Table of Contents

Title Page

August 1945

The Faerie Queene

Prologue

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part II

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Author's Note

More from Carrie

About the Author

Copyright Notice

In August 1945, shockwaves from the two atomic bomb explosions in Japan woke the dragons. After lying dormant underground for a millennium, they rose up against humanity. The last time they had fought, human armies possessed only swords, catapults and rudimentary gunpowder. This time, with human aircraft to match the dragons’ flight, the two sides were evenly matched. Eventually, they agreed on a truce. The dragons retreated to territory in the far north, but tensions lingered, and violent conflict once against seemed imminent—until seventeen-year-old Kay Wyatt, in a plan she concocted with a young dragon named Artegal, offered herself as a virgin sacrifice to preserve the peace.

The sacrifice was symbolic. Kay lived, and she and Artegal went on to search for Dracopolis, a fabled hidden refuge where dragons and humankind lived in peace.

Then with his waving wings displayed wide,

Himself up high he lifted from the ground,

And with strong flight did forcibly divide

The yielding air, which nigh too feeble found

Her flitting parts, and element unsound,

To bear so great a weight: he cutting way

With his broad sails, about him soared round:

At last low stooping with unwieldy sway,

Snatched up both horse and man, to bear them quite away.

--The Faerie Queene, Book 1, canto xi, stanza 18

The fourth day after the sacrifice, after a day of crossing the Atlantic, with Artegal flying low enough that a mist of salt water coated his body and Kay’s face, they reached the coast of Greenland and turned to follow it north. The pumping, swooping action of the dragon’s wings felt almost mechanical, and Kay had been clinging to his harness so hard, for so long, that she was numb. But they continued on, and on, until the ground below turned white and frozen. Until finally they saw the unbelievable: another dragon with harness around its chest and a rider on its back.

It might have been a mirage. Kay held her breath; Artegal’s wing beats tilted back, so he hovered.

As the flame-orange dragon circled in the distance, its rider waved, swinging an arm overhead for best visibility. Kay tried to wave back, but she was tired, her arms cramped from holding on so tightly. The sun glared off the ice, making her head ache. It was a wonder she could see anything.

But they’d done it. They’d found Dracopolis.

Artegal’s wings glinted white in the light as they dipped, and he descended. He landed hard, legs giving way, his body slumping to the snow. He was usually so nimble, so graceful. Now, the blue-gray dragon lurched, setting the claw tips of his wings on the rocks and heaving a sigh. He’d flown for almost a week with only a handful of rests and little to eat and drink. Now, they were nearing the end of the journey, and the strength he’d been harboring seemed to disappear. She leaned forward, touching the base of his neck, and called, “Are you okay?”

An affirming growl rattled in his throat. She started to unhook her harness from the clips connected to his ropes, and he tilted an eye toward her. “Wait,” he said in his rough, gentle voice.

Wait. If this didn’t go well, they’d need to get out of here. She blinked back tears. Where would they go? He didn’t have the strength to fly any farther. This had better go well.

The other dragon and rider continued flying in a wide, lazy circle above them, spiraling down to earth. This was what they’d come to find, Kay reminded herself—the secret settlement of dragons and humans living together in peace. Here was proof that the stories were true, and she and Artegal had known what they were doing the whole time. They weren’t the first to build a harness to secure a rider to a dragon’s broad back and go flying together.

Though late in the day, the sun still lingered above the horizon. It seemed to have hovered there all afternoon, and the slanting, hazy light reflecting off the gray sea on one side and a field of ice on the other stung Kay’s eyes. She wished she’d thought to bring sunglasses. A chill breeze cut at her face, but she was so used to the numbing bite of the wind while flying that she hardly noticed.

Above a nearby flat stretch of ground, the strange dragon dipped a colorful wing and plunged downward, bringing its hind legs under at the last minute to alight. The move was fast, graceful. The dragon stretched its wings before folding them back and leaning forward to rest. It kept its head raised, regarding them with a haughty, narrowed gaze. The scaled ridges over its eyes slanted, and its lips seemed to curl.

The dragon was twice as big as Artegal. Its scales flickered red, a flaming spark against the snow-swept landscape around them. Kay felt the muscles in Artegal’s back and neck tense, as if he was thinking of backing up or even launching. She took a stronger grip on the ropes.

The rider was a woman, her hair in a thick blond braid over her shoulder. She wore leather— a fur-lined coat and trousers, heavy boots, woolen gloves and a knitted scarf. Slotted glasses covered her eyes, defense against the snowblinding light. Over it all she wore a leather harness that fit snugly around her shoulders and torso. She pulled back a couple of straps, presumably undoing buckles, and slid off the dragon’s back, down its shoulder, landing on snow.

Calling enthusiastically and smiling, she marched toward Artegal. Kay didn’t understand her.

“What’s she saying?” Kay whispered to Artegal.

“Don’t know. And he hasn’t spoken yet.” He tipped his snout to the other dragon.

The other rider stopped, shaded her eyes and called, “English?”

Kay blinked. “Yes.”

“Where are you from? Where did you come from?” Her accent was strange, full of roundness and drawn-out vowels. Kay had trouble understanding her.

“West,” Kay said, pointing. “Across the Atlantic. The Rockies.” An entire ocean and most of a continent. God, what had she and Artegal been thinking?

The blond woman laughed. “Marvelous! Come down from there, eh? Let me look at you.”

Kay hesitated. “What do you think?” she murmured to Artegal.

“No choice, really,” he murmured back. “They seem calm.” The flame-colored dragon snorted.

Which probably meant they didn’t mean any harm. Kay had become paranoid. But this was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

“Don’t be ‘fraid!” the woman called. “You’re welcome here, very welcome!”

Hands shaking, Kay undid the clips on her harness that held her in place, and with much less skill and grace than the other rider, she skittered off Artegal’s back onto the icy ground. She stayed close to him, keeping her hand on his neck, and let the woman approach. He arced his neck around her, sheltering her. The message: they would have to contend with him if they wanted to hurt her.

Under the bulky clothes, the woman was stout, her face and ears rosy and chapped, her expression bright. She stopped close enough to talk, but far enough away that Artegal couldn’t reach her with his teeth. A polite distance, Kay though, recalling her own first meeting with the dragon.

“Welcome!” she said. “We’ve not had fresh news in ages. Ages! You’ll have to tell everything, how you came here, who you are—but later. When did you last eat?” She said this to Artegal.

Artegal huffed through his nostrils. “Days ago. Fish on the crossing.”

“That’s no good. We’ll feed you both, quickly then. I’m Inge. And you—”

“Kay,” she said, her voice hoarse; cautious. “This is Artegal.” She gestured up at the dragon, not yet ready to come out of the shelter of his wings. Artegal nodded at the woman.

Inge pursed her lips, considering, maybe a little bemused. She gestured to the reddish dragon. “He’s Rood, a little standoffish but no mind. Come with us. Come to Dracopolis, the others will wish to meet you.”

“Where is it?” Kay asked.

“Not far. We fly a bit, then walk a bit. Come on!” She trotted back to her dragon, the flame-colored Rood, who dipped his wing for her as she grabbed hold of his harness and pulled herself onto his back. The movement was so smooth, so perfect, they must have been doing this their whole lives.

“Are you okay?” Kay asked Artegal. Against the landscape of rock and ice, the color of his scales seemed to fade, more silvery and gleaming than blue. A dragon of ice.

“Yes,” he said. “Just a little more.”

More slowly and carefully than Inge had, she climbed on Artegal’s back. She was always careful, worried about stepping on a sensitive spot on his back or near his wings. Such care must have been second nature to Inge.

Inge and Rood launched, a burst of movement and a swoop of wings, powering straight up in a flurry of disturbed snow glittering around them. Artegal followed, muscles bunching, wings stretching, as if trying to match the impressive move, but he was simply too tired. He lurched, his wings scooping at the air several times before his body lifted. Kay lay flat on his back, still as she could to not throw him off balance. She looked forward, along his neck and past his head to see the other dragon flying, dipping and soaring, circling back to let Artegal keep up with him.

They left the coast and turned inland to fields of rock and ice, patches of ground where a thin, scrubby layer of vegetation kept hold. There was also steam, signs of hydrothermals. Soon, Rood descended. Kay propped herself up, leaning on Artegal’s back, looking for where Inge and Rood might be going, but saw nothing. More rocks, more ice. The dragon landed on a clear stretch of ground, and Artegal followed, sighing as he folded back his wings.

Kay unhooked her harness and slid off. Inge was already on the ground, waving them over. “This way! It’s not far.”

The dragons were surprisingly agile on the ground. Their huge bodies should have been bulky, ponderous, but they balanced on their claw tips, and their tails stretched out behind them like rudders, counterweights for their necks and heads. They stepped lightly, sinuously.

Kay had to scramble to keep up, staying out of Artegal’s way while also trying to keep close to her friend. Ahead, Inge’s long, practiced strides seemed to easily match her dragon companion’s. Like the flying, she’d probably been doing this all her life. Kay was a little envious, and a lot tired. She did the best she could.

She tripped on a rock, recovered, and grumbled at herself for being clumsy.

“Are you well?” Artegal asked, looking at her sidelong with a big onyx eye.

“Yeah. Just tired,” she said.

“Yes.”

Inge and Rood marched them up a gentle slope topped with craggy outcroppings of dark rock. Kay only spotted a break in the ridge when they rounded the top of the hill, and Inge leaned on a boulder. A path opened up, leading over the ridge and down, wide enough for a dragon to travel.

“Here we are!” she said.

Rood went down first, slipping over the ridge and vanishing. Kay marveled that a being that large could vanish. Inge gestured Kay and Artegal over next. Kay went first, bracing against the rocks and checking her footing. She didn’t trust her exhausted muscles. She stepped aside to give Artegal room to follow her.

The overhang protected a caldera filled with rubble, the result of old rockslides spilling into a cleft in the earth. Steam trailed up from some of the cracks, fissures leading to some geothermal source. Flying directly over the area, you’d only see rocks and ice. Here on the ground, the dark mouth of a cave was visible, a rough, broken opening and a path leading into it. Rood went into the darkness.

Kay and Artegal stared a moment. She wondered what they were getting into.

Inge approached. This close, Kay saw that she was shorter than she expected.

“Welcome,” she said. “You ready?”

Urged on by Inge, Kay and Artegal picked their way along the rubble field to the mouth of the cave.

Warm, wet air pressed out, and Kay caught her breath. The last couple of days, she’d only felt the cold bite of the freezing arctic. The darkness surrounded them quickly—little sun got past the hill and outcropping. She listened hard for the sound of Rood’s clawed feet scraping on the ground ahead, past her own noisy stumbling.

The tunnel they moved through seemed large to her. She couldn’t sense where the ceiling was, and she couldn’t touch the walls with her outstretched hands. But it must have seemed close to the dragons. Artegal would hit his head if he sat up, and Rood moved in a crouch.

Soon, a light ahead glowed, and the cave opened into an unbelievable valley.

Pools of water dotted a green meadow, scooped like a bowl and spreading far before her, farther than she could see. Livestock—goats and sheep—grazed in pastures, people worked in gardens, and smoke rose from chimneys in several dozen stone huts clustered along one side of the bowl. The valley, its meadows, pools, pastures, all its signs of people and habitation, continued forward, around a bend and beyond.

The jagged cavern walls, cut with ledges, pillars, and protrusions that looked like like teeth or stairs, stretched up to a ceiling dotted with holes, through which faint rays of sunlight poured, creating an ethereal twilight. Dragons perched there like carvings, dozens of them, lining the volcanic walls. Small as cars, large as houses, the colors of gems and forests. All watching with dark, glittering eyes. One launched, spread its wings, and glided to land in an open pasture near a pond that was filled by a running stream. Birdsong rose from a grove of trees.

Kay leaned on Artegal’s shoulder, staring. Artegal grumbled low in his throat, “It is like home. Except for the people.”

Apart from being underground, this might have been any pastoral village, like something out of an old painting. There must have been hot springs and thermal vents keeping the air warm. She wanted to take off her coat, lie in the grass, and sleep.

They were safe. They’d done it—they’d found Dracopolis. It was all true. She wiped her eyes, which had started to water. Artegal let out a sigh.

“I can’t guess what this must look like through your eyes,” Inge said. “Been quite a time since we had newcomers. Before my time, for certain.”

Rood took off from the end of the tunnel and flew toward the largest of the buildings in a cluster half way down the valley. This one was two stories, whitewashed, and had a bell tower. It might have been a church.

Inge unwrapped her scarf and pulled off her gloves and eye shades. “Rood’s gone to get the Elders. We’ll wait here, let them take a look at you.”

Kay felt her mind fuzzing out—this was too much to take in. It was all so strange and unbelievable. What was going to happen next? She had no clue. She couldn’t even imagine.

She turned to Artegal and started unsnapping the clips and untying the knots that held his harness in place. He’d been wearing it for a week, and it had rubbed some of his scales across his chest and under his wings dull. She could focus on the mundane task, coiling the ropes while Artegal stretched, shook out his wings and scratched at the spots where the harness had rubbed.

By the time she’d finished arranging the harness, a committee of sorts had arrived. Two people: a man and a woman, both of them older, their hair graying. They were smiling and seemed just as enthusiastic as Inge had on seeing them. Their clothing was rough, archaic—loose woven, natural colored shirts and trousers tied with sashes of red, blue, purple, woven jackets, and leather boots.

They seemed so happy to see her and Artegal.

“Welcome!” the woman said. She wore her long graying hair in a braid.

“We have not welcomed a newcomer in so long—how did you find us?” the man said. “Wait—do not talk yet. We will wait for Laris. He will want to hear this.”

“Laris?” Artegal said, his neck rising up, his head alert despite his exhaustion.

“You know him?” the man said.

“My Mentor.”

“Ahh!” the man said in wonder.

Kay put her hand on Artegal’s chest. He had wanted this so badly. His Mentor had left the Rockies a generation ago.

They didn’t wait long. Rood returned, soaring across the cavern and giving some idea of just how large the space was, that a dragon like him could fly across it. Another dragon was with him, even larger, so black he turned iridescent at the edges, purples and greens rippling in the light. Artegal shivered, rearranging his wings.

Rood came to rest on a nearby ledge. The stone hadn’t just been carved, she realized—they’d been worn down by the gripping claws of house-sized dragons using them as perches for centuries.

A large, flat pillar, like the base of a statue, stood at the entrance of the tunnel. The great black dragon came to land here, giving him the perfect vantage to look down at the newcomers like some kind of judge. When he spread his wings, they encompassed her and Artegal. He was a shadow. Kay put her clenched hand on her companion’s shoulder.

Artegal let out a sigh. Even under his scales, she felt him relax. He bowed his head before the great dark dragon, whose voice rumbled—a rattle, a growl. Artegal responded in kind. A dragon conversation, hushed. Vibrations of it prickled across her skin.

Artegal turned to her then. “Laris,” he said. “My Mentor.”

The hulking dragon bowed his head to her. “Welcome, Kay, to Dracopolis.”

She froze. She had never heard another dragon speak English. Laris’s words were deep, ominous. Words made out of thunder. His dark eyes seemed to glow gold. This was the monster of legends, the dangerous beast of Beowulf; The Faerie Queene. The source of all humanity’s nightmares. If she hadn’t had Artegal beside her she might have fainted.

“We waited for you,” the man said. He still hadn’t introduced himself and she hadn’t thought to ask what his name was. “Now then, you two—how did you find us?”

His tone was friendly rather than interrogating. Like he’d asked which road she’d taken, not what she was doing here at all. He had the same rolling accent as Inge.

“He had a book,” she said, nodding to Artegal. “We found a sheet of paper in it with coordinates and went looking.”

Laris grunted, steam rising from his nostrils. “I know this book, and where the page came from. Very old. Did not think you would use it,” he said to Artegal, who kept his head lowered. Kay couldn’t tell if he was being apologetic or just shy.

“The two of you together?” the woman said, and Kay nodded. “Then peace has come to the outer world?” she said, verging on elated.

Kay bit her lip. “No. Not even a little. We—” She and Artegal looked at each other. How did they explain what had happened?

“We made a sacrifice to stop war,” Artegal said.

They looked at him, startled. The obsidian dragon huffed a breath.

“We don’t know if it worked,” Kay added.

“You speak well, sir, if I may say,” the man said, nodding to Artegal.

“Practice,” he said, his scaled lips curling in what Kay knew was a smile.

The woman explained. “Here, most of us understand dragons’ speech, and they understand ours. Few of us speak the other’s tongue.”

Kay blinked in confusion, not sure what to say, not sure she understood. She already knew Artegal was special.

“Were you followed?” Laris asked.

“No. At least, I don’t think so,” Kay said, just as Artegal grunted a sound that she took to mean no. They were not followed.

“Good,” Laris said. “Then you are welcome.”

They kept this place well hidden. If Kay and Artegal had been followed? Well, that would have been bad.

The woman rubbed her hands together.

“Oh, my dear! How we carry on, with you so tired? You should sleep, then we talk, yes?” The woman started to come forward, but she hesitated and glanced at Artegal. His stance continued to be guarded, protective of Kay. “I’m Hilde, he is Njall. We’re friends, I warrant you.” Above them all, the dragon Laris nodded.

Artegal curled his neck back, tilting his head toward Kay. “Well?”

“What do you think?” she said.

“We need rest. This place—it’s what we searched for.”

She nodded, he blinked, and they came to a decision.

“All right,” Kay said, moving forward past Artegal’s reach and taking the woman’s offered hand.

Kay slept for the rest of the day and into the next.

She awoke on a pallet on the floor of a sunlit room, wearing a borrowed woven shirt and skirt. They had some trick that reflected and magnified the sunlight from the roof of the cavern at different times of day. This was definitely morning. She had wanted to stay up and talk last night, to learn more about this world, the underground valley and the people of Dracopolis. Instead, she’d passed out as soon as she was horizontal.

She remembered that Artegal had fallen asleep before her, curled up in the yard outside the house they’d taken her to. They’d offered him one of the high stone perches, but he’d asked to stay close to Kay. She felt better, knowing he was close by.

A basin of water sat on a dresser in the small, stone room. She washed her hands and face, dried them on the tail of her shirt. Her own clothes and equipment were piled in a corner, which relieved her—she’d been half afraid Hilde or one of the others would take them away while she slept. She didn’t know why she was worried. The borrowed clothing was clean and felt wonderful after a week of wearing the same ripe sweater, jeans, and coat. But her old clothes were a connection. She even still had her homecoming gown—the pale dress she’d worn as the virgin sacrifice, wadded up in her pack and hopelessly wrinkled. Tam, who’d helped pick it out, would be horrified.

Kay shook the thought away. This wasn’t a good time to think about her best friend Tam. Or Jon, the last person she’d hugged before she left.

She still didn’t know if he understood why she’d done it.

Feeling more awake, she went out the door and into the yard, a stretch of grass that ran up to the rocky wall of the cavern.

Artegal was awake and sitting up, his hind legs folded under him and his wings tucked back to his sides. He was eating from a basket, plucking rabbit-sized furry bundles with his narrow snout and pointed teeth, and gulping them down. Like popcorn. It was almost funny, and a lot weird. Except for the fish he’d grabbed from the ocean on the journey here, Kay had never seen him eat.

“Morning,” she said, and he nodded to her.

“Well?” he asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Better,” he said, and he sounded it, his voice clearer, his mood brighter. One of the people here had given him a salve for the sores from the harness; they were healing.

Beyond the house, voices carried. Kay peeked and saw a crowd of people gathering, talking excitedly. On the cavern walls above dozens of dragons watched from their perches. Kay stared—she’d never seen so many dragons, all looking down on her, obviously curious. Two little ones, one bright green and another bright yellow, were no bigger than horses, and they leapt and dodged and bounced from perch to perch, creeping closer then springing away until one of the larger dragons hissed at them to be still. At least Kay assumed that was what the larger dragon hissed, because the two small hyper dragons settled to a perch, necks bowed, chagrined. Children—they were children.

Word must have spread that newcomers had arrived. And there was Laris, a space open around him, accompanied by respectful quiet.

Hilde, Njall and Inge came around the corner of the house with a basket of their own. They must have been watching for her, waiting until she woke up. Smiling, welcoming, they spread out a picnic on a blanket and invited her to join them.

The food was simple, but luscious—soft, mild cheese; sliced apples and dried berries; just-out-of-the-oven bread. Her mind a little clearer, Kay felt she was able to respond more graciously than she had earlier. She smiled back and said thanks.

Artegal finished his meal, took the basket in his snout and set it politely aside.

While they ate, Hilde said, “Now, tell us all. We’ve not had news from outside in three score years or more.”

Kay told them. She wasn’t qualified to give a history lesson—where would she even start with that? So she started with how she and Artegal met, how the dragons had been living in their own territory, how it was illegal for them to talk with one another at all, but they had, and had kept doing it. How that had led to them learning to fly, which had put them in the middle of things when tensions rose and the first battle in sixty years happened in the skies over her hometown of Silver River between Air Force fighter jets and dragons. She didn’t mention that a dragon and a human pilot had died in that skirmish, or that her father had died in a fire set by dragons. Only that she and Artegal took the stories of virgin sacrifice to heart and made the outrageous gesture, hoping they could at least make both sides stop and think.

She and Artegal had no way to know if it had worked.

“I was thinking after we’d had a couple of days to rest we could fly back south, find a phone or an internet café or something—I figure even Greenland has to have an internet connection somewhere. I can get a message to my mom, or my boyfriend Jon, or even just check the news to see what happened—”

Her three hosts had stopped smiling. The air had grown still. Kay waited, wondering what she had said wrong.

Njall shook his head. “You can’t leave.”

Letting out the faintest growl, Artegal lowered his head. She looked back for him and reached to put a hand on his neck, to steady herself. Together, then, they stared at Njall.

“What?” she said.

Hilde’s smile returned, though sad and pitying this time. “My dear—this is how Dracopolis remains secret. No one can ever leave.”

Jon dragged the last of the rafts up the gravel riverbank and shouldered it onto the trailer. Water dripped off it, soaking his shirt and shorts, but he didn’t mind—it felt good in the afternoon heat.

He took his time tying down the rafts and checking all his knots again. The clients from this trip dawdled before boarding the bus back to town, snapping pictures of late afternoon sun glinting on Silver River, chatting and laughing, still pumped on adrenaline from the run. The stretch of river they’d traveled wasn’t that rough, but for someone who’d never been rafting it must have seemed terrifying, full of rocks and eddies, gushing water, and roaring rapids. Jon sometimes thought he wasn’t an assistant river guide so much as a babysitter, ferrying tourists on big, safe rafts, giving them a show. The tourist season in the town of Silver River had been booming—it didn’t matter how many experts said the region was dangerous, that the park service and Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement warned people away because of the unstable situation with Dragon. People wanted to be here, to see for themselves where the next war with the dragons had almost started.

Almost, but hadn’t. The truce that Kay and Artegal had worked for was holding for now. He was so proud of her—and then he tried not to think of her. He missed her, and he didn’t know when he would see her again. Or even if he would.

He didn’t want to think about that.

A lone car was parked in the staging area. He thought it belonged to a hiker or sightseer, but then a well-dressed guy climbed out of it and came toward him. He was from the city—hardly mattered which—with his gray T-shirt, brown tailored blazer over it, designer jeans and polished leather shoes. His dark hair was trimmed, slicked back, and his skin was perfect. Guy like that wasn’t from Silver River, that was for sure. He carried a handheld digital recorder, and Jon knew what came next. He ducked his head and tried to ignore him.

“Hi!” the city guy said. “You’re Jon Allen, aren’t you? I’m Brandon Lopez from People magazine, mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“I can’t talk now, I’m working,” Jon muttered, turning his back to the guy.

“Just a couple of questions. We can talk while you work.”

For the third time, Jon tightened the knots that secured rafts to the trailer. Some of the tourists were looking over; one of them pointed a cell phone for pictures. Jon resisted an urge to snarl back.

“You’re Kay Wyatt’s boyfriend, right?”

Jon had answered these questions a million times already. In the month since Kay left, reporters and news crews had camped out in his family’s front yard. He’d learned to ignore them, and they’d mostly stopped talking to him as other stories and scandals drew them away. But a few were still trying to ambush him.

“Were you surprised by what she did? Or did you know beforehand what she was up to?”

“I’ve already answered that. Look it up.”

“You helped her, didn’t you? How much did you know about what she was doing, crossing the border like that?”

“No comment.” The phrase didn’t work as well as it was supposed to. His parents had hired a lawyer; Jon was supposed to hand out cards and tell people to talk to the law office. Mostly Jon didn’t want to stick around long enough to do even that much.

“Do you know where she and that dragon went?”

