Lahat ng Kabanata ng My little Dragon Queen: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

The dragons continue to grow. They are still relatively small, enough that Alcina can cradle each of them in her joined palms, but no longer small enough that she could do so one-handedly. As Orion and Perseus grow in size, so do their personalities, each growing louder and louder inside of Alcina’s head until she has to learn anew how to tune out the dragons’ sensations from her own. Their fire-breathing capabilities, too, become confirmed, as both of them have recently begun to snort out brief jets of fire when they’re agitated.It’s all in harmless fun for now, but Alcina dreads the day they grow more masterful with their flames and isn’t at all sure how she’s going to tackle that particular hurdle when it arrives.Perseus, as of late, has grown particularly attached to Brendan, such that he’s found sidling up to the lord at least half the time, even in Alcina’s own presence.There’s a part of Alcina that wonders with mortification whether it’s a matter of transference, given tha

It is nearing midnight, Alcina breathless after countless rounds along the dance floor, when Brendan begins to guide her to the doors.It is late, but the ball is still in full swing, the music crescendoing louder as the people, too, grow more vibrant and rowdy with the sinking evening.Alcina, cheeks flushed with exertion, glances in confusion between Brendan and the slowly diminishing dance floor, but going willingly nonetheless.“What is it?” she asks but receives no answer in favor of a little, secretive smile.Halfway down the marble hallway, Brendan discards his mask, and Alcina, befuddled, slowly does the same.In silence - though not unbroken by Alcina’s occasional grumbles, something along the lines of acting so mysterious for no reason other than to seem bizarre - the two of them walk along a series of halls until Alcina finds herself being led through a previously unexplored part of the palace.It feels calmer here, as though there aren’t enough people walking through it on

Marriage, Alcina finds, is oddly not very different from being engaged.At least in the way that she experiences it.Nothing changes between the two of them, and it’s a constancy that Alcina revels in - this feeling of being settled. Of being wanted and of being kept.Her two brothers depart rather quickly after the wedding, given that they’d already stayed longer than they were really able to.It’s a bit of a tearful goodbye, of course, and Alcina clings to them for longer than propriety might have deemed proper.It helps that they would be seeing one another in only two months’ time. Nordin and Alfred’s wedding, after all - a grand and widespread event that had been in the works for years - would be their next reunion. It also helps that Alcina has Brendan’s hand to clutch onto as she watches her brothers board the carriage that would take them back to the Heartlands.She stands on the front steps of the castle, holding too-tightly onto Brendan’s hand, watching with wet eyes the

In another few weeks’ time, it is time to depart for the Heartlands to attend Nordin and Alfred’s wedding.Alcina finds herself, for the most part, overcome with a conflicting mess of emotions as to her return home.“Home,” she’d called it, but it hadn’t been until her arrival to the Western Plains, to Brendan, that she’d realized, perhaps it had never truly been much of a home at all.Alcina thinks of looking up into her parents’ faces - that stone-faced silence from her father and the sharp edge of lingering disappointment that had never left her mother’s - and something curdles in her stomach.But she supposes, for all of her reservations about returning to the House that had thrown her aside, she will be doing so to attend the most sacred and treasured event for the two people who had made it home, nonetheless, for her first twenty-two years.And she will do so with the person who, for the past few months, had been her home; had made Alcina a home, here, giving Alcina the space an

Alcina doesn’t remember very well what happens next.She can only recall in blurred snippets of colors and sensations, filling her heart with a blackened char and ice.But what she does remember is this:She remembers running into the fire headfirst.Remembers locating that crumpled, prone form in the center of the inferno and throwing herself at it with a choked, painful sob.Remembers desperately pulling Brendan’s shoulders into her lap, curling over him. The feeling of sorrow, panic, and rage is so strong that it consumes her whole, leaving behind nothing but this dark, black pit in the center of her chest where her heart ought to be.She doesn’t realize, then, that the fire doesn’t burn.That all around her, where the flames lick at her skin, the only sensation she feels is a dull, pleasant warmth.She doesn’t realize, either, that as she cradles Brendan’s unconscious - dead? - body in her arms, the fire slowly ceases to burn him, too.Because all Alcina can focus on, the only th