‘Sure, during the day,’ she said, smirking. He knew she was teasing him – testing that possessive streak – and it made him want to growl at her. Which meant he was failing. Ugh. ‘But the nights here are solong,Alarik. Andcold. I would know.’
The wrangler looked up, confusion pinching her mouth as she glanced between them, no doubt piecing together where the king preferred to spend his nights – alone, in his own bedchamber.
‘Oh, I know! What aboutdriedflowers?’ said Lief. ‘That has a sense of the macabre about it, and will still manage to keep your mother happy …’
And just like that, they were back to mindless tedium.
The mountains crowded in on them, the air warming as the world got smaller, closer. Nestled in the narrow pass, Alarik’s skin prickled with a familiar awareness. He looked past Lief, watching the craggy rock face rise and fall.
Instinctively, he whirled around, looking to his wrangler. Her eyes were closed, her mouth downturned in concentration. She gasped, soft and low, her eyes flying open to meet his.
The others were talking among themselves, oblivious to the thread of awareness that went taut between the king and his wrangler.
‘Can you feel it?’ he said, in a whisper.
She nodded slowly. ‘There’s something in the mountains.’
He tried not to hint at the fear coiling in his gut, but the last creature his soldiers excavated from these mountains was a terrifying undead witch who had nearly razed his palace to the ground and then started a war that decimated his army. He did not like to imagine there was something else hiding in there. Something even more dangerous.
‘I believe so,’ he said, uneasily.
‘It feels wild and … ancient,’ she whispered. A pause then, her breath quickening as the sled picked up speed, trundling towards the end of the pass. ‘I think it’sfrightened.’ She closed her eyes again, the breeze toying with the loose strands of her hair. ‘I can feel its heartbeat rattling.’
‘Perhaps it’s angry,’ said Alarik, darkly. After all, it was trapped. And despite his growing awareness of it, he had done nothing to free it. Rather, he feared the very thought.
She opened her eyes, curiosity shining there. ‘What do you think it is?’
He had a theory, not that he had ever dared to voice it aloud for fear Vine would think him mad. And yet there was something about the wrangler that made him want to confide in her. In this matter, she was his closest ally. A confidante who could sense the same strangeness – and more – in his mountains.
He leaned in, keeping his voice low. ‘When I was a boy, my father used to tell me bedtime stories about a snow-swept land, full of dragons.’
Her eyes went wider still. ‘A Gevra of long ago,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘My father used to tell me the same stories. I was so enchanted by them I would try so very hard not to fall asleep.’
Alarik smiled to find themselves on common ground. Whispers of the same bedtime stories, of the fathers who sat at their bedside and regaled them. Magical, half-forgotten tales of the northern continent before the last great thawing of the ice thousands of years ago. A time when dragons filled the skies, painting the clouds with their fire.
He went on. ‘There was one story in particular that my father favoured. Or perhaps it was the one I always begged to hear. It was the story of the Last Dragon. It belonged to the king of Vask, a covetous, war-hungry man who went to battle against Gevra only to fall in love with its queen.’
‘I can’t think of a less romantic setting,’ muttered Iversen.
Alarik huffed a laugh. ‘Are you sure you’re Gevran?’
She gently swatted him. ‘Keep going.’
‘The Vaskan king tried everything to woo the Gevran queen. He called off his troops. Ceded the Blackspires to her. Even promised a peace treaty for a hundred years. But the queen remained unmoved.Growing desperate and still hopelessly enamoured by her, the king of Vask gifted her his last dragon.’
The wrangler beamed. ‘And she fell in love?’
‘With the dragon, certainly,’ said Alarik, chuckling at her surprise. ‘Not with the old fool who gave it up! I can only imagine Vask is still smarting about that. I hope it haunts Regna every time she falls asleep.’
‘So, the queen kept it?’
‘Of course,’ said Alarik. ‘She and the dragon bonded at once. Not just friends, but allies. They shared a soul-connection, borne of power and royalty. The queen rode the dragon into every battle for the next sixty years and won every single time. Until the night Vask sent its mercenaries into our kingdom.’ An all too familiar story. He suppressed a shudder. ‘By then, the old king was dead, but his people had not forgotten his foolishness. His son intended to reclaim his father’s dragon and restore Vask to its former glory. But first, he had to break the bond between queen and dragon.’
The wrangler gasped. ‘He killed the dragon?’
‘He killed the queen.’ The wrangler paled. ‘In her own bedchamber, as she slept. An easier target, I expect.’ Alarik’s lip curled. ‘Vaskan cowardice at its finest.’
‘This is quite an unsettling bedtime story,’ she murmured.
