Everlast (The Chronicles of Nerissette) (Entangled Teen) Page 22

  “You’re a dragon?” I asked, stunned because she was so short and dragons were—well, huge.

  “Sort of,” she said with a quiet laugh. “If we’re being specific about it, I’m a wryen. My name is Kitsuna.”

  “Hi, Kitsuna.” I stuck my hand out for her to shake before looking down and realizing that it was still covered in filth. I brushed my hand off on my skirt and grimaced at her before offering it again. “I’m Allie.”

  “Yes, my queen.” She curtsied and gave me a wide smile, a deep dimple coming out in each of her cheeks. “I know who you are. Now, why don’t you peel yourself out of that heavy gown? I’ve brought clothes that might be more appropriate for battle.”

  She held up a bundle of clothes, and my eyes widened. She had pants—real pants. They weren’t jeans or sweatpants, but they were pants, with two legs and a way to move without tripping. Whatever a wryen might be, Kitsuna was now officially on my very short list of favorite people. There was only one problem.

  “I can’t get out of the dress on my own,” I said. “I tried to undo the laces after Winston left, but I couldn’t get the knot undone. I think my maid trapped me inside of it just to be spiteful. It’s so uncomfortable.”

  “Your maid trapped you inside your own dress?”

  “She doesn’t really like me,” I said.

  Kitsuna motioned for me to turn around, and when I did she began to tug at the laces. She uttered a few strange-sounding words that I thought might be curses underneath her breath, then stepped away from me and walked into the tiny kitchen area. The next thing I knew there was something pointy running up my spine and the dress sagged.

  I pushed my arms out of the sleeves and sighed at the feel of being free from its weight. I climbed out of the puddle the dress made, and she pulled it away from me, tossing the heavy silk into a corner.

  I felt the edge of the knife run up my back again, and my corset fell free as well. My ribs rejoiced at being able to expand again, and I wanted to get on my knees and kiss Kitsuna’s feet.

  “You should be able to strip the rest of it off now and get clean while I make you something to eat,” she said. She picked a rag up off the table and a small bit of soap. “The water should be warm enough for you to bathe. There’s no way to clean your hair, but at least you’ll have the dirt and the smoke off you.”

  “Thank you.” I took the rag and the soap from her and smiled.

  Instead of responding, she walked into the kitchen area, purposely turning her back to give me privacy, it seemed.

  I stripped off my slip and underwear before dipping the rag into the water and starting to scrub at the dirt on my arms. The smell of roses from the soap mingled with the smells of frying meat. I dipped the rag back into the water and lathered more soap before scrubbing at the rest of the dirt. “Kitsuna?”

  “Yes, Queen Alicia?”

  “You said you were a wryen? I don’t want to be rude but—”

  “What is a wryen?” She laughed, and the throaty chuckle coming from such a tiny young woman was a surprise.

  “Yes,” I said as I finished scrubbing my toes and then reached for the towel. “I mean, you can breathe fire and you live at Dramera, so that means you must be some type of dragon. Right?”

  I finished drying myself off and started pulling on the clean clothes she’d brought for me. Once I had the green cotton shirt on I started tugging on the brown trousers, wiggling to get the narrow fabric over my hips.

  “Not exactly.” Kitsuna picked up a plate and a mug and brought them over to the table. “A wryen is a child whose parents are two different types of dragons. In my case, my mother was a red dragon and my father was a dragon from the east, a landwalker from Bathune.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I shifted my eyes away from her, uncomfortable about digging into her personal life, and saw a pair of soft brown boots underneath the table. I pulled them on over the heavy woolen socks she’d given me.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “I’ve already had dinner, my queen,” she answered.

  “Call me Allie.”

  “Allie.” She smiled at me again. “Now, you should eat so you have your strength. While you do I’ll brush out your hair and explain about the dragons here in Nerissette.”

  “You don’t have to.” I felt her start pulling the pins from my hair, letting it fall free down my back. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “You should know these things, and it’s not prying. Really.”

  “Okay, then, I’d really like that, thank you.”

  “Eat.” She pointed to my plate. I picked up the wooden fork and started shoveling bits of sautéed meat and limp green vegetables into my mouth while she untangled the complicated twists Heidi had wrapped my hair into.

  “There are many types of dragons in the world. Not just different clans, like the black dragons and the golden dragons. Clans are just different families of the same type of dragon. It is like humans.”

  “Like humans?” I asked.

  “You are all humans, even though you might have long brown hair and someone else may be a blonde with green eyes. True?”

  “Sure.” I shoveled more meat into my mouth and reached for the hunk of bread sitting at the edge of the plate. I hadn’t eaten in a while, and I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until there was food in front of me.

  “And all the members of a family look the same or similar? It’s what they call a resemblance?”

  “Right,” I said, my mouth full.

  “It is the same with dragons. Some may have golden skin, or some may be blue, and another might have a multicolored pattern because their father belonged to one clan and their mother to a different clan. They are all dragons of the same type—but there are other types of dragons. Giant lizards that never fly but stalk across the ground, slithering into tiny crevasses and breathing fire. Similar but different.”

