Page 109 of The Flame King's Queen

“Look at you, my brave, beautiful dragon. So many of your scales have been shredded, you were outnumbered and without your mate, but you never let any of the undead pass, did you? All the young dragons are alive.”

She limps out of the cave entrance and toward Scourge. He lowers his massive head and his wings shelter her, and he makes low, soothing noises. Finally safe, she closes her eyes and slumps to the ground.

Zabriel wipes away my tears. “It hurts to feel her pain and see her wounds. I know it does. But she will be all right. These injuries do not threaten her life. I will tell the riders to tend to her while we check on the castle.”

Reluctantly, I leave our dragons resting together after their long ordeals and cross the bridge to the castle with Zabriel.

Esmeral lives, but others have not been so lucky.

We find Fiala in a room high in the castle with a squalling Sylvi cradled in one arm. In the wingrunner’s other hand she holds a broken halberd. Tears are flowing down her cheeks and there’s a dazed, grief-stricken expression in her eyes.

Three fallen figures are at her feet. Dusan, his face ghastly pale and his blood pooling around him. Santha and Posette, their clothes torn and their bodies bearing terrible wounds.

“The women were unarmed,” Fiala whispers. “But when Dusan fell… They threw themselves on the undead to fight them with their bare hands. They sacrificed themselves for Sylvi. They slowed the undead down just long enough. I was backed in here with the baby, when suddenly every single skeleton collapsed into piles of bones.”

Zabriel covers the bodies, Dusan with his wingrunner cloak, and the women with his own cloak. I wrap my arms around Fiala and Sylvi and cry with her.

“Dusan was the bravest man, always lifting my spirits. Santha and Posette were with me when we were prisoners of the Brethren,” I say through my tears. “They were so courageous through all that torment, and they were a comfort to me, the lost villagers, and they cared so much for Sylvi.”

Fiala places the baby in my arms. While I feed her, Fiala gets to her feet with what seems like the effort of a much older woman. She gently pulls the cloak back from Dusan’s face and cradles him in her arms, and sweeps the blood-soaked hair back from his face. Tenderly, she kisses his brow.

Then she lifts her eyes to mine. “It’s dead? The lich?”

I nod. “It’s dead and gone forever.”

Fiala closes her eyes and tears slip down her cheeks. “Then Dusan’s sacrifice was not in vain. Goodbye, dear friend. I won’t know myself without you.”

I feel much the same way as I emerge from the castle and stand atop the battlements with Sylvi in my arms. I don’t know myself in Maledin, and I barely recognize the city. The sky is filled with smoke, and the streets of Lenhale are littered with debris and bodies. Fires are still burning, and so many buildings are aflame. I didn’t see this much devastation even when Emmeric slaughtered the Maledinni of western Maledin.

This is our home, and it’s been all but destroyed.

My eyes sting from smoke and emotion, and I’m hit with a great wave of despair. “So many people are dead. Zabriel, what are we going to do?”

My mate is gazing down into the city. Suddenly, he points a finger. “Look.”

I follow the direction he’s indicating. There’s a chain of people from a well to a row of houses which are aflame, and they are all working as fast as they can to put out the blaze. I look closer, and I see civilians at different places around the city clearing rubble, tending to the injured, and collecting bodies.

“The people are already doing what must be done. We must join them.”

Mother Linnea approaches us, dusty and slightly scorched-looking, but uninjured. “I saw you land on Scourge. It’s…dead?” she asks, her face filled with uncertainty and hope.

“It’s dead. The lich will never trouble Maledin again.”

The almost ecstatic relief of Mother Linnea’s face reminds me that what I am saying is true, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.

She reaches for Sylvi. “Queen Isavelle, I can take the baby if you andMa’lenwish to go down into the city.”

I have worked with my bare hands while burdened with grief, confusion, panic. Compared to those, my daughter is no burden at all. I shake my head. “I will take Sylvi with us. Will you help me secure her to my back, Mother Linnea?”

We use the sash from around my waist to secure the baby to my back in a way I’ve seen the women of my village do during planting times. She is safe and secure, and my arms are free to work.

Down in the city, Zabriel joins in the rescue efforts. Sundra is coordinating units of the City Guard to put out fires, carry wounded to the Flame Temple, and collect bodies to take them outside the city walls into the fields for later dragon rites. I join the Temple Mothers and maids helping the wounded with their cuts, broken bones, and burns, while Zabriel lifts beams and broken walls out of the way of wagons that are trying to pass through.

It’s hard, heartbreaking work. Many survivors are crying, and there is so much blood and death, but I focus my attention on the way people are helping one another, and the happiness on their faces as word spreads that the lich has been defeated, and undead armies will trouble us no more.

I realize we’re on a familiar side of the city when I see the tall, slender figure of a man in dusty black clothes rounding up a flock of hens that are running loose in the street.

“Master Gaun,” I exclaim, smiling for the first time in what must be hours. I help him catch the last few hens and put them into their makeshift pen.

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