the knowledge of ruzal against him; maybe it’ll turn the Greens. The Dragons hate Ianthine–as you might, if someone can control your mind.”
“Good idea. Watch this.”
As she loped forward, Flicker muttered near her ear, “I hate it when you say that, Lia. It always means you’re about to do something stupid.”
“Father! Father!” Hualiama waved cheerfully as she vaulted the low wall surrounding the Receiving Balcony and trotted toward Ra’aba, as if blissfully unaware of the Green Dragons turning to glare at her and a Dragonwing darkening the skies just half a mile away, now. “Islands’ greetings, father!”
“I am not your father!”
Ra’aba’s growl did not dissuade her. “Oh, Ianthine told me all about the bargain you struck with her, daddy. The power of ruzal in exchange for your service to Ianthine. Is that what you’re doing to these mighty Green Dragons? Are you controlling their minds just like the Maroon Dragoness wants you to?”
Having expected the Green Dragons to react, Hualiama was shocked when they only blinked their nictitating membranes at her. Not even a curl of fire? Something was terribly wrong with this picture. She had to work it out.
Ra’aba’s hand rested on the pommel of his sword, his expression poisonous. “Girl, you’ve been sticking your nose into secret Dragon lore. Shut your yapping little muzzle before I shut it for you!”
She settled for a coy approach. Dragons liked hatchlings. Nibbling her forefinger and gazing around her with assumed innocence, Hualiama said, “I just don’t understand why you’d try to kill your own daughter. Isn’t there some good left in you? Or has Ianthine stuck her talons so deep in your mind that you no longer know who you are?”
He laughed. Full of confidence, Ra’aba strutted toward her. “My Dragonwing comes, little Lia. Who would stop me?”
“A Dragon,” she said.
For a second, a shadow seemed to flicker behind his yellow orbs. Then, he shaded his gaze to take in Grandion’s lone attack on the Greens.
A smile just began to tug at his lips when a howl of wind carried to their ears, even across the distance separating the Dragons from the conflict around the palace. Mist billowed ahead of the Tourmaline Dragon’s flight, while blue-accented lightning blasted out of his body, a series of electrical discharges so powerful, the bolts lit up even the dawn sky. Multiple Green Dragons turned white with hoarfrost. Weighed down by tons of ice on their wings, more than a dozen Greens tumbled from the sky as if mossy boulders had, for an improbable moment, attempted to fly. Lia winced as the first Dragon smashed to the ground, literally shattering into pieces.
Fire blasted against her shoulder.
A dragonet’s cry of pain! Flicker’s torn wings brushed her face–he had protected her, she realised, from an attack she had not seen. Lia had no time to examine her hurts as the dragonet flapped away a short distance, attacking an archer who had crept up behind her. Ra’aba roared down upon her, vengeful. Her Nuyallith blades zinged out of their twin sheaths. Hualiama stopped his blades with a two-handed parry, swords crossed above her head, but his boot followed through to kick her in the sternum, right between her breasts.
Pain exploded in her chest. Lia fell backward, yet tucked in her head as she rolled, tapping the momentum of his kick to flip over onto her feet again. She was certain he had broken something. Ra’aba followed through with a sword-strike which shattered the stone planter she had fetched up against. Flicker rushed between them, his claws moving faster than a Human eye could follow, but Ra’aba’s uncanny speed saved him at the expense of a three-clawed furrow on his cheek.
The Roc’s sword trimmed an inch off Flicker’s tail as the dragonet whizzed past.
“I see I’ll have to take care of you myself,” said Ra’aba.
Lia wiped blood off her lip. “I’ve been longing for a father to do that for years.”
Ra’aba screamed into his attack, achieving a new pitch of strength that jolted her with every blow. But the stronger he became, the faster Lia danced, drawing on every ounce of knowledge Master Khoyal had poured into her to keep alive. They clashed furiously and ripped apart again, like two Dragons sparring. Lia became dimly aware of fighting on the internal stairs leading to the roof. Ja’al, Chago and Inniora had arrived, cutting their way through the Royal Guards still loyal to Ra’aba.
“Time’s running out on your reign, Ra’aba,” she said.