Page 37 of The Dragon Queen

“Sir.”

Flynn saluted General Rex as he came to stand beside us, but the man didn’t notice. His eyes were entirely on Draven and Darkspire, watching them cross the water in great sweeps of his wings, getting closer and closer to a decaying ship that was starting to list on one side, pushed over by the lapping sea.

The ocean wouldn’t be the one to destroy the ship, Draven would.

From a great height Darkspire dropped his burden, yet he backwinged furiously, gaining altitude rapidly to put a larger distance between him and the ship.

For good reason.

I faintly heard the whistle the pot made as it plunged down, the ship rolling and waving with the tide.

“Hit it…” Flynn muttered, stepping forward, Glacier shifting with him. Only Glimmer seemed unperturbed. She watched the events with a kind of world weariness.

As if she’d seen it all before.

What will happen?I asked her on a hunch.Glimmer…?

We burn or they burn,she replied almost dreamily.Or everyone burns.

What?

I didn’t have time for clarification. The ceramic pot hit the ship and then everything exploded.

Didthey expect the impact to be this great? I thought dimly, right as we were hit with a blast of sea water and air that made a storm feel like nothing. I staggered back, Flynn’s arm snapping out to stop me from falling flat on my behind. Screams and cries went up around the crowd, but when I blinked water from my eyes, I saw what had happened. The ship hadn’t been hit like a cannonball, it had been obliterated. All that remained were some fragments of wood, nowbobbing along furiously with the waves that smashed into the dock moorings.

So what exactly did Draven intend to use the dragonfire for?

“Bloody hell, there’s some fishermen out there,” Flynn said, pulling away. “Ged!”

“On it!”

Both of them leapt into the saddles of their dragons, launching themselves into the air and then skimming along the wildly rocking waves, plucking several bedraggled looking fishermen from the water and depositing them on the docks moments later, where they were joined by Darkspire. The king’s dragon buffeted the crowd with his wings as he landed with a flourish.

“I call that little experiment a success.” Stefan looked positively gleeful as he jumped down, turning to look back at their handiwork. “A few of them would put a fire up the arse of Harlston.”

“Harlston?” I said, looking around me, but all the men were converging on Draven.

“Exactly how much of the dragonfire was used?” General Rex asked the king. “The entire vial?”

“Just a drop,” Stefan chortled. “That and a pot packed with blasting powder was all it took to take out the ship.”

“And you have considerable stores of dragonfire?” Rex asked.

“More than you could possibly need,” Stefan replied.

“Your Majesty, we need to start testing this weapon on land targets.”

Land targets? I could just imagine what such an explosive would do to Nevermere.

“You’d blow up half the countryside, dropping this stuff,” Stefan explained.

“Sire—”

Draven held up a hand, silencing both before turning to face me.

He found me in the crowd with ease. The crowd had recovered and were talking excitedly about what they’d just seen, but he didn’t seem to care at all. Just a small smile and then he reached out a hand. He wanted me to play at being a queen now?

No playing, only being.

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