His name is Artegal, he imagined Kay saying. He didn’t know where they went. He wished he did. Kay hadn’t called or texted since a few days after her big stunt. She might as well have fallen off the edge of the world, where the ancient maps used to write, Here be dragons.

As everyone knew now, there really were dragons at the edges of the maps.

“Do you think she’s still alive? A lot of people are saying these virgin sacrifices only end one way. What do you think?”

“No comment,” Jon said, thinking she had to be alive. She’d known what she was doing. Artegal wouldn’t hurt her. She had to be alive. He had to keep thinking that.

Lopez wouldn’t let up. “If you’re really her boyfriend, can you confirm that she really was a virgin?”

Jon stopped, his hands squeezing around one of the ropes on the trailer. If he didn’t take a breath, he’d turn and punch the guy.

That was Kay’s big plan: stop a war between dragons and humanity by offering herself as a virgin sacrifice to the dragons, just like in the stories. She knew the dragon involved, and they’d planned the whole thing. The great gray dragon swept her off the ground and flew off with her clinging to his claws. An amazing publicity stunt, but she’d argue and say it was a whole lot more than a publicity stunt. It was symbolic, with deep historic and mythic roots. Everyone had paid attention.

Really, though, the publicity had been key to the whole thing.

The last thing she’d done before rushing off to meet the dragon was hug Jon. He had to acknowledge the flush of pride that gave him. She’d come to him with the whole world watching and hadn’t hesitated. Girlfriend. Yeah, that worked. But that meant that everyone looked to him for answers to rude questions.

“Come on, Jon,” the reporter said. “Just a yes or a no. You two ever sleep together?”

“None of your business,” Jon said.

“Don’t you think people have a right to know? We’ve got the government basing policy decisions on some archaic system of virgin sacrifice, and while a lot of people are saying that the dragon wouldn’t have taken her if she hadn’t been a virgin, I have to ask myself—was it just an act?”

He didn’t know why people were asking him. All he could say was that he’d never slept with Kay. Kay said she was a virgin, and Jon believed her. But why should anyone believe him? He didn’t know everything about her. She’d kept her meetings with Artegal secret from him for months. He was still a little angry about that.

But he wasn’t going to tell this guy anything.

The trailer was loaded and Andy, the tour leader, had gotten all the tourists onto the bus. They lingered, watching Jon and the reporter—maybe waiting for a fight to break out. Jon must have looked really angry.

“I gotta go,” Jon said, turning away.

“It’s a simple yes or no question!” Lopez called. “Have you slept with her or not?”

Jon spun back, glaring, and was satisfied to see the reporter take a step back. Jon wasn’t a huge guy, but he wasn’t a wimp either. This city guy probably got winded walking up a flight of stairs. Especially at this altitude.

“I said it’s none of your business.”

He was the last one on the bus, storming up the steps and collapsing in the seat behind Andy, who was driving. Andy didn’t say anything, just started up the engine and pulled away, but Jon could feel everyone staring. The back of his head burned with it.

He might have been her boyfriend, but Jon didn’t know where Kay was or what she was doing. She might as well be a million miles away. He’d tried calling, and he’d gotten a couple of text messages from her saying she was all right, then nothing, which meant her phone had died and she didn’t have a way to recharge. So where was she? Was she okay?

He kept lingering on the worst possibility: something had happened to her. She’d had a plan, and he trusted her. He’d met the dragon Artegal. Despite the creature’s size, his fierce claws and teeth—he really could breathe blasts of fire—he had been protective of Kay. He had been wise and proud. Artegal wouldn’t let anything happen to Kay.

Unless something had happened to both of them.

Back in town at the rafting company’s storefront, Jon helped lock up the trailer and gear for the night. He half expected Lopez to follow him here, to harass him some more. But he didn’t. After work, he started to drive home, then changed his mind.

The Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement was still occupying the middle school gym since school was out for the summer. Their actual offices had burned down in the dragon attack last spring. The dragons had seemed to know where to go, and went for the government buildings rather than a more convenient target. Kay’s father had died in the fire, which made her running away with the dragon even stranger.

She hadn’t run away, he repeated to himself. It was a sacrifice. A peace offering.

The double doors leading into the gym from the parking lot were open to let a breeze into the stuffy room. Just a few years ago Jon, Kay, Tam, and all their friends had been students here, bitching about gym class, throwing basketballs around without much care to the rules, waiting to get back outside, back to their own lives. The gym had seemed bigger then. School had seemed more important. He was supposed to graduate in a year. But then, so was Kay.

The modular office partitions, desks, computers, TV screens, fans, and miles of cable taped to the floors made the place seem even smaller, more crowded. Phones rang, people talked, uniformed rangers came and went. A map of the region, a dozen feet across and taped to the wall, had pins in it, colored markers revealing some kind of coded information Jon couldn’t interpret.

Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched self-consciously, he went down the aisle of temporary offices looking for Mrs. Wyatt. Her cubicle was at the end. Larger than the others, it contained a conference table and a white board with what looked like a patrol schedule written on it.

The cubicle didn’t have a door. She was talking on the phone, and he waited by the gap in the partition for her to spot him. When she did, she smiled, wrapping up the call and leaving the phone on her desk.

“Jon,” she said. The shadows under her eyes had become permanent. She looked tired and seemed to be turning old. “How are you?”

“Fine, Mrs. Wyatt. I’m okay. Have you heard anything?”

She pursed her lips, granting him a look of pity. He’d been in here almost every day asking the same question, as if he didn’t trust her to call if she had news. But he had to do something, and this was all he could do.

“No, I haven’t.”

He hadn’t expected any other answer. He was still disappointed, frustrated. Furious.

“How can you not find her?” he said. “All this radar, satellites, equipment—you ought to be able to find her.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” The woman was an image of grief, hunched in on herself, pale, deflated. She’d lost her husband and daughter in the space of a few weeks. He ought to apologize for harrying her.

“It’s just—I miss her,” he said softly and turned to leave.

“Jon?” she said, her voice taut. Jon hesitated.

Kay’s mother kept her gaze downcast as she spoke, as if she was studying something on her desk among the jumble of papers and folders there. “We traced her last round of text messages—she was in Newfoundland. They must have been getting ready to cross the Atlantic. After that she turned off her phone, or the battery ran out. Some fishing boats and a couple of military surveillance stations reported seeing a pale blue dragon—it might have been them. We thought they might have gone to the Taymyr territory in Siberia, but that border is under just as much surveillance as ours is and nobody saw them cross. They have to be on an island in the North Atlantic somewhere.” Or had they fallen into the ocean, drowned…

This was more than she’d said before, when he’d ask and she’d only said no. Maybe what she knew was classified, official eyes only. Or maybe she thought she was being kind, sheltering him, as if he could be sheltered after all that had happened.

But Kay might be out there, hurt, needing help, and it seemed like no one was doing anything. “Have you asked the dragons where they went? Maybe they know.”

Mrs. Wyatt frowned and seemed thoughtful. “We’re still negotiating the terms by which we can even start talking about a new treaty. We haven’t gotten to the point of being able to ask about something that sensitive.”

Jon was starting to get an inkling of a bad idea, and wondered if this was how Kay felt when she was brewing her plans with the dragon. “Maybe you haven’t,” he said, and turned to walk away.

“Jon? Jon—wait a minute—”

He was already gone.

Back outside, early evening, the sun was setting, and the sky had turned a twilight blue. He looked north. These days, a few dragons were always visible, flying their own patrols a dozen miles north of the border, gliding and swooping in lazy circles. They might have been hawks far in the distance, but Jon knew how big they really were. They weren’t that far away.

It wouldn’t take much. He could pack a sleeping bag, enough food for a few days of camping, head north—the hardest part would be getting across the border. There had to be a way to get across, even now. He just had to get one of those dragons to spot him.

He was developing a plan: he’d have to hike for several days just to get to the border, but that way he could avoid roads, and therefore the authorities who might go after him. He knew this area, had been hiking and traveling it for years. He thought he could find a remote spot where no one would be looking for trespassers. It would be a rough trip, but he could do it.

He dropped by the Alpine Diner looking for Tam. He hadn’t really been back since Kay left town, because the one time he did, people stared at him and whispered. Small town, everybody knew who he was, and the episode had granted him a strange status. Weird, when everybody knew that you and your girlfriend hadn’t slept together. Like he owed any of these people anything.

Dealing with it all made him angry, so he avoided it.

Tam had gotten a job waiting tables at the Alpine. She’d said she needed something to keep her busy, with Kay gone and her boyfriend’s family leaving town when the war started. She needed a distraction. Jon understood. But he was about done waiting.

Tam saw him first when he came through the door. She had dark hair and sparkling eyes, and somehow made the mint-green waitress dress look good. “Hey there!”

“Hey,” Jon said tiredly.

“Coffee, right?” Tam said, her smile wry. “I’ll bring it to the counter.”

He took a stool, hunching his shoulders as if that would fend off the stares. He glanced sidelong, expecting that reporter to jump out at him again. Tam set down the cup of coffee and leaned on her elbows. Her black hair was in a ponytail, and her normally cheerful face seemed grim. They met each other’s gazes for a moment, so much meaning packed into a single look. They had a connection, through Kay, and through Artegal. Jon felt like the two of them might be the only ones who really understood what had happened, what Kay had tried to do.

“How you holding up?” Tam asked finally.

Jon meant to say, fine, I’m okay, but the words didn’t come.

“That bad, huh?”

“I think I’m going to try to go after her.”

She stared. “And how are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head, as if relieved. Like if he didn’t have a plan he couldn’t actually go do something stupid. What did that say, if he knew it was stupid and he was going to do it anyway?

She lowered her voice. “Everyone talks at me like she’s dead. Like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I knew you were close, this must be hard.’ But I don’t think she’s dead.”

“No. I know she’s not dead.” It wasn’t some mystical connection—she’d asked them to trust her, and he did.

“Yeah,” Tam agreed.

“But, you know, if I did go looking for her…”

Tam considered, and someone down the counter called for a coffee refill. Flashing Jon a quick smile she said, “Tell her I said hi.”

This wasn’t like last winter, when Kay went off trail to sneak across the border where the creek wasn’t much wider than a trickle of water. Then, patrols had consisted of a few cops and rangers in 4x4’s driving up and down the highway looking for trespassers. Someone who knew the area could dodge them pretty easily.

Now, the Army had checkpoints. Helicopters regularly thudded overhead. Traffic on the highway was restricted to authorized personnel, and patrols ran constantly. No one had crossed the border since Kay and Artegal had shown the world that there was more to the relationship between dragons and people than war.

People had seen what was possible when they saw Kay with Artegal. A lot of people suddenly wanted to cross the border and meet a dragon for themselves. Nobody stopped to think that only Kay and Artegal could have done what they’d done—Kay’s sense of adventure, Artegal’s curiosity. Another dragon might have attacked an intruder; any other person would never have crossed the border on a whim in the first place.

But no one considered that, and the increased patrols caught dozens of people trying to cross every week. Jon wasn’t sure how he could manage, especially with the pack of gear he’d need for a multi-day camping trip.

His solution was to skirt far enough out of the way that the patrols wouldn’t even think to look for him there. He took time off work. He told his parents he was going on a multi-day backpacking trip. He got Tam to cover for him.

This was going to be rough, he didn’t have any illusions. But he knew his way around the backcountry. He had bear spray and a cell phone. He was more worried about the human patrols than he was of the dragons, because if the dragons would talk to him, this would all be worthwhile. Surely they would talk to him.

He set out at dawn with just enough light to see by.

Toward the end of the second day he reached Border River. As soon as he stepped over it, he’d be breaking the law. He didn’t even pause.

At this point the river was more of a creek, not wide enough for rafting or kayaking, but still deep enough to be trouble if you fell in. Water, ice cold with runoff from the mountain snowpack, ran frothing over smoothed rocks.

He hiked upstream, looking for a place where he could cross. His heart was pounding; he kept glancing up for one of the aerial patrols, which he probably wouldn’t hear over the sound of rushing water. He had to get across and disappear on the other side as quickly as possible.

Finally, he found a spot where debris had piled up, branches and foliage caught up on rocks lying close to the surface. The river was in the process of eroding around the blockage, but for now it made a decent bridge. Choosing with care, he stepped on a rock, a sodden branch, a matted bunch of sunken foliage. Got his boots wet but kept going. In five steps he was across.

That was it. He was in Dragon. Didn’t feel any different, really. Somehow, though, he could imagine the faint scent of fire on the air, as if dragons had been breathing nearby.

After fifteen minutes of hiking, he could no longer hear the churning of Border River behind him. Ahead, the forest seemed oddly still—the trunk of a tall pine creaked in an unfelt breeze. The sound rattled him. If the dragons came after him, what would he hear? Would he have any warning at all?

He reminded himself that the whole point of being here was to meet dragons. He wasn’t supposed to hide from them. Drawing his compass out of his pocket, he took a bearing due north and started hiking. He’d keep going in as straight a line as he could until he found them. Or until they found him.

Through the afternoon, he hiked as if he had someplace he needed to be, a destination and deadline that if he didn’t reach in time, he’d be doomed. Or Kay would. This meant he went faster than necessary, his steps falling harder than they needed to until his heart raced and his breaths came fast, burning in his throat. Sweat dampened his shirt. Overworking himself, at least he couldn’t think too hard about where he was and what exactly he was doing.

The sun started setting, long shadows growing among the trees and turning the air cool. The border was miles behind him now. According to his compass, he was still heading north. The mountains were hidden from view at the moment as he made his way over and around hills. He thought about stopping to set up a camp.

The dragons should have found him by now. He’d expected them to already be here; they patrolled just as much as people did on the human side of the border. He didn’t think he would have to wait to confront them. So where were they?

And what was he going to say when he finally encountered them?

When the sun dipped fully behind the mountain, he stopped. He’d packed as light as he could, but he had a sleeping bag, tarp for rain, a butane burner, tin bowl, enough freeze dried food to last a week, and water purification tablets. If he didn’t find what he was looking for in a couple more days—well, maybe the dragons didn’t care about invasion as much as everyone thought they did.

He cooked a bag of mush that was supposed to be freeze-dried chicken casserole, and it was good because it was hot and he was starving. He thought that if hiking all day hadn’t attracted the dragon’s attention, maybe cooking with butane would. But he didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. Nothing found him.

After the meal, he tied his pack up in a tree to discourage bears, spread his tarp and sleeping bag on the ground under a sheltered spot, foliage overgrowing a fallen trunk, huddled against the chill of night, and slept.

In the gray before dawn, he started awake. He’d slept well enough—it wasn’t his first night on the ground in the open. The air was cold, damp. Condensation streaked the nylon shell of his sleeping bag, and his hair felt itchy. He guessed it was around five a.m. His camp seemed undisturbed—the pack was still in the tree; he and his gear were safe. Maybe he’d dreamed the dragons might sneak up on him and steal him away in the night.

Strange to think of dragons sneaking, but he didn’t doubt they could.

He cooked some oatmeal, cleaned out the bowl, packed his gear, and got moving. Two more days, then he’d turn around. He wouldn’t reach the mountains where the dragons made their homes in that time, but if they didn’t come after him by then, he’d have to assume they didn’t want to talk.

Until then, he had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He tried to imagine he was on some kind of epic quest—which he was, but he didn’t feel very much like the hero in an adventure. Heroes always seemed to know exactly what they needed to do: throw the ring in the volcano; defeat Darth Vader in a duel. This was just walking.

He wasn’t trying to save the world and still didn’t quite understand how Kay had come to be in a position to do so. And here he was, treating her like some damsel in distress who needed to be rescued. She was probably fine, and she and Artegal were having some grand adventure. But just in case…

For lunch, he ate a Power Bar, sucked down water, and kept going. After another hour, he started to zone out, his body falling into repetitive, hypnotic motion. When a shadow passed overhead, blocking the sunlight for a heartbeat, he stopped without thinking, surprised that something had changed. Tipping his head back to stare, he looked for the clouds. But the sky was clear. His mind was slow to draw the correct conclusion, because after two days of hiking it seemed impossible.

The scaled body crashed through the trees ahead, snapping branches that rained down around him, and landed hard, like thunder on a clear day, noise and chaos. Jon fell, ducking instinctively, sliding away from the menace.

A second jolt of thunder crashed behind him. He scrambled to turn, cowering.

They’d come at him from straight overhead, diving silently like they’d strike at prey. They could have slammed on top of him, crushing him. One was ruby red with hints of orange, fiery streaks along its belly and limbs. The second was a deep, lapis blue, its spread wings luminous, like twilight. They were smaller than he expected, bus-sized, and sleek, nimble. Their bodies rippled, strong and sinuous, as they closed on him. They moved faster than he could.

Both dragons held their wings aloft, outstretched, blocking out the sky. When Jon tried to get to his feet to run, they came after him, fanged mouths open, hissing. First one, then the other as he changed direction. They were herding him, keeping him corralled in this clearing. He wondered how long they’d been watching him, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Well, he’d wanted to find dragons. Now what? These guys didn’t seem like talkers.

“Wait a minute! I’m a friend of Kay and Artegal! Kay—the sacrifice! I want to talk!” He fell on his backside and sprawled there, out of breath while the dragons’ necks snaked forward, giving him an even better view of their wide, tooth-filled mouths. Their eyes were black, shining.

He expected the charcoal burn of their fire to wash over him at any moment. But they didn’t burn him. When he stopped moving, so did the dragons. They loomed over him, bodies braced and threatening, ready to spring. Jon held his hands up in surrender to show he didn’t have any weapons and hoped the gesture meant something to them.

The scene froze like that long enough for Jon to catch his breath.

Dragons could talk. They communicated, they had brains, they weren’t just big lizards. He’d met Artegal, he knew that. His instincts and the knowledge that their jaws could close around his body without effort almost made him forgot.

The fact that they didn’t just rip him to pieces made him remember.

“I’m trying to find Kay,” he said as clearly as he could. “The girl who went with the gray dragon—she’s my friend, I just want to find her. Please.”

He didn’t think they understood him. The red one tilted its head and looked at its companion, who looked back, blinking. The blue one hissed and clicked. Were they speaking?

Jon hadn’t thought about what he’d do if the dragons he met didn’t speak English. Or if they didn’t know who Kay was. He’d just assumed. He thought they’d be like Artegal. He should have known better.

“Is there someone I can talk to? I just want to talk,” he said, a last try because he didn’t want to have to spend two more days walking home with nothing to show for it. And he didn’t want to get flamed.

More clicks passed between them, an incomprehensible discussion. Then the blue one backed away from them, balancing on the tips of its wings, keeping its gaze on Jon until the last moment when it looked up and launched into the sky. Its pumping wings sent a gust through the trees; Jon put up his arm to protect against it.

The remaining dragon, its scales like fire in the afternoon sun, remained in its guarding stance, wings outstretched, head looming. Jon started to stand, just to see what would happen, and the dragon stepped forward, curling a scaled lip. Jon stayed where he was.

They waited.

The sun dipped behind the mountains, and the air grew shadowed, cool. Jon got out his jacket, which once again startled the dragon, who growled in the back of its throat and huffed through its nostrils. When Jon settled again, so did the dragon. He couldn’t guess what the creature was thinking. Looking at those huge liquid eyes, he only knew that it was thinking something.

His stomach was starting to rumble at him, but he didn’t dare dig in his pack for anything, not even a piece of beef jerky. He figured the dragon would either rip it, or him, to shreds. So he waited.

If they were going to kill him, maybe pick up him up and drop him back over the border or take him to the mountains to serve as dinner, they would have done it already, right?

The chilly evening didn’t seem to bother the dragon.

When the branches overhead groaned in a sudden gust of wind, Jon straightened, looking up for the source of the movement. His dragon guard raised its head and blinked.

Two dragons appeared, wings spread wide as they descended, hind legs reaching toward earth, where they settled into the clearing with surprising grace. Jon couldn’t be sure—in the weak light, all colors faded to shadow—but one of the dragons seemed to be the blue one from earlier.

The second one was larger—house sized, its wings brushing the branches halfway up surrounding pine trees—and approached slowly as if tired, without the power and agility of the first two. It seemed to be a dark, smoky gray, though that may have been a trick of the fading light. The smaller dragons stood aside while this one lowered its snaking neck to look at Jon, who stumbled to his feet and backed away.

“I speak,” the dragon said in a rough, rumbling voice. “Who?”

“Who?” Jon echoed, resisting an urge to flee. “You mean who am I? I’m Jon—Kay’s my friend.”

“Kay,” the dragon said, lifting its neck, tilting its head. “Sacrifice.”

“Yes,” he said, relieved that they knew what he was talking about. They must have understood him after all. “Where did she go? Where did the dragon—where did Artegal take her?”

“Artegal?” the old dragon asked, sounding out the syllables as though the word was strange.

“The gray dragon—Kay’s friend. Where did they go?”

“Why?” it asked, the gravely word seeming to rattle from deep in its chest. The smell of coal and fire lingered around it.

He hesitated, because he thought it was obvious. “She might need help.”

The dragon growled and shifted, settling its folded wings to its sides, seeming to prepare for a long conversation. “Do not trust?”

“Trust? What am I supposed to trust?” he said. “She just vanished.”

“What other did you expect?” the dragon said, matter-of-factly, like this was a story and they’d come to the end of it. How could Jon make it understand?

“Can you just tell me she’s alive? Please, I need to know.” The desperation tightened his voice, and he swallowed the lump from his throat.

The dragon’s voice rumbled. “We would not harm.”

Jon almost sank to the ground with relief. They’d made it to Newfoundland, he remembered. They’d made it at least that far. “What about Artegal? The dragon. Aren’t you worried about him?”

“He chose.”

So did Kay, for that matter. But it couldn’t be that simple. Surely Kay expected to be able to come back, or at least send word. The dragons had to know something.

This had to work, because Jon didn’t know where to go next for answers.

“If you’re not worried it’s because you know where they went.”

The dragon studied him a moment then sighed, steam huffing from its nostrils, sounding like a crabby teacher with a slow student, which made Jon bristle. The creature began pawing at the dirt. First, it used a clawed wing to sweep clean a section, brushing away dead pine needles, then it scratched into the dirt. It was drawing something.

Jon dug in his bag for his flashlight. When he snapped it on, the dragons flinched. The two guardians pulled back, hissing, squinting at him. The large one merely growled and looked away. Sheepish, Jon blocked the light from them and aimed it to the ground.

The lines were rough, hard to see without good light. But as the outline took shape, Jon recognized it: the dragon was drawing an outline of North America, and the ocean beyond. Then, another stretch of land. Jon tried to remember, picturing maps he’d looked at it. The Arctic didn’t have any land, just ice flows. The pair wouldn’t have gone that far north, would they? Was the dragon outlining Siberia? Or no—a vast island in the North Atlantic. Greenland?

“The Refuge,” he said. A claw pointed at the spot of land, but only generally. He didn’t make an X marks the spot. “Went there. Can’t tell if they arrived. Refuge speaks not.”

“But where—where exactly is it?” Jon snapped a picture of the rough map with his phone, trying to get the light just right so the image would show up. The dragons flinched again, growling. He quickly put the phone away. They didn’t seem at all curious about the technology he was using. They were just annoyed at having to deal with him.

“North and east. You fly and you find it,” the dragon said.

Jon glared. “But I can’t fly.”

“Not invited,” the dragon said curtly.

The dragon flicked his claw, and the membrane of his wing swooped forward, its wind obliterating the image drawn in the dust. Jon stared at the spot, staving off hopelessness.

“So they’re okay. Kay—the sacrifice—she’s okay?”

“Don’t know,” the dragon said and straightened, stretching his neck up, spreading his wings, obviously preparing for flight. He hissed a command to the two guardians, who both launched, spiraling into the sky without a backward glance. The force of it knocked Jon off his feet.

“That’s it?” he demanded, scrambling up, trying to get in a last word. Not that he had a say in what happened. He was lucky they didn’t just smash him. “I came a long way, I want to know more—”

The dragon’s head swooped down, looming over Jon. Ashy breath washed over him. He had a sudden urge to run away. It was the only sane thing to do around these monsters, wasn’t it?

“You say you know the Sacrifice. We respect you for that. That is all. Go now.”

“If you didn’t want to help me, why didn’t you just kill me?”

“Not worth the trouble,” the big dragon said, with a curl to his lip that might have been a smile.

The dragon took off, the trees around the clearing bending at the force of wind it produced, earth spraying as it kicked off from the ground. Jon fell again, arm over his face, holding his breath until it was all over.

He’d spent a ton of time thinking about how he was going to get north over the border, to Dragon. He hadn’t thought much about how he was going to get back home. He slogged south, aching and unhappy, no better off than when he’d started. Well, he supposed he knew a little bit more: the dragons knew where Artegal had taken Kay, and they weren’t worried. But they were dragons, powerful and longed-lived. Why should they worry?

