This time, the arrow was true. It didn’t miss her vital organs. Instead, the stone arrowhead sank deep into her heart.
The pain-filled wheeze couldn’t have come from her. Sigrid couldn’t have made that sound, even when the blinding ache of death filled her lungs. Warm liquid spurted from between her lips.
She rocked forward, fingers clutching the shaft of the arrow and staring down at it in disbelief. Someone had really tried to kill her?
“Sigrid!” The anguished shout was laced with more than just Nadir’s voice, more than just the dragon. It was Hallmar, and Brynhild, and Camilla, and Raheem. All the people who cared so much about her who would despair to see her die.
Nadir roared. Fire billowed from his jaws and his tail lashed out at anyone near them.
She fell to her knees. Holding onto the arrow with shaking hands as her dragon mate crouched above her and screamed at the world that he would kill them all. They couldn’t understand him, but they could hear the anger in his rumbling cries. His flames turned blue with heat, then white-hot with rage.
Blood coated her fingertips. She stared down at the thing which had killed her and realized she didn’t want to die.
What had the ancients said? She didn’t need a throne or a crown to be a queen. She was the woman who her people had prayed for. A dragon queen who would take the world by storm whether they wanted it or not.
Her people were led astray by someone who wanted to see the world on its knees. Not because he wanted to see them in a place of power, but because he wanted to see himself in a place of power.
There was so much she and Nadir could do to fix this world. They could force people to see the goodness in each other. They could destroy armies with a single breath. They would never be given the chance, because she knew he would go mad the moment her breath fled from her lungs.
“Please talk to me,” his voice finally broke through the pain. “Please, Sigrid, don’t leave me now. Not like this.”
She looked up and saw a man on the other side of the battlefield set aside a bow. White hair, white skin, pink eyes staring at her from a distance. She could see the grin on Jabbar’s face as he celebrated the victory he thought he had won.
Sigrid would finally die. Raising from the grave in her people’s eyes would have taken every scrap of power away from him. She’d become more than just a matriarch. She would have become a god in the eyes of the Beastkin.
Looking up, she reached for Nadir’s face even though he was still spewing flames upon the battlefield.
“My love,” she said through their connection. “Look at me.”
Nadir’s jaws instantly snapped shut. He swerved, crouching over her, holding his wings around her like he could keep out the world. “Anything, ya amar.”
“What does that mean?”
“My moon,” he replied. “My life. The love of my heart.”
Sigrid touched her blood-smeared fingers to the large scales of his jaw, and smiled. “That’s beautiful.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” he replied, broken and so sad it made tears drip down her own cheeks. “They have taken you from me, as they have taken everything else.”
“Not yet they haven’t.”
The dragon inside her burst forth. Flames covering her body and engulfing her in so much pain she wasn’t certain she could survive it.
But she did, because a dragon could not burn.
Opal scales unfurled down her body and wings stretched wide as her fingers spread into something so much more powerful than just a human woman. Nadir held her within his leathery wings until she finished her change.
Only then did he open his arms and reveal that she had not died. That yet again, she survived certain death and came back to her people when they needed her.
She lifted her slender neck, then touched her head to his. She bumped the top of her jaw along the bottom of his.
“You said we were to become gods,” she whispered in their minds.
“You didn’t want to become a goddess.”
“And yet, now I am.”
Nadir stroked the top of her head, running his jaw along hers, and then nipped at her neck with his fangs. “Kill him, wife. Before I do.”
Sigrid shot up into the air faster than she’d ever flown before. Jabbar did the same, his form melting away into feathers as he tried to get away from her.
Perhaps he thought he could flee the scene, take them somewhere he might have the advantage. Sigrid almost laughed at the thought. He had nearly lost the last time they fought, and now he thought he could get away from her?
Lightning crackled along the feathers of his wings as he flew into the air and tried to leave. She caught his tail feathers between her jaws. Pulling hard, she disrupted his flight and spat out the long tendrils in her mouth.
“Come here,” she thought, shoving the thought through the air and into his mind like a spike.
His eyes widened in horror as he realized she could speak in this draconic form. Not only could she speak, but she could talk directly to him.
“It is possible,” she projected, knowing what he was thinking and laughing at his fear. “Come here, thunderbird. Let me feast on your flesh.”
He lashed out with claws that tore at her chest. Long talons scraped down her scales, searching for any small bit of a gap between them so he might pierce through her flesh as he had with his arrow.
She didn’t care. Blood dripped from the wounds, but she refused to allow him to kill her. Not now. Not when he had done so much already, and she wanted to taste him on her tongue. The dragon was entirely in control now, and the dragon knew how to fight.
Sigrid pushed