  “So a wryen is one of these lizardy dragons?”

  “No.” She began pulling a brush through my hair, firmly but gently working the knots out of my hair before starting a simple braid. “Wryens are the children of two different types of dragons. Halflings, if you will.”

  “Okay, I’m not following. So, you’re only half dragon?”

  “No, I am a dragon. It’s just that I was born to two different sorts of dragons and that makes things complicated because my body doesn’t know which form to shift into, so I’m stuck in human form.”

  “Two different sorts of dragons? What do you mean?”

  “My father was a lizard dragon. The ambassador to Dramera. He fell in love with my mother, who’s a red dragon, but when she found out she was going to have me, he left. He went back home, and we’ve never heard from him again.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The Lizard People believe that wryens are demons in disguise. Bad omens. They believe it’s unnatural for a dragon to spend its life trapped in human form.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  She finished the braid, tying it with a piece of twine. “It’s the only life I’ve ever known. Perhaps it would be better if he were here, but then again maybe it wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah.” I picked up the cup of tea she’d put on the table for me and thought about my own absent dad. “I know what you mean.”

  “Your Majesty?” she asked.

  I pushed the thoughts of just who my dad might be further back in my head and tried to focus.

  “What will you do in the war that comes?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “You’re not one of the warriors, are you?”

  “We will all fight. Anyone who doesn’t have a nestling to care for will follow you.”

  “But you can’t fly. You said yourself that you’re trapped in human form.”

  “So are you, but yet you intend to go back to your palace. How will you go to war without wings? Without sorcery? How will you fight magical creatures with nothing but a crown on your head?”

  “I’m
not sure.” I lifted my crown gently off the table and slid it over my forehead, feeling it tighten against my skin. “I guess I’ll think of something.”

  “Then you shall think of something for both of us.” She picked up a mirror from the bundle of things she’d brought with her and held it up to me.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror and tried to recognize the girl staring back at me. Who was this person? She wasn’t me. She wasn’t Allie from Bethel Park or even the Princess Alicia who had flown off to be crowned queen earlier.

  The girl in the mirror looked wild, like some sort of woodland princess you’d find in one of the paintings at the Carnegie Museum or the Warhol. She was a girl out of a fairy tale.

  “What do you think?” Kitsuna asked.

  “I think I don’t look like myself,” I said.

  “No, you don’t look like who you were. Now, you look like who you have been forced to become. Never forget that. A mirror is nothing more than a reflection of what it sees in front of it. An illusion.”

  “I think you look beautiful,” a voice said from the doorway. I turned to look at Winston, dressed all in black. “The scouts have returned,” he said. “They have news.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “What do we know?” I asked when he stepped into the room.

  “The Fate Maker is gone. So are the giants. And the trolls. Some of the noble families have fled as well, but most are still in Neris. The fighting has stopped.”

  “But?”

  “The palace was damaged and so were parts of the city. The Hall of the Pleiades was completely destroyed.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. The Hall of the Pleiades was gone? It had stood for three thousand years. It couldn’t just be gone, could it? And if it had been destroyed, what else had we lost?

  “And the people? The citizens of Neris? The soldiers?”

  “There were losses,” Winston said quietly. “We don’t know exactly how many yet, but we don’t think it was too many.”

  “Even one person is too many,” I said.

  “The fighting has stopped though,” Winston reminded me. “And it’s time for you to go back. If you’re ready, we can leave in an hour.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “Good.”

  “Come on.” Winston held a hand out to me. “The other dragons are in the square.”

  We walked outside and through the narrow, winding streets of Dramera. Once we’d reached the entrance to the square I staggered to a stop, stunned at what I saw.

  Hundreds of dragons were milling around an area the size of an NFL football stadium. As one, they turned to face us and lowered their very large heads to the ground. Tevin, still in his human form, stepped out from a clutch of golden dragons, their scales glowing like a thousand small suns. He bowed low to me, his hands clasped in front of his forehead.

  “Your Majesty. We are honored to ride to war with you. With the blessing of the stars we will destroy your enemies, and then peace will reign for a thousand years.”

  “Thank you,” I said, still staring at the mass of dragons bowing to me. “Thank you all. And good luck.”

  I turned back to Winston. “So, what do we do now?”

  “We go win you a kingdom back.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, pressing his lips against mine.

  “Enough kissing now.” Tevin laughed and pulled us apart. “Shift already and let us ride.”

  The other dragons began to roar in approval, and I stepped back, my eyes wide as blue-black flames flared up around Winston. The others stood up on their back legs, beating their wings when he shifted silently from boy to dragon. Once the change was complete, he balanced on his back legs, too, his nose pointed toward the sky, and let out a long plume of fire.

  “Hey.” I pointed my finger at him. He dropped back down onto all fours and put his snout close to my face.

  “Don’t you remember anything they taught us about preventing forest fires? If you burn down Dramera I’ll make you come back and rebuild it on your own.”

  Winston snorted and smoke curled out of his left nostril. He rolled his eyes, and I poked him once at the tip of his nose, giving him my best imitation of Gran Mosely’s evil glare.