He realized he’d been entertaining a strange fantasy: he thought that he might meet a dragon like Artegal, and they would fly together after Kay. He thought the dragons would be as worried about their young comrade as he was about Kay. But no, this all seemed perfectly normal to them. Perfectly natural, as if dragons flew to this Refuge with virgin sacrifices and were never heard from again all the time. Maybe they did.

Dragon was a very big place. He supposed he was lucky he’d even found dragons, and that they’d been willing to talk to him instead of eating him outright.

Not that he’d ever heard of an actual case of a dragon eating a person since they’d re-emerged at the end of World War II. Everybody talked about it. The stories all mentioned it. They burned down buildings and towns and attacked airplanes that had crossed into their territory. But had they ever actually eaten anyone? Did people even taste good to them?

Nobody really knew anything about the dragons, did they? Nobody except Kay, who likely knew just about everything, now.

He’d done what he’d come to do, the dragons had told him everything they were going to tell him. And he had to get back home, somehow. Figure out what to do next.

As he approached the border, he kept to the trees, glanced up often, and listened for the thudding engines of patrolling helicopters. He moved quickly, because if he could just get back to the human side of the border, the penalties for getting caught wouldn’t be so severe. He’d be heading away from Dragon, and no one could prove he’d been on the other side of the river. Spring had turned to summer; the sun seemed to get hotter and hotter as he hiked. Sweat soaked him, but he couldn’t rest. He checked his compass often: due south, until he reached human lands again.

The rushing water of Border River through the trees ahead spurred him on. Almost there. He moved quickly, forcing his tired legs faster. They kept up the pattern he’d been walking for days.

The river’s noise almost made him miss the distinctive mechanical thumping overhead: a helicopter patrol. When he finally noticed it, he didn’t know how long it had been audible, how long he’d missed it. Immediately he crouched next to a tree, sheltered under its branches, and waited. The helicopter’s thumping seemed to get louder… and then it grew softer, fading under the sound of the river. Maybe it hadn’t seen him. Surely it hadn’t. Blowing out an anxious breath, he forced himself up and continued on.

At this spot the river was rushing fast, but it was narrow and not too deep. Rather than walking along the bank to search for a crossing, he plunged right in. He gasped at the cold mountain water hitting his skin—this was snow runoff from the mountain, near to freezing. Only thing for it was to keep moving, one step at a time. The water ran halfway up his calf, frothing and tugging at him. The current would knock him over if he didn’t pay attention. So he paid attention, made each step carefully so he wouldn’t slip on river-smoothed rocks, and kept his eye on the opposite bank.

He reached the bank in a dozen steps, and then he kept going, hiking on until the sound of the river was behind him and fading. He had to get far enough away from the border that no one could accuse him of having crossed it.

“Hey! You! Stop!”

He’d thought he was safe by that point. He should have been paying more attention.

Jon almost didn’t know what do when the shouted command echoed through the trees. He stopped, looked around, blinking in confusion. Then a pair of soldiers emerged. Their faces were covered and they pointed automatic rifles at him. Jon put his hands up without thinking.

Not that it made a difference. They charged forward and tackled him before his hindbrain could tell him to get down. He went down hard, one of the soldiers wrenching his arms behind his back—difficult, because he was still wearing this backpack. The other pinned his legs, and part of Jon wanted to step outside himself and laugh at how ridiculous this was, except it kind of hurt. Well, at least they didn’t shoot him.

The one soldier finally figured out that zip tying Jon’s hands together would be easier if he took the backpack off first. The weight coming off his shoulders was a relief.

He tried to say something. “Please, can I make a call? I just want to make a call—”

They patted him down, found his phone, and took it. So, no, he couldn’t make a call.

He figured Mrs. Wyatt would find out he’d been captured soon enough.

They brought him to the Air Force outpost and locked him a small, industrial-looking room. Bare walls, vents whispering. He sat in a metal folding chair, hands still zip-tied behind his back, next to a table. He wanted to ask for food and water, maybe a chance to wash up. He needed to use the restroom, but shouting and complaining seemed undignified. Not that anyone would even listen.

They were waiting him out. They might leave him here for hours, or someone might come in any minute. He thought he’d be okay waiting—it would give him a chance to rest. He also thought he’d be ready when the door opened. But when it did, maybe just fifteen or twenty minutes after he sat down, he jumped anyway. His nerves were electric, his whole body rigid with stress.

The man wore a blue Air Force uniform. Star on his shoulder, meaning he was a general. Jon was surprised that he rated a general; surely the police ought to be dealing with him? The tag on the man’s chest read Branigan. He was the general who’d given Kay a hard time, the one who’d been agitating for a war against Dragon. Gruff, looking angry, Branigan dropped a manila folder on the table with a clatter, then scraped out another chair across the table and sat. Sizing him up, he gazed out at Jon. Playing the waiting game. Jon stared back. Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, but he didn’t want to look away, cowed, like he was a little kid.

Jon thought he’d seen on the news that General Branigan had been transferred to a different base to better facilitate peace negotiations with Dragon. Apparently not.

“So. Mr. Allen. How are you?”

One foot in front of the other. Jon just had to get through this and everything would be fine.

“I’m okay except I don’t really know why I’m here, I was just hiking, and I was wondering if I could get my phone back—”

“You were picked up a mile from the border.”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention to how close I was—”

“I know someone else who gave that excuse.”

This wasn’t about Jon at all. It was about Kay.

“Look, Jon,” Branigan said, all friendly now. Best buds, right? “These last few months must have been really tough for you. I know you’re looking for answers, we all are. I’m thinking we can help each other. I just need you to answer a few questions, then you can walk out of here. How about it?”

Jon was wary and wondered if he should ask for a lawyer. He didn’t actually know any lawyers. “Sure.”

“See, we’re on the same page. Good.”

“Could I maybe get some water?” Jon asked. The general didn’t move. So, Jon guessed that was a no.

“We know you crossed the border, son. You don’t have anything to be afraid of. You’re not in trouble, we just want to know what happened.”

Of course Jon was in trouble.

“Don’t I get to make a phone call?” Jon asked. “Don’t I get to have a lawyer here, before I say anything? I want a lawyer.” He set his jaw and tried to look decisive and hopeful. This always worked on TV, didn’t it?

The general smiled, a wicked and unpleasant expression, like he was planning a battle he was sure he would win. “You would, if I was from the police. But this isn’t the police. The United States government has rules about aiding and abetting enemy nations. Or attempting to join foreign terrorist groups. You could be brought up on treason charges, you know, depending on how things go.”

Dragons were terrorists now? Jon scrambled mentally, trying to order his thoughts. “But I didn’t—you can’t prove it—”

“You were walking away from the border, not toward it, Mr. Allen. You’d only be walking away from it if you’d already been there.”

Jon wondered how long the soldiers had been tracking him before they pounced. They’d waited until he was closer to the road; he’d done half their work for them, walking into their trap. And now the military was going to drop him in a hole and no one would ever see him again.

He’d just wanted to find Kay. He wasn’t trying to commit treason.

“So. Mr. Allen. You crossed the border. What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said tiredly. “Nothing happened.” The less he said the better, he imagined.

“Are you looking for Kay Wyatt? Is that why you crossed?”

Jon looked at the surface of the table, unwilling to give away any flicker in his expression. He really wanted a glass of water.

Branigan continued. “The dragon that took her—we tracked it going east. Why would you go north looking for them? That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”

“No, sir.” He sounded belligerent rather than polite.

“You didn’t see any dragons. You didn’t talk to any dragons.” These weren’t questions but accusations.

“No, sir,” he said, trying to be as dull and tired as he could to cover up the lie. Because he was pretty sure Branigan knew he was lying. Without a word, the general stood, took his file folder, and left. He’d never even looked in the folder. It might have been empty.

It wasn’t a matter of whether Jon was skunked; it was how badly. Well, at least this gave him something to focus on instead of worrying about Kay.

He didn’t have to wait long before the door opened again, and again Jon started as if this was somehow surprising. This time, Mrs. Wyatt came in. He didn’t feel relieved. She was yet another government official, and while she was the one person who might understand what he’d done—who might even support it—he’d still broken laws. He didn’t know if she would risk her job and position to defend him; he couldn’t tell anything by her expression. She had that same worn, numb look that he’d carried with him ever since Kay left. Since Sheriff Wyatt was killed.

She sat in the same chair the general had been in, which didn’t bode well.

“I talked to General Branigan,” she said carefully. “I informed him this incident falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Border Enforcement, not the Air Force. I get to decide what to do with you, not him.”

Jon slumped in the chair, relieved. Everything was going to be okay, then. “Can you maybe get this tie off and let me go to the bathroom?”

She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

That place ended up being in her SUV, pulled over on the side of the road about ten miles from the Air Force station. After setting the brake, she drew his phone out of her bag and tossed it on his lap.

“The only thing that saved you back there is you didn’t take any pictures of them.” Them. The dragons. “But I have some questions about that map you drew.”

He didn’t say a word—what could he say? He keyed on the phone and flipped through a few apps. Everything looked fine, but he assumed the security guys had been through it. Probably downloaded the pictures of his rough drawing. He was pretty sure that was illegal. Not that he could do anything about it.

Mrs. Wyatt sat for a long time, both hands gripping the steering wheel, her jaw tight. Jon didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

“You should have told me what you were planning to do,” she said finally. “I could have helped. I could have kept the patrol off your back.”

“I couldn’t to tell you I was planning to break the law.” In hindsight though, if he’d told her why he’d wanted to do it—yes, she might have helped him. Too late now.

“So. Did you find them? Did you talk to them?”

“Yes,” he said. She closed her eyes, letting out a breath. She was going to be disappointed, though. “They didn’t… they didn’t seem to care. I mean, they didn’t seem worried. They assumed Kay and Artegal were safe. Didn’t even doubt it. They wouldn’t tell me where they were. Like it would have broken some kind of rule. But they gave me a general area: way in the north Atlantic. There’s nothing there, is there?”

She didn’t say anything, which raised his hopes. The authorities—they knew something. “I don’t suppose you thought to ask if they still want to move forward on new treaty negotiations?”

Hadn’t even occurred to him. “Um. No.”

“This is why we make it illegal to cross the border,” she muttered.

“Mrs. Wyatt, do you think Kay’s all right—”

“Sit tight. I want to show you something.”

He nodded; it wasn’t like he had a choice. He needed a ride home. She restarted the car and pulled back to the road. Ten minutes later they were at the parking lot of the middle school, the FBBE’s temporary headquarters. On the way to her office, people glanced at him, frowning—small town, everybody must have known what had happened, that the Air Force had caught him, and Kay’s mother had gotten him loose.

She sat him down at the conference table, told him to wait, and left the room.

He thought about ducking out. Just run, and see if anyone noticed. But a minute later she was back, carrying a package—a big cardboard square with an official-looking tag on it. Carefully, reverently almost, she set it on the table. The box folded out to reveal a book, thick and ancient looking, bound in leather, weathered. It must have been hundreds of years old, with parchment instead of paper for pages. It might have come from a museum.

“I think that dragon gave it to her. As old as it is, it might be from one of their treasure hordes.” She opened the cover and started leafing through pages, turning them over, pausing on each one to study the paintings. Almost every page was covered in bright drawings, weaving vines and lacey flowers. And dragons—people and dragons, in village scenes of every day life. It was… nice. It was a fantasy.

She stopped on a page showing a scene that was crazily familiar—a slender woman in a white dress stood on a platform while a crowd of people looked on, and across the page a fierce green dragon, claws extended and teeth bared, approached. The medieval virgin sacrifice, right there on the page.

“She left it on her bed on this page. I think she wanted to tell me where she got the idea.” Her smile was sad. She stroked the edge of the page—the page that Kay had touched.

“So when she and the dragon—” Artegal, he could hear Kay’s voice reminding him of the dragon’s name, “—planned the sacrifice, they had a place in mind to go. They knew where they were going.”

“Dracopolis. The City of Dragons. We’ve had a group of medieval Latin scholars working on translating this. It’s an amazing book, the whole secret history of dragons. It mentions a refuge—a group of dragons and humans hidden away in a secret territory to maintain the old ways, when the two species cooperated. I’d give an arm to find out how the book made it to the Dragon territory here—because I’m guessing this book was made there.

“Something here told Kay and the dragon exactly where they were going: north Greenland. Somewhere in north Greenland. She knows what she’s doing. I trust her, I do. This is what’s supposed to happen, you trust your kids to take care of themselves and then let them go. I just thought I’d have more time. More warning.” Her voice cracked and she covered her mouth.

Greenland. Wasn’t that far, was it? Just halfway around the world. He could do it.

“You have a map, right?”

“In the conference room next door.”

He went out; she didn’t stop him. They must have used the room for planning or strategy. The map was nearly wall sized and had lots of pins, marks, and writing on it. Big red circles over cities that had been attacked at the start of the war—the early battles that prompted Kay to try to do something. Boston, St. Petersburg, London. A red zone that stretched down from the arctic, where the dragon territories were.

He ignored that and studied the north Atlantic. The western coast of Greenland sloped up to the Arctic Circle, awash in white. How hard could it be?

“We’re studying satellite pictures, but if the place is there, we can’t find it. We’re not as good as finding things as we think we are. There ought to be heat, something—unless it’s hidden under the ice. We can’t get people on the ground there while the truce is on. Not officially. But you—you have that map. That looks like it was drawn with a claw.” Wryly, she glanced at him.

She was a government representative. She probably shouldn’t even be telling him this. Was it enough to go on? Enough information to find Kay? Maybe, may not.

“I’ll do it,” Jon said. “I’ll go.”

“Officially, I have to tell you that’s a bad idea. That you may very well be breaking national as well as international law. That people like General Branigan will want to charge you with rendering aid to an enemy power. That if something goes wrong we’ll disavow any knowledge of what you had planned.”

“But unofficially?”

She looked at the map, not him, as if she could solve the riddle here in her office by studying pieces of paper long enough. But she couldn’t hide the anxiety that furrowed her brow, tightened her lips. This was her daughter they were talking about.

“Unofficially—you’ll need a satellite phone if you’re going to keep in touch.”

Jon didn’t tell his parents what he was really doing. They’d have tried to stop him. He was just about eighteen—give it a few months and technically no one could tell him what to do. If he wanted to leave, his parents couldn’t tell him no. He even had money saved from working, so he didn’t need to ask for anything from them. But he didn’t want to argue with them, and didn’t want to just disappear, so he lied. He told them a friend of his boss was starting up a rafting company in Maine and had asked guides to come and help. He made it sound like a glowing opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new business, learn entrepreneurship, and do some traveling on top of that. He used all the catch phrases that would make this sound awesome, but stopped short of calling it a “growth experience.” That might be laying it on too thick. Then he told them he’d feel better maybe getting away from the border with Dragon for awhile, to distract him from thinking about Kay, and who could argue with that? If something went wrong later, he’d leave it to Mrs. Wyatt to explain to them what had happened. He hoped they’d understand.

He couldn’t imagine what might happen; this whole expedition was unknown territory. He supposed it made him a bad person that he didn’t much care how this might hurt his parents. He had to do this.

He drove.

He didn’t want to be tracked. He didn’t want to be stopped. That meant not getting on an airplane. It meant paying cash for gas and food and not leaving his name anywhere, so he slept in the back seat at rest areas, curled up in a blanket. It meant getting to the coast and finding a way on to some kind of boat where he wouldn’t have to tell them who he was or why he wanted to go to Greenland.

Mrs. Wyatt said she could deflect attention to some extent, but she could only do so much. There wasn’t a ferry, he couldn’t afford a ticket on a cruise ship—but again, there was the problem of passports and security and the likelihood of someone spotting him. Same thing with trying to get a job on a cruise ship. Cargo ships sailed to Greenland, but he had a feeling those jobs might be union and he’d have to know someone to get one. He wasn’t going to be able to just show up and ask to be paid under the table.

Not that he knew anything about working on a cargo ship. He doubted his experience on the rivers in Montana would count for much on the Atlantic. Charters sometimes went out that far. Again, he couldn’t afford to pay for a charter. But maybe he could get a job on one. Charter boats needed crews all the time. This was what he was going to shoot for.

If anyone official found out he was looking for Kay, and Dracopolis, he could scuttle the whole peace talks. He would undo everything Kay’s sacrifice had accomplished. But he had to make sure she was safe—alive. After that, he could leave again. Maybe he could take her with him, bring her home.

That was a long way out, though. First step, he had to get to the coast and find a way to Greenland. He’d worry about the rest after he found her.

He ended up in Portland Maine, and splurged on a hotel so he could take a shower, air out his clothes, and get a free map from the front desk so he could figure out what to do next. The city had a large port area—tourist, municipal, industrial, fishing. He’d head there, scout out how things were, and see if getting a ride on a boat would even be possible, or if he’d have to go somewhere else.

He’d grown up next door to mountains and dragons. Impressive, overwhelming, awesome in the original sense of the word: full of awe.

He’d seen the ocean before on a family trip to California. This was different. Probably because that had been fun, trying out surfing, playing volleyball on the beach. This was work. This was his future stretching out like a big gray sheet of roiling uncertainty.

Jon arrived at the docks dressed for hard work in jeans and a sweatshirt, walked with his chin up and shoulders back, confident and respectable. The place smelled like moldy wood and fish. Gulls cried, congregating by fishing boats for scraps. A chill rolled in from the water, cutting through the warm day. He was grateful for his jacket.

Walking along the concrete, entering the maze of piers and warehouses, he didn’t know where to start. There didn’t seem to be any organization to the place. It was all a mob of ships and machinery. Dozens of boats floated in the water, secured by huge ropes to big steel cleats. These were sixty foot steel-hulled monsters lined up, built up with cranes and rigging. The river rafts he knew so well seemed like toys here.

Walking around for half an hour, he zeroed in on a structure that looked like an office, maybe headquarters for some company. He didn’t know if it would be better to find a boat captain or look for some kind of dock master or official. Who would be more likely to help him, and who would be more likely to kick him out? Or call the police? He chose the building with the Brendan Fisheries sign on it, took a deep breath, and walked in the door.

The place was kind of comforting. It looked like his boss Andy’s office back home, with its jumble of furniture piled up with catalogs, file folders, print outs, and even spare tools and random crap like first aid kits.

A middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap and heavy sweater sat behind the desk, sorting papers. He looked up and asked in that drawling New England accent Jon would probably never get used to, “Can I help you?”

“I don’t know. I’m new here and I’m not really sure what I’m doing.” Might as well be honest, right? Might get him some sympathy. “I was just wondering—where do most of these boats go?”

“Most of them are with the fisheries, going north to the Grand Banks. A bunch are out now, this isn’t even all of them.”

“Does anybody go all the way to Greenland?”

“That’s a long way out.”

“Yeah,” he said tiredly.

“A few charters go out. Some of the crab boats go out that far.”

“Any of those guys hiring?”

The man ducked his gaze, hiding a wry smile. Yeah, must be a lot of guys come in looking for work. See the crab boats on TV and think it’s a good way to make a fast buck. Did he bother explaining that he wasn’t interested in the money, he just wanted to get to Thule somehow?

“Not that I know of. Maybe try the Starbucks in town.”

Yeah, that was a snub. Jon just smiled back. “Yeah, okay—but can I leave my number, if you hear of anything?”

“Yeah, sure. If something comes up I’ll let you know.”

Jon went back the next day. He kept his eyes open. When he found a couple of guys hauling boxes from a truck to one of the boats—resupply, looked like—he asked if he could help for maybe twenty bucks. They said yes. After, he gave them his number and asked them to let him know if they heard of anything else, or maybe anyone with a boat heading to Greenland that needed help. The next day, he got a call—did he care if the job was messy and gross? No. So he spent the day washing out lobster traps and got fifty bucks. Smiled the whole time, and took a really long shower afterward.

He spent more than a week hanging around the docks, making himself visible, making himself known. Known, and trusted. That was how this sort of thing worked. He could get a river rafting outfitting job anywhere in the country based on his work in Montana and who he knew. But this was a different industry, and he had to start on that bottom rung of the ladder again. He could work his way up, though. Work hard and learn the ropes. Literally—a lot of the odd jobs seemed to involve coiling rope. Lines, here, when they involved boats. Leonard, the guy at the desk at Brendan Fisheries, even had a few jobs for him. The cash was nice, but the goodwill was what he was working for. That day when he could walk along the docks and have locals wave at him and call him by name. He was Jon, that kid looking to work his way to Greenland. They didn’t seem to think it sounded nuts.

It all paid off on the day Jon knocked on the door of Leonard’s office and asked, “Hey, you wanted to see me?”

Leonard said, “Yeah. You still looking to get to Greenland? I think I have a berth for you.”

He tried to play it cool, but inside Jon felt like he’d reached the summit of some impossible mountain. “Yeah?”

“If you’re sure about this, I mean,” Leonard said. “You have plans out there, or you just in it for the adventure? Hitchhiking the hard way, maybe?”

Jon could tell him the whole story, but he didn’t want to leave that kind of trail. Let the guy believe what he would.

“I’m traveling the world,” Jon said with a straight face. “I just want to see if I can do it.”

“Well, you’re a hard worker, I’ll give you that. If you don’t get into too much trouble along the way I’ll wager you can make it, too. But this isn’t a lark—it’s hard work. Dangerous work. Lotta guys lose fingers, crack their heads. Are you sure?”

He hadn’t said what the job was and Jon wasn’t going to say anything but yes. “I’m sure. As long as I can get to Greenland.” He tried to look earnest, like he knew what he was doing.

“Right, then,” Leonard said, standing from the desk and coming over to pat Jon on the shoulder. “Let me introduce you to your new captain.”

Jon had worked. He’d had plenty of jobs—tough jobs. Working the river tours was ridiculously difficult, hauling boats into and out of the water, hauling tourists into and out of the same boats when they couldn’t quite manage themselves. He was in really good shape. At least he’d thought he was.

The job on the Blue Star under Captain Carl Palsson was the hardest work he’d ever done. Time was money, and they only had a couple of weeks on the water to make as much money as possible, and they only made money when they were on the decks dropping nets, hauling them back in, sorting the catch, cleaning equipment, and starting all over again. Over and over and over again. For twenty hours a day. He thought he might have trouble sleeping in the tiny shelf of a bunk he was assigned to. For all the time he’d spent on the river, the rock ‘n’ rolling rough and tumble of white water, he’d never been on the ocean, and it was completely different. He didn’t know if he’d be able to sleep through the surge and drop, the roll and churn of massive waves tipping the whole ship one way and another. But he lay down and was out cold immediately. One of the other guys had to shake him awake, yelling at him to get his ass in gear, get his coat on, get to the deck and get to work.

He never got enough sleep. He was always bleary-eyed, which made the work even harder. He had to focus, had to be aware, had to be careful, or else he might get swept off deck by a net, caught up in the rigging on the winch, or get a limb sliced off by a stray swipe from a fish hook. Dwayne, the chief deckhand, was missing two fingers from getting his hand twisted up in a line. And he came back for more.

Because he was the newbie, the greenhorn, the rookie, he got the worst of the scutwork. He had to clean the bait buckets. He scrubbed fish scales and guts off the deck. He coiled and folded greasy, slime-covered, splinter-producing lines. His hands cramped inside his gloves. His feet always seemed damp despite the rubber boots he wore. It felt like he’d never be warm or dry again.

But every day brought him closer to Greenland. Blue Star’s captain was changing fisheries, getting ready to sell the boat to an outfit in Sisimiut, which was apparently the second largest city in Greenland… with a population of maybe 6,000. They were fishing along the way, because why not? Most of the crew planned to get jobs out that way or fly back to New England with their paydays in their pockets before they started the next season on a new boat. Jon was the only one who just wanted the trip to Greenland.

Spending time with the hardened fisherman was an education in itself. They swore, talked about dates they’d had in port—although Jon was pretty sure “date” was not the right word for what some of them had been doing. A couple of the deckhands had wives back in Portland; a couple claimed to have girlfriends. A couple bragged about girls they’d spent a couple of nights with. They talked about the women like they were a movie they’d rented, or a quick meal they’d enjoyed. Jon listened, rapt.

“What about you, Kid?” Dwayne asked him. Jon had spent the first day trying to get them to call him Jon. Then he gave up. “You got a girl back home, or you have a little fun back in town?”

The crew’s faces turned toward him. It didn’t matter what Jon said, they’d find a way to pick on him. He took a long time to answer—not trying to figure out something clever to one up the others. Rather, he had to figure out how to explain Kay and what had happened to her.

If they’d slept together she wouldn’t have been able to be the virgin sacrifice, and she wouldn’t have gone away. He’d thought about that a lot. But then humans and dragons might have gone to war. And maybe they’d all be dead, or running away, or something. Too late to second-guess any of that.

“Kid?” Dwayne prompted.

