Lahat ng Kabanata ng My little Dragon Queen: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

Alcina sips dutifully at the glass of water Brendan had forced upon her, eyes doleful as she peeks up at him from underneath her lashes.Brendan stands over her, arms crossed, not unlike an ominous guard watching with keen eyes as if to ensure Alcina truly is drinking the water. They had hardly made it to the closest parlor room from the courtyard entrance when Brendan had promptly sat her down on a chair and ordered a terrified attendant to fetch a pitcher of water.Alcina sips obediently at her second glass now, shoulders slumped both in exhaustion and misery as she glances up at Brendan through her drenched bangs.“Why do you look as though someone has slaughtered your childhood pet?” Brendan demands.Alcina recognizes the terseness of Brendan’s awkward attempts at caring for someone, but cannot help the slight grimace all the same. “You were watching, weren’t you?” she says sullenly, mouthing at the rim of her cup. “I was terrible-”“You were not terrible,” Brendan begins to say,

Somewhere far, far below the grounds of the Western Plains, is an elaborate passageway of holding cells, built of heavy metal bars and lit only by the sparse torches.The dungeons, though no one quite likes to use the word.The dungeons have long been empty for years, having only been used once in recent times. And only briefly, too, given that the inhabitant had been quickly disposed of, once all the information had been extracted from his mind with Lord Alfred’s Gift.Today, the unused torches in the dungeons have been lit once more, for a new guest.It is a young woman, hardly older than twenty, her features lovely and delicate in violent contrast to the grimy holding cell she has been chained to. Everything about her seems like a sacrilege, here, in the dank walls of a dirty underground prison; as though she is something that does not belong in a place so dirty and murky.Even the color of her hair - pale pink locks, vibrant even in the darkness of the cell - stands at odds with t

The courtyard is a ruined wasteland.Everywhere the eye can see, the ground is shattered into nothing more than rubble, uneven and dusty and jagged with uneven footing.But there is one woman who maintains perfect balance, even as the ground shakes violently underneath her precarious red heels: the Duchess, hair flawlessly coifed with not a single strand out of place, even four hours into their training session.She lifts her chin, and a massive, tapered boulder, narrowed to a lethal point, separates itself from the ground.And then, it goes shooting forward, soaring through the air to hurtle towards the two figures hovering in the sky. Alcina sees it coming and grits her teeth as Orion dives sideways in a spinning tumble to avoid it.The Duchess straightens up.All of a sudden, the ground falls still.The silence that follows feels oddly deafening in Alcina’s ringing ears, after hours of its cacophonous din. She, too, straightens up, peering down at her mother in confusion. The Duc

In the morning, Alcina wakes earlier than her husband.It is not often she gets to experience such a luxury, given that Brandon is the early riser between the two of them. But occasionally, on mornings like this, Alcina has the privilege of waking before Brandon, and looking over to see her husband’s face smoothed with slumber.Alcina had never thought she’d grow to adore another’s features the way she has Brandon’s.It is an endless fascination for him, one that she could spend hours tracing the lines and dips and curves of, without end. Even now, Alcina turns and shuffles a little closer, pillowing her head on one arm while her other reaches up of its own accord, fingers reaching out to-She stills.Her fingers, still outstretched towards the slope of Brandon’s nose, hover uncertainly in mid-air. They twitch, before she brings her hand back to tuck tightly against her own chest, biting her lip.Alcina stares at Brandon, now, the man who had fearlessly and lovingly grasped the very h

“You would wage a war, For my daughter?”Brandon’s gaze flickers up to meet Duches's eyes, wretchedly amused.“Madame,” he laughs, low and dark, and in it, she hears something ruinous.This man, she realizes then, is one who would wage not one war, but thousands of wars, all in the name of devotion to her daughter.“I would do far more than fight a war, for your daughter,” he says, condescension laced into every word, lips parting to reveal a cold and predatory, calamitous facsimile of a grin. “and I would win it.”And as the Duchess stares into Lord Brandon’s face, she discovers, that there is something frightening like no other nightmare in the world could replicate, in a devotion like this. An ardent, zealous, terrifying brand of devotion, one that is more befitting of a creature they call the Shadowed Beast than a man.For better, or for worse.The man - the monster - to whom she had bartered off her own daughter, with thoughts of a hundred and thirty thousand lives, and hundreds