Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 9 of 46

By afternoon the bond still held, but the cave felt like a trap. Violet stood in the crystal cavern, colored light sliding over the walls. The mother dragon coiled tight around her five hatchlings. Kael's men would arrive in three days. Violet had to move the whole nest to the fortress before then. But the mother would not take one step from her eggs and young. Violet had tried. She had walked to the cave mouth and called. The dragon only pressed lower over the sleeping hatchlings and watched the exit. Theo leaned against a cold wall, arms folded. "A dragon that won't fly is worth nothing to Kael," he said softly. "He wants her at his gate, or he wants her in chains. Those are the choices you left him." Violet ignored him. She studied the treasure pile. The blue stone glowed there, cherished above all the rest. The mother guarded it the way she guarded her eggs. Then Violet understood. The dragon would not follow her. But she might follow the things she loved. Violet knelt by the nest and lifted the gold-horned hatchling. The mother's head snapped up, eyes flat. Violet held the little one against her chest, calm, hands open. She had done this before. The mother remembered. Her head lowered a fraction. Violet carried the hatchling slowly toward the cave mouth. "Come on," she whispered. "Come with your baby." The mother rose. She uncoiled from the nest for the second time ever and crept after Violet, low and tense, never taking her eyes off the gold-horned one. Step by step, Violet drew her to the light. The dragon reached the mouth of the cave. Then she stopped. She looked back at the four hatchlings still inside. She looked at the blue stone. She would not leave them. Violet set the hatchling down. "Theo," she said. "Bring the others. And the stone." Theo did not move. "Your hands, not mine." So Violet made trip after trip. She carried each hatchling out and set it beside its mother. Last she took the blue stone, warm and smooth, and laid it at the dragon's feet. The mother nosed the stone, then her young, counting. Everything she valued sat outside the cave now. Violet climbed onto the great scaled shoulder. She pressed her palm to the dragon's neck, felt the pulse under it. "Now we fly," she said. The dragon spread her wings and lifted, hatchlings clutched close, the stone gripped in one claw. They rose over the crystal cave into open sky. But as they climbed, Violet saw the valley below. Riders on horses moved along the road toward the north. A banner snapped among them. Kael's men. Theo had said three days. They had come early. And they were riding straight for the empty cave Violet had just left behind.