Page 19 of A Bond of Ice and Glass
The monarch shrieks in fury and lifts her wings, unfurling them like glaciers ripping apart.
A wind howls through the pit as she collides with the fire dragon midair. Frost slams into ash, and the air shatters around them. The lava in the cave walls flares and glows. Stone rains down from above, cracking some of the columns. One of them falls towards Kymera, but the witch lifts her hand and blasts it out of the way.
I grab Cyrsí’s reins. “Pin the smaller one down,” I command.
But my dragon doesn’t move.
“I cannot intervene. The monarch is our queen. She must win this fight or she is unworthy.”
While I understand the logic behind it, it’s not worth losing a dragon over. Even the bondless one could one day be useful. Any lost dragon life is a loss too many.
The fire dragon claws and slashes at the monarch’s back. With a swipe of her tail, she sends huge pillars of ice shooting at him. One of them catches his wing and rips through the membrane. He’s too outmatched. He won’t last long. They tangle midair, claws locking, jaws snapping.
I shake my head. “He’ll never win. Why is he even trying?”
“He heard her claim over the witch. We all did. He does not agree with it. He challenges her. It is the way of dragons.”
True. That’s how I got my crown, too. I killed Maelena’s father and ripped it off his bleeding skull.
Then I let Cyrsí eat his corpse while he begged me for mercy.
Another dragon calling out pulls me back to the waterfall.
Freyren.
She lifts her wings weakly, shaky from the loss of her rider, and lets out a cry for her mother. The sound pierces me, and frost-fire blazes down over my head. It barely reaches the fire dragon, but it distracts him, and that’s all the monarch needed. She lunges again, slamming the other dragon away, with a roar so loud stone crumbles from the ceiling. Her body glows with runes, and she releases a shattering wave of cold that freezes the lava in jagged streaks. Then she pins him down between her talons with another roar right into his face. He shrieks and tries to twist, but one of her ice-blue talons pierces his body.
“Don’t kill him!” The monarch tilts her head at me, her gold eyes glowing. “Let me tame him. Zepheira will help. She’s the best dragonmeyer there is. Too much dragon blood has been wasted already.”
For a moment, the monarch’s talons move, as if she’s about to kill him. But she lets him go.
He crawls to his feet, his wing torn, bleeding, and retreats back into the ground. Zepheira is already down there. I’ll interrogate her later about how he managed to escape in the first place. But first I need her to heal him.
“The witch,”Cyrsí says, lowering so I can climb off her.
I slide down and run over to Kymera. She’s lying on the ground next to a crushed ice-pillar. I crouch down and check the pulse in her wrist. Her eyes open, no longer glowing, but rimmed with frost.
“Still alive in there?”
“Yeah,” she answers hoarsely.
“Good. Now why the fuck didn’t you tell me about the monarch?”
She slowly sits up and looks over to where the monarch watches, silent and ethereal.
“I didn’t know she was a monarch. I only heard her voice in my head sometimes, guiding me here. She said you needed my help and that I must go to you.”
The monarch blinks, staring at her. They’re talking through their bond.
“So, what does this mean now?” I demand.
“I know where she is.” My pulse spikes. “I saw a forest covered in snow. A castle with blue spires. Something dark was watching Maelena. I couldn’t see its face.” She looks up at her dragon again. “Let him see.”
And she does.
The vision plays in my head as clear as day. Maelena, chained in the snow, her mouth moving, breath fogging up the air. What is she saying? I can’t hear her, but I feel her pain, ripping through me like a blade of ice. Behind her, something dark moves, stirring the shadows around it. They cloak Maelena as the vision suddenly shifts, and the castle with blue spires appears. I recognise Noble’s crest on the flags. He never told me on which mountain his home was hidden. But now we have the key to finding it.
I stagger back, freed from the vision. Part of me wants to climb back into it just so I can see my wife again.
