step back. “I have to check on the ones we left behind.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Allie—”
“I’m going.”
He opened his mouth to protest again.
“Don’t make me order you because I will. I’m going with you. I won’t let you go there alone.”
I wasn’t going to take that chance again. Not after Mercedes. I’d seen too much death since we’d arrived in Nerissette to send him out into the unknown alone.
I thought about the sound of Mercedes sobbing into my back earlier that day when we’d found her. I remembered the sound of her broken voice telling us that she was alone now, and I knew I couldn’t take the chance of Winston going through the same thing. I just couldn’t. “Please.”
“No. You have to stay here. You have to raise an army, and if Bavasama’s soldiers are in Dramera, I can’t guarantee that I can protect you.”
“But—”
He shook his head and then brushed past me, making his way into the aerie so that he could shift in private. I watched him go with my arms wrapped around my own waist and tried not to tremble.
“Allie?” Kitsuna reached for my arm, and I stepped away from her.
“Take care of Mercedes for me,” I said, my voice no more than a whisper. “If something happens to me before all of this is over, I need you to take care of Mercedes. She’s not really there right now. I mean she’s not crazy or anything, but she’s not herself. Our Mercedes would have never—”
“I know.”
“She isn’t a killer. She doesn’t hunt things. I can’t even believe that she knew how to shoot that stupid bow. I mean, I know she was learning but actually
“She’s a dryad,” Kitsuna said. “They may love peace and nurture life, but they have been trained for war, Your Majesty. Mercedes would have been trained to defend herself and her tree along with her sisters.”
“We were never supposed to learn how to do this stuff,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the top of the aerie where I could see the faint green glow of Winston’s change taking place. “This isn’t the life that we were supposed to live. This isn’t her world. Or Winston’s.”
“You’re all fighting to keep Nerissette alive. I’d say that gives the three of you just as much claim to this world as the rest of us.”
“Maybe.”
“Your—”
Winston roared, and I broke my gaze away from Kitsuna’s, looking up at him instead as he launched himself from the roof of the aerie’s tower and climbed higher as he turned to the south, toward Dramera.
“Be safe.” I whispered as I watched him disappear into the night. “Please be safe.”
Chapter Twelve
The next morning I paced in the dew-drenched grass of the Crystal Palace’s back garden as the sun came up over the darkened plain where the labyrinth had once been, waiting for Winston to return. I could see what was left of the mermaid’s pool—empty, forgotten, drained—and clenched my hands around the Dragon’s Tear hanging around my neck. The necklace was one of the Great Relics, and it would never leave me again. I wouldn’t let