“Uh, yeah. It’s a long story,” he said finally. Everyone laughed, and he blushed because it wasn’t supposed to be a joke, but the guys ran with it anyway.

“The answer is both,” Dwayne said. “Girl back home and one in town.”

“It’s tradition.”

“Have fun while you’re young, right?”

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

They laughed some more, and Jon laughed along with them because he was too tired to argue.

So that was who he was working with. When they weren’t poking fun at him, he tried to stay quiet and listen. He could learn to fit in here. And he wanted to learn everything he could about where they were going.

He expected them ask why he was doing this. Why a kid with no experience and no previous interest in ocean fishing ended up on a boat in the middle of the North Atlantic. In his own mind he’d embellished his story about wanting to travel the world, trying to make it sound plausible. But the guys never asked. As long as he did the work, as long as he didn’t complain, they left him alone. But he wanted to tell the true story. He wanted to know what they knew about the dragons.

During daylight hours, he scanned the northern skies, searching for winged shapes on the distant horizon. Surely if there was a whole settlement of dragons he’d be able to see them soaring in the distance, guarding their skies the way they did in Silver River. Once or twice he thought he saw something—a sweep of tail, a curving neck. But it was always a trick of the light, and what he really saw was just a tern swooping above the water, hunting for leavings from the nets.

“You’re looking for something, Kid,” Captain Palsson said to him one day.

He started, pulling back from the railing, looking for a chore to do. The deck needed cleaning again, the mop was close to hand. But Palsson didn’t yell at him about lazing around and getting off his ass and making himself useful. It was a nice change.

“You ever see dragons? I’ve heard stories about dragons living way north, and I wondered if maybe they ever flew out over the water here.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard those stories. That there’s some kind of dragon country hidden under the ice. That they come out at night and spy on us.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“They’re just ghost stories. Can’t say I’ve ever seen dragons out here. What about you—you ever seen a dragon?”

He looked out over the water, hiding a grin. A group of terns was wheeling and dancing, skimming the water, catching fish with a flick of their beaks. Doing what they were designed to do.

“Yes,” Jon said simply. “I’m from Silver River, Montana. I’ve seen plenty of dragons.” And talked to them, and let my girlfriend ride off with one...

Palsson studied him with a furrowed brow, as if he was trying to decide whether to believe him.

“So, why’d you need to come chasing them out here?”

Jon gave an unsatisfactory shrug, because yeah, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Shaking his head, the captain walked away, and Jon picked up the mop and got to work.

When their destination finally appeared, it didn’t look like much. A haze on the horizon, resolving into a dark line, which became a mound of land. Details became increasingly clear: a rocky shore, green vegetation above it, then the docks and buildings of a town and its port. Gulls arrived, wheeling overhead, playing in the wake.

He’d expected Greenland to be white, snowbound, covered in glaciers, but this looked like any other coastline. Parts of Maine they’d sailed past looked like this.

By now, most of the work was done. Jon hung on the rail at the ship’s bow, watching the gray sea crash against the hull and the land grow closer.

In port, they offloaded cargo—it would go to the fish markets of Europe. The captain seemed pretty happy with the haul. Jon didn’t have anything to compare to, but Palsson was happy, so everyone else was happy. And it turned out their take was tied to the ship’s profits; the money Jon had earned here would fund the next leg of his quest.

Then came more cleaning, scrubbing, washing the hull, stripping the bunks and galley, and on and on. Another two days of work, and Jon stayed to help, even as he wanted to rush off, because he was part of the crew and he’d committed to the work. Even though at times it seemed like the job might never be done.

And then it was. Jon packed up everything he had in his backpack, stood on the deck, and prepared to leave the Blue Star. Dwayne and the guys were all there, getting ready to head to a bar and celebrate the trip by getting drunk. They’d invited Jon—expected him to join them, really. But he had to get away from here. He’d taken too long to get this far as it was.

“Sorry, guys. It’s been fun but I need to keep moving,” he explained, trying to be polite about it.

“That’s it?” Dwayne said. “You just get off here? Free trip across the Atlantic and you’re done?”

“That was not a free trip,” Jon said, thinking of every blister he’d developed, every cut and bruise he’d acquired.

Palsson stepped up to him next, opened Jon’s jacket, and slipped an envelope into the inside pocket. “That’s your take. You earned it. Good luck on the quest.”

When Dwayne approached next, Jon almost flinched away, but the big man raised his hands in a show of peace. He was holding something, Jon couldn’t see what, until he also opened his jacket and slipped something into the interior pocket there. A couple of foil packets. Condoms. “Just in case,” he said, winking.

He tried to play it cool, but blushed hard enough he finally felt warm. The others laughed, predictably.

Dwayne said, “Hope you slay yourself some dragons. Bring home a nice big trophy.”

“Thanks guys,” Jon said, waving at them, smiling wryly.

Yeah. If he’d gotten through this, he could get through anything.

Jon hadn’t known what to expect from Sisimiut—didn’t know if it had enough of a tourist industry to help him plan a way north. He’d hoped in these high summer months it wouldn’t be unusual for some guy to show up and want to go into the wilderness. He still had a huge amount of territory to cover; it would help if he could hire some bush plane to carry him right to the edge of the Arctic, near the dragon’s territory, without raising too many questions.

Turned out, there were plenty of tourists and back country hikers and such who came through Sisimiut. More easily than he expected, he found an outfitter that advertised guided hikes and heliskiing trips. Which actually sounded like a huge amount of fun, if he was in any mood for fun right now.

First thing, though, he checked into a hotel for a shower and a long sleep.

He didn’t recognize himself when he looked in the mirror. He’d started growing a beard, hadn’t cut his hair in a month, and had shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. He looked like some scruffy reprobate, the kind of guy who went crazy and crawled into the wilderness to live in a trailer. Well, that wasn’t far off.

Kay’s mother had given him a satellite phone that would work internationally, batteries, and a GPS device loaded with as much information as she could give him. The kind of thing he wouldn’t be able to buy when he got here. Jon texted her a message to tell her he’d arrived in Greenland; she replied to wish him luck.

He was close, he could feel it.

The Allied armed forces had had weather stations and listening posts in Greenland during World War II. Jon had done some reading—during the war there’d been plans to build a permanent Air Force base in Thule, far north on the western coast. But with the reappearance of the dragons, those plans had been scuttled. The location was too close to where dragons were known to fly. The base was built further south, near Sisimiut. Jon planned to give it a wide berth.

Some Inuit people had hunting villages near Thule. Tourists generally didn’t go to these, and the Inuit communities didn’t talk about dragons—for them, keeping the peace meant silence. But if Jon could get that far, he wouldn’t have to talk anyone. He’d just have to go.

“I want to go there,” Jon told the guy at the heliski place, pointing at a map on the desk to a place called Pituffik. An Inuit village that was barely there.

“We don’t go that far north,” the guide said decisively. He was young, bearded, brown-skinned—might have been Inuit himself. In other respects, he might have been a lot like Jon, spending his summers working for tourists who wanted a taste of wilderness, providing adventures with a smile. This guy wasn’t smiling.

“How far north do you go?” Jon asked, and he pointed to a spot on the map well south of where he wanted to be. Upernavik. “What’s there? Can I maybe get a snowmobile or ATV or something?”

He answered, “What are you trying to do, really?”

“I just want to go north. As far north as I can get.”

“Some kind of stunt? You crazy or something?”

Jon worried that if he even breathed the word dragon, a big flashing light would go on over his head, landing trouble on him like a boulder. Better if people thought he was crazy.

“Does it matter?” he said. “Does it really matter if I walk north and never come back? What is it to you?”

“Can’t a person be worried about another human being, just because?”

“You don’t need to worry. I know how to take care of myself.”

“Or I’ll be reading about some Inuit hunter finding your frozen body in ten years.”

In the end, Jon had the money and convinced the heliski place to fly him to Upernavik. Before leaving, he bought a set of top-of-the-line cold weather gear—boots, coat, gloves, hat, goggles, thermals, heat packs, stove, fuel, food. A pair of second-hand snowshoes in good condition. As much as he could reasonably carry.

Upernavik was an island in summer. Jon could see the white expanse of permanent glacier on the mainland. He found someone to sell him an ATV with snow tires and a couple of cans of gas, and a boat captain to take him to the mainland without asking too many questions. That burned through the last of the money from the Blue Star. That was okay, he wasn’t going to be seeing too many more places to spend money.

The boat captain let him off on shore, studying him skeptically.

“You doing this as some kind of stunt? Some kind of internet blog thing?” he asked, his English broken by a Danish accent.

“Sort of,” Jon said with a lopsided grin, because that was easier. Then he took a chance, because he’d already gotten where he needed to go and what could he lose? “Hey—do you ever seen dragons here?”

“You’ve heard stories, haven’t you? Of some secret dragon cave at the North Pole, where they’re building an army to take over the world as soon as we let our guard down?”

Jon was nonplussed. “I hadn’t actually heard that one. Just, you know, that you could sometimes see dragons this far north.” Like it was the aurora borealis or something.

“Kid, I hope you didn’t come all this way just to see a dragon. You gotta go to Montana for that. That place is crawling with them, I hear. Burning up whole towns.”

Jon didn’t say a word about where he’d come from.

“You sure you going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Jon said, holding up his bag. “I’ve got a satellite phone and a plan. I’ll be fine.”

The guy returned to his boat and motored away from the pier, leaving Jon with a second-hand ATV, a couple of spare gas cans, and a couple of packs of gear. The sun was very bright, and the air was suddenly very quiet. The lapping waves didn’t even seem to make noise.

He packed up his gear, double-checking it, looked at his map and GPS unit one more time, and set out.

He knew how to camp in cold weather. He knew how to take care of himself, how to hike, how to boil dinner over a propane stove, how to navigate. This was all stuff he’d done back home. But this country was big and lonely, even by the standards of Montana.

And the sun never, ever set. It was high summer near the Arctic Circle. He’d known to expect midnight sun in the abstract; experiencing it was something else. He thought he’d stop to camp when the light started to fade, like he did back home. Then he’d check the time, and it would be 11:30 at night and still bright out. Like four in the afternoon bright. It never got dark enough to feel like it was time to sleep. In the meantime, he grew more and more exhausted. His body still needed to rest even if his mind, his internal clock, refused to shut down.

Really, he just had to keep doing this for as much time as it took to get to that vague spot the dragons had pointed him toward. No problem, right?

The countryside wasn’t totally desolate. On a fairly regular basis, he came across houses. Huts, really, built with weathered wood planks and even bricks of sod. There might not be roads, but he would sometimes find a collection of houses by the shore, a tiny fishing village with a single pier and small boats, with nets and traps set out in the sun to dry.

Many of the villages were Inuit, native peoples who’d been living in these villages and fishing off these shores for a thousand years or more. They’d see Jon, wave and try to talk to him. He usually didn’t speak their language, and they often didn’t speak English, so he couldn’t answer their questions. They’d watch him with curiosity and confusion as he drove on into even more bleak country.

Then, several days passed when he didn’t see anyone. He entered a never-ending snowfield, and even with his heavily tinted goggles protecting him, the glare hurt his eyes.

When he used up the last of the gas, he realized something: he was making this trip with the assumption that he wasn’t coming back. That he wouldn’t need to come back, because he’d find Kay, and then… and then he didn’t know. Kay would be there, Artegal would be there, and everything would be okay, somehow. He’d be able to call someone to come pick them up. Maybe that was ridiculous, but he’d come so far by this time he saw no point in stopping. He would find Kay, and figure out the rest of it later.

He abandoned the ATV, reduced his load to one pack, strapped on the snowshoes, and kept going. Walking, one step in front of the other.

On a brightly lit evening, Jon sat on his pack next to his unlit stove and stared at the object in his hands. This. This packet, this stupid freeze dried meatloaf, was the turning around point. After this, he didn’t have enough food to get back unless he turned around right now.

He wasn’t some idiotic Shackleton type, ignoring lessons and common sense. He knew that even if he rationed hard—half a meal a day—he might not make get back south. If he didn’t eat enough calories, his body would have a tough time keeping warm. His chances of getting frostbite and hypothermia increased.

This leg of the trip was a balancing act, and he was about to fall off the tightrope.

He stared north, squinting through his goggles. Should he keep going? Did he really think he could find Kay? Was he willing to bet his life on it? Because after this meal, he was betting his life on it.

Carefully, his movements calm and measured, he set up his stove, put a tin of snow on it to melt. He ate meatloaf for dinner. Then, he packed his kit back up and continued. North.

The first dragon he saw he thought was a trick of the eye. The shape swooping close to the horizon was only there for a second and then was gone. It might have been a bird, but he knew it wasn’t. He’d gone so long without seeing anything, he couldn’t believe he could have possibly found what he was looking for now.

The second time he saw a dragon, he thought he was hallucinating. A sinuous figure arced above the horizon, making a curl like a tail twisting around against a backdrop of a smeared shadow that might have been wings.

He didn’t think this would be so hard. He’d grown up in Silver River, he’d watched dragons in the distance, flying and dipping among the mountain peaks, his whole life. Surely he’d be able to recognize them here. But he wasn’t sure now. He didn’t trust himself. It had to be a mirage; the never-ending arctic light playing tricks on him. Spots in his eyes, dancing.

When the shape of the flying dragon was gone, he couldn’t be sure he’d seen it at all. He might be hallucinating. That was what happened when you were starving.

Or he was going in the right direction, and he was close. So, so close, but he’d been saying that for days now. He was almost out of food. He had to do something.

He had to get their attention. That was his rational explanation. Do something, anything, to draw attention to himself.

There was another reason to do what he did next, emotional and unacknowledged: he had nothing to lose. He was a hundred miles from civilization and out of food. If he turned around and tried to walk back, he’d die. But if he managed to get the attention of someone, anyone, anything…

Digging through his pack, he pulled out a few necessary items—the satellite phone, the GPS, the last granola bar, his water bottle. Everything else—sleeping bag, chemical hand warmers, snowshoes, change of clothes—he shoved together into a pile. He set up the camp stove and flicked on the lighter.

He shoved the lit stove under the pile of stuff. Junk. All the gear that he’d dragged this far, that had kept him alive. He burned it all.

Much of it—sleeping bag, tarp, and such—was synthetic, nylon and other materials that tended to be highly toxic when they burned. The fire licked and spread, and the smoke that rose up was black and acrid. It even smelled poisonous.

When the flames reached the little propane canister, Jon remembered that maybe he ought to get out of range. He stumbled back, slipping on the snow and then recovering, turning away just as the canister exploded. Debris shot out, pattering against the back of his parka. A fireball swelled and rose. Not a big one—there hadn’t been much fuel left.

Maybe thirty yards away now, Jon sat and watched his life burn away in a black column of smoke. Surely someone would see it. Someone had to.

At any rate, it was a really cool fire. He laughed a little. Patted the snow around him, raising a little bit of a flurry. He couldn’t remember when his feet didn’t feel damp, and that was bad. If the fire didn’t stink so much he’d stay close to it. Keep himself warm, at least until it died away.

The flames were already failing. He hadn’t had a lot of stuff to begin with, and in this bleak world he didn’t have anything else to add to it.

He would watch the fire until it was gone, and then he would walk north until he couldn’t any more.

He really was in bad shape, because he was so intent on the flames and the fascinating way they made his gear melt and warp into a pile of blackened muck that he forgot to watch the skies. He forgot to look north, to see if anyone had noticed his signal and come to see what was burning in a place that never saw fire. When the shadow passed over him, made by a body crossing between him and the low sun, he barely registered the movement. When he finally looked over, the dragon was already landing.

At first he thought it must be Kay and Artegal—the dragon was gray, flashing blue in the light. But no, this dragon was bigger. Way bigger, and it swung its head around, opening a vast mouth filled with what seemed like hundreds of teeth.

Jon fell back, smacking hard on the ice, gasping for breath. And then he couldn’t move. The dragon cast a wide shadow over him. His fire was collapsing in a smoldering ruin.

A figure was riding the dragon, perched on its back. Just like Kay used to do—and this gave him hope, that maybe this really was Kay come to rescue him. But no, the rider was a bearded man in a hulking coat made of hide and fur. He unhitched himself from harness made of leather and iron rings and deftly slid down the dragon’s shoulder to stand on the ice.

Meanwhile the dragon, a snarling curl to his lip, swept his tail along the ice and scattered the bonfire. The last of the flames went out, and Jon’s gear was now nothing more than a black smear on the landscape. The beast huffed in satisfaction.

The man stalked toward him. Jon couldn’t tell if he was angry or anxious or what. But he was a person, the first person Jon had seen in days. He laughed, and realized he sounded insane.

The man was wearing slotted glasses—sun shades. The Inuit wore shades like this. A woven scarf wrapped his neck, and the ends of his beard and moustache were flecked with frost. Jon rubbed his own face, now thick with a beard. His gloved hand scratched hair all down his jawline. It felt strange. Kay wouldn’t even recognize him.

The man said something, but Jon didn’t understand the language. He somehow got to his feet and stayed upright, though his balance seemed wonky.

He said, “Kay! I’m looking for Kay!”

“Kay—the sacrifice? And Artegal?” the man said.

Jon laughed again, relief bursting out of him in sound. “Yes, Kay—I want to see Kay.”

“Ya. Sure.”

The ground beneath him became unsteady then, and Jon fell for no good reason. The man was coming toward him when Jon blacked out.

Kay Wyatt made careful stitches, drawing needle and sinew through the row of holes she’d already punched in the leather with an awl. Each stitch secured a length of felted padding to a wide strap, part of a breastplate for a dragon’s harness. It was tedious work, and her seat was uncomfortable: a hard wooden bench outside the harness shop. A squat stone structure near the wall of the cavern, it sat in a row with other workshops and communal buildings: the weaver’s shop, the blacksmith’s, the little chapel. The meadow and orchard, the creek running through the middle of it all—the prettiest part of the vast cavern—was just out of sight. The view here was mostly rock, and the light from the fissures at the roof of the cavern was diffuse. Out in the meadow, or working on chores at Hilde and Njal’s cottage, she didn’t feel like she was in a cave. Here, the stone got to her, and the work could only distract her for so long.

This was her job for a couple of hours every day—repairing harness for the dragons and riders. A dragon and rider went out on patrol at least once a day, which meant their gear went through a lot of hard use. Besides everything needing a good cleaning on a regular basis, a couple of worn or broken pieces always ended up on the table.

She never seemed to catch up with repairs. She liked the work, she did—she’d gotten to pick what she wanted to do, and as she’d spent so much time improvising gear for Artegal out of climbing equipment, not to mention working for the river outfitters back home, the leather straps, buckles, and wool padding made sense to her. She also appreciated learning about the “right” way to do it all—or at least, the way the experts had been doing it for centuries. The folk of the Refuge had looked on her nylon ropes and carabiners with some skepticism. They’d never seen modern steel and synthetics. But her methods gave them ideas, too, ways of knotting rope and adjusting harnesses to make them more adaptable. She didn’t feel like such an idiot, working with the harnesses, like she did when she tried to cook or spin wool or butcher chickens.

And it brought her a little bit closer to flying.

She set the half-mended harness in her lap, resting for a moment, stretching her legs and pressing her back to the wall. Looking up, following the walls of the cavern, she couldn’t quite see the top of it. Quirks of the light made it almost seem like sky—except in winter, she was told, when the whole place went dark for months and was desperately kept lit by oil lamp and dragon fire. During winter, no one could see much of anything, and much of the work of the Refuge just stopped. But when the first light came through the fissures again, the settlement threw a huge party that almost made the struggle worthwhile.

Soon enough she’d experience it for herself. She’d get to know every aspect of life in Dracopolis. She’d kept track of the days she’d been here, using an awl to scratch marks on a scrap piece of leather. Today was a hundred. She’d been here a hundred days. She was running out of space and would need to find a new scrap soon.

A shadow passed over her face—a dragon, sailing from a perch on one side of the cavern to the other on some task of its own. Forest green, bigger than Artegal, with a long tail rippling behind her. That would be Pol, the dragon Gavin rode on patrol.

Kay and Artegal had not been allowed outside the cavern since they arrived, much less been invited to join the patrol roster. They hadn’t been flying in a hundred days. Her whole body itched from cabin fever, but she couldn’t imagine how her friend must be feeling.

A high-pitched squeal, followed by cackling like a flock of birds echoed above. Three juvenile dragons came into view, chasing a fourth. Their wings flapped manically, their small, sinewy bodies careening back and forth like wild kites, nearly crashing into each other and then spinning out of the way. Playing tag. These dragons were too old to be hatchlings but too young to have sense, as Laris explained it. Kay smiled at them.

“Hey! Hiya, Kay.”

She flinched back to herself; she’d been staring out into space long after the juvenile dragons had zipped and whirled out of sight. She’d just kept staring. Her hands clenched on leather and wool, and she looked at the mending as if surprised to see it there.

“Startle you?” the young man asked.

Gavin was maybe a year or two older than she was, muscular from hard work and tough living, like most of the people here. He had ruddy hair and a trimmed beard, light brown skin and broad features. Most of the people here had some Inuit in their ancestry, along with the Scandinavian travelers who’d first settled in the cavern. He wore a short-sleeved homespun tunic with trousers, thick boots, and a belt covered with tooling, Celtic-style spirals and knot work. He smiled a lot, and he paid Kay a lot of attention. She wished he wouldn’t. But she wanted friends.

“Hey,” she answered, as always a little self-conscious about her voice, her hard American accent so different from the rolling Scandinavian variation here. At least most people here spoke enough English they could understand her. She was learning their version of Icelandic, which had a lot of English and a smattering of Inuit vocabulary mixed in, but still had to concentrate to understand them. The accent sometimes got away from her. She was learning, but she would never be comfortable.

Kay tied off the knot on the thread as Gavin slouched onto the bench beside her—close, but not too close. A carefully calculated distance between them.

“Busy?” he asked.

“I just have to put this away and I’ll be done.”

“Heard a rumor from Anna that you haven’t seen the hot springs yet.” He donned a conspiratorial grin. He’d found another hidden secret of the Refuge that he could delight in showing her.

“Inge mentioned them,” she said. Inge was the rider who found her and Artegal. She’d been the one to encourage Kay to apprentice with the harness shop. “I’m still finding my way around, and she said they were pretty deep in the tunnels.”

“Some of us are going up there with a couple of flasks of brandy if you want to come along.”

“Okay, sure.” She wondered if she should bother asking about swimsuits. That seemed like yet another luxury this place wouldn’t have.

He grinned. “You’ve not seen anything like it, I’d wager.”

She wasn’t going to try to explain hot tubs to him. But the thought of peeling off her boots and socks and soaking her feet, even for a few minutes—bliss. Inside the shop, she hung the finished harness on its hook and hurried off with Gavin to join the others.

The group was made up of her, Gavin, his brother Mikal, and three of the girls: Esta, Marge, and Anna. They were dressed for summer, or as close to summer as it ever got here, in skirts and tunics and trousers. Sandals instead of boots. Kay looked just like them but still didn’t feel at home in what seemed like costumes to her. Garb from a Renaissance Faire photo op. Mikal and Anna carried picnic baskets, and the whole outing had the feeling of a party.

Kay didn’t notice the trail until they were well uphill and into the rocks, traveling from the main cavern and through a tunnel she hadn’t known was there. Single file, they hiked on switchbacks around rockfall until they entered the cleft in the stone. Leaving the bright light, Kay turned back to watch the dragons perched on ledges, calling to one another. The blue-gray shape of Artegal wasn’t there just now. He spent much of his time with Laris and the other dragons in their own set of hidden tunnels and caverns—back in school, he’d say with a wink.

She always kept a watch for him.

She was happy for him, being back with his Mentor, having this adventure. Even if he had a world now where she couldn’t follow him: most of the tunnels and caves branching off from the cavern belonged to the dragons. The treasure hordes were there, Kay learned, and their nursery, where eggs were incubated and hatchlings cared for. She gathered that life here for the dragons was much like it was back in the Rockies.

This wasn’t so different for Artegal. She was the one who didn’t speak the language and had to learn how to exist here.

“Come on, keep going,” Gavin urged her, tapping her shoulder, a laugh on his voice.

“It’s really not far,” Anna added, and Kay hurried to walk with the young woman.

“Can I carry that for you? At least part of the way,” Kay asked, gesturing at the basket. Anna nodded, and Kay gripped the handle. She really wanted to make friends with the girls her age here. Assure them she wasn’t chasing after Gavin and the other eligible guys. Be at home, not a guest. She was going to be here a while.

Darkness quickly closed in the tunnel. Kay couldn’t see a thing, and held her hand out to keep from running into anything. The sound of Anna’s footsteps, leather scuffing stone, guided her. The blackout didn’t last long. Ahead, the faint glow of sunlight through fissures reached them. The tunnel started to open up.

