Draxus Flameheart's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The hatchlings slept warm in the den, but Kerra's question waited. Draxus could not answer her under his ancestors' roof. Words spoken over dead nests would sound like old greed. He led her out into the cold night instead. A broken watchtower stood on the ridge above the hold. Its stone was cracked and rimed with snow. Black rose bushes had grown wild against its base, their dark blooms open in the dark. Here no one could twist his words. "You asked what I'm after," Draxus said. "I'll show you." He drew a broken pendant from his cloak. Two halves of carved stone, split down the middle. The words "dragon born" ran across the crack. "My clan carried this for ten generations. Raiders came. They stole our hoard and stripped our hold to bones. This is all that's left." Kerra took the pieces. Her thumb traced the fracture. She had tracked wyverns her whole life and knew stolen things when she saw them. "So you want the gold back," she said. Her voice went flat. "A man crosses a wasteland for treasure. I've buried riders who died chasing less." She held the pendant out to return it. "I care for the living, Draxus. Not old metal." His chest tightened. She was leaving. Then a voice cut across the snow. "He's not chasing metal." A tall draconian woman climbed the ridge toward them. Braids swung at her shoulders. Orange eyes caught the pendant's dark stone at once. She wore the same broken look Draxus carried. "I'm Lyra. His sister. I followed his trail three weeks." She stopped beside him and gripped his arm. "Our clan-hold sheltered wyvern young for hundreds of years. You saw the den. The hoard paid for the straw, the meat, the walls. Raiders took all of it. Now the young ones freeze in the open." Kerra looked at the two hatchlings' distant den, then back at Lyra. "You'd spend the gold on them." "On these," Lyra said. "And every clutch after. That's what the hoard was for. Not one man's chest." Draxus pulled a signet ring from his finger. A black dragon marked its face. "This proves the hoard is ours by blood. I don't want to sit on gold. I want to rebuild what kept those hatchlings alive." He held Kerra's eyes. "You taught me to keep two of them breathing. Help me keep the next hundred." Kerra was quiet a long moment. The black roses stirred in the wind. Then she pressed the pendant back into his palm and closed his fingers over it. "Then we don't just find the hoard," she said. "We find who took it, and where they buried it." She turned toward the den. "Your sister followed a cold trail three weeks. Show me where it starts."