  “Don’t you give me any attitude. Otherwise, if we ever get home again, the first thing I’ll do is tell your mom you set an entire village on fire, and I don’t care if you are a dragon, she can still kick your butt.”

  “Did you just threaten to get his mother if he didn’t behave?” Kitsuna asked as she came up behind me in clothes identical to mine. “You’ll fit in with the dragons better than I thought.”

  “You haven’t met Winston’s mom. She’s fierce.”

  “What do you think they are?” She nodded her head toward the assembled mass of dragons.

  “Point taken,” I said.

  She hurried off toward a pack of red dragons with black stripes down their sides. I turned back to Winston and could see that he was trying his best not to laugh—even in dragon form he could still manage to smirk.

  “Don’t even start.” I poked his nose again.

  He shook his head back and forth before craning his neck down enough for me to scramble onto his back. Instead of clinging to his neck this time, I maneuvered myself backward so that I was wedged between two of his upraised back ridges and could hook my feet over his shoulders. I grabbed on to another spiky protrusion and held on tight. Hopefully, he’d fly more like a jet plane this time and less like a rocket ship.

  “Wait!” Kitsuna’s lilting voice yelled. She slid off the back of a large red dragon with gold markings along its neck and ran back over to us, a large bundle cradled in her arms. She shoved it at me. “Mom says you should be careful.”

  “That was your mom? Wow.”

  “What? Yours doesn’t look like that?” She pulled the brown blanket that was wrapped around the bundle free and nodded toward a long, curved sword strapped to a leather belt that had been swaddled inside.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh well, put your sword on anyway. Let’s hope your army is good enough that you never actually need it, but either way it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

  “Now that sounds like something my mom would have said.” I laughed and buckled the sword low around my hips like Kitsuna’s was, trying not to think about the fact that if I had to use it, then it wouldn’t be like fencing practice. There was no buzzer, and the person I stabbed wouldn’t get up again when it was over. My hands started to tremble, and I pressed them against the sides of my legs so that no one could see.

  She snickered. “Oh, and Mom also said to tell you the pointy end goes in the other guy.”

  Winston snorted, and I turned around to glare at him. He turned his head over his shoulder and tried to fake-cough.

  “That one I knew already.”

  “Great. So, now that we’ve got that settled,” Kitsuna said, “let’s go back to your castle and take our place at the head of an army full of angry villagers intent on overthrowing the wizard who’s been tormenting them for the past seventeen years. What do you say?”

  “Let’s do it,” I said, my hands still shaking.

  She nodded and then ran back to her mother. She scrambled onto the red dragon’s back and smiled at me.

  “Okay.” I leaned forward and kissed the top of Winston’s scaly head. “I’m ready. Just don’t launch yourself upward like you did—”

  He reared up on his hind legs with a loud roar and shot into the sky, completely ignoring me. I threw myself flat on my stomach and clung to his neck, squeezing my eyes shut and trying not to wet myself.

  Once we were airborne, I turned, watching the other dragons flap their wings and take off in a smooth, horizontal glide. Why couldn’t Winston do that? I was starting to think the only reason he shot into the air like he did was because he liked tormenting me. Stupid boys. Stupid, insufferably cute boys who could make your brain go mushy.

  Winston dipped lower, skimming the lak
e of silver water, before climbing higher and taking me up over the trees. We leveled out, and I turned again, this time to find the sky behind me filled with dragons, all of them soaring through the clouds in a V-shaped formation against the pink of the dawn sky. Ahead in the distance I could see east tower of the palace on top of its hill.

  I leaned forward, resting my chin against Winston’s back as he flew toward our new home and all that was waiting for us there.

  …

  An hour later the sun was fully up, and we were close enough to Neris that I could see smoke billowing up from the city and the now-scorched white bricks that had been used to build the palace.

  I scanned the trees, looking for enemies who might be waiting to ambush us, but there was nothing. No magic hurtling through the air trying to take us down. No giants. No trolls. No one. Just smoke and ruins, as if everyone in the world had disappeared.

  Once we were closer I nudged at Winston’s neck and pointed toward the mermaids’ labyrinth. He nodded and turned toward it, dipping low enough that we grazed over the top. Talia waved from her rock, and I breathed a sigh of relief that they had been kept safe. Once we were clear he rose again, and I saw the extent of damage the battle had done to the palace.

  The kitchen was covered in black streaks of smoke and part of the roof was missing. Where the household staff’s quarters had been was now nothing but a muddy field with huge chunks of dirt missing. But there was no one outside.

  I could see where the battle had been fought, but where were they all? Winston had mentioned losses but surely not everyone. He would have told me if we’d lost everyone…

  He circled again and dropped lower, his claws scraping the marble courtyard as he landed. Birds sang in the distance, but I couldn’t hear a thing from anywhere else. The entire world was silent. The other dragons landed behind us, waiting quietly while I slid off Winston’s back and began to look around. The place looked completely abandoned.

  I heard a creak and turned toward the palace just as the front door flew open, and Mercedes rushed down the steps, launching herself into my arms. “Oh, thank the trees you’re safe. I was so worried about you.”