In the front, Esta and Marge were chattering in a mash of Icelandic and English, Mikal and Anna were flirting. He’d walk backwards, make jokes until she laughed, blushing. That left Kay with Gavin, who kept smiling, anticipating his big reveal. She clung to the basket with both hands.

The rocks in the tunnel were black, rippling with whorls and patterns. The stone looked volcanic—this might have been cut by an old lava flow. Or maybe carved out by dragonfire. She’d heard they could do that.

Another dozen steps and the tunnel opened into a grotto, a small cave lit up by filtered sunlight, expanded with lenses and mirrors hung from the rock. It was beautiful. Water bubbled up from underground, seeping through volcanic rocks and heated by the same thermal vents that warmed the caverns, collecting in a series of pools at different levels, water from higher ledges trickling to lower pools in mini-waterfalls, filling the space with a sound like chimes. Mixing with cooler surface water, the steaming pools were decked with moss and ferns, smelling of sulfur, bubbling pleasantly.

Her very first thought: Jon would love this. She wished he could see it. She had to shut her eyes and look away to keep back tears. Take a deep breath, pretend like everything was fine so no one would ask her what was wrong. The process was familiar by now.

Gavin was giving her a searching look; he’d probably noticed.

Anna let out a whoop of happiness, pulled off her slippers and hiked up her skirt. She found a seat on a flattened rock and dipped her feet in, sighing in pleasure. Yeah, that looked pretty good to Kay.

Kay thought that they might be skinny dipping in the hot springs—if it was normal here she couldn’t very well suggest swimsuits. But they didn’t strip naked. Instead, they kept on their undertunics as they slipped into the water, and then sat back to soak. Kay took off her boots and rolled up her pants. The water was right on the edge of being too hot. Her skin turned pink, her muscles melted, and for the first time since leaving Silver River she started to relax. Really relax. The steam got into her bones. Kay’s muscles all let go of tension they’d been holding… well, for months, probably.

After the soak, Marge and Esta spread out their mini picnic: bread, cheese, berries, and an unlabeled bottle of something. Probably something dangerous.

This ended up looking a lot like the parties Kay’s best friend Tam liked to go to after dances and football games: a bunch of teenagers sitting around, passing bottles of booze they weren’t supposed to have, and talking shit. Esta passed Kay the bottle first, and Kay took a swig of a throat-burning liquid, full of fumes and somehow still tasting sweetly of cherry. Gavin and his friends did their best to make Kay feel welcome, offering her food, asking what she liked, if she was okay, and how did she feel.

She just wasn’t sure she wanted to feel welcome.

“I’ll get as far as the sea on my next patrol, mark,” Gavin was saying to Marge and Esta. Showing off for the girls, clearly. “Catch a big tuna or whale and bring it back to ya.”

Gavin’s job was riding patrols. The patrol riders didn’t always go far, just circling the general area to see if anything was wrong, anything they needed to be concerned with—like a new dragon and rider suddenly appearing from the south. They hunted sometimes, if an easy catch was available along the coast.

Mikal scoffed. “Pol can’t carry a whale, she’s not big enough.”

“Is too, you’ll see!”

“Pol knows better than to catch a whale, and you can’t talk her into it!”

They all laughed, and Kay wasn’t sure she understood exactly what was funny. She and Artegal had crossed the ocean; Artegal had caught tuna to eat on the fly. She didn’t point this out, because she wasn’t sure they knew, and she didn’t want them to laugh at her. Or remind them that she was an outsider. They would know with her it had to be true, and then it wouldn’t be a joke anymore, and maybe Gavin and his dragon partner Pol would feel like they had to go catch a whale to impress her. She didn’t want that.

She didn’t belong here.

Mikal asked, “Kay—when they letting you and Artegal go on patrol?”

No one had said anything about even letting her and Artegal outside the cavern. She assumed they were afraid they’d try to escape. She’d noticed Artegal looking wistfully toward the entrance, but neither brought up the subject. It would be picking at the wound.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

“We could take you out,” Gavin said. “Me an’ Pol. Show you how it’s done.”

Kay just smiled.

“They’re afraid she’ll run off,” Marge said. “But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“Wouldn’t be much point,” Kay said. Artegal was too honor-bound to try it. She wasn’t sure about herself.

“What’s it like, out in the world?” Conversation with her always turned to this question, sooner or later. They kept asking in case she said something different, something new. Times like these, she felt a little like an animal in a zoo, and they were waiting for her to do a trick.

“Well,” she started, splashing her feet a little. “We have artificial hot springs in plastic boxes with jets that make bubbles. But they don’t feel as good as this.”

Anna said, “Ah, a hot spring you can put wherever you want, what fun!”

Yeah, Kay supposed it was. She hadn’t thought of it like that. She tried to think of something else to say, some anecdote about cars or shopping malls or cell phones, but nothing came to mind that she hadn’t already tried to explain. Mostly, the world outside was a lot more people and a lot more stuff to deal with. The world certainly changed when you spent most of every day making sure everybody had enough to eat.

“What’re you thinking now?” Gavin asked, his smile easy.

“I miss Jon,” she said, without realizing. It just fell out. She tried not to mention Jon, especially around Gavin. When she talked about missing anything, Silver River or her mother, her friends, everyone got these pursed frowns and looked away from her.

“You know you’re never going to see him again, yeah?” Gavin said softly. Not harshly. He wanted her to move on. To be happy. No matter how she really felt.

“Gavin, hush you,” Anna hissed at him. Then she passed the bottle to Kay. “Never mind him. You feel what you feel.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” she said, and took a long drink of brandy.

She drank enough to get buzzed. The others seemed to drink a ton more, but looked like they handled it just fine. They’d grown up drinking. After a couple of hours of soaking, eating, and talking, they packed up the baskets and trekked back to the main cavern.

As the others started on the path back to the valley, Kay hung back. “I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

They turned, waved farewells, didn’t question. Except for Gavin. “Not ready to come home yet?”

She shrugged, wishing he would leave her alone, but not wanting to be rude. “I’m just taking a walk.”

“Well, you want company?” he said hopefully.

A shadow passed over them, made by a gray-blue dragonish shape sailing overhead. One of the dragon’s wings dipped, his neck curving to turn his head, so he could catch her eye. She waved at Artegal.

“Right,” Gavin said, lips curled. “Talk to you later, then.”

She was already trotting up a trail that went into the rocks, to where the dragons lived. Artegal soared ahead of her, braking his wings out to come to rest on a set of ledges hidden away from the buildings and people, where other dragons didn’t often go.

Sometimes when she saw Artegal on the ledges, other dragons, particularly younger ones, came to him, rumbling and growling in their language. When Kay asked what they talked about, he said the young ones wanted to know about the outside world, the human world, and the wars that had happened and would happen. He was like some explorer who’d returned from an impossible land. “There be humans,” she joked with him.

Kay was starting to understand the dragon language. She might have only recognized the tones of it—happy or sad, uncomfortable or contented. But she thought she could recognize her name, that particular grunt some dragons made right before they looked over at her. Or they might have been saying “girl,” or “outsider,” or “sacrifice.” Some of the humans called her the Sacrifice, with an impressed tone—there apparently hadn’t been a virgin sacrifice to dragons in a very long time. A few people here bragged that they were descended from virgin sacrifices who’d been taken to Dracopolis to live, centuries ago.

If only she knew if her sacrifice had worked. That it had stopped the war that so fascinated the young dragons.

Artegal settled into his nook, folding his wings, arcing his neck to a resting shape. As she always did, she marveled at his grace. How something that size could seem to move like a floating feather.

“Hi,” she said.

He snaked his head closer to her. The scales around his mouth shifted, a smile. “Well?”

“Yes. You?”

He huffed, a noise of uncertainty. “Restless.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a sigh.

“You saw the springs?”

“I did. They’re beautiful. Warm. It was nice.”

“Too small for dragons.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“No matter. We have all the air,” he said, looking up and around at the great height of the cavern.

She said, “Gavin thinks we should ask to go on patrol. He says we’ve got to be better riders than just about anyone here, to get as far as we did.”

He snorted, his nostrils quivering, a gesture of thoughtfulness. “Don’t know that we’re to be trusted so much. No one is, who isn’t born here.”

“No human, you mean.”

“They say I’m too curious.”

“We never would have met if you weren’t so curious.”

“Exactly. Cause trouble.”

She had to smile. Yeah, their curiosity had caused a lot of trouble. But they’d accomplished so much, too. “I think I might be happier if we could go flying.”

“Then… you are unhappy?” He sounded worried.

“ I mean, I miss home. I miss… everything. But what you said—restless. If someone told me there’d be peace between humans and dragons, but I had to stay here forever, I’d be okay with that. But I’d have to know. That’s the worst, not knowing what’s going on out there. If we did any good. If the sacrifice worked.”

“Yes.”

“Are you happy?” she asked.

He paused before answering, looking out across the cavern, then at her. His eyes were clear, his expression neutral. “Wanted to see the world.”

Her eyes stung with tears for a moment, but she didn’t think he noticed. “Yeah. Me too.”

Artegal raised his head. His long neck was like a watchtower. His gaze focused on the far end of the cavern and the tunnel leading out. One of the patrol dragons was returning, agitated and unhappy, shaking out slate-colored wings and snorting steam.

Kay couldn’t see much from here, only that many dragons were turning their attention in that direction, emerging from grottos, perching on ledges to watch. She stood and put a hand on Artegal’s chest.

“What is it?”

“Something’s happened.”

“What—?”

He spread his wings. For a moment he looked like he might launch. But he shivered, settled, brought his neck low, his head near to Kay. “Don’t know. Must wait.”

In fact, a half dozen other dragons—larger, older, more senior in the hierarchy—were already in the air, gliding across the cavern. The atmosphere became charged, unhappy—ominous storm clouds gathering.

The day’s patrol had found something. The place must have been like this when she arrived, an upset to the order, a disruption that made everything stop.

Having to wait was maddening. Obedience was implicit here, because their survival depended on the rules, on everyone working together. Even more than in Silver River—this world was so much smaller and more precarious.

Soon, though, Laris came to land on the ledge above them, the shadow of his wings covering them. His head lowered, appraising them both with a narrowed gaze. “We need you,” he said to Kay. “Come.”

Kay half-climbed, half-slid down the ledge, chasing Artegal’s shadow along the paths that led through the settlement. The dragon arrived first, settling on a perch where others made room for him. Catching her gaze as she arrived, his scaled face sloped into his version of a frown. He was worried. Njal was here, wearing that same anxious look. He urged her forward, saying, “Kay, we need you here.” She moved up to his side.

A man lay unconscious on the stone plaza at the mouth of the cavern. He was dressed in grubby winter clothes, including face-obscuring goggles and a knit cap. A dragon and his rider—Myrl and Erik, she thought—stood nearby in full patrol gear.

“Said he knew you before he passed out,” Erik said.

Kay had a sick feeling in her stomach. The patrolman removed the hat and goggles, turned him on his back.

It was Jon.

She almost didn’t recognize him. He had a scraggily, wiry beard, and his brown hair had grown long and was sticking out every which way. His cheeks were sunken, and his jacket hung off him like it didn’t fit, or he didn’t fit. Before she could figure out what to do, or even to be surprised, he started to wake up. Hand to face, rubbing his eyes—and all at once he sat up, a panicked flinch. He looked around in exactly the way one would expect someone to look, waking up to find themselves surrounded by dragons: eyes wide, breathing hard, scrambling to his feet and then freezing when he saw her.

He focused right on her, like he suddenly didn’t notice the dozen dragons looming over him. His expression was full of hope and uncertainty, like he was afraid she might disappear.

In that moment she realized that yes, it really was Jon, whom she hadn’t seen in months. He must have been terrified that something was wrong, that he’d messed up somehow, because she wasn’t saying anything. So she swallowed, murmuring, “Jon,” and went to him. He melted in her arms like he didn’t have any strength left.

They guided him to Hilde and Njal’s house, where he collapsed again. What little he’d said didn’t make much sense. He’d been traveling a long time, alone, across the icepack. Before that he’d crossed the ocean on a ship, but he was vague about those details. Who knew what all he’d been through—and he’d done it to find her. She couldn’t believe it. She kept asking why, and he’d looked at her like she was crazy, like she should have known, like the answer was obvious.

He never should have come. Of course he shouldn’t have, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain it to him. He would expect her to be happy to see him.

They gave him soup, a change of dry clothes, and a warm place to sleep. He melted into the furs and pallet and fell into a deep sleep, looking like he might never wake up. His fingers clutched the wool blankets like he was afraid someone would take them away.

Kay sat nearby and watched him. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone so tired. Even she and Artegal weren’t this exhausted after their journey to Dracopolis. It had only taken them a handful of days. They’d flown; Jon had walked for much of the way, clearly. His boots were worn, cracked. His brow was still furrowed with worry, even asleep.

She ought to be happy to see him and part of her was—she’d missed him every single day. But this felt less like he’d come to rescue her and more like he hadn’t trusted her to take care of herself. A fine line. She ought to be grateful, but she didn’t need to be rescued. He didn’t understand, and now somehow she had to tell him he couldn’t leave.

Artegal waited outside. “Why did he come?” he asked Kay when she emerged from the house. He was on a perch, a chunk of rock that had tumbled from the cavern wall ages ago.

“I don’t know. I think… he wanted to make sure I was okay.”

“He didn’t trust?”

“No,” she said sadly. “When he’s feeling better, maybe he can tell us how things are out there. If the sacrifice worked. Right?”

Artegal huffed, steam curling from his nose. “The Elders don’t know what to do with him.”

“I figured they’d do with him what they did with me. Right?”

“He found Dracopolis without help from dragons. Did he bring anyone with him?”

They’d accepted her because she came with Artegal. Moreover, Laris was here and could vouch for his former student. But Jon—how suspicious was it, this guy stumbling over the ice straight for the refuge?

“We need to talk to him.”

Artegal reached his neck down, tilting his head to look her in the eye. She touched his long gray snout, and was comforted. They’d get through this.

Jon woke up in the morning, groggy but looking much better. Warmer, better fed. She had tea, bread, and yogurt waiting for him. She’d slept nearby, so she would be close in case he woke up disoriented. She hadn’t slept well, sitting up and looking at him every hour or so to make sure this all hadn’t been her imagination.

He saw her, and his big smile made her heart ache. She’d missed him, she’d really missed him. But what did he think was going to happen next? She shouldn’t feel so responsible for him, but she did.

When she didn’t say anything, his smile faltered. He took the tea, sipped. Settled back on the pallet. “I guess I thought you’d be happier to see me,” he said. His voice was scratchy, cold-scoured.

Blinking back tears, she looked away. “I’m happy to see you. It’s just… what are you doing here?”

“I came to find you. We had enough clues, we had that old book, we knew you had to be somewhere around here. I got close and lit a bonfire, and well—it worked.”

The book. The Dracopolis manuscript. They should have brought it with them. At the time it had seemed like one more thing to carry, when they were trying to cut down weight.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get killed.”

He didn’t deny this. Wryly, he looked in his tea. “Yeah. But I had to do something. I couldn’t stay at home not doing anything.”

Home… “How… how is it back home? Did it work?”

“It. You mean that stunt you and that dragon pulled?”

“His name is Artegal,” she muttered. This was an old refrain.

“It worked,” he said. “When I left, negotiations were getting started.”

Kay closed her eyes and tears slipped down her cheeks. It had worked. They’d done it, and a weight came off her shoulders. Anything else she could handle; whatever came next, she’d deal with it. They stopped the war.

“My Mom?”

“She’s really worried about you. But she’s okay. She… she knows what I did. She wanted me to find you.”

That sounded like Mom. She probably pulled some strings, helped Jon figure out where he needed to go—she had the Dracopolis manuscript, after all.

Jon said, “So why aren’t you happy to see me?”

She reached for his hand, held it tight, thinking the contact would make this easier. His skin was warm. She’d forgotten how nice it was, holding hands with him. Part of her wanted to crawl under the covers with him, because wouldn’t that be even nicer?

Maybe. But this wasn’t going to get any easier.

“You shouldn’t have come, Jon.”

He shrugged off the words. “But I wanted to see you.”

“I know. And I appreciate it, but—”

“I came to get you. It worked, the sacrifice worked. You can come home now. I can take you home.”

“No. You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. Kay, your mom gave me a satellite phone, we can call—”

“No, we can’t. Don’t you get it? We can’t call, we can’t leave, we can’t tell anyone where this place is, we can’t do anything that will give us away.” The words sunk in then, and hit her like a punch in the stomach. “Wait a minute—is the phone on? Is it transmitting a GPS signal?”

“I don’t know—”

His gear was stashed in a corner of the front room. She dashed over and pawed through the coat pockets, the backpack.

“Kay!” He followed, still slow and wobbly.

The Elders and patrol riders had gone through his things already, but they didn’t know the danger. She’d told them about mobile phones, but she hadn’t told them about GPS. The battery in her own phone was long dead; she hadn’t thought that the GPS mattered and she didn’t want them to worry. To be even more suspicious than they already were.

“Kay, what are you doing—”

She found the phone, a black chunk of plastic and circuitry. As far as she could tell, it was turned off. The battery might have been dead, or maybe not. She pried at the cover, popped it off, took out the battery pack. She found an actual GPS unit and did the same. That wasn’t enough, though, so she grabbed a knife and started ripping out wires.

“Kay! Shit, Kay, what are you doing!” Jon lunged at her, and she let him grab the pieces out of her hands. It was too late, the damage was done. She dodged out of his way, hands up in a gesture of surrender. How to explain this? He wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t understood the sacrifice in the first place, he sure wasn’t going to understand this. Jon looked at the pieces in his hand as if he was drowning and a lifeline had just been yanked away.

“We can’t,” she said, her heart racing. She tried to catch her breath. She was about to cry because he wasn’t going to understand, and she had probably just lost him. “We can’t call. We can’t go back. They won’t let us. It’s how they keep this place secret.”

“Have you even tried? You could just sneak out—”

“And do what?” she demanded. “Cross five hundred miles of glaciers on my own? How long would it take the dragons to go after us?”

He stared. Slumped to the floor and put his head in his hands. He must have been so tired. “And you believe. You believe in all these, these stories, the peace, the sacrifice, the refuge—”

She paused, swallowed. “Yes, I do.”

She could see him working it out in his head—and still not understanding. He was deciding something, and she didn’t know what it was. She continued, “This is for everyone back in Silver River. This is for my dad. It’s to keep them safe.”

He glared. “Do you really think this is what your dad would have wanted?”

It was a low blow and he knew it. She’d done such a good job of not thinking of her father, the first casualty in the war. The war she’d stopped. What would he have thought of this? Well, who understood sacrifice better than Jack Wyatt? So what would he have done? What would he say? What would help the greatest number of people, she thought. That was what he’d work for. Keeping as many people as he could safe. It was what had killed him.

Kay hoped he’d be proud of her.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said softly, trying to keep her voice from cracking, failing. “A sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice unless it hurts.”

“Oh, Kay—”

Gently, he came to her and folded her in his arms, holding her tight. She pressed her face to his shoulder. The more she tried to keep from crying the harder she shook.

“What is this? What’s wrong?” Hilde came to the doorway, looking in. She held a walking stick like a weapon. Kay was too flustered to tell them all to stop, just stop.

“It’s okay,” Kay managed to get out, looking up and wiping her eyes. “We’re just talking.”

Hilde glanced down at the bits of modern, foreign technology broken and scattered on the floor. Understanding what Kay had had to do and how Jon had reacted. “Well then. All right.” She left them alone.

Kay and Jon were alone again. She pulled him back to the bedroom. “Let’s finish breakfast.”

They ate quietly, without enthusiasm, nibbling and sipping only. Jon wasn’t smiling anymore, and wouldn’t look at her.

“You wish you hadn’t come,” she said finally.

“No, that’s not it. It’s… really good to see you. And I guess—well, I’m not dead, am I? This is fine. This will all be fine.” The beard changed his face. He looked older, maybe angrier, despite the smile that had returned.

“Yeah,” Kay said, but she still wondered.

Kay was there when Jon got the lecture from Hilde and the other Elders, the same one she’d gotten about how Dracopolis stayed hidden because no one left. How if it was going to stay a refuge it had to stay secret. Jon nodded and said he understood; agreed to live by their rules. But Kay recognized his thoughtful expression, even with the beard. The calculation in his eyes. She believed in the purpose here—she’d protect it even though it hurt. But he wouldn’t.

“That’s a lot to take in,” he said simply. She urged him to walk with her through the cavern’s pastures so they could talk. They moved slowly, aware that people were watching them—the second stranger to arrive in less than a year. They were suspicious. Gavin hadn’t made an appearance yet, which was a relief.

“Yeah.”

“This place… wow.” He studied everything, just like she had. Considering the sight of so many dragons looking down, studying him. She thought of the hot springs, how much he would like them. Maybe later.

She guided him up the path, away from the settlement to the back wall, to Artegal’s perch. A shadow passed overhead. Jon flinched, ducking instinctively, but Kay knew what was happening: a dragon, soaring ahead. Jon’s breath caught as he recognized Artegal, who spread his wings and reached hind legs to settle into place.

“Uh. Hi,” Jon said. His voice didn’t shake too much.

Artegal crouched low, resting on his belly, wings loose beside him. Relaxed. Unintimidating. He knew Jon had never really gotten used to him. Jon held back, even when Kay went to sit near the dragon.

Jon crossed his arms and looked unhappy. Maybe she should try to comfort him. She hoped she didn’t ever have to pick between the two.

“Jon. Welcome,” Artegal said in his rumbly voice. “Your journey—the others are impressed.” Artegal glanced up and around, clearly indicating that “others” meant the dragons. Indeed, they were being watched. They were always being watched.

“I just…” Jon shrugged and looked away. “I was worried about Kay.”

“Yes,” Artegal said simply. Not arguing. “The others want to know—how did you find this place? You could not have followed.”

Kay was wondering that herself and waited for the answer. Trying not to notice how the way she was sitting clearly aligned her with Artegal, with the dragons. Suspicious of the stranger.

“Uh, yeah, about that,” he said, looking at his feet. “I kind of went into Dragon territory north of the border looking for Kay. I, uh, might have met a couple of dragons.”

Artegal snorted—not a laugh this time, he was surprised. She stared. “How did that go?”

“A lot like here—I said I knew you and they listened to me. Your name’s a little bit magic with them.”

“They told you the way here?” Artegal asked.

He shrugged. “Just a general direction. North, across the water. I just sort of took off and… hoped.”

“That was stupid, Jon.” She frowned at him. “You almost died out there.”

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. He was so thin, he must have lost twenty pounds out on the ice. “But, you know, I was trying to rescue you.”

“I don’t need rescuing!”

“Then maybe I just wanted to see you.” He wouldn’t meet her gaze. She wanted to reach out and cling to him, but she was also angry. He’d almost died. And she might never have known.

“Kay is right,” Aregal said. This time, the snort was a laugh. “Stupid. But brave.”

“What are we going to do now?” Jon said. “We can’t just stay here. Can we?”

Kay despaired a little. She and Artegal had had this conversation a dozen times already. And Jon… he’d never get it. He’d never be satisfied.

“If it keeps the peace, I would stay here,” she said.

Jon was pleading now. “You can’t—it’s bigger than that. You’re just one person. You can’t—”

“Change the world?” Kay said wryly. “But I’m not one person. I’m a person and a dragon.”

Jon blew out a breath and turned away. From this vantage, most of the valley inside the main cavern was visible, the cave walls turning to grassy slopes, leading to the thin creek running toward the entrance and the clusters of medieval-looking buildings. Sheep grazed, people worked, dragons watched, occasionally gliding from perch to perch.

“This place is amazing,” he said finally.

A knot in Kay’s chest loosened. “Yeah,” she said. “It is.”

The news Jon brought—that the sacrifice had worked, peace was holding—spread quickly. Only Kay was relieved; the people of Dracopolis had expected it to work. They hadn’t doubted the way she had. They didn’t understand that the rest of the world didn’t really believe in things like virgin sacrifice anymore.

After Jon had a couple of days to rest, the Refuge held a feast to make him feel welcome, but more to give people a chance to look him over. They’d held one for Kay when she arrived. In the clearing in front of the chapel, closest thing they had a town square, people set up tables and presented pots of stew, platters of breads and cakes, dishes of vegetables, dried fruits and nuts. Casks of cider and beer. All the best the Refuge had to offer, and everyone gazing hopefully, eager for her to like it. To not want to leave.

Welcoming Kay had been easy because Artegal had been with her. But Jon? Nobody knew what to make of him. The smiles weren’t as welcoming for him as they’d been for her.

Through it all, Jon was polite. Listening hard at the accent, the hybrid vocabularies. Mostly keeping quiet, as if he understood that he wasn’t supposed to be here. Gavin stayed out of sight, which annoyed Kay. They’d have to meet sometime.

