Maylie shook her head, barely able to understand.Princess Tiannie became a dragon?
The hamadryad did not reply; its dark, wet eyes watched her closely.
Maylie asked another question, even though she knew it would not be answered.The maidens sent to the Great Dragon do not die?Then a shocking, choking realization almost toppled her to her knees.
‘Esmelie …’ she whispered aloud in her own tongue.
From above came a human cry that Maylie could not ignore.
She turned and began clambering up the ridge, scrambling over rocks, palms scraping against stones. Jaw clenched, she thrust and heaved herself up, finally tumbling over the lip of the ridge to see a dying woman sprawled naked on the ground. Maylie staggered upright just as the woman vanished, her body crumbling to nothing, fading with the last curls of smoke into the night’s sky. She was there; then she was gone.
‘Princess Tiannie?’ Maylie murmured.
The hamadryad had told her the truth.
Two other figures standing before the black, blood-stained ground turned at her voice. The taller one had dark, cropped hair and wiry limbs knotted with muscle. She looked like some kind of warrior or knight, and she glared at Maylie suspiciously, bending to snatch up the sword at her feet, before faltering with a groan, her wounded leg collapsing beneath her.
‘Alinore, stop!’ cried the other figure.
Maylie turned her attention to the bare-footed, black-haired maiden. She realized with a jolt of shock that it must be the Princess. Her child. It was the baby she had once held in her arms, now a young woman of eighteen winters. She was here. She was real. And she was beautiful, but unexpectedly so. If Maylie had ever allowed herself to imagine her daughter, she had envisioned a curly-haired, dark-eyed girl, much like herself. The smooth, midnight-black locks and amber gaze of the Princess were surprising. Maylie might even have thought that the woman before her was someone else, but there was a shadow of familiarity in the point of the Princess’s chin and the thin arch of her brow. And more than that, Maylie knew it instinctively – this was her daughter.
‘Who are you?’ snapped the one called Alinore, glaring at Maylie. ‘What’re you doing here?’
Maylie forced herself to take a long, deep breath. ‘I was led to you,’ she replied. ‘I came to try and stop this.’
Alinore grimaced and clutched at her leg, leaning on the Princess for support. ‘What do you mean? Who led you?’
The hamadryad had not followed Maylie on to the ridge. She could sense it lingering in the shadows below, listening.
‘I saw a saddled horse running by without a rider so I stopped it and followed its trail here,’ she replied. ‘I heard the dragon attacking as I climbed the ridge and I thought perhaps I were too late, but you defeated it. Both of you.’
The Princess and Alinore glanced at one another.
‘You’re hurt,’ added Maylie. ‘You need those wounds tending to.’ She moved closer, never taking her eyes off the Princess, drinking in every detail. ‘And you need help too, Your Highness,’ she murmured, fingers fumbling to unclasp her cloak. ‘You must be cold.’She draped the woollen material over the Princess’s shoulders, flinching when the back of her hand brushed the Princess’s neck.
She was real.
‘Thank you,’ replied the Princess, but her attention was focused on her friend and her gaze skimmed over Maylie.
‘That was Princess Tiannie, wasn’t it?’ said Alinore, her voice shaking. ‘Princess Tiannie – she – she was the dragon?’
Maylie nodded.
Alinore’s jaw clenched and she pressed a trembling hand to her forehead. ‘The dragon attacked us, and I …’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I … killed it. Her. I killed her.’
‘No, you freed her,’ replied Maylie, echoing the words of the hamadryad. ‘After three hundred winters she were more beast than human. She didn’t know herself any more.’
Alinore took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘How can you be sure?’ she asked.
‘Someone told me.’ Maylie glanced behind her at the shadowy edge of the ridge. ‘Someone I trust.’
The Princess’s back stiffened and she turned to look properly at Maylie for the first time, amber eyes narrowed.
‘I don’t understand,’ murmured Alinore.
‘I’ll explain it later,’ replied Maylie, frowning at Alinore’s injuries. ‘You need the wound on your leg sorting. ’Tis a deep cut. I can find you something for the pain, and the burns. You must be hurting.’
Alinore blinked. ‘Whoareyou?’
