Dragon Found (The Dragon Queen, #1)

by Sam Hall

Would I want that? A quick end to what promised to be a long and painful life. If I was a heroine in a penny dreadful, I would’ve rather died than experience the indignities I’d been forced to endure thus far. Unfortunately, I was no heroine. Instead, a need burned inside my breast, one that was difficult to articulate. To live, to keep on breathing, to survive,

Pigs are startlingly intelligent creatures. So much so, it’s probably a minor crime against nature that we slaughter them for their meat.

By losing my position of privilege, I’d been forced to confront another reality and while I was down at basically the bottom level of society, all of my assumptions, my expectations had been challenged. Life wasn’t about right or wrong or fair or unfair. No, instead in the real world it was might equals right. Well, now, I was the one wielding the might.

There was only her. She speared into me, breaking me open, forcing her way inside me, filling me with the most complete and utter love, the like of which I was unsure I’d ever experienced. Then she pushed her shell away and there she was. Golden, tiny, completely perfect and mine. “Hello, little one,” I said, choking on the words, the little dragon’s head tilting to one side at the sound of my voice. I hurriedly wiped away my tears, not wanting a drop to fall on her. “Welcome to the world.”

“You are perfect.” My voice was one part assertion, one part vow. “The most perfect dragon that’s ever lived. I would lay down my life for you, do anything to ensure you grow into the queen you are.”

His eyes met mine, and it was only now that I noticed they were the endless grey blue of a winter sky. “What do you want to be called?” Did he know how alluring that simple offer was? No one had asked me what I’d wanted for so damn long, it took my breath away to even consider it.

I felt it then, an echo of what they experienced at the sight of her, and it was daunting. Such love, such focus. It washed through me, my eyes forced to close as tears pricked at the corners. I’d never expected to feel something like this again, and the awareness of that seemed to make it swell further and further, filling me up, running into all of the cracks in my soul until… “Take a breath, lass,” a deep voice said, a hand coming to rest on my shoulder blades and somehow that sensation became a part of everything else I was experiencing. “But—” I began to say. “We know.” Soren’s voice was coarse, almost ragged with emotion. “We have always known.” And with that, I let out a long sigh.

Later I would realise that this was the moment when I reclaimed what I was, who I was. Pig was dead, swallowed up by dragons, just like Cecily and Arabella had been. Lady Pippa had been revived from the mud like some bedraggled phoenix and in the process had become Pippin. And Pippin? She was prepared to shoulder the responsibilities, the power of being a lady once more, because she was never going to be pushed down into the mud again.

But, while I wasn’t afraid of asking for help when needed, I’d found life as a pig herder had taught me one thing. People spoke of abstract values like loyalty, freedom and fairness, as if they were lodestones that led them through life, but they forgot the one that really drew people forward. Power.

My mouth opened to speak, but he pressed his thumb across the gap there. “Yes, beauty. Beautiful enough to draw a man’s eye, have him moving closer, wanting to catch your scent in his nose, to feel you shiver beneath him, because you are a terrible thing, Lady Pippa.” His head came down, getting closer and closer, but he stopped himself from closing the gap between our mouths, even as my lips pulled free of his thumb and tipped up for him. “A combination of complete artlessness and… hope.” I heard the pain in his voice at that last word. “There’s nothing more seductive than that.”

Because that was the thing that the men in that inn, in all of the pubs across Nevermere, didn’t understand. Women, respectable women, were shepherded through life. From the hands of one man to another, father to husband to grave, we were possessions. But that woman? She made her own coin, could no doubt have her choice of partners to play each of her consorts.

Glimmer and I were queens and we were going to find a way through this situation together. Of course, we will, she said. But first, breakfast.

Every woman needs to be called a fascinating creature at least once in her life. To be caught up in a magical moment where your head spins slightly and you’re not sure if it’s for him or just the wine. To have him stare down at you like you are the only woman in the world and then dart forward to press his lips to yours.

A dragon does not worry about the opinions of the sheep,

“Lift your hips up, my queen.”