The sun set—a sure sign that autumn was approaching, Kay had been told. When the sun stopped coming through the cracks and crevices, when the periods of darkness grew longer, then winter was close. Months of cold and dark. She couldn’t imagine it. So twilight fell, and oil lamps and lanterns all over the cavern were lit, shining from windows and lighting the paths across the meadow. People drifted home, Kay’s friends said their goodbyes, and she and Jon had a moment alone, backs against the chapel house, listening to the bell-like trickle of the creek that flowed through the cavern.

“I don’t remember anybody’s name,” Jon said tiredly. His hands rested limply on his knees, his whole body slouched.

“Yeah. Took me a couple weeks for that.”

“Was it hard? When you first got here?”

She had to think back. That time seemed ages ago—but didn’t she and Artegal launch from Silver Fork just a few days past? “Maybe a little. But it also felt like we’d won. I wasn’t really thinking about the future.”

“And you had Artegal to talk to.”

“And you have me.” She smiled and patted his arm.

“I guess I’m going to have to get a job?” His expression wrinkled.

“You could be back babysitting river tours,” she said, hoping he might laugh, or at least smile. She wasn’t good at making jokes.

He didn’t smile, and she thought maybe he wished he was back guiding river tours.

She shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Everybody has to work together to keep all this going.”

“Yeah, I get it. It’s fine. It’s just…” He put his arm over her shoulders and held on tight, like he was afraid. “It’s really good to see you.”

The whole world felt a little like it was falling, all over again.

Exhausted, Jon fell asleep quickly. Kay stayed up, feeling like she had to keep watch over him. Nervous about what might happen next, for no reason at all. The days would tick on, like the last hundred had. She’d forgotten to make the last two notches in her strip of leather, she realized. After catching up, she was able to lie down.

She must have fallen asleep because someone shook her awake at dawn. Hilde. “Get up, dear. You’re needed.”

Kay started, thinking something was wrong with Jon, but Hilde was smiling.

“Dress warm and go to the tunnel outside. Artegal and the others are waiting.”

She shrugged on a sweater, wool trousers, boots and her coat, and hurried out.

Dragons and their riders were waiting for her. Inge and Rood, Gavin and Pol—forest green with hints of black up close, on the edges of her legs and wings. She gazed with a scaly, permanent frown. And Artegal. He was wearing a harness, and tears filled her eyes. She could remember the feeling of hooking in and flying with him in her bones, and she’d missed it. He was restless, feet flexing against his perch, wings fluttering. He looked over and smiled at her.

“Want to go up, girl?” Inge asked. She gestured to a pile of gear: a big furred coat, goggles to protect against glare, a harness for a rider.

Kay didn’t believe it, so she stared blankly.

“Come on, Kay!” Gavin said. He was already suited up and ready to go. Pol and Rood started for the tunnel. “I know you’ve been itching for this.”

“Why let me out now?” she asked the woman.

“You proved yourself,” Inge said.

Because she’d destroyed the satellite phone and GPS. They may not have recognized the technology, but they understood what it did. And that she’d trapped Jon here. She’d sided with them. She was being rewarded for betraying him.

Artegal stretched his neck and whispered to her, “Kay. Come.”

Yes. They could fly, and she could forget about all the rest of it. They hadn’t been up since their epic flight to get here. Months. As restless as the downtime made her, how bad had it been for Artegal, not to be able to stretch his wings except for short hops across the caverns?

After the trek through the tunnel, they gathered at the edge of the caldera that marked the cavern’s entrance. Morning light turned the ice outside to diamond. A vast sheet of shining gemstone, interrupted by rocks, hills, outcrops, and a distant shore. A breeze was blowing, but it was slight, making the air fresh rather than cold. The air outside was crisp and clean; she hadn’t noticed how much the cavern smelled like a mulchy garden. Not a bad smell, but this was better.

She was now dressed in what the riders of Dracopolis wore: fur-lined leather pants, thick knee-high boots, woolen clothing under a heavy parka, big fur-lined gloves. Like what the Inuit peoples wore crossing the Arctic ice. She’d thought her high-tech gear and chemical hand warmers kept her as warm as she could possibly be, flying with Artegal back in Montana. But these clothes cocooned her. She wouldn’t even feel the wind.

Artegal’s gear had been upgraded as well, and Kay was chagrined at what they’d made do with before—thin ropes and hooks and a lot of good intentions. The harnesses at Dracopolis were padded leather, buckled for a custom fit, safety straps in place in case the buckles broke. The harnesses for the riders hooked in to the dragon’s harness in three different places—waist, shoulders, legs. She wouldn’t flop around on his back the way she had their first few flights. This was hardcore. This was right. They’d look like the illustrations in the Dracopolis manuscript. They even used the knotted rope pressing into the scales to communicate while airborne. That was one thing they’d gotten right.

“Beautiful day,” Gavin observed. Pol snorted above him.

“Artegal?”

He looked like a sculpture made of ice, the light turning him pale, almost silver. She almost thought she could see through him. He sat back on his haunches and stretched his head up as far as it would go, his long neck straight, his nose tipped up. He spread his wings, simply opening them to the sun, stretching the membranes. He was beautiful. And he’d been shut up for too long. She wiped a tear away with the back of a leather glove.

The dragon sighed; his breath came out in a cloud of steam. “Good to be out. To see sky.”

“Scares some folks,” Gavin said. “All this space. Not everyone can be riders.”

Artegal ignored him, curling his neck down to look straight at Kay. “Let’s go.”

It seemed like it had been forever since she grabbed the harness and clambered up his shoulder to secure herself to the straps on his back. It also seemed like it had been yesterday. Her muscles hadn’t forgotten any of this.

“Ready?” he huffed, looking at her out of the corner of her eye.

She patted the base of his neck to signal yes.

Gavin swung into his harness easily, with the efficient movements of long practice. He was grinning. Kay got the feeling he was showing off, so like Artegal, she ignored him.

Artegal gathered himself, the muscles of his haunches, back, and shoulders tightening; he spread his wings, and launched.

Wings pumping hard, he climbed straight up, and she lay flat on his back to not impede his movements. Spiraling, he leveled off only a few hundred feet from the ground, making adjustments until his wings filled and he glided.

It might have been her imagination, that he was thinner than he had been, weaker. That his wings weren’t as strong from going unused for so long. But she was thinner and weaker, too. Dracopolis didn’t really have mirrors, but she could feel her face, her cheekbones. She felt drawn. They really had been cooped up too long.

The other two dragons took off after them. Inge and steady Rood made a wide circle in what looked like the start of a regular patrol pattern. Meanwhile, Pol really was showing off, diving and spinning, flying in circles around them, whipping her tail, tossing her head like she might breathe fire. Even over the wind, she could hear Gavin laughing. If they were trying to goad her and Artegal into some kind of contest or race, they’d be disappointed. They were too happy just being. Kay could stretch out on Artegal’s warm, smooth back and fall asleep if she wanted. She turned her face to the sun and reveled in its warmth. Below them, the land spread out, a plane of ice and rock. A stretch of gray to the west was probably the ocean; they weren’t that far from the coast. She wondered if Artegal might like to go and fish, but then didn’t think they should get that far from the cavern. Gavin wasn’t here to keep them company after all; he was keeping an eye on them. To stop them if they tried to run.

Given how weak Artegal was and how strong Pol was, it wouldn’t be much of a struggle.

“Are you well?” Artegal tipped his head back and called. His voice rumbled in his lungs.

“This is perfect!” she called back, and he snorted in agreement.

They turned lazy, soothing circles for half an hour before Artegal turned back to the cavern and descended. Kay sensed the strain in his muscles; he was out of practice, and this was all he could do. That was fine.

Artegal landed, tucking in his wings and sinking to the ground. Kay stayed on his back, just for a moment, arms spread across his shoulders as if she could hug him. “Thank you,” she told him, in their last moment of privacy.

“Felt right,” he said.

She slid to the ground, and his head was right there, turned back to her, and his lips curled in a smile.

Inge and Rood continued patrolling, but Gavin and Pol swooped in ten minutes or so later, diving fast and pulling up at the last minute to hit the ground. Another flashy stunt move, and Kay was annoyed at it. She didn’t need to show off. She was just happy to be in the air, and she didn’t have anything to prove. After Gavin dismounted, Pol shook herself and snorted at her companion. Artegal huffed, and Kay smiled because she could imagine what they were saying—Gavin needed Pol to pull off those stunts, but the dragon certainly didn’t need the young man.

“You’re pretty good,” Gavin said when he got close. This annoyed her even more. She hadn’t asked him for his opinion.

“I think so, considering I’ve only been at it a year.”

“We are careful and trust each other,” Artegal added.

“Right, sure,” he answered, laughing. “Ready to go in?”

“I think we’re going to just sit here for a little while longer,” Kay said, and huffing in agreement, Artegal settled in beside her. They looked out over the ice, which she once thought might have looked featureless and boring. But it was complex, fissured and crystalline, and the searing blue sky was so beautiful it hurt her heart. This was even bigger than the sky back home, which she had always thought was enormous.

“We cannot stay out here forever,” Artegal said finally. They’d been watching Rood turn a circuit around them, out to the coast and back, gold wings tipping, the membranes going translucent in the sun.

“I know. But maybe they’ll let us out now and then from now on.”

“I would like to patrol.”

Patrolling involved more than just flying around. They’d have a lot to learn. But it would be something to work for, and having some kind of a goal would be nice.

“Yeah, me too,” she said, patting his shoulder.

Back in the cavern, Kay unhooked and peeled off Artegal’s harness. He shivered, shook his wings, gave her a friendly snort. A greeting, an affirmation. Solidarity. Then he lifted his wings and soared up and away, toward the back caves where the dragons lived.

Tired and contented, she went to the harness shop to clean and put their gear away. She found Gavin there, working on his own gear. He smiled broadly when he saw her. “Told you you should patrol.”

Thoughtfully, she wiped down leather and looped straps before hanging them in their places. She was going to be sore tomorrow—she was really out of practice. But she wanted to go right back out there. “Yeah. Maybe we’ll talk to the Elders about it.”

“Want to get breakfast?” he asked, helping her loop and hang the last of the straps.

“No, I need to get back and make sure Jon’s okay.”

A beat, a pause. A spike of tension in the air, like he’d sucked in a breath. She didn’t look at him, instead focusing the last set of buckles to hang on its hook.

Gavin made a quick nod. “Impressive, him coming all this way for you.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. Was it wrong of her to wish he’d stayed home, safe and free?

“Hard to compete with that,” he muttered.

“Then don’t,” she said with forced lightness, and marched outside. He was being a jerk. He had to know he was being a jerk, right? Did he think that would make her like him any better?

“Kay! Kay, wait, I’m sorry!”

She wasn’t surprised when he followed her—chased her, really.

“Kay, please stop.”

Reluctantly, she crossed her arms and turned to face him. “What?”

He glared, his dark eyes flashing, and stood too close, like he might catch her up in a hug. She could have stepped away, but she didn’t—didn’t want him to think he’d affected her.

“Say the word and I’ll leave you alone,” he said. “I’ll never speak to you again.”

She huffed. “I don’t want that. I want to be friends, but you can’t keep… pushing.”

“It changes things, having your boyfriend here. Doesn’t it?”

She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Of course it changed everything, but weirdly she couldn’t seem to think more than a couple of days into the future. It was just too exhausting, and it was all so nebulous. Gavin’s life had always been this, the Refuge, all spread out plainly before him. There was no other world than this.

But for her, this still seemed like a dream.

“So—you think he’ll be all right here? This boyfriend of yours?” His voice had an extra edge. He wasn’t asking as a friend; he was asking as a patroller, who trained to protect the cavern.

“I think he will,” she said firmly.

“You two—when you and Artegal made the sacrifice—you were a virgin, weren’t you?”

When she and Artegal arrived, everyone had just taken her at her word. Or she thought they had. His voice was light; he seemed to be joking. Or giving himself an out, to claim he was just joking.

She wondered what he’d do if she said no. “Artegal told me it doesn’t matter. The dragons can’t tell the difference. It only matters to the humans, and they seemed to take the sacrifice just fine.”

“Yeah, but… are you?”

Some things never changed, no matter where you were. “I say yes, you’ll take it as a challenge,” she said, and marched out. Gavin’s laughter echoed behind her.

“It’s the first time they’ve let us go flying since we got here. It was great. We’re hoping to do more.”

She was back at the house eating porridge with honey and drinking hot cider. She was cold but not freezing, and starving in the way that only good exercise inspired. And Jon was looking at her like she was a stranger.

“So you’re a prisoner here,” he said.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Seems pretty simple to me. We can’t leave, so we’re prisoners, and we should try to escape.”

“I’ve decided staying here is the right thing to do,” she said. “I’m sorry you got stuck with that decision.”

“At least we’re together.”

She reached for his hand; he held it. Yeah, this was going to take a little while to work out.

That morning he finally seemed awake, not bone-weary from the trip. He finally looked like he’d had enough to eat and drink. She walked him through chores of cleaning, feeding animals, gathering eggs, weeding garden patches. She showed him various workshops: the weavers, the leather workers, the carpenters and metalsmiths, the bakers and butchers. Like some medieval village out of a history book. Which it was, she supposed. How strange, to be comfortable enough here to give someone else the tour. Comfortable enough that Jon kept giving her looks like he didn’t recognize her. When he wasn’t staring at the dragons, a dozen of them perched on their ledges, looking down, watching. One took off, sailing overhead in a lazy circle before disappearing down one of the tunnels to the caves where they lived.

At the last cluster of buildings, the farmers’ cottages, Gavin stepped out. He made it look casual, like he’d just happened to be there, just happened to run into them. But he had on a sly, calculating expression.

“Oh, hiya Kay,” he said, waving a greeting and then waiting expectantly. His accent sounded thick and strange, after hearing Jon speak all morning.

“Gavin. This is my friend, Jon. Jon, this is Gavin.”

And this was going to suck, because the two looked each other up and down like they were sizing up meat. Gavin appeared tougher—muscles developed through a life of hard work. And he hadn’t just spent weeks traveling hard, freezing and starving at the end of it. Jon looked weak, but his gaze was sharp and suspicious.

“Heard a lot about you,” Gavin said. And if he asked Jon the virgin question, Kay might actually punch him.

“Hi,” Jon said bluntly. The two kept staring. Territorial.

“Geez, you guys,” she muttered.

“What are you up to?” Gavin asked.

“Just taking a walk.”

“Ah, yeah. Jon, we’ll be puttin’ you to work soon, I reckon.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Jon said.

“What are you good at? Anything?”

Kay had never seen Jon in a fight, but she’d never seen him provoked, either. His arms bent, his shoulders bunched, and he looked like he might charge Gavin. She told herself he was still stressed and shocked and tired, and that was why this was getting to him.

She stepped in between them, glaring at them both. “Stop it.”

“So,” Jon murmured. “He’s a friend of yours?”

Jon had never had a reason to be jealous before. But they hadn’t seen each other in such a long time, and she could imagine him asking the same question Gavin had been asking her: are you a virgin? Still?

She decided it wasn’t either of their business.

A shadow passed over them. Kay and Gavin both knew what it meant, but Jon flinched. Kay had to pull him to the ground when Artegal swooped in for a landing, the claws of his feet stretching as if he might grab at them. When really, he was just landing. Even Gavin ducked, arm up to guard his face. He straightened quickly and tried to look cool, even as he glared at the dragon. The dragon snorted smugly.

“Is all well?” Artegal asked.

Kay did the only thing she could—she went to stand beside the dragon, against both Jon and Gavin, who were acting like idiots.

“We’re okay,” she said. “Right?”

Artegal crouched with his wings spread, ready to launch, or to flick a claw and knock one of them over if he needed to.

“Well then,” Gavin said, his sly smile returning, though he still looked at Jon like he was sizing him up for a fight. “You need anything, come to me, yeah?”

Jon didn’t say anything, and Gavin hiked back down the path to the settlement.

“Well isn’t he nice,” Jon muttered.

“He’s competitive,” Kay said, and Jon just shook his head. She turned to Artegal. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

“Not that you need it,” he said. “But he is being cruel and knows better.”

“He likes to show off.”

“I don’t belong here,” Jon said firmly. “I’d leave if I could, but—”

Artegal lowered his head, bringing his big shining eye close. “You are not alone.”

A deep metallic clanking sounded then, echoing against the stone walls of the cavern, reverberating until it rattled in her skull. Someone was hammering on a bell, loudly and continuously. The sound of warning was unmistakable. Artegal’s head went straight up. He snorted, his wings fluttering nervously.

No one had told her about this.

“What is it?” Jon asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

Gavin came back, running up the path, face bloodless. “It’s the warning. Hasn’t been sounded in sixty years, I’ve never even heard it, but it has to be—”

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a summoning of all the patrol. It’s calling for the defense of Dracopolis. It means an invasion,” he said. “Come on!”

Kay stopped and grabbed Jon’s arm. “Jon, what did you do? Who did you call?”

At that, Gavin stopped and stared as well. Jon was suddenly at the center of a circle of accusation.

“No one, I swear! I didn’t call anyone, I couldn’t tell anyone! The phone was off, I hadn’t used it since the coast—”

Kay believed him, and she turned over all the possibilities. It might just be chance. Sooner or later, some satellite photo, surveillance flight—hell, someone following a radio collar tagged polar bear—would make some lucky guess and find Dracopolis.

But that wasn’t what happened. The timing was too coincidental.

She put her hand to her head and tried to think.

“My mother—you said my mother knew that you were looking for Dracopolis, that you were coming here—”

“Yeah, she got me the phone—”

Kay ran back to the cottage. Jon and Gavin were right behind her.

A sense of astonishment had come over the settlement, people running out of houses, stopping in their tracks. And everyone turning toward the cavern entrance to see what was coming. A dozen dragons glided overhead. Other dragons herded the young ones toward one of the high tunnels—back to the nursery, where they would be protected. The juveniles screeched and complained, necks stretching back to watch the commotion, but they soon reached their shelter.

This all—the bell, the weapons, how to react—must have been part of patrol training. Patrol training that she might have gotten soon, if things had been different.

One of the dragons held the bell, the kind that might hang in a church tower, in a great hind foot, dangling it while her rider pounded on it with a hammer. Patrol riders were harnessing dragons, and others were handing out crossbows.

What did they think they could do against a modern invasion that would have armored vehicles and machine guns?

Back at the cottage, at the pile of Jon’s gear, Kay dug through his coat and backpack, all that was left after he’d burned the rest. The backpack was trim and blue, made of treated ripstop nylon, lightweight and practical with lots of tie-downs and pockets. She turned it inside out, searching every pocket, running her fingers along every seam—and she found something. She had to dig it out of a little pocket of fabric inconspicuous next to the seam, it had been so well hidden. She ripped open the patch and an object fell into her hand: a transponder the size of a dime, no bigger than a sim card for a phone. Government issue, want to bet.

Jon, followed by Hilde and others who had seen her panic, stood in the doorway, breathing hard and looking on.

Grimly, she held up the prize. “She was tracking you the whole time, Jon.”

First thing Kay did was take a hammer to the transponder, smashing it to pieces.

For a bad moment she thought the others were going to kill Jon. All that talk, all those protests that he hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t led anyone here, hadn’t done anything wrong—all her defenses of him—and now this. They might want to kill her, too. Artegal wouldn’t get to her in time to save her.

All over again she had to explain to them about GPS and radio signals and tracking. They didn’t believe all that technology could fit into such a little thing, no bigger than her finger. But it could, and Jon hadn’t known about it.

She found him sunk to the ground outside the house, head clutched in his hands. Practically collapsed into an unhappy ball. Hilde and a few of the others stood nearby, as if guarding him. The Refuge didn’t have a prison. What would they do to him?

“I’m so stupid. I should have known,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

She sat next to him, hugging herself. “It’s not your fault. It’s not, Jon.” But she was the only one who said so. “What’s actually happening out there?” Kay asked Hilde.

“Don’t know. Jens was the patrol that spotted it, they’re all too busy with the defenses to say what’s on.”

“Defenses?”

“We’re not helpless here, dear.”

She had to find out what was happening.

Beyond the crowd at the tunnel entrance, the dragons and their patrol riders—including Gavin—looked like an army preparing for war, passing out spears and crossbows, testing edges, hefting the weight of them. And there were dragon-sized crossbows, ballista and catapults being hauled out of caves, along with stone and scraps for their payloads. The medieval weapons seemed so outdated to Kay’s eyes—but in these hands, and claws, they were dangerous.

Everything she’d done to stop a war, and she was going to end up right in the middle of one.

She charged past them all. She had to get out and see what they were really up against.

Inge grabbed her, holding her fast; Kay cried a protest.

“Let me go see, I have to see what’s happening!”

“Stay, girl!” Inge hissed.

Artegal arrived, trying to get to her, but Pol and the other dragons blocked his way, wings spread as barriers. He snorted, bared his teeth, flapped his wings and puffed himself up in a fierce display. Then Laris arrived, a great shadow that cut through the chaos. The clacks and growls of dragons amplified the noise, the grumbling, the creak of wooden wheels on stone, the calls to be ready.

The arrival of the elder dragon distracted Inge, and Kat saw a chance. Maybe a stupid chance, but when had that ever stopped her?

She wrenched her weight, twisting and dropping, and lunged out of Inge’s grasp. Didn’t know if she could do it, but threw herself forward and hoped. And she was suddenly free, and Inge cried out. Kay didn’t look back but raced on, ducking to the edge of the tunnel, away from the gathered forces and anyone else who might try to stop her.

Above, dragons screeched. In the corner of her eye she saw a blue-silver shape swooping up, spreading wings—blocking a path. Covering her escape.

She was in the tunnel now and didn’t dare look back. She kept running through the transitional darkness to the bright light of the glaciers outside. And then she burst into the light.

For a moment she stood huffing, trying to catch her breath and gasping at the sudden cold. She wasn’t dressed for this, but couldn’t let that stop her. She wouldn’t stay long, she just needed to see what had so spooked the patrol.

Quickly, she climbed the path to the edge of the rocky basin. At the top, she shaded her eyes against bright arctic sun and looked out across the icy plain.

Footsteps crunched after her, someone running.

“Kay! What’re you doing? Get down—” It was Gavin, come to fetch her back.

“Shh!”

He was beside her then, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her back to the entrance. “You’re in real trouble, Kay. You need to come back in and explain—”

“Quiet!” she hissed at him, and amazingly he went still.

She heard it then: the rapid, rhythmic thud of helicopter motors pounding distant air. More than one of them. She knew the sound from patrolling aircraft along the border of Dragon back home.

“What’s that?” Gavin murmured, subdued. She hushed him again with a gesture.

Yes, the thumping engines were getting closer.

“There,” she whispered, pointing a chapped hand to the western horizon.

Three helicopters approached, fanned out, armed with cannons mounted to their undersides. Blue NATO emblems marked their sides, and she didn’t know if that was good or bad. Slowly, steadily, they drew closer, bending their path in a circle around the area.

The transponder signal had stopped—well, she hoped it had stopped. But they must have known they were close, so they circled. The tunnel entrance was well hidden, but if they approached from the right angle, saw the landscape in just the right light, they’d find it.

Or, when the patrol dragons brought their weapons out, the people in the helicopters would see.

“What are those things?” Gavin said, and for the first time worry edged his voice.

“Helicopters,” she said. “Airplanes. That’s what you’re up against if you have to fight.”

Maybe she could stop it. If they were looking for Jon—and by extension her—maybe she could get them to turn back. If she could just talk to them.

If they knew she was here.

She stood tall and waved her arms as hard and as high as she could, hoping they saw her. She wasn’t wearing a hat, scarf, or goggles, so they could see who she was, her brown hair, her face. They’d have scopes and cameras, they’d analyze every centimeter of what they saw of her.

The aircraft arced back around and hovered. A couple hundred feet off the ground, a couple hundred yards away, they paused, pointed toward her. Clumsy mechanical things, after she’d spent so much time with dragons.

They didn’t hover long. Then their engines revved up, pounding so loud the air thrummed, and they turned and glided away. She slumped to the ground, wondering what the hell was going to happen next. They knew where Dracopolis was, but they hadn’t attacked. Now what?

“This place has been hidden for a thousand years,” Gavin said. He continued staring after the helicopters long after they were gone, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “What now?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed.

He turned on her, glaring. Like this was all her fault, like she wasn’t trying to help. Taking hold of both her arms, he pulled, hauling her to the tunnel. “Come on.”

This time, she didn’t resist.

He didn’t let go of her, even after they’d returned to the crowd still gathered at the mouth of the cavern. Everyone turned to her, anxious and waiting, and she didn’t know what to tell them. She was still trying to figure out what to do. If she could just talk to them…

Laris rested on his perch, looming. Artegal was nearby. He didn’t have anyone holding on to him like she did, but he was near Laris, who held his wings out, all but pinning the younger dragon against the wall. The blue dragon wasn’t held, but he was trapped.

