Abruptly, she sat down on the floor beside him. He reached out blindly and took her hand into his. Tears were running down her cheeks but a smile trembled on her lips. ‘We will still die together.’ With a shaking hand, she reached for the teapot. ‘Will you have a last cup of tea with me?’

He turned his gaze on her. An odd calmness was welling up in him. ‘I would rather have a kiss. My first and last, I think.’

‘Your first kiss?’

He laughed shakily. ‘My circumstances have not lent themselves to the giving or receiving of kisses.’

She blinked and the tears spilled faster. ‘For me, also.’ She leaned a little closer to him and then stopped.

He looked at her. She had closed her eyes. Her hair was sleek, her skin like cream, her lips pink. Her first kiss would come from a scaled dragon-man. He leaned in and found her mouth with his. He kissed her softly, unsure of how it was done, expecting her to pull away in revulsion. Instead, when he leaned back, she was smiling through her tears.

‘To be touched by a man, with gentleness,’ she said, as if that wonder were so great, it dispelled the circling dragons.

He put his arm around her and she leaned close to him. Together they watched as the dragons swept out of sight. A moment later, they returned in another sweeping arc. For the first time he saw that two of them carried riders. Their scaled bodies gleamed in the sun as brightly as the dragons they bestrode. One of the dragons trumpeted, and suddenly the three of them swept in a wider, lower circle. As the dragons flew, they gave cry. Gleaming droplets of acid venom drifted from their wide-stretched mouths and then they suddenly beat their wings more strongly, all three rising above the swathe of death they had spewed.

Chassim put her arms around him. She held him closer and her face was white as she said quietly, ‘It looks a quick way to die. Perhaps faster than a fall.’ She helped him to stand. He clung to the stone railing of the balcony and they looked down on the city.

In the distance, the streets were full of fleeing people. Horns vied with screams to fill the air but the trumpeting of the dragons triumphed over all. They fled away from the widening circle of scorched earth. A circle, a moat of death and crumbling masonry, was forming around the Duke’s grand palace. Selden saw the dragons’ plan clearly now. ‘They will seal the castle so there is no escape without running into the venom on the ground. And then they will slowly destroy it,’ Selden said quietly. The plan came so clearly into his mind. He could almost see it unfolding as if he were with the dragons above. He lifted his eyes to the sky.

‘I wish we could live,’ Chassim said wistfully. ‘I wish I could live to see Chalced dragged out from under my father’s foot.’ She turned her face and her soft lips brushed his scaled cheek. ‘I wish we could live,’ she whispered.

‘Tintaglia!’ He cried out his dragon’s name with every ounce of strength he had, shouted it in desperation. ‘Tintaglia! If you live, then I do, also! Blue queen, gem of the skies, where are you?’

Reyn felt sickened, but not by the swaying flight of the dragon. Below him, buildings were slowly crumbling. Those too slow to flee had fallen beneath dragon spray. He had pulled his tunic up over his head, and tugged the sleeves down over his hands, having seen what dragon venom could do. He viewed the world through a narrow fabric window, and wished devoutly he did not have to see much.

He could not fault the courage of the Chalcedean soldiers. He had watched them loose arrows that arced far beneath the dragons, and then watched their ranks literally melt in a fall of acid. Some gave way to the dragons’ glamour as they overflew them, breaking to run. But they ran the wrong way, away from the stronghold and into the acid-riddled streets that now ringed it. Poor bastards. He caught a stinging whiff of dragon venom and drew his shirt tighter over his face.

He tried to admire the dragons’ strategy. No dragon flew behind nor below any other. They had broken into groups and in each group, each dragon flew alongside the others. They spewed their venom so that it fell below them, and then turned back and retraced their arc, each time getting closer to the centre of the Duke’s castle. Their timing was perfect, so that the dragon groups never encountered one another. The outer walls of the castle had received several passes. They were old and very stout, but the dragons were intent on killing people, not crumbling stone. Within the arcs they had overflown, nothing moved.

Tintaglia shuddered suddenly, and broke ranks. She rose so sharply that Reyn lunged from the shelter of his tunic, thrusting his hands clear of his sleeves to seize her harness. He thought she would loop over backwards. ‘Are you hit? Have they hurt you, Tintaglia?’