Song of Dragons The Complete Trilogy - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,23

He followed in the darkness.

Kyrie walked in his socks, but still had to tiptoe to avoid making noise. Luckily the wind moaned this night, a loud and mournful sound, masking his footfalls. Rex carried a lamp, and Kyrie followed its light, his breath quick. Owls hooted, frogs trilled, and crickets chirped. Soon it began to rain, and still Rex walked through the darkness, Kyrie slinking behind.

Finally the forest gave way to a clearing.

It was a small clearing, circular, sunken in. Kyrie had read that wroth angels sometimes tossed boulders from the sky, and where their heavenly rocks hit, no trees could grow. This looked like such a place. Pines and oaks fringed it, tall and dark, and the clearing's floor danced with pattering raindrops.

As Kyrie watched from the trees, Rex entered the clearing and stood at its center. Kyrie held his breath.

Rex looked to the sky, tossed his head back, and outstretched his arms. Wings sprouted from his back, leathery and black. His arms and legs grew longer, and claws grew from his hands and feet. Scales flowed over him, and fangs grew from his mouth. Before Kyrie's eyes, the rough woodsman became a black dragon with a scar along his chest and a torn wing.

Hiding among the pines, Kyrie tasted tears on his lips.

Benedictus the Black, King of Requiem, stood before him in the night.

LACRIMOSA

The mountain winds howled around Lacrimosa, threatening to topple her. They billowed her cloak, flapped her hair, and stung her eyes with snow. With shivering fingers, she tightened her cloak around her, but its white wool did little to warm her, and her fingers looked pale and thin to her. My bloodline was never meant for snow and mountains, but for glens and glittering lakes, she thought. Her family had always had pale skin, pale eyes, silvery hair; they were the color of snow, and brittle like it, but with a constitution for sun and meadows.

"Agnus Dei," she whispered, lips shivering. "Please."

She stared at the cave, but could not see inside. She saw only darkness that fluttered with snow, deep like the chasm that had opened in their family, their home, their people.

"Agnus Dei," she whispered again, voice so soft, she herself could not hear it. "Please."

The mountains rose above the cave, disappearing into cloud—cruel, black mountains covered with ice and snow, bristly with boulders like dragon teeth. The snowy winds danced around their peaks like white demons, and even when Lacrimosa turned to gaze below, she could not see the green of the world she had fled.

She dared take a step toward the cave, but it was a trembling step. She was afraid. Yes, afraid of her daughter, afraid of what Agnus Dei had become. The girl was eighteen now, no longer a child, and she had become like a stranger to Lacrimosa, as wrathful as her father.

Lacrimosa smiled sadly. Yes. Agnus Dei was like her father, was she not? So strong. Proud. Angry. Tough enough to live in forests and snowy peaks, while she, Lacrimosa, withered in these places and missed the warmth of their toppled halls and the song of their shattered harps.

Does Agnus Dei remember those halls, where marble columns stood, where fallen autumn leaves fluttered across tiled floors? Does she remember the song of harps, the poems of minstrels, the chants of our priests? Does she remember that she is Vir Requis, or is she full dragon now, truly no more than a beast of fire and fang?

"Agnus Dei," Lacrimosa tried again. "Let us talk."

From inside the cave came a growl, a puff of smoke, a glint of fire. Yes, she was still in dragon form. Why did she never appear as human anymore? She was such a beautiful child; not pale and fragile like Lacrimosa, but dark and strong like her father. Lacrimosa still remembered the girl's mane of dark hair, her flashing brown eyes, her skin always tanned, her knees and elbows always scraped. A wild one, even in childhood. She had been seven when her uncle destroyed their world, when Dies Irae shattered their halls, and the harps were silenced.

Seven is too young, too young to understand, Lacrimosa thought. She was too young.

She felt a tear on her cheek. And I was too young when I married Benedictus, too young when I had my children, the loves of my life, my Agnus Dei and my Gloriae. She had been only fifteen when she married Benedictus, twenty years her senior, to become a princess of Requiem. She had