‘The British government asked Queen Ignacia to send aid over to Bulgaria.’
‘To help the human population when they wired us a plea for support,’ I say, recalling my history lessons.
‘No,’ Chumana growls. ‘That was a lie. The aid was for the Bulgarian dragons, to ensure their operation was successful.’
For a moment, my heart seems to stop.
‘They sent British dragons over there to helpkillthe humans?’
‘Yes, human girl. To ensure that the most powerful dragons in Europe would forever owe Britannia. Do you really think Wyvernmire convinced the Bulgarians to ally with her on promises alone?’
I shake my head. That can’t be possible. Britannia wouldn’t betray its fellow humans, and its dragons wouldn’t agree to help kill them. Our national motto isPraise for peace and prosperity!
I remember what Wyvernmire told me.
And, in the end, we made sure those dragons were in our debt.
‘A few important people protested, of course,’ Chumana says. She curls her spiked tail round her body, and it circles the spot I’m sitting in. ‘Especially the few who knew it would mean the end of the Bulgarian humans’ effort to decipher the Koinamens. The British government didn’t understand what the so-calleddragon codewas then, nor how much they would come to covet it.’ She snorts a puff of dark, angry smoke.
Revulsion rises inside me. ‘Chumana … you killed the Bulgarian humans?’
‘Yes.’
‘My mother’s family died in that massacre,’ I spit. ‘She barely made it out alive. She still has nightmares.’
Chumana bows her head, revealing a small row of horns along its crown. ‘Yes. You told me she was Bulgarian in the library.’
I stand up. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’
‘I was following my Queen’s orders,’ Chumana says calmly.
‘But … but her orders were wrong! She’s evil to have ordered such a thing.’
HonourableQueen Ignacia is what the dragons call her. Her reign stretches back to before my grandparents were born.
‘Evil is not a strong enough word.’ Chumana meets my gaze and sparks fizz from her mouth. ‘My first return to my motherland was done in bloodshed. I killed, burned and destroyed. I chased humans from their homes and demolished the boats they tried to escape on. The flames I breathed did not discriminate between old and young.’
‘You’re lying,’ I say, my whole body trembling. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, but I did. And, after it was over, Britannia’s government began talking about a Peace Agreement.’ She snorts again. ‘The irony. They saw how easily we slaughtered the Bulgarian people and were suddenly afraid for their own country. The Peace Agreement was written only to ensure that British humans would never suffer the same fate as the Bulgarians they helped murder, and to portray dragons as creatures to be feared. Fear breeds hatred, the kind thatoppresses dragons and humans alike.’
I think of the detonator I cut from Chumana’s skin, of Nicolas’s untreated burns, of Dodie and Katherine and Owen.
‘Queen Ignacia agreed to it after she was offered … special privileges.’ Chumana stamps the ground, leaving a claw mark the size of my head in the dirt. ‘I hated myself for what I had done. The horrors committed in Bulgaria were too much to bear, even for a dragon. And I continued to witness the corruption that had always existed between a string of Prime Ministers and the Dragon Queen. So, on the eve of the signing of the Peace Agreement, I protested its creation. I attempted to kill Queen Ignacia.’
Chumana is a Bolgorith, one of the largest dragons in Europe. But the Dragon Queen is rumoured to be even stronger, the biggest Western Drake ever recorded, with jaws powerful enough to crush stone.
‘Kill?’
She nods. ‘I consider her a traitor to dragonkind.’
My stomach churns.
‘I failed, obviously,’ Chumana says, and her tail twitches irritably. ‘I wasn’t granted the privilege of a dragon’s execution – you have seen the prison they sent me to.’
I nod.
‘I lived there, haunted by the evil of my own memories, for years. I was considering flying out over the walls of the university to set that detonator off when a human girl appeared and offered to remove it for me.’
