Page 58 of Into Ember

It banks over the towers, slow, enormous, and the gold light off the windows catches it from underneath — scales, a body the size of a house hanging up there like the air weighs nothing — and the sound reaches me a second late, a deep whump of wingbeats I feel in my sternum before my ears get any of it.

My knees dip and I’m halfway to the ground before I know I’m going there, and Rayner’s hand is under my elbow like it was already waiting.

That’s a dragon.

Dragons aren’t real. I have read a thousand books about them and they are not real, they’re a genre, they’re a shelf at the bookstore, they’re— and it turns, and the whole sky changes, and okay. Okay. They’re real.

They’re real, and everyone keeps saying that I’m—

Nope. One impossible thing at a time. That’s the policy, effective immediately.

“My queen?” Anya has stopped too. All three of them are looking at me with polite confusion.

“It’s only a patrol, my queen,” Neve offers, helpful, baffled. “They fly every evening.”

Only. Like it’s no big deal.

“She’s fine,” Brock says, and then he’s at my ear, low, just for me, under whatever the gray women can hear. “Breathe, Pretty. That’s the Legion. He’s a long way up, and nothing in this sky would ever hurt you.” His hand comes to rest at my back, warm, easy, and settles something in me. “You’re his queen. He’ll bow to you just like we all will. Just look. That’s all you have to worry about right now.”

Just look. That I can do. I’m already doing it. I couldn’t stop doing it if the castle caught fire.

It crosses the last of the light and slides behind the towers, and my heart is pounding so hard I can hear it.

Brock starts to say something else. But he stops himself. His hand leaves my back and I’m walking again, somehow, one foot and then the other. Rayner stays close enough that I could fall in any direction and it would be fine.

I look back at Brock. “You and I are going to talk about that later. Once I can form sentences again.”

He grins, the fucker.

Gates. A courtyard. Torches burning in the open. Doors twice my height, already swinging inward, and then we’re inside and I stop walking.

Stone and candlelight everywhere. Chandeliers hang the whole length of the hall, iron rings crowded with little flames, and at the far end a staircase wide enough to march an army up climbs and splits toward two separate wings. People hurry across the floor with linens and flowers and trays, dozens of them, and every single one slows down to look at me.

This is all for me.

No, this isn’t real. It can’t be.

I grew up on a cul-de-sac. I have a couch from an outlet sale and a car payment. People are carrying flowers through a castle because I’m in it, and my brain has stopped working and just stands there with the rest of me.

Somewhere to my left, Gunnar breaks.

A snort, then all of it, and Brock goes down with him, and now two enormous ancient warriors are wheezing in the doorway while the staff pretends very hard not to notice.

“Your castle, my queen,” Gunnar manages.

“I will have you executed,” I say. “I know people now.”

That finishes Brock entirely.

Leif isn’t laughing. He stands inside the doors and goes over the hall piece by piece, the staircase, the people, the flames, and doesn’t like what he finds. At least I’m not the only one who thinks this is insane.

“Your chambers are this way, my queen.” Anya starts up the staircase, left side, and there’s nothing to do but follow her, past faces that dip as I pass, up steps worn smooth in the middle, down a corridor with carpets far older than me. Maybe older than them.

Gerald’s head slides out of my hair somewhere along the way. I feel him moving, looking, and he makes a noise I’ve never heard him make.

I don’t speak pangolin, but that didn’t sound like a compliment.

The doors at the end of the corridor are carved, floor to ceiling, and Anya pushes them open on a room bigger than my entire apartment. A fire already burning. A table laid with more food than six people could finish. Another door standing open on candlelight and steam.