Page 62 of Lady Dragon
Samansa shrieked even louder, her eyes going wild as she reared back in shock.I’m not Raka! She can’t have me!Her great chest heaved with panicked breaths.She can’t—she can’t—
She?Kirek’s mind groped for coherent thought as she dragged herself upright. Samansa was speaking as if she somehow knew or had seen Raka—a dragon dead for three hundred years. It wasn’t making any sense.
Kirek’s whole world didn’t make sense anymore. She felt utterly adrift. Cut loose with her mother’s life.
I would know you anywhere, Pavak said, with that smug, oily certainty.For I have long seen you in my dreams. Have I not, daughter?
From against the edge of the platform, where she’d been silent and still, watching the events unfold, Valraka gave a slow nod of her black head, her eyes as red as the blood spilled all around.
Pavak’s gaze hadn’t left Samansa’s.You’ve seen her, too. Perhaps before in dreams, but now you need only look at your reflection in a pool of water.
Stop it!Samansa screamed, sounding nearly in pain. She began backing away on her huge, clawed feet. FrombothPavak and Kirek.
“Samansa,” Kirek croaked, her throat raw, taking a step toward her. She couldn’t look at the giant heap of her mother’s body, trailing gore, that lay beyond her, so she tried to focus on the retreating princess—dragon princess—instead. “We have to—”
You!The red dragon spun and snarled down at her, making Kirek leap back and nearly fall again.You don’t tell me what to do. You are nothing. A traitor to your species. And the only one who will kill you isme.
Kirek’s mouth was almost too dry to speak. “What?”
Samansa blinked again, as if trying to focus, and then she swiveled away with a terrified look in her eyes, clawing the rest of her way across the platform in a panic. Her wings barely opened in time before she threw herself over the edge, flapping wildly to bring herself aloft. And then she was soaring through the cavern, toward the nearest opening to the sky.
Leaving Kirek behind. Surrounded by dragons, who were looking at her like fresh meat.
Pavak rose from her crouch slowly, menacingly.Shift back. This form is beneath even you.
“I… can’t,” Kirek gasped, clutching at her chest, feeling losteven though she knew this place better than any other. “The Heartstone—it’s not gone, but broken.”
Pavak sneered down at her in utmost disgust. You’rebroken. An impure thing. Already defeated. You don’t deserve my wrath. Letting you live in this pathetic state, cast out from your own kind, is enough. You don’t even deserve a clean death.Her head snapped in Valraka’s direction.Get the traitorous exile out of my sight.
Much to Kirek’s surprise, Valraka dumped her unceremoniously outside, in the rocky sand beneath the tower of High Nest, without killing her, let alone forcing her to disarm. The dragon even carried the saddle along with Kirek, in claws that didn’t attempt to shred her tender human flesh.
Perhaps the thing was too offensive to leave inside, just like Kirek.
Pavak had given the order that Kirek was not to be harmed, in line with Raka’s wishes—Samansa’swishes. Who evidently wanted her kept alive only so she could kill her herself. Pavak had also apparently followed the directive toleave Kirek alonequite literally. She was being left. Alone.
In exile.
Both Samansa’s and Pavak’s words still rang in her skull, even though Kirek hadn’t exactly heard them aloud. Perhaps they would follow her forever.
But forever might not be terribly extended, in her case.
She squinted up through the beating sun to look at Valraka, looming over her like death’s shadow. At least the sun was beginning to set, and wouldn’t attempt to cook Kirek’s delicate skin for long. At least not until tomorrow morning.
She wondered, vaguely, if Valraka intended to follow her mother’s order and leave her alive to see sunrise… or even sunset.
She also wondered if she herself cared. She’d lost everything. Her mother. Her position. Her pride. Her dragon’s scales.
Even Samansa. Samansa had left her. Called hernothing. A traitor—whatever that even meant, coming from a human princess of a different realm.
Maybe it meant that Samansa was becoming less and less human. Less herself.
Now Kirek had only Valraka for company, and likely not for long. Perhaps that was for the best. Kirek was at her weakest, and her cousin was her direct rival—if Kirek hadn’t fallen too low to count as one anymore, which she probably had.
Cousin, Valraka said, perhaps in farewell, before leaving her in exile. Or dead.
“Better thantraitor,” Kirek rasped, trying to moisten her mouth enough to spit out the sourness of bile on her tongue.
The dragon regarded her for a moment.I pity you.