None of the faces turned to them seemed friendly. None was welcoming, as they had been when she arrived here. The world, turned upside down again.

“Kay. Are you well?” Artegal asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice taut, her teeth chattering. The cavern’s warmth hadn’t touched her yet.

“What did you see?” Laris grumbled.

“Helicopters,” she said. “Flying machines. They saw me.”

“You wanted them to see you,” Gavin accused. “They’ll be back!”

“Then we will prepare,” the old dragon said.

“You don’t understand!” she cried. She gestured to the crossbows, the old wooden weapons that wouldn’t make a difference against something like those gunships. “Their weapons, their technology—you don’t understand what you’re facing. They have missiles.”

“So do we!” one of the men called back, slapping the great wooden frame of a ballista, a dragon-sized bolt launcher.

“No, you don’t,” Kay said. She had to make them understand. “Their bolts are a million times more powerful. Like Laris compared to a human baby. If they shoot one of these missiles into the cave entrance this entire place will burn in seconds. They make explosions, huge, terrible explosions!”

They hadn’t brought gunpowder with them into the Refuge all those centuries ago. They had burning pitch, which was bad enough. But it wasn’t anything close to modern explosives.

“We can defend against fire,” one woman said hopefully. “Can’t we?”

Kay put a clenched fist on her head. “It’s not just fire. It’s so much worse.”

“We won’t surrender,” Njal declared. All the human Elders, and some of the dragons, repeated this.

Kay took a breath of preparation and said, “I can talk to them. I need a chance to talk to them. They’ll listen to me. I’m half the reason they’re here!”

“If they want to talk,” the great old dragon said in a way that suggested he didn’t think they would.

She shrugged out of Gavin’s grasp and stepped toward him. She’d heard all this before, back in Silver River. She was tired of it.

“Artegal and I stopped a war once. We can do it again.”

Everyone started talking. Gavin was making one argument; on her other side Hilde and Inge were making another. Everyone had an opinion, and everyone was scared, and angry at her. They had every right to be.

Laris watched for a moment, then tipped his sculpted snout to the roof of the cavern and roared. Kay—and everyone else—pressed hands to ears, to cut out the noise. When the roar died, the place was silent. Everyone watched Laris now, who stepped aside to let Artegal loose.

The dragon—her dragon, merely medium-sized—left the stony perch and crossed the space to her. People scattered out of the way as he came to rest in the clearing, between a pair of catapults. He was still bigger than the weapons.

“Ambassadors,” Artegal rumbled, then growled the same word in dragon. “We are ambassadors.” He stood straight, neck tall and towering, wings outstretched, the same way Laris had stood.

Ambassadors. The old role, the part that hadn’t been played in centuries, since before the dragons went underground, before any sort of sacrifice was ever needed. Laris was the last of them; he’d helped negotiate the Silver River Treaty. Then he’d retreated to Dracopolis.

Kay and Artegal had always seen themselves as ambassadors. If she had to beg, she would: let them do the job they’d been practicing for.

“I am the sacrifice. It’s why I’m here. That gives me a voice,” Kay said, feeling self-conscious about it. But also certain. Gavin scowled.

Laris’s nostrils flared, and he nodded to Artegal. “Then you should try.”

It was decided: in the morning, she and Artegal would fly to meet the helicopters with a flag of truce, and she would ask the foreigners—the invaders—what they wanted. She would ask them to stay away and leave Dracopolis in peace. In the meantime, Dracopolis would fortify its entrance against incursion. The work to do so was going on right now, dragons moving rocks and palisades into place, hauling the ancient weapons out of the caves to be repaired and readied.

She took a pair of shears to her old homecoming dress. The white one, that she’d worn as the sacrifice. She doubted anyone would recognize it. Well, her mother might recognize it. But even if it didn’t mean anything to anyone else, it would mean something to her. Taking the section of fabric, she stitched holes in it to secure it to a long staff. All those hours working on harness, she gotten pretty good at sewing.

Jon watched her, sitting against the wall of the cottage with his arms crossed, sullen. She was on the floor nearby. Throughout the cavern, preparations for battle continued. Dragons passed by overhead, back and forth. None of the juveniles were out playing.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, lifting up the staff. The fabric shimmered, rippling as she waved it. It would gleam in the sun.

“Why do you have to do this?”

She was the only one who could. She and Artegal had already passed from one world to the other. They could do it again. “I guess it’s our job.”

“Because you’re the virgin sacrifice and all?”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding a bit hopeless. “That’s right.”

“We could fix that. The virgin part I mean.”

Frowning, she paused in her work. He was staring at his hands and blushing hard. She’d never seen him so red.

“I’m sorry, that was out of line. I’m sorry.”

For a moment, she blushed, too. Didn’t know at all what to say, but Jon was looking closed-in and miserable. She wasn’t even angry. Just… there wasn’t a rule book for any of this.

Grinning, she said, “Are you hitting on me?”

She waited, feeling her own skin blushing hard, waiting for his response. He was taking a long time to respond.

Then, he laughed. “Maybe I am.”

“This is really shitty timing, Jon.” She sighed.

He came over to her then, and she folded herself into his embrace. He held her tight. Just held her. They hadn’t even kissed since he’d arrived at the Refuge. She wanted to kiss him. So she did. Tipped her face back so it nestled against his shoulder, touched his chin and turned it toward her. He reached toward her eagerly. Their lips touched.

This was hotter and fiercer than their first few kisses had been—months ago now, back home when they were trying to be girlfriend and boyfriend like it was a new and dangerous climbing route. This was distance and longing made real.

“I really did miss you, you know,” she whispered.

He made a noise of agreement and kissed her again, mouth to mouth. She shifted in his arms to a more comfortable position, facing him so they fit together, and her hands slipped to his chest to feel the solidity of him. Responding to her touch, he pulled her even closer.

Something crinkled under her hand, an anomaly in the fabric of his shirt. She paused, pulled back a little, her brow furrowed. Pressed harder, trying to figure out what it was. Something in his pocket.

Straightening, he held her hand and pulled it away. His vivid blush returned.

“Um, yeah, never mind that—”

“What?”

“It’s nothing—”

She dodged his grip and went for the pocket he’d tried to keep her away from.

And pulled out the crinkly foil square of a condom in its wrapper. She was so startled she didn’t know what to think at first. Just held it between them, looking at him quizzically.

“The guys on the fishing boat,” he murmured, grabbing it out of her hand and shoving it back in the pocket, out of sight. “It was supposed to be a joke. I’m sorry…”

“Stop apologizing.” Leaned her head on his shoulder and snuggled close, to let him know it was all right. Just for this moment, it was all right. “Maybe… when this is all over…”

She put her hand over the pocket, the condom, and kissed him again. Yeah, she decided. She wanted to be as close to him as she could. When this was all over.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “It’s going to be okay. Isn’t it?”

“I hope so.”

“Be careful,” Jon told her over and over again at the cavern entrance, harness over her shoulder, flying gear in hand. “Come back soon.”

“I will. I’ll be fine. Artegal’s looking after me.”

Jon’s smile didn’t seem certain, but she couldn’t worry about him. She kissed him, and his expression was bleak. Like he was sending her to war. She thought about making a joke—he just wanted her to stay safe so he could sleep with her. But that seemed crass, and untrue.

They were all of them worried. Glancing up, she spotted Artegal sailing overhead. He’d been keeping watch for her on a high perch, and arrived at the entrance right after she did.

Together, they hitched up his harness, him lifting his wings, using claws to hold a strap in place while she buckled, and shivering to better settle it in place.

“Do you think this going to work?” She tried to sound light, casual. Just making conversation.

He turned to her, curling his neck to make eye contact. Seemed awkward, but it never stopped him from looking right at her when they talked. “Doesn’t matter. We have to try.”

“Because we’re ambassadors.” She smirked a little. Hard to believe in the title when she and Artegal were the only ones using it.

“Because only we can,” Artegal said.

She rested her hand on his chest, on the scales under his wing. He radiated warmth; his body was a furnace. The rippling shades of blue and gray made him look like old ice.

He was right. They had traveled between worlds. They were the only ones who could do this. She tucked the flag she’d made through a loop in the harness, where the fabric could fly easily. Taking a deep breath, she looked at him.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Hm?”

“For being my friend.”

A smiled a bit of a toothy smile. “It is good.” His shining black eyes blinked. “Let’s go.”

The new fortified entrance was impressive. The place had gone from looking like a hidden, rocky, windswept depression to resembling a medieval castle, all in the space of a night. Wouldn’t the NATO guys be surprised?

A crowd waited, both people and dragons, manning the equipment and keeping watch. Preparing. Inge and Rood, Gavin and Pol, Erik and his great gray dragon Myrl. A half a dozen other riders were there too, harnessed and suited up, ready to go if they were needed. Laris towered over them all, a great shadow.

Gavin’s expression behind his hat and scarf were unreadable. He was a statue looking outward, no doubt prepared for battle. Pol swung her neck around, baring her teeth at Artegal, who pulled back and growled. Kay couldn’t tell if it was the start of a fight or the dragon version of flirting. No one else seemed bothered, and after exchanging a few more clicks and growls, they settled.

Laris shifted position, moving to a lower perch, arching his neck so he looked at them more closely. “I do not trust that this will work.”

“I have to try,” she said.

Laris breathed out, a great sigh. “Then luck go with you.”

Gracefully as she could, knowing they still didn’t have anywhere near the ease the Dracopolis riders did, she pulled herself up Artegal’s shoulder and strapped in. She felt him tense and shiver—he was anxious to show off as well, to appear in control and at ease. He spread his wings, gave a hop, and launched off his perch, leaving people behind him ducking and scattering.

They flew, straightforward, only a few dozen feet off the ground in the direction of the helicopters. The fabric of her makeshift flag whipped hard beside her.

When she made the sacrifice, when she waited for Tam’s call that Artegal was on his way and went out for that fake press conference wearing her white homecoming dress so no one would mistake what she was trying to do, then run to the field where Artegal landed—she had felt powerful because she was doing something. She and the dragon had made this plan together, they’d done what they needed to do, and it had worked. Sure, the whole thing had been a little bit crazy, but rather than being scared she’d been giddy. She felt like they could have done anything.

She hadn’t felt like that in a while. This time, this plan, felt like a shot in the dark. She was a pawn, only able to move a step or two at a time.

Artegal snorted; she caught sight of it in the distance—sun reflecting off tents, helicopters, and other equipment. The NATO camp. Artegal didn’t cover the whole distance to the camp. Instead, he gave a few great flaps of his wings, sailed higher, twisted his body so she would be visible to anyone watching, and then descended, spiraling to a place roughly halfway between the camp and the entrance to Dracopolis.

He was getting back in practice, landing lightly, claws digging into the sun-drenched, crystalline surface. His wings settled, and he raised his head as a lookout. A wind was blowing. From here, she could just make out the ridge hiding the cavern entrance, and the NATO camp appeared as a shadow in the distance.

Kay unstrapped the flag from the harness and slid down to the ice. Standing in the shelter of the dragon’s body, she waited. And waited.

“Maybe I should stay in the harness?” she asked him. He didn’t move his gaze from the NATO camp.

“In case we need to escape? Hm. Not sure.”

Well, if he was thinking it too maybe she wasn’t crazy. He could definitely fly faster than the helicopters—not that it would do much good when the helicopters were armed. She chanced a glance behind. A huge dark dragon shape had appeared, standing on the edge of the ridge, watching. Laris. Movement around him told her some humans had joined him. Hilde and Njal maybe. If things went wrong, they needed to be ready. And if things went right? Kay wasn’t sure she knew what that would look like.

If the NATO people didn’t come talk to them at all, they were going to look kind of stupid standing out here.

“How long do we wait?” Artegal asked.

“I don’t know,” Kay said. “They have to know we’re here.”

“If they do not come, they do not want to talk.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh.

Artegal lifted his head, neck tensed forward, listening. Kay followed his gaze; he had better hearing and eyesight, but she heard the noise soon enough after he did—an engine, some kind of vehicle revving, coming closer. She gripped the flag tighter. She didn’t wish for a weapon, because she had no desire to use it. Artegal shifted, preparing to spread his wings if he needed to.

Squinting through the glare on the snow, she saw the vehicle approach: a kind of SUV on treads, like a mini Snowcat. It was flying NATO and UN flags, and she still didn’t know if that was good or bad.

Holding her flag straight up so it couldn’t be mistaken, she walked forward. Artegal followed, moving on his clawed wings.

The Snowcat was another fifty yards out from her when it stopped, and two doors opened wide. A figure bundled in a parka and snowsuit jumped clumsily out of the passenger seat and ran toward her. Other figures emerged; one shouted, but the first figure didn’t listen. Kay almost backed away—the others were clearly military; one held a rifle. But the running figure pushed back her hood and pulled down the goggles she’d been wearing. Her graying brown hair was clipped in a bun, and the woman was crying.

“Mom,” Kay murmured.

She was too stunned to move, and so waited for Alice Wyatt to reach her. Kay didn’t drop the flag so much as let it fall when her mother came at her with open arms.

“Oh my God, Kay, you’re all right, you’re all right!”

They hugged. Mom was gasping for breath, laughing or crying, maybe all of the above.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Mom. It’s okay.” She kept saying it over and over, but she didn’t know if her mother was really listening.

“No, you’re too thin, you’re too pale, look at you, what have they been doing to you?” Mom stepped back, holding Kay’s face in her hands, studying her intently.

Kay laughed from nerves, or relief. Amusement at the ridiculousness of it all. “Mom, I’ve been living underground. I’ve been eating just fine. But, you know, not a lot of soda and junk food in a hidden medieval city.”

For a moment Alice just stared, and Kay was afraid she’d have some kind of meltdown right there, but after a heartbeat the woman laughed. “Oh, Kay!” Her gaze darted over her shoulder at the dragon; Artegal waited a polite distance away. That didn’t stop her mother from looking nervous.

“Mom, what are you doing here? Why did you bug Jon’s pack?”

“I did it for you,” Alice Wyatt said as if it were obvious. “I came to get you.”

Kay looked at the military Snowcat and handful of men in winter fatigues, with weapons. They wouldn’t have put together an expedition like this just to get her. She was just the excuse.

“Mom, you should meet Artegal—he’s my friend. We came to talk—”

“No, Kay. Come on, come with me now.” Her mother grabbed the sleeve of her coat and pulled. Kay stumbled, trying to free herself.

One of the soldiers raised the rifle, but Kay yelled, “Put that down! Please, put it away. Please.”

A different soldier nodded, and the first lowered the weapon.

Kay didn’t know what to do with this mess. Everyone was looking at her like she should be doing something. She said, “Jon said the sacrifice worked. That you guys are working out a new peace treaty.”

“Jon’s here? He’s safe?” Mom looked relieved for a second, and she nodded. “Yes. It’s taking such a long time—”

“You know this might ruin it? Dracopolis is sacred to the dragons, when they find out you’re here, that you followed Jon—”

“Kay, calm down. This has nothing to do with that. You come with me and we’ll forget we were ever here.” Again, she went for Kay’s arm, turning back for the Snowcat.

Kay stared. “Do you really think that’s what’ll happen?”

It may have been what she’d told herself. It may have been what she’d planned on telling Kay to convince her to leave. But Kay spotted the lie. She spoke more quickly, trying to make her mother understand. “Mom, we—me and Artegal—are ambassadors. We came to talk.” She reached out for her mother’s hand. They were both wearing thick gloves, and the pressure between them seemed lost. “You said the sacrifice worked. It made everyone stop fighting and sit down to talk.”

“Yes, so far…”

“Then I can’t go back.” She didn’t know how else to explain it. You couldn’t make a deal and then pretend like the deal never happened, or go back to the way things were.

“I don’t understand,” Alice said starkly.

Kay felt a soft breath behind her—Artegal, lending support. It wasn’t just the peace making her stay, she realized. She couldn’t leave him.

“Can you set up a meeting? Like at Silver River, when they made the treaty. We want it to be formal. The people here are scared because Dracopolis was supposed to stay secret.” But you ruined that, she didn’t say.

“We. Are you one of them, now?”

“I’m just an ambassador. At least, I’m trying to be one.”

“Oh, Kay, when did you get to be so grown up?” Alice said, her eyes tearing up as she put her hands around Kay’s face. The wool itched on her skin. She’d never seen her mother look old and worn out the way she did now.

How had any of this happened? How had they ended up here? Oh yeah, she’d gone rock climbing on the border of Dragon. But if she hadn’t, the Air Force would have continued with its plans to press at the border until it got a reaction, the dragons would have retaliated, no one would have had any way to contact them, and the war would have started all over again.

She had to hope her weird luck kept holding. As forcefully as she could she said, “As the officially appointed ambassador of Dracopolis, I offer the following demands: all outside military presence must leave this location and not approach within a hundred miles. This region must be granted some kind of preserve status, so that the refuge can remain isolated. Dracopolis is prepared to defend itself, if it needs to.”

She’d never seen her mother look so sad, not even on the day she sacrificed herself.

“All right,” Alice finally said. “All right. Let me radio this in. See what they’ll let me do, what I can agree to. It’ll just take a minute.”

Once more, impulsively, her mother grabbed her in a hug. This would all work out, it was all going to work out. It had to.

Kay’s mother returned to the passenger seat of the Snowcat, where she talked into a headset microphone. The soldiers remained on watch. They still had their rifles—maybe not raised and aimed, but still at the ready. Kay didn’t feel safe. Artegal stood at her back like a sentinel. His head panned, studying the scene ahead of them, his nostrils working. He huffed a breath, and smoke curled up—a sign that he was gathering himself to launch flames if he had to.

She touched his chest. “Hey, everything’s okay, right?”

“No,” he murmured, and the pounding beats of helicopters rattled the air. Two of the aircraft cruised toward them from the NATO camp, as if they had been waiting. Mechanical dragons, moving fast and aggressively.

A pair of shots rang out, one right after the other. It sounded like a hunting rifle, echoing across the ice so she couldn’t tell where it came from. The soldiers from the Snowcat were running toward her. Instinctively she fell, hands over her head to block out the sound, to give herself some kind of shelter.

Next to her, Artegal stumbled—and fell. His tail thrashed, and the claws at the ends of his wings scrabbled at his flank, where dark blood dripped over pale scales. Kay gasped, but she didn’t get a chance to go to him, to even say a word.

A dozen men in gray-and-white shaded camouflage had suddenly surrounded her. Kay shouted wordlessly in frustration.

Artegal lurched back, stumbling, grunting in pain again. But his dark eyes flashed and he snarled, lips curling to show all his teeth. She knew what was coming so she ducked, and he let out a stream of flame that covered the ground in front of them. The soldiers fell back, raising rifles to shoulders. Another shot rang out.

Kay screamed at the dragon, “Go, fly, get out of here!”

“But you—” he started, but the soldiers had already grabbed her.

They’d never seen this as a negotiation, but as a hostage rescue.

Kay kicked, trying to twist out of their grasps, but the soldiers were strong and very well trained and they pinned her tightly, hauling her back toward the Snowcat while the others covered their retreat. Her mother was watching over it all, serious and satisfied. She’d called in the helicopters, started the attack.

Artegal was airborne at least, flapping away, the movements of his wings jerky to her gaze. It might have been her imagination that he was dripping blood.

She was going to scream at her mother. She might never speak to her again.

The soldier shouting orders had a British accent; others answered him too curtly for her to tell where they were from. She thought they were taking her to the Snowcat—she was entirely off her feet now, half slung over one guy’s shoulder with another holding her legs clamped together. She kept trying to kick them. They didn’t have faces, all wearing goggles and balaclavas under the hoods of their parkas.

They bypassed the vehicle, though. One of the Chinook helicopters had landed; they were carrying her toward it. Its blades were spinning, its engine roaring. And there was Alice Wyatt, shouting, “Let’s go, get her out of here, go!”

Kay screamed because it was all she had left to do. Meanwhile, she was efficiently handed off to another pair of soldiers in the back of the helicopter, who shoved her into a seat and started belting her in—one of them held her hands immobilized, because she was still thrashing.

Her mother climbed into the helicopter as it lifted off, and Kay’s eyes went wide and she screamed, yet again, “You didn’t have to shoot anybody! Why are you doing this?” She sounded incoherent, but she kept screaming anyway.

“Jesus,” one of the soldiers muttered. But not at her—he was looking through the still-open door.

Above the entrance of Dracopolis, dozens of dragons swarmed. Every color imaginable: green, red, gold, black, gray, brown, yellow, they swooped, wheeled, plunged and soared on sail-like wings. Not at all like a flock of birds moving as one great shape, they created disarray, each dragon following an individual path, yet none of them colliding. It was all grace and chaos. Some of the dragons wore harnesses and had riders, but just as many didn’t. Helicopters hovered around the edge of the display, but the military aircraft couldn’t engage with the swarm. They couldn’t predict the patterns, and so couldn’t risk the collisions that might occur if they tried. Kay was afraid they might just start firing missiles and machine guns into the crowd. Maybe the dragons could dodge.

She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Artegal must have gotten back to warn them. Which meant he was getting help, she hoped. She looked for him, but didn’t recognize his shape among all the others. Maybe they’d heard the shots and launched a response. Which meant they had expected her to fail and had been ready with a response. Kay wanted to cry.

The humans in the helicopter watched a moment, stunned. Then Alice Wyatt called to the pilot. “Go! Get us out of here!” The helicopter rose in altitude and started traveling.

“No!” Kay screamed again, not that it did any good.

Alice had on a very determined expression that was disturbing in its coldness. “I’ve got to get you home—”

“What about the war, we have to stop—” Kay shouted in reply. Not to mention Jon. What did it say about her mother, that she used Jon to find Dracopolis and then would just abandon him?

“There isn’t going to be a war, Kay. NATO command has decided to stop the dragons. To just stop them.” She pressed her lips together.

Kay stared at her mother, brow furrowed, jaw dropped with disbelief. The dragons, beautiful dragons who’d been around for millennia, building a quiet civilization. And NATO was going to just stop them? Kay hadn’t stopped a war after all. She hadn’t stopped anything. What made her keep thinking she could make a difference?

She swallowed and said, “What about Jon? He’s still down there.”

“That’s his choice.”

“That was my choice!”

She had a really crazy idea just then. Ridiculous crazy. But she asked herself: did she trust them? Yes. So then, how could she prove to her mother that she trusted them? Well.

She wrenched apart the buckles on the straps holding her into the seat, and before anyone realized what she was doing and could stop her—they were all still staring at the swarm of dragons, more dragons than anyone had seen in one place maybe in centuries—she plunged out the door.

For a moment, she seemed to float. Between the helicopter’s motor and her mother’s scream, the world seemed very loud.

Her mother might have jumped out after her if the soldiers hadn’t held her back.

Then she was falling very quickly. She could tell because the air suddenly grew quiet and the helicopter was far away. If she closed her eyes, she might think she was flying, but she couldn’t close her eyes, however good an idea that sounded, because she had to be ready. But she didn’t have to look down. That was a good idea. Don’t look down.

She was falling fast—but dragons flew very fast. She was counting on it. She trusted. And there one came, rocketing like an arrow on a skillfully chosen trajectory, not right at her but below her.

Pol. It was Pol, green scales flashing, neck curving as her body writhed to put herself in position. Gavin was on her, waving. Kay overcame the paralyzing fear of the situation she’d put herself in, flattened herself and reached out, making herself easy to catch. Pol was going to get under her rather than try to grab her with back claws. She hadn’t been sure which she would try. She hadn’t even known if this was possible, if this was something they practiced for. And she was amazed that the seconds were dragging out long enough to let her think about these things.

Then, instead of the ground rising up to her, there was the broad stretch of Pol’s back, and Gavin standing up in his harness to reach for her. Breathe, Kay reminded herself. She had to keep breathing. And not tense up too bad. And be ready for it—

She hit hard, and the breath slammed out of her. Pol shuddered, losing altitude and swerving before steadying her flight. Her landing must have felt like getting punched. Kay was sliding, her inertia carrying her on while Pol struggled to stay under her. Gavin’s hands were on her then, scrabbling at her coat. She grabbed him back, and he put a rope in her hands, which she gripped hard. Together, they worked to tie a loop around her. She wasn’t much help, her hands were shaking so hard.

“You’re mad! You’re flipping mad!” he yelled over the wind of Pol’s passage. A scarf covered his face so she couldn’t see his expression.

Kay didn’t answer; she was too focused on clinging to Pol’s harness and reveling in the sensation of the dragon’s solid body, muscles flexing with the movements of her wings. Gavin patted Kay’s shoulder, and she managed a relieved smile while trying to get her heart to stop thudding in her throat, and for all the fear to drain out of her nerves.

