Chương 231: 39. Scorched Earth 3

I'd assumed that once we actually cleared that sea of fire, my head would loosen up a little. It didn't. The wind was still vicious. The night was still freezing. The spot on my chest where she'd hit me still ached faintly. And I was currently plastered flat against the back of a red fire-dragon, both hands locked on the saddle, saying goodbye to an entire harbor that was actively turning into a chapter in a history book. Expecting calm under those circumstances was, frankly, asking too much of me.

Once we'd put enough distance between ourselves and Isca Apubra, the fires below were slowly swallowed by night and cloud, until only the very edge of the horizon still glowed red — like someone had left a wound at the far end of the sea that simply refused to close. I looked back once. Claiming I felt nothing would be a lie. Down there were the streets I'd nearly run myself to death across over these past few days. The docks where I'd almost lost my life outright.

A harbor full of nonsense I'd been forced to listen to and lunatics I'd been forced to watch in action. And a Drake Tower that, by now, was probably nothing but drifting smoke. It wasn't my country. It wasn't my home. Strictly speaking, it had never even been my responsibility. But people are strange, faulty things — nearly die in one place a handful of times, and you end up saddled with feelings about it that have absolutely no business existing.

"Stop looking back." Her voice came from ahead. I lifted my chin off her spine.

"I thought dragons weren't supposed to get distracted mid-flight."

"I'm not distracted," she said.

"You just turned your head loudly enough to notice."

"... Fair." I stayed quiet a moment, then added it anyway.

"Just confirming it actually burned clean."

"It burned perfectly clean." Her tone stayed flat, almost cruel in its calm.

"Enough to make Yanxia's heart ache for quite a while."

"Then I can rest easy."

"Your definition of resting easy is bizarre."

"I can't exactly let all that undignified scrambling tonight go to waste." She didn't answer right away. Up here, there was only the wind, the low resonance of her wing membranes, and the unnervingly steady rhythm of her flight. Compared to Lei Lian's blue dragon — lean, precise, distinctly military — Ignicia flew heavier. Grander. Not slower; if anything, faster, but with a speed that never bothered to announce itself. As if the sky had simply always belonged to her to pass through.

I watched the clouds roll open ahead of us for a while before I couldn't hold it in any longer.

"That thing I said earlier. Feel free to pretend you didn't hear it." She didn't look back.

"Which thing?"

"... You know exactly which thing."

"I heard a great many things today."

"You know precisely which one I mean." This time, she went quiet for two full breaths. Long enough that I seriously considered faking unconsciousness, just to preserve some kind of tactical retreat for my dignity. Right before the silence finished me off completely, she finally spoke.

"I have no intention of pretending I didn't hear it." I froze. The wind tearing past my ears suddenly sounded far louder than it had a moment ago.

"... Oh." That may be the single stupidest sound I have ever made in my life. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. But there was nothing to be done about it.

There are moments when a human brain simply loses whatever thin, hard-won grip it normally has on basic composure — especially when the person cornering you with a tone implying nothing at all out of the ordinary has occurred is the exact same princess who, within the span of one evening, buried her face in your chest, hit you twice, and then burned down an entire harbor. She kept flying forward, apparently unconcerned that my face had, by this point, achieved an expression too undignified to be shown in public.

"But now isn't the time to discuss it."

"That's a very you thing to say."

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"None at all," I answered immediately.

"I'm simply realizing that I appear to have sold myself off tonight using a remarkably unsophisticated strategy." This time, she laughed. Very quietly. Almost torn apart by the wind. But I heard it.

"Relax," she said.

"You were never getting away from this anyway." Why did that sound so alarmingly dangerous? I very nearly asked which specific clause of which diplomatic treaty that fell under, but swallowed the words at the last second. Not out of fear, exactly — more out of a strong conviction that if I kept talking, my life expectancy would not survive the remaining distance to the capital. We flew on. The cloud cover thinned, and moonlight began spilling down through the gaps. The sea of fire fell far behind us.

Ahead, the sky had begun bleeding into the cold grey that comes just before dawn. Only then did it belatedly occur to me exactly how exhausted I was — bone-deep, marrow-level tired. From the harbor alarm, through the evacuation, the running, Drake Tower, the night raid, bombing ships, blowing the tower, and finally sending the entire port skyward — if I wrote everything I'd done tonight into a single report, it would be more than enough to give three separate government departments a simultaneous migraine.

