Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 27 of 33

The charter held, and the months rolled easy after it. Snow fell gently now, the way it should. Glaciana walked the outer villages and saw full grain bins where empty ones had stood for three winters. Both courts sent no complaints. The dragon slept curled in the courtyard by day and circled the peaks by night. Children climbed its scales and slid down its tail. It let them. She wrote a clean number in her ledger and, for once, wrote nothing beside it. Everything worked. That was what frightened her. Victor found her at the window that evening, one hand on her rounding belly. She did not turn. "It has been too smooth," she said. "Peace like this hides a crack somewhere." "Name the crack," he said. She could not. So she went looking. The next morning she rode down to check the dragon herself. It lifted its great head when she came near and pressed its snout to her belly, as it always did, gentle as a hound. But this time it did not settle again. It rose. It paced the courtyard and turned its eyes toward the far peaks, and low in its throat came a sound she had not heard before. Victor came at a run, crown askew. He put his hand flat on the dragon's neck and read it the way he read a ledger. His jaw set. "What does it feel?" she asked. "Something under the mountain," he said. "Where the ice was. It smells like the crystal." Glaciana's stomach dropped. She had shattered the Snowheart crystal herself. She had watched the mountain thaw. "The crystal is gone," she said. "I broke it." "You broke one," he said. She understood him then. The dragon had been frozen beneath that mountain for years, sealed by the crystal's magic. If the crystal had held one thing trapped, it could have held another. The thaw had not finished its work. She made her choice fast, the way Kira had taught her. Doubt was slower than danger. "Saddle nothing," she told the guards. "We ride light. Bring Kira. Bring the fairy." She turned to Victor. "I want to see what the dragon smells before it reaches a village." Victor did not argue. He only gripped her hand once, hard, and let go. "You're carrying," he said. "You don't climb. You direct." "I direct," she agreed. The dragon lowered its head and let her set her palm between its eyes. The peace of the last months was a lie she had almost believed. She had bought quiet, not safety, and now the mountain wanted the rest of what it owed. She swung the ledger shut and left it on the sill. Whatever waited beneath the ice, she would meet it before it met her people. The smooth season was over. The next climb began at first light.