Lahat ng Kabanata ng My little Dragon Queen: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

As always, Alcina paces the floor with near frenetic energy in the hallway outside the meeting room.Duchess Clair had forbidden her from further meetings, citing Alcina's emotional preoccupation to have rendered her unable to participate in the proceedings with the objectivity required of war.There is a part of Alcina that wonders how loathsome it is to be able to speak of objectivity and the greater good.Perhaps Alcina's mother is right, after all, that she is ill-suited to war, given that such concepts are complex for her to grasp. Not when every time she closes her eyes, she can still see Brendan's last, parting smile seared into her mind with a vengeance.It has been two days since Brendan was taken.Since he had been stolen from her.And still, no one moves.Commander Lincoln is tied up in the Western Plains, given the nation has never been more vulnerable than now, when their greatest strength and future king has been taken.Alfred, future Duke as he may be, is nonetheless se

In the throne room, Cedric pulls his blade free from Brendan’s abdomen with a sickening, wet, slick blood spattering immediately onto the marble floor to join the growing pool of red.Brendan’s head lolls on his shoulders, his vision blinking in and out from a haze of whites and duplicates, pallor drained almost entirely of color.His hands and legs are bound in a metal chain. There is a metal collar on his neck, which bit into his skin as the blood trips down from there. His hand is covered with black fur, which is sticking together as the blood-soaked and dried on it.His fingers turned into claws, and his razor-sharp nails are fallen at his clawed feet. Cedric took his sweet time cutting them all out. Brendan doesn’t have the energy or a will to summon his magic or power, but a faint black shadow still surrounds him. Trying to protect him from the torcher, from the agony but-The shadows are barely visible to the naked eye as it gets lost in the black fur adorning his body. But it

Orion lets out an unholy screech as the wave of soldiers threatens to pull her under, and a spear manages to pierce the soft underside of the tip of her wing.The panic in Alcina rises higher, and she feels as though she cannot breathe.The soldiers continue to advance, unminding the dead bodies that litter the floor. It seems as though there is an endless supply of them, pouring in from the double doors, new ones replacing each one that Orion manages to befell. This, Alcina thinks in her bleak despair, is why her mother told her that she is unfit for battle. She was not wrong.Alcina’s hands curl around the chains in her hands, ignoring the stinging pain of her torn skin, and her eyes clench shut when a massive, thundering roar cuts through it all.Alcina’s heart pounds in her chest, this time, not with panic, but with a vengeance.Over the balcony, a huge, looming shadow appears.The soldiers freeze in their advance.And with another ear-splitting, heart-shaking roar of fury, Perse

When Brendan has been unconscious for two days, Alcina has taken to reading to him.She doubts that Brendan can actually hear or register a single word, but. Alcina feels as though she might go mad if she spends another day just staring at Brendan, watching for any signs of him waking up that never come.And for another, she hopes-Well.She hopes that Brendan is not trapped in his terrible nightmares when Alcina cannot reach him and protect him from his own shadows; hopes that Brendan is dreaming of happy, pleasant things if he is in a place where Alcina cannot go.But Alcina cannot help but to think of Brendan as the man who had endured the worst of his own shadows, night after night when they had first met.And so she reads, hoping that, perhaps, the sound of her voice will help keep the nightmares away; that perhaps she might be able to replace them, instead, with dreams of Brendan’s favorite constellations, and that Brendan might be able to spend this time with those stars that h

When dawn breaks, Brendan is wide awake.Sleep doesn’t come as easily, apparently, after forty-eight hours of continued torture at the edge of a blade. He has already slept far more than enough. Besides.Glancing down at the girl sleeping beside him curled half into his lap, one hand tangled tightly together with one of Brendan’s with her cheek resting atop their joined hands, Brendan supposes that sleep is a needless concept when he has this particular vision spread in front of him.Of Alcina, lashes fanned across her delicate cheeks, her skin aglow in the light of the breaking day.Brendan’s thumb shifts and counts the beats of Alcina’s pulse on the inside of her wrist.Wonders, when that rhythm had become the singular center around which the rest of the world revolves.Wonders when and how he had managed the inconceivable: to gain the love of a creature as unsullied as Alcina.It is this thought, then, that begins to spread outwards and consume his thoughts, such that it’s still