"If you're tired, sleep." She said it out of nowhere. I blinked.

"On your back?"

"Would you rather the ocean?"

"... No, I just think this counts as remarkably high-end treatment for a foreign envoy."

"You're not an envoy right now."

"Then what am I?" She paused half a beat, as if hunting for the description least likely to terrify me outright while still being strictly accurate.

"Trouble."

"I'm aware of that much."

"Also a witness."

"That doesn't sound promising."

"And—" Another pause.

"Someone under my jurisdiction. For now." My fingers tightened on the saddle for one sharp instant. That line was more her than any straightforward confession could ever have been. No promises. No softening. Not gentle in the slightest — carrying, if anything, a faint edge of command. And precisely because of that, it sounded exactly like something she would actually say out loud. I pressed my forehead against the scales along her back and let my eyes fall shut.

"Your Highness. Saying things like that makes it very easy for a person to get the wrong idea."

"What wrong idea?"

"The idea that running back there wasn't a complete waste of time." She didn't answer. But the rhythm of the great wings beating ahead of me steadied, just slightly — in a way it hadn't been a moment before. Further on, we left the coastline behind entirely. The terrain below began to rise and roll, dark hills and mountain ranges stretching north like an exposed spine. The Dragon Kingdom's territory bore little resemblance to the human realms I knew.

Roads weren't the center of anything here; mountain winds and high-altitude flight corridors were. Place names I'd only ever encountered on maps now slid past beneath my feet, each one carrying the silent implication that I had better get used to this, and quickly. I forced myself to stay conscious long enough to ask, "How far is Latpan from here, exactly?"

"In a straight line, not far."

"That answer sounds suspiciously like a non-answer."

"Then I'll give you one you can actually use." Her tone stayed even.

"We'll enter the capital's outer airspace before sunrise."

"Airspace."

"A problem?"

"No. I'm just suddenly and very concretely aware that I have, in fact, been dragged into dragon territory."

"Only realizing that now?"

"You expect far too much from an ordinary human being." She made a small dismissive sound, apparently deciding I wasn't worth the effort of an actual argument. But in that small sound, I caught something else entirely. She had already started speaking to me in the tone of someone bringing me into her capital. Not sending me there. Not dropping me off along the way. Bringing me. The distinction was tiny — small enough that on any other day, I probably wouldn't have caught it at all. Tonight, though, I did.

And with that, some restless, nameless unease that had been floating loose in my chest finally settled quietly into place.

"Ignicia."

"Mm?"

"What happens to me, once we reach Latpan?" She didn't answer right away this time. The sky ahead was brightening by degrees, the edges of the clouds carved into cold white lines by the coming dawn, the silhouettes of distant mountains beginning to surface out of the dark. A dragon in flight, against a sky like that, looked less like a living creature and more like something ancient that mortals were never meant to encounter directly. After a while, she finally answered.

"First. You survive."

"Not exactly a shocking answer."

"Then. You explain everything you know."

"Fair enough."

"And finally—" She turned her head slightly. That golden, slit-pupiled eye found me at an angle, caught right on the line between the last of the night and the first of the morning.

"We find out whether you have what it takes to keep up with the pace of the Dragon Kingdom." I blinked.

"That sounds like a threat."

"It isn't a threat," she said.

"It's a preview."... Wonderful. I had an extremely bad feeling about this. I looked down at my own hands, still locked around the saddle, and felt an absurd urge to laugh.

"Let the record show—""Go on."

"If your plan involves teaching me how to dismount a dragon's back with any kind of grace, I am almost certainly going to disappoint you." This time, she genuinely laughed. Not loud. But unmistakable.

"Relax, Cedric." The morning wind rushed to meet us, carrying her voice further and brighter than the night ever had.

"That is absolutely not the only thing you'll be learning." I lifted my head. And there, straight ahead — past the last sea of clouds, past the final mountain ridge — the outline of something vast had begun to take shape against the distant sky. Like a crown built on high ground and wind. Like a capital that had always, unmistakably, belonged to dragons. We had reached Latpan.