Something that Mercor had said long ago pushed into her thoughts. They had been discussing Elderlings and how dragons changed humans. She tried to recall his exact words and could not. Only that he had claimed humans changed dragons just as much as dragons changed humans.

The thought was humiliating. Almost infuriating. Had her long exposure to humans changed her, given her a need for their company? Her blood coursed more strongly through her veins and her body answered her question. Not just company. She felt the wash of colour go through her scales, betraying her.

‘Sintara. Was there a reason for this visit?’

Mercor had moved closer still. His voice was almost amused. ‘I go where I please. Today, it pleased me to come here. Today it pleased me to look on what might have been drakes.’

He opened his wings, stretched them wide. They were larger than she recalled. He flexed them, testing them, and the breeze of them, heavy with his male scent, washed over her. ‘It pleases me that you have come here, as well,’ he observed.

A sound. Had Alise laughed? Sintara snapped her gaze back to the woman, but her head was bent over her bucket as she wrung out her rag. She looked back at Mercor. He was folding his wings carefully. Kalo was watching both of them with interest. As was Spit. As she looked at him, the silver male reared back onto his hind legs and spread his wings as wide as they would go. Carson stood between them, looking very apprehensive. ‘It needn’t be Mercor!’ the nasty little silver trumpeted suddenly. ‘It could be me.’

She stared at him and felt her poison sacs swelling in her throat. He flapped his wings at her, releasing musk in a rank wind. She shook her head and bent her neck, snorting out the stench. ‘It will never be you,’ she spat at him.

‘It might,’ he countered and danced a step toward her. Kalo’s eyes suddenly spun with anger.

‘Spit!’ Carson warned him but the silver pranced another step closer.

Kalo lifted a clawed foot, set it deliberately on his tail. Spit squalled angrily and turned on the much larger dragon, opening his mouth wide to show his poison glands, scarlet and distended. Kalo trumpeted his challenge as he snapped his wing open, bowling the smaller dragon to one side as Carson leapt back with a roar of dismay to avoid being crushed.

Kalo ignored the chaos behind him.

‘I will fly the challenge!’ the cobalt drake announced. He lifted his gaze to Sintara. She heard a distant cry and became aware that far overhead, Fente was circling. The small green queen watched it all with interest. The heat of Kalo’s stare swept through her, and suddenly all she felt was anger, anger for all of them, all the stupid, flightless, useless males. A rippling of colour washed through her skin and echoed in her scales.

‘Fly the challenge?’ she roared back at all of the staring drakes. ‘You fly nothing; none of you fly! I came to see it again, for myself. A field of drakes, as earthbound as cows. As useless to a queen as the old bones of a kill.’

‘Ranculos flies. Sestican flies,’ Alise pointed out relentlessly. ‘Two drakes at least have achieved flight. If they were the drakes you wanted …’

The insult was too great. This time, Sintara spat acid. A controlled ball of it hit the earth a body’s length from Alise. Baliper surged to his feet, eyes spinning sparks of rage. As he charged, Alise shrieked and ran. A spike on one knob of his outflung wings narrowly missed her. Sintara braced herself, flinging her own wings wide, but cobalt Kalo intercepted Baliper. As the two males slammed into one another, feinting with open mouths and slashing with clawed wings, the air was filled with the shouts and screams of Elderlings. Some fled, others raced toward the combatants.

Sintara had only a moment to take in the spectacle before Mercor knocked her down. Gaunt as he was, he was still larger than she was. As she sprawled on the turf, he reared up over her and she expected him to spray her with venom. Instead he came down almost gently, his heavy forefeet pinning her wings to the earth and pressing painfully on the flexible bones.

She opened her jaws to spew acid at him. He darted his head down, his mouth open wide to show her his swollen acid glands. ‘Don’t,’ he hissed at her, and the finest mist of golden acid rode his word. The stinging kiss of it enveloped her head and she flung her face aside from it.

He rumbled out his words, so that the others heard, but he pressed them strongly into her mind at the same time. ‘You are impatient, queen. Understandably so. A little time more, and I will fly. And I will mate you.’ He reared onto his hind legs again, lifting his forefeet off her wings as he did so. She stood up awkwardly, muddied, her wings bruised and aching as she folded them back to her body and scrabbled away.

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