CHAPTER 31

It all seemed to slow down as I watched.

The green dragon fell on the battle between Lucille and Sebastian. She opened her mouth to add her fire to Sebastian’s.

Lucille saw her coming and dove underneath Sebastian, between his legs.

The entire ledge blossomed with fire.

As the green dragon cleared the top of the cliff above us, I saw a glint of metal and heard a cry.

Sir Forsythe.

The knight—my knight—leaped from the top of the cliff above us as the green dragon dove past his position. He arced into the air holding the black sword Dracheslayer in both hands, point aimed downward. The runes etched in its blade glowed like hot coals as he landed on the green dragon’s neck. Dracheslayer plunged in, just behind the base of her skull before the dragon knew what hit her.

The green dragon slammed into Sebastian’s ledge face-first, shattering the heat-weakened stone and continuing downward in a shower of gravel, leaving Sebastian perched on a rocky outcrop barely big enough to hold him.

At some point in the descent, Sir Forsythe had leaped aside and landed on the upper ledge where Rabbit and Laya had been. He still held Dracheslayer. He pointed the weapon at the black dragon.

“As I said to my liege, ‘One at a time.’”

Sebastian howled in fury and sprayed fire up at Sir Forsythe. I wasn’t worried much. Now that Sir Forsythe held the sword Dracheslayer, dragon fire could do nothing to harm him. Sebastian made a furious effort, producing a massive jet that splashed up toward the ledge Sir Forsythe stood upon. For the space of nearly a minute, Sebastian’s flame turned night into day.

The fire subsided and Sir Forsythe stood astride his rock. Everywhere around him the cliffside was stained jet black with soot, except for a sharp circle centered on Sir Forsythe and Dracheslayer that remained free of any sign of damage.

“Now foul beast,” Sir Forsythe said, “Prepare to face the wrath of—”

Sir Forsythe’s words were cut off as a giant foot with blue scales and talons the length of my forearm scooped him off the ledge. Dracheslayer tumbled from the knight’s hands as the other dragon lifted him off into the sky. I yelled something in frustration as the blade tumbled and struck the side of the mountain.

To my horror the glowing blade broke as it hit five hundred feet below. The halves of the blade flared red, then went dull as they tumbled the rest of the way to disappear into the cloud of dust that was just settling around the green dragon’s body.

Sebastian howled. It was a sound to make my ears bleed and tear the bowels free from my body. Gravel tumbled down the cliffside as his wail shook the stones loose. Looking up, I saw the beast spasming, muscles locking. He leaped upward, frantically beating his wings. As he lifted off the stone in a panic, I saw Lucille crouched between his legs, all her hair and clothes burned away, showing some wounds that were still struggling to heal.

Not all her clothes. I saw the end of her belt in her hands. The other end of the belt I couldn’t see, but it rose with Sebastian. She held on to the belt, and her arms rose with it to give a final jerk, tightening it around something as it dangled from beneath Sebastian.

Sebastian’s wail of pain rose so many octaves it became inaudible despite its volume.

I winced. Dragon or not, there are some places you never want a tourniquet.

Sebastian cried and tumbled in the air, tearing at himself with his talons so desperately that I winced again. He almost fell down next to the green dragon before he threw a broken strip of leather away so hard that it cracked like a whip. He wheezed as he beat his wings to bring him back up to Lucille’s level.

“I. Will. Kill. You.” He panted as he hung between the cliffside and the distant mountain.

Lucille stood on the broken shelf of rock, naked, unarmed, nowhere left to dodge. She stood straight and looked Sebastian in the eye. “No,” she said with a silver glint in her own eye. “You won’t.”

Sebastian tried to immolate her, but his breath came out in a cough and little more than a roil of smoke. He had exhausted his flames.

“I can still crush you to a pulp!” he screamed as he dove at her.

Lucille smiled.

I realized that the mountain behind Sebastian was to our east, because the silver glint in Lucille’s eye was a reflection from the bright sliver of moon peeking just over the mountain’s shoulder.

If I didn’t know what was coming, I would have thought Lucille had started to cower just before Sebastian’s hand slammed her into the cliffside, pinning her with such force that the remaining ledge crumbled away.

But I knew that what I’d seen hadn’t been her ducking her head and raising her arms.

Her back and shoulders had been growing.

Sebastian didn’t notice—or just ignored—the second set of arm-like growths springing from her back, or the lengthening limbs and torso. In his fury he just forced his own head over hers and snapped his jaws shut.

Or tried to.

His jaws didn’t close completely. His teeth bit into the flesh of Lucille’s neck, flesh that was red, scaled, and rippling with muscle. That neck kept growing as her torso swelled, pushing Sebastian’s hand away from the cliffside.

I stared in horrid fascination as the black dragon’s monstrous jaws were slowly pushed apart by the growth of Lucille’s own skull. Then a white-hot glow erupted inside Sebastian’s mouth, so bright I saw the light through the skin of his cheeks. Flame shot through his nostrils and his head popped off of Lucille like a cork flying off of some overfermented wine. He fell off her, hand going to his face.

“My noth! My noth!”

Lucille pushed gracefully off the cliff, launching herself into the air almost as if she was swimming. As she did, she spat out a leathery flap of flesh. “Hurts when the backwash hits the sinuses?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Thith ithn’t happening!”

She dove suddenly, striking quicker than I could follow. A blur, then she swam through the air on the other side of the dragon and Sebastian bled from a half dozen parallel slashes across his face and neck. He didn’t seem to notice. He flew upward, away from her, “You’re not the printheth!”

“I AM PRINCESS LUCILLE OF LENDOWYN!” she screamed, in a fury that would make the Dark Lord Nâtlac shy away. She looped, became a blur again, streaking toward him. She slammed him into the cliff above me, raking another series of gashes along his back. He tried to push off, but Lucille fell on his back and her head dove at his shoulders like a giant snake snapping at a rat in a hole. In this case the rat was the joint where Sebastian’s right wing met his shoulder.

He screamed as her jaw clamped on the base of his wing and twisted.

He tried to turn his head to bite at her, but he was too slow and she sprang off into the air and his jaws clamped on nothing. She spiraled around above us, looking down.

She was a magnificent sight, red and lithe and graceful. Sebastian, for all his size, seemed pathetic now. One broken wing draped itself, twitching, across his back. His wounds bled freely, spilling down the cliff, some pooling on my ledge now. One eye was swollen shut, and a third of the teeth in those massive jaws were broken and missing.

Lucille called down, “Frank?”

I waved up at her and called out, “I’m fine!” The shout made me cough and wheeze. I wasn’t fine. I was half past ancient. But if I had to choose between decrepit and dead, I wasn’t going to choose dead.

Sebastian’s skull turned toward me. “Francith? You’re Franthith now?”

“Funny how things work out,” I said.

“Why I thould—”

I held up a hand and pointed at the sky, “You really want my husb—my wife to keep killing you?”

He glanced up at the orbiting Lucille and stopped moving.

Serves you right, I thought.

I sucked in a breath and called up, “Do you see what happened to Sir Forsythe or that blue dragon?”

“No sign of them.”

I was about to call her down to grab me so we could look for them. Sebastian wasn’t going anywhere. My thought was interrupted by a sound on the ledge behind me.

I spun around to face the Elf-King Timoras bringing his hands together in slow and deliberate applause. “I will say, Francis Blackthorne, you are never boring.”