landscape, the same landscape that he had seen from high overhead, even though he wasn’t able to make out much else about it. He could feel the energy of this land, he could feel the power that was within it, and he recognized there was dragon power here.
Were there other dragons that he had yet to see?
As Jason focused on that energy, he tried to see if there might be a dragon pearl or even a dragon or, worse—what if there was a Dragon Soul?
Jason didn’t think that was the case.
The rumbling continued around him. The mist swirled, a steady sort of movement to it. Smoke and the haze within danced around him.
All of it was disconcerting, and it made it difficult for Jason to focus, to pay attention to anything other than that strange energy he detected all around him.
There was little doubt in his mind that these were powerful dragons. Even the smoke dragon released a sense of vast energy. Lorren had misled him.
Of course Lorren would have misled him.
Lorren wouldn’t have wanted to admit the kind of power that he had access to.
Jason recognized the energy within the smoke dragon, and it came to him as something familiar. Within the smoke was a sense of irritation. Rage.
It reminded him of the iron dragon.
Jason smiled to himself.
Perhaps the iron dragon should have come.
Then again, the iron dragon wouldn’t have been able to make it here.
Heading through the cold would’ve been stressful for him, and Jason had already traveled with the iron dragon enough times through the cold that he realized there were limits to how far and how well the iron dragon could fly against those conditions.
“We could talk. I have worked with other dragons much like you.”
“There are no other dragons like us,” a voice said.
This was strange, twisted, and higher-pitched.
Could it be a female dragon?
Had Lorren had a female dragon, Jason would have expected that he would have done anything to protect it.
Of course.
That explained far more than anything else he had seen so far.
Lorren had been protecting her.
“Who are you?” Jason asked.
He focused on the power within him, and he tried to focus on the energy that he detected all around him. There was that of the earth dragons, that of the mist dragons, even that of the smoke dragons, but what he felt on top of that was something else.
He didn’t even know what it was, only that what he detected felt different.
It was unique.
A misfit, that much was certain, especially given what he knew about Lorren and the type of dragons he kept. He stayed in place, holding onto the power of the ice dragon, feeling the irritation from the iron dragon, and using that to probe.
“I am the queen,” she said.
“The queen of what?”
“The queen of dragons.”
A shape appeared in front of him.
Jason hesitated, feeling uncertain, but there was a dark shadow that loomed out of the fog and the haze and the mist. The dragon that came toward him was enormous. Jason had never seen anything quite like her. As he stared, he couldn’t help but feel a trembling within him.
“The queen?”
“The queen of the dragons.”
Power radiated out from her. It was the kind of power that Jason had never felt before, the kind of power he recognized as definitely dragonlike, but he couldn’t tell if this was a typical dragon—or if this was a misfit.
The shadow loomed even larger, standing tall, and massive wings spread out to either side, and then she reared up.
The mist around her lifted. It had been enormous, the mist incredible, and yet, as she lifted up, Jason was aware of just how powerful she was. He could feel the energy radiating off her. Somehow, she been masking that power and that energy, and somehow she’d been hiding from him.
Now that she reared up in front of him, she seemed almost as if she wanted to make him fully aware of that power within her. It was almost as if she wanted him to know that she was there, and that she was powerful.
Heat began to radiate from her, wafting away in a cloud of power and energy. Jason stood back, looking up at her.
The sense of her was immense, enormous, and incredible. As he stared at her, feeling the power coming off her, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he had made a mistake in coming here.
He probed gently, using ice and iron, mixing them together, and he pushed. For the first time when