“You could wait out here,” Fern said, taking a step towards the arch.
“Then who’s going to rescue you from the dragon revenants haunting the cave?” he asked, waggling his fingers as he pretended to be a monster.
“Me,” I said.
“Me.”
“Me.”
Fern looked back as each one of us said the same thing, her smile fading. That vulnerability that replaced it? I liked it a lot. It meant we were building enough trust for her to show her softer side. The need to let my guard down rode me hard, but right now, she turned back to the cave entrance.
“So we?—”
“Let us go first.” She stepped back in surprise as Dain landed on the ground before her, then pulled his sword. “You don’t know if the cave is stable or whether the pathway is safe to walk.”
“So I should watch you fall to your death?” she said, hands going to her hips.
“She seems feisty, this Fern.” Billy nodded at me. “A good fit for you. I’ll have to introduce her to Florrie when she gets home from the market.”
And just like that, the hatchet was buried. My oldest friends and my newest ones followed our dragons into the cave complex.
“What are…?” Fern stopped several steps in to peer at the walls. Harley lit a lantern that was stashed just inside the cave for just this purpose and he held it up against the carved stone.
“Seems like some kind of family tree of sorts,” he told us. “Itgoes all the way down as far as I can tell. This is a gold queen, and those males look like the silver beasts you brought with you.”
He nodded to the dragons who looked over our shoulders at the artwork.
“Initially, we thought the silver was painted with pigment to make it look like a blue or bronze or red dragon,” Billy added. “Didn’t even know silver dragons existed.”
“They haven’t for some time,” Dain said, moving further down the ramp. “Silver mates with gold.”
As we’ve been saying all this time.
That had to be Slate who made that comment. Auren snorted, then followed Dain, her eyes raking across the wall. A foreclaw went out, the citrine sparkling in the dim light, right before she pressed it into the socket of a massive beast. Then she stepped back and stared at the new artwork.
“That one’s gotta be an exaggeration,” Harley scoffed. “No dragon gets that big. Not even your silvers?—”
It’s a white-gold queen, Auren said in awed tones.
“White gold?” my friends spluttered. “What the hell is one of them? Queen dragons only come in yellow gold, I mean gold.”
The future.
All the dragons said that as once, then turned and walked deeper into the cave. Red dragons and a huge blue one graced the walls, along with purple and black dragons. Stylised lightning and fire licked the walls, but it was a more familial scene the dragons paused at. A white-gold queen sat there, her silver mates clustered around her, but in her nest was something that had me moving closer.
“A green…?” Fern turned to me. “Why would a white-gold queen and silver males produce a green egg?”
It was then I remembered something Viridian said.
Lad, you said the silver dragons are your brothers.
His deep green eyes stared into mine.
They are my brothers.
But not by blood, I said.You were one of Zafira’s dragonlings, one of only two greens.
They are my brothers, he insisted.
