46. Hers
Agadart's reality shifts...
The Queen’s Aerie is a MMF fantasy romance (romantic fantasy?) in 57 parts that I serialized throughout 2023/2024! If you are just now joining the story, you can catch up by starting here. Full story ToC here.
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Previously: Rodgardae was brought up to date whether he liked it or not...
Agadart shuffled on the platform, her claws scraping against the wood. The sound was weird and unsettling, so she picked up her hand and looked at her fingers but didn’t recognize them. They were darkened and leathery, her fingers long and bent at strange angles, and her palm did not look like it was supposed to.
Like the way she remembered it.
She sniffed the air, the salty brine of the sea rife with the rich scent of the life that swam within it, living and dying and mating and giving birth in the deep, unfathomable, waters. It felt strange to be sitting on the water in such a way, and her senses were tuned to everything that was happening around her – including the people who were out on the ships, circling the fake, floating strip of land that she was on.
There was blood in the air too, but that she knew the source of. It was the person/dragon/creature curled up in a ball, like a baby animal trying to protect itself from a storm. But it was the thing who had attacked her chosen mate, so she had no sympathy for it.
The drive to kill the enemy who had hurt her mate was strong, but deep inside, somewhere in the dark recesses of her rational mind, she remembered that doing so would be wrong. That killing in a straightforward way like that, as much sense as it made to her, was also something that at other times in her life she would call murder. Whatever crimes he had committed he should stand trial for them, no differently than what she had been through facing her queen…No, not her queen. The dragon she was thinking of was just a dragon to her. A peer, not a ruler, not someone who was in any way divine or special.
And what did that mean? She wondered as she toddled over to her injured enemy and sniffed over him with her sensitive nose. Walking was weird as well, because with every step she warred between her instinct to stand on her hind legs versus the sensation of being off-balance and wanting to walk on all fours with her strange hands-claws. Part of her stood outside of herself looking at herself, and knew that she had become a dragon – the most impossible thing that she could have ever imagined had happened to her without warning, and without explanation.
She heard a strange cry in the skies up above and looked up and saw a distant spot becoming larger quickly as it shot down from the heights that it had been flying toward the fake land – the platform – that she was standing on. She grumbled, but knew that this dragon was not a danger to her. In fact she knew that few single dragons would be… she did not stop to question why she believed that to be true.
The massive beast dropped down lightly onto the far side of the platform, opposite from where her enemy lay bleeding and whimpering. It had one front leg held out daintily, then gently set something down on the platform. It smelled familiar to her and she went closer to inspect it.
The large dragon, who owed her no fealty, dipped its head and then took off again, straight up into the sky, avoiding the enemy dragons that were circling with the ships at a distance. She looked back towards what had been dropped on her platform and gently, if awkwardly, used one claw to pull the fabric away. She knew who it was before she even saw him, as his scent rolled out from the material as it fell open: Mani.
Matrica Mani. Her…mate? Another? Also?
She scooted backwards a little, scared to touch him in her current form and afraid of her own power. She heard a splash off to the side and looked over to see another dragon, one with a hide similar to hers, such a dark blue indigo it could be black and scattering light like diamonds across it as water shed down off its wings and tail. She did know this dragon, even if he was unfamiliar to her. She knew him. He was family.
She did not know how she knew that, but she did in the same way she knew that Mani was one of her chosen; that he was, in the most basic sense, hers.
