I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) by Marc Secchia (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

“Confession time. Since your negotiations were taking a while, I peeked through the window. You were talking –” the woman’s eyebrows shot up “– aye, talking fluently with your hands, and your body, and then with your lips …”

Yardi turned the colour of the sunset. “You – you!”

“Just call me Dragon.”

“Azania, where did you get him?”

“Corner shop, priced to fly off the shelf.”

Gnarr-hrr-hrr, he chortled. “For my part, I got short-changed at the second-hand royal sale.”

Even Chalice smacked him for that one.

* * * *

Three days later, with travel sums having been done, goodbyes said and promises made, Dragon and Chalice set wing for the westering suns. They planned to fly all together to Hamirythe, where Dragon and the Princess would promptly turnabout and fly almost the same return journey. Two long sides of a very flat triangle, as Azania put it. The other option would have been to cool their heels at Mornine for over a week, which did not make a jot of sense.

Chalice bore Yardi upon her back.

The Dragoness did not appear overly comfortable with the arrangement, but she had requested it, claiming the need to practice for the return journey. No way was she walking from Hamirythe to Juggernaut’s lair!

Excuses. He grinned to himself. Corrupted another Dragon into doing the unthinkable. He would just change Solixambria one creature at a time.

Dragon bore Yarimda in a lightweight travel litter. She was not well enough even to sit for long periods of time, but her complaining about her mode of transportation certainly sounded lively enough. Doctor’s orders. He kept his forepaws curled about her bed. The comments could just wash off. This first stretch of a couple of hours until nightfall was just to test her out and assess if she would be able to cope with the far longer journey.

Hamirythe was within reach. He could smell it.

How had she kept her condition hidden for so long? One tough woman.

“So, you still have a deal?” Azania prompted, calling over to their friend from Dragon’s neck to where Chalice flew slipstream just behind and slightly below his left wing.

“We do. Garan plans to make everything ready by the time I return. He’ll finish up all his orders and hand the forge over to a group of his graduates, who are keen to take over the business. The children were more than excited to embark on an adventure. Over forty! I do hope Juggernaut knows what he’s getting into …”

The Princess said, “Rest assured, when he sees how they work, he’ll be more than grateful.”

Chalice put in, “You’ll need to be open with him about your relationship with Garan, but the point regarding giving orphans a hope and a future – that will not be lost upon him. Nor upon any Grinder. We may not be the most forward-thinking Clan, but we do like to fly against a trade wind.”

“Why is the wind?” Azania asked.

The Dragoness chuckled appreciatively. “Why is the ocean breeze, o Princess?”

“Quite.”

Yarimda called weakly, “The question is, granddaughter, do you know what you’re getting into?”

Stiff-backed, she stared at her relative.

“Dear one, I do believe people can change,” she smiled. “Please don’t misunderstand; you both explained everything and I accept that. What I meant is, should all proceed as I hope, are you ready to be a mother of over forty all at once?”

The blacksmith shook her head. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve no idea what I’m doing. But I am getting along to be thinking about my own children, grandmother. This is a cause I could … I could thrive in. I truly believe that. I’m not saying it won’t be probably the hardest thing I have ever tried – but the most worthwhile? Aye. Best of all, I won’t be running away from my past anymore. Nor will he.”

Perceptive.

“He isn’t the only one who has changed, child.”

Oh, by his wings! This was so intimate, he could barely stand to overhear.

After a moment, he said, “She’s fallen asleep again.”

Yardi wept silently.

Chapter 18: Ocean Bright

IN FOUR LONG DAYS of flying, the pair of Dragon Rider teams crossed half the breadth of Solixambria, covering hundreds of miles with the aid of a variable breeze from the northeast.

“We’ll be flying against that all the way back,” he told Azania.

She made a face that would have shocked any decent Princesses right out of their dainty slippers.

Leaving the dense, tall forests of Dorline in their wake, they swept over a wild hill country where wooded hilltops punctuated dark green streams and patches of saltgrass. Nothing much of use grew in the briny soils. Midway through the journey, they flew across the Taribonli River, well to the north of the ruined, deserted kingdom, and then joined the busy coastal road for the run across the Hamirythe peninsula, past the rugged, windswept coastal mountains famous for their bamboo stands and man-eating tigers, and on to the edge of the Lumis Ocean once more.

The capital city, Hamir, was a gorgeous cluster of blue-tipped turrets and spires located upon the edge of a sheer white cliff that cut away into the turbulent ocean. The Ociane family was one of the wealthiest and most prominent in the kingdom, owning a massive mansion right on the cliff tops. Yardi’s father was a Lord. He would never have thought it of her. Curious what people, and Dragons, might hide beneath their scales – just as Azania had been mistaken for a robber for the first time in her life.

He had not stopped tugging her wings about that.

As Yardi directed them into the grounds of her family mansion – a pretty castle with whitewashed walls and blue turrets, for all intents and purposes, comprised of two interlocking pentagons with no less than eight towers and a