When she had a moment to look, she searched for the helicopter she’d jumped from. It had circled back to hover on the fringes of the defensive swarm of dragons. Kay couldn’t see if her mother was there, if she had seen that the dragon had saved her. She had to have seen.

Pol tipped her head back and grunted a word in the dragon’s language. Gavin called back. With that, she dipped a wing and arced over, back toward the cavern, toward Dracopolis. They passed through the wheeling swarm, a storm of dragons. Rippling wing membranes and hot breath, the smell of smoke and brimstone. Dragonish clicks and calls filled the air, along with the whoosh and swoop of wings. Some of the riders waved at them. Gavin waved back.

“Gavin!” she called, to be heard over the noise of wings beating against air and dragons grumbling to each other. “Artegal! Is Artegal all right? How is he?” Please let him be all right…

“They got him inside,” Gavin said. “After that, I dunno.”

They glided over the new fortifications, covered now with Dracopolis’s own soldiers, armed with crossbows, spears, and swords. And how could any of it be of use against a modern army? And yet, bombs hadn’t started falling yet.

“Go back! I have to go back, they want to bomb the place, I have to stop them!”

“‘Cause that worked so well!” Gavin shouted back, and she wanted to thump him. She kept twisting back to look, but this close to the entrance, flying level with the surrounding ridge, she couldn’t see much of anything. Just the swarm of dragons, a living shield that aircraft couldn’t penetrate.

Pol headed for the entrance, not bothering to land first and walk in the way dragons usually did. Tucking in her wings, stretching hind legs forward, she sailed into the entrance, hit the ground, and came to an abrupt stop, like a plane landing on an aircraft carrier.

Kay wanted to scream at her to turn back, but she wouldn’t listen to her—only to Gavin, who seemed to be furious.

The abrupt change from the bright outdoors to the lamplight of the tunnel meant she couldn’t see anything right away. Everything was just dark. So she focused on getting herself untied from the harness and sliding down Pol’s shoulder. Her legs wobbled, and she almost sat hard. Gavin came down after her and steadied her.

“It’s a good thing we train for that sort of thing,” Gavin said.

Kay grinned. “I had a feeling you did. And I was right.” She looked back into the tunnel, trying to get around Pol’s bulk. The dragon snorted, shifting out of the way, but her attention was out, back to the entrance where everything was happening.

Artegal wasn’t here. He had to be further in. Kay ran.

Hilde met her as the tunnel opened up. “This way,” she said, pointing. Kay continued past her.

In the first alcove inside the great cavern, Artegal rested, curled up protectively around himself. His eyes were half-lidded, and his breathing was heavy. Was she imagining it, that his scales looked pale, ivory instead of the usual silvery gray, and what did that mean? She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen his head touch the ground when he wasn’t sleeping.

“Artegal,” she said, falling to the stone near his head, afraid to come closer, afraid to touch him, afraid to ask if he was okay. Two women in kerchiefs and aprons were folding bandages. Blood spattered the ground nearby.

“Kay,” he sighed. “You came back.”

“I got away, yeah. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“We had no reason not to trust them,” he said gently.

She wanted to touch him. With any other friend she’d hold a hand or give a giant hug. But she was afraid of hurting him—she couldn’t even really tell how badly he was hurt. All she could do was rest a hand on his neck. He sighed.

A square of cloth rested loosely on his shoulder, near the base of his neck. Another was on his flank.

“He’s badly bruised,” one of the nurses said. “But their scales are armored, the bullets didn’t go far and we got ‘em out. We gave him something to help him rest.”

She’d never pictured Artegal getting hurt. She hadn’t been sure it was possible.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked him. Bring flowers, make soup—nothing applied.

“Stay safe,” he murmured.

“Yeah, well, I kind of jumped out of the helicopter.”

He snorted, raising his head to look at her. “What?”

“Gavin and Pol got me.”

“Lucky,” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t ever want to do that again.”

One of the nurses scolded, “Artegal, you must rest. Kay, please let him rest.”

The dragon nudged her hand with his pale head. “I am well,” he said. “Will speak later.”

She was crying, but she nodded, giving his snout a rub as he settled back to sleep.

Hilde was there, hands on her shoulders to guide her away. On the first available grassy stretch, a whole crowd was waiting for news. They leaned close to Kay—this couldn’t have looked good, the way she was crying, how her face was windblown. Hilde waved them back and called up a young woman—Marge —who had a basket of food and a bottle of brandy, which she made Kay sip from. It settled her. And now she was right back where she’d started: she’d done something stupid, and she didn’t know what was going on on the outside. She didn’t know if she’d stopped a war or started one.

“Kay!” Jon was running up the path from the cottages, accompanied by Njal. The crowd parted for them.

He caught her up in a hug before she realized what was happening. “Are you okay?”

“They shot at us.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and she wondered why he was apologizing.

A shadow, a swoop of wings, and Laris arrived, choosing a perch some twenty feet up. People—even these people, who lived so closely with dragons—backed away a step or two. He curled his neck and focused on Kay. After murmuring assurances at Jon, she stepped up to face him. This could easily turn into an execution. Artegal’s jaws could bite her in half; Laris’s could swallow her whole.

“Treachery,” he said.

She nodded. She couldn’t argue. “My mother treated me like a hostage. She didn’t take me seriously. I—I almost got him killed.”

“He chose to be there.”

As did she. No one was going to blame her.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work,” she said.

“You tried.”

“What now?”

He closed his eyes for a thoughtful moment, then straightened, lengthening his body, stretching his neck until he appeared even more massive. He said, “We prepare for war.”

The people of Dracopolis had always had a plan, in case they were discovered. After going into hiding hundreds of years ago, they assumed that if they were discovered, they would be attacked. They opened up caves they could use to stockpile food, to protect their livestock from a siege. They set up an impromptu hospital and brought out stores of cloth to make bandages. They made a plan to retreat deeper in the caverns when the time came.

No matter how much Kay explained, they didn’t seem to understand what she told them about missiles and bombs. That the modern military had enough firepower to destroy the entrance, to trap them underground, to level the entire area. Yes, they knew about the bombs at the end of World War II, but the dragons hadn’t sensed explosions like that in a long time. Surely, it was a unique occurrence. But it wasn’t.

They waited. And nothing happened. Two days passed, then three. The patrol riders watched in shifts. The siege weapons were left in place, but those manning them rested, waiting for word.

Artegal stayed curled up on the grassy glen where he’d come to rest, and Kay spent her time watching over him, helping him drink the medicated broth the nurses wanted him to have. He’d tip his head back and she’d pour from a pitcher into the corner of his mouth. He was well enough that they could chuckle when he spilled. The bandages came off. The scales under were still that pale blue of the rest of him, but they were scarred, crooked, rough. They’d always show where he’d been injured.

Jon watched with her sometimes. Often, though, he stared out the entrance with a look of frustration. Probably wondering why he’d even come here.

“What are they doing out there?” he asked on the third day.

Kay brushed his arm, held his hand, and he hugged her.

“It gives me hope,” Artegal said with a sigh. “They would have done something already if they meant to.”

So Kay began to hope as well. The alarms of warning continued not to sound.

On the fourth day, Gavin ran to the cottage during breakfast. He was still in his harness and patrol gear—he must have just come back from flying out with Pol.

“Kay, come on, something’s happened.”

She ran out with him before Hilde, Njal, and Jon realized what was happening. Gavin grabbed her hand and pulled her on, as if he could make her run faster.

Once again, a crowd gathered at the entrance, including the patrol riders and some of the Elders. Dragons sailed overhead, waiting for word. And Laris—he was on his perch, his head raised, watching for her. He snorted a call when she appeared. The group quieted and watched her approach.

“Give it to the Sacrifice,” he said.

She stared. “What’s happened?”

Gavin’s eyes were wide, gleaming. He said, the words rushing so she had to work to understand his accent, “They’ve moved the camp, they’ve moved all their gear—we reckon about a hundred miles from the entrance.” Other patrol riders nodded; they’d all seen it.

“Like I asked for.” She had just enough time before they grabbed her to pass on the list of demands. Had her mother actually listened? Had the soldiers been paying attention?

“I don’t know, but that’s what’s happened. And then—one of their flying machines dropped this.”

She asked, “One of the helicopters—”

“No,” a woman said—one of the soldiers manning the siege equipment, bundled up in a fur coat and gloves, still with her crossbow slung over her shoulders. “I watched it come in—‘twas no bigger than myself, but flew and landed all on its own, outside the ridge. We waited for it to shoot or explode, but it didn’t.”

“A drone,” Kay said, amazed.

“Ulaf hit it with a club but it didn’t do anything,” the woman said. “But this was attached to it.” She handed over a metal canister, maybe the size of a soda can. The lid had already been twisted off, and inside was a typed sheet of paper.

“It’s in your language,” Laris said. “Can you read it?”

A message. They’d sent a message. Part of her wanted to laugh, to jump around—this had to be a good sign, right? Unless it was telling them they had an hour to get out before NATO dropped a nuke on the place.

Holding the page in both hands to steady it, because she was shaking, she read. And read it again. Only when she understood what it was saying—or thought she did, parsing the formal language and picking apart the meaning—did she read it out loud for the others.

The author of the message introduced himself as Colonel David Addison. He was commander of the detachment of NATO soldiers, but he reported to a UN peacekeeping envoy. He stated that Deputy Director Alice Wyatt had been removed from a negotiating position because of a conflict of interest, and he hoped he could persuade the people of Dracopolis to attempt another meeting. As a gesture of good faith, he had ordered several of Kay’s demands to be instituted: they’d withdrawn their position to a hundred miles away. A draft proposal was being prepared to declare this a protected, restricted region. Concessions the UN negotiating team requested: the establishment of some kind of permanent line of communication and at least partial diplomatic relations, not just between Dracopolis and the outside world but also, if Dracopolis could help facilitate it, between the other dragon territories in the Rockies and in Siberia. Communication with all of dragonkind.

“Our two peoples have come close to war too many times, and it behooves us to do what we can to prevent such an occurrence, for the sake of all the world.”

Someone in a uniform who felt the way she did. Was it possible? How was this happening? How had her mother allowed it? Kay hoped she was all right… even after what she’d done, she didn’t wish her harm. She just didn’t want to talk to her for awhile. Maybe she’d calmly stepped aside when she realized her method of “negotiation” wasn’t working. Maybe it had been Kay’s second sacrifice, leaping out of the helicopter. Proving that dragons could save people as well as attack. That they could work together—well, all of Dracopolis was proof of that.

Kay finished reading, and everyone was silent. It sounded… good. Colonel Addison had asked for a difficult thing—opening up to the outside world—which made his offer to negotiate seem real. If he hadn’t asked for anything, that would have been suspicious.

“Do you believe him?” Laris asked.

“Yes,” Kay said. “I do.”

This time they made a show of force. This wasn’t just Kay and Artegal being ambassadors. Jon came with Kay, for one thing—he claimed he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight ever again. The Elders came as well, all six of them, Hilde and Njal and the others. Laris was there, too, in the center of them all, flanked by five patrol riders and their dragons. Two of those held dragon-sized spears in their hind claws. Even a modern helicopter wouldn’t do to well with a giant stick gumming up its rotors. The riders stayed mounted and served as an honor guard, lined up behind the delegation. Another handful of dragons remained airborne, sailing in circles, arcs, and corkscrews as if out for a leisurely bit of exercise. But they were watching.

This was all of Dracopolis announcing itself, for better or worse. The outside world would finally see what they were: not a myth out of the past, but a real place. More than that: they were a possibility.

The NATO delegation didn’t send any helicopters. They were in a pair of armored Snowcats, and Kay guessed they’d be in radio communication with their base and could send any number of aircraft at short notice. She made sure to tell this to the others, to account for the technology they still weren’t used to. And would they learn, after all this? Would Dracopolis get satellite phones and Internet, batteries and electric generators? Sun lamps to grow more food? Would that Dracopolis be a better one? Or would they chose to stay as they had been?

Well, not exactly as they had been. She’d mucked that up pretty well for them, hadn’t she? She and Artegal. But this was what the two of them had wanted: peace. The ability to talk to each other without fear. And they might actually get it.

She was wearing her parka and clothes from home. She didn’t want to look foreign to the NATO group. She wanted to show them that moving in between the two worlds wasn’t so strange. If any pictures of this got out, that was what she wanted people to see.

They waited. The Snowcats parked, but no one emerged. The windows were too reflective to reveal anything inside. Kay’s delegation became restless, getting overly warm in the eternal summer sun. Pol stretched her wings, and Laris hissed a dragon word at her. She grumbled and settled.

Her rider was just as impatient. “How long do we wait?” Gavin said.

Hilde looked at Kay. “Well?”

“We have to let them have a good look at us,” she answered.

Gavin huffed. “We could drop a spear on ‘em. That’d wake ‘em up.”

She glared up at him. “No.”

Artegal was here too. His wounds weren’t visible unless you knew where to look. The nurse had been right, his scales worked like armor, just like in some of the stories. He was still very sore, though—he’d walked out to the meeting instead of flying, and though he wore a harness for show Kay had no intention of actually flying with him. The whole walk out here she’d kept asking if he was all right, and he finally told her to stop, with a mock curl to his lip and an annoyed snap of teeth. Now, he stood steady, his neck tall, his eyes gazing out.

“This will be strange,” Njal said quietly. “We haven’t spoken to the outside in so long. We are our own world of dragons. How do we talk to them?”

“You talked to me,” Kay said.

Njal chuckled. “I suppose so. But I rather think you were already one of us in spirit.”

“There,” Artegal said, huffing a growl.

They looked out.

A door in one of the Snowcats opened. A figure climbed out and started toward them purposefully. He was a light-skinned man wearing one of those icy gray camo uniforms and a pale blue beret—was he NATO? UN? All Kay knew was that he was alone.

“Artegal, does he have any weapons?” Kay asked, her heart pounding anxiously.

“No,” he said. The man didn’t even seem to have an empty holster on him. A sign of good faith? Of overconfidence? Another plot? Overhead, the riderless dragons flew, gathering closer to observe, dipping their wings and swishing their tails. She recognized the pattern from back home, when a few dragons would fly over the distant mountains as if simply reminding the people of Silver River they were there, and they were watching. It was a holding pattern.

The man stopped within speaking distance. He was maybe in his late forties, with a trimmed moustache and beard, a studious gaze.

Kay walked out to meet him. “Are you Colonel Addison?”

He took a deep breath and offered a relieved smile, as if he had reached the end of some quest. “Yes. You must be Kay Wyatt. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

He even sounded like he meant it.

He gazed past her shoulder to the delegation; mostly to the row of dragons, who were like larger-than-life tanks gazing down with sentience and suspicion, casting shadows that touched them all.

“My God. I have dreamt of seeing this my whole life,” he said. He had a crisp British accent, like someone from a movie. “You see, I hold a degree from Oxford in Anglo Saxon literature. I tracked down every old account of dragons I could find. There are legends about this place, you know—a refuge in the north. They’re obscure, if you don’t know where to look for them. Most scholars discount them as tales, like Atlantis or Shangri-La. But I wanted to believe. Then I joined the RAF instead of continuing on in my studies… thought maybe I could do a little good regarding the Matter of Dragons, as we call it. I thought if anyone ever had a chance to become an ambassador to dragons, I would like to be the one. But you, Miss Wyatt, beat me to it.”

This may have been why he kept studying her with an odd, bemused look in his eye. She was just a kid; what must this look like to him? But he seemed glad to be here, smiling vaguely at the dragons sweeping overhead.

Kay stepped to his side and gestured. “This is Laris, one of the Elders of Dracopolis. Pol, Rood, Myrl, Elke, Tray are standing behind, with their riders. And this is Artegal.” She smiled unconsciously, because her dragon friend looked so elegant, standing with his wings tucked in despite his pain. He tipped his head in a polite bow.

Addison tore himself from whatever spell he was about to fall into, though he couldn’t seem to turn from the dragons. He said, “I am hoping to do better toward relations between our people moving forward.”

“I don’t know how to make that happen,” Kay said starkly. “Everything I do, someone comes along and screws it up.”

“Yes, I know.”

“My mother—is she all right? How pissed off is she?”

“She calmed down after we threatened to send her back to the States. She said much the same thing you just did—everything she says, you seem to take badly, and she can’t seem to do anything right.”

“If she would just listen—” Kay stopped herself, realizing that was exactly something her mother would say. From the cluster of the delegation Jon was watching her, a worried look in his eyes. She tried to relax.

“I persuaded her that her continuing to lead this envoy was perhaps a conflict of interest.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her…”

“I believe she understands that. And that stunt, jumping from the helicopter? Well, let’s just say we’re all very impressed.”

She hadn’t done it to impress anyone. She had just run out of options.

“Might I ask,” he said. “Why did you do it?”

“I trusted that one of them would catch me.”

“Ah,” he said with a sigh that seemed to suggest he’d decided something. “Until the war, scholars assumed the old stories of dragons and people being at peace until a war separated them were metaphors of Christianity supplanting pagan religions. And then suddenly these works might not have been metaphorical at all. These might have been telling the story of the rise of modernity after the Age of Dragons. We’ve been playing catch-up ever since, trying to write revised histories, taking the stories at face value and reinterpreting. But we were missing pieces. We were missing this.”

“This place was supposed to stay secret,” she said. “It’s been secret for a thousand years. I want to protect it. We have to protect it.”

He squinted into the sun; the shadow of a dragon passed over them. “I have a proposal, then. If they’ll speak with me.” He regarded the group of strangers standing before him.

They would, and they did.

A year passed.

The bunker, a little over a hundred miles south of Dracopolis and close to the coast, didn’t look much like an embassy. Half buried, it had been modeled on the sod houses that were common in Greenland, underground for better insulation and shelter from the wind. But it was surprisingly comfortable, as high tech as they could manage, with a good heating system and full-spectrum lighting for the winter months. It had an infirmary, a helicopter landing pad, and a trio of flagpoles outside the main entrance: Greenland’s red-and-white flag, the blue U.N. flag, and a banner of purple showing the silver silhouette of a dragon in flight. The staff often had to bring the flags inside, though, when the wind was too much.

The dragons had helped fund the embassy from their horde. All the governments that shared borders with Dragon territories contributed as well, though some of them grumbled about it. Kay had to remind people: this was an all or nothing proposition. Either they all supported peace, and they all contributed toward the effort, or there would not be peace. If any human government tried to assert itself over a dragon territory, dragons around the world would retaliate as they had in Silver River. It was a balance, but an obvious one and not so very hard to maintain in the end. Like a couple of kids getting a see-saw to stay level. It look a lot of work, but they felt so accomplished when they managed it.

The best part of the embassy complex, though, might have been the adjoining building, a huge garage-like room that could be opened to the sky, large enough for several dragons to sit in conference. It had raised perches, plenty of room for curling tails, a drinking fountain that ran water into a pool, and its own rabbit hutch so the embassy could provide refreshments.

Dragons from all over the world came here to speak to Laris and the Elders of Dracopolis. Their dragon voices hissed and rumbled; when they called and roared in argument, you could feel the whole embassy complex rattle. The human staff would pause and look up, wary. In time, a few scorch marks decorated the ceiling, but the dragons’ room was steel and no real harm was done.

The dragons spoke to humans more reluctantly. Any human envoy who wanted to talk, to bring a complaint of territorial infraction or a request for cooperation at some far flung border, had to be patient. For all its remoteness, the embassy was comfortable, to make the waiting a little easier. People learned.

On a sunny summer day, Kay stood outside, eyes closed, face turned to the sky, soaking it in. The embassy flags slapped in a slight breeze. Just enough wind to make the air crisp, not enough to make flying difficult. Two dragons, Artegal and Pol, waited on the hill above the embassy. A helicopter parked on the pad—a delegation from Silver River had arrived, including both human and dragon members. It seemed like a miracle to her, and she took a moment to simply enjoy the day.

Kay had spent the winter in Greenland, shuttling back and forth between Dracopolis and the site of the new embassy. An army engineering group managed to get most of the complex built in a matter of months, using prefab buildings and floodlights when the sun sank into the dark of winter. She was the go-between, taking requests back and forth between the Refuge and the outside world.

Winter darkness had settled in for months, and at times it seemed like the sun would never return. The people of Dracopolis had managed a system: continuously burning fires and torches along with oil lamps suspended from the top of the cave, tended by the dragons, created a strange eternal twilight. It was just enough to fool the plant life into staying alive, to keep the people functioning. Many of the dragons hibernated during this time. Hilde confessed, though, that every ten years or so one of the human residents would walk out into the frozen waste and never return, overcome by the darkness. One of the things Kay wanted to do was persuade the Elders to install battery-driven full-spectrum lamps in the cavern—growing food would be easier, their livestock would stay healthier. But they were still resistant to bringing any part of the outside world into their domain.

Give it time, Kay kept telling herself. Be patient, as she kept advising the human delegations who came to see dragons and didn’t understand that the long-lived dragons moved more slowly.

In the meantime, her official title was ambassador-at-large. She spent a long time trying to decide exactly what that meant—until she ultimately realized it meant whatever she wanted it to mean. The important thing was to work hard to make sure it meant something. She interned with Colonel Addison, the embassy director, learning how things actually got done in the real world. This generally did not involve virgin sacrifice, which was probably a good thing. She earned her GED online—that was part of the deal of being involved. While part of her missed having a senior year of high school, and prom, hanging out with Tam and all the rest, the rest of her knew this was so much more important. She was trying to get Tam to come out for a visit.

Addison kept making noises about her going to college, earning some kind of degree in history or politics. “You’ll appreciate the depth, I promise,” he kept assuring her. She wasn’t sure she was ready to leave all this yet, though. In the meantime, she took online classes.

Her mother really wanted to her to go to college. To come home, mostly. But if college did that, then college would work.

Kay could look at her mother without feeling angry these days. Still deputy director at the FBBE, Alice Wyatt was part of the current Silver River delegation. This trip, though, she’d mostly come to see Kay.

“They really are beautiful,” she murmured, squinting through her sunglasses at Artegal and Pol, who were sunning themselves, wings outstretched, faces upturned. They clicked and chuckled to each other in some subdued dragonish conversation.

Kay smiled, because of course they were. “You want me to go to college because you think if I just get away from here for awhile, I’ll forget about them and go back to normal.”

Her mother ducked her head, hiding a smirk. “I don’t think that. It’s just… you’re only eighteen. You have your whole life ahead of you. You should pack in as much as you can.”

That was the best argument for college Kay had heard yet. And maybe, just maybe Artegal could visit. She imagined the uproar if he landed in the middle of some campus quad. He’d be very popular, she predicted. Dragon Studies—was that a thing yet? Maybe it should be.

Jon and Gavin came out of the Dragon’s Lair, as they jokingly called that side of the complex. Both were wearing flying harnesses, though Jon picked at his, clearly uncomfortable.

“You’ll do fine, don’t worry,” Gavin said, laughing, slapping Jon on the shoulder. Jon looked a bit green.

“You don’t have to stay and watch,” Kay told her mother.

“Oh, I know.” She took a deep, obviously nervous breath. “But it’s still interesting, as long as I don’t think of you falling.”

“I won’t fall,” Kay said, trying to hide a smile. Yeah, they could almost laugh about it now.

“I know. Kay—” She looked around, at the bleak striking landscape, the dragons, activity around the helicopter as supplies were unloaded, and the flags at the embassy’s front entrance. “Dad would be proud of you for all this. It’s… amazing.”

Kay’s eyes filled, and she managed a “Thanks,” as they gave each other tight hugs. Then she ran to join the two guys and the dragons. Gavin handed her her own harness, which she slipped on with practiced speed.

“Ready then?” Gavin called to them, hauling himself up Pol’s harness. Pol danced, slapping the clawed ends of her wings to the ground, scraping her feet into the tundra, even before her rider had clipped himself in. He was used to it and laughed.

Gavin spent quite a bit of time at the embassy, though the Elders weren’t willing to station him there full time. His official title was Courier, and he delivered messages back and forth when Kay was busy with other duties. He worked the embassy in to his patrol route. Mostly, he seemed to want to be where the action was. He wanted to see who was here, who might be here. And he wanted to be seen. He liked nothing better than to soar overhead with Pol as a new delegation arrived and stared, openmouthed.

Jon still wasn’t used to all this. It had been a rough decision last fall, with lots of conversation and a few tears, but he’d gone back to Silver River to finish school. Made some noise about not having anyone to go to senior prom with, which made her laugh—but didn’t make her want to go to prom. He’d thought up a plan. It was a good plan, she thought. The tourist industry in Greenland was growing, and if a solid peace could be established with dragonkind, it would only grow faster. He wanted to be part of it. “Make the trip over here a little easier for people than it was for me.” Maybe, he suggested, it could even work both ways. People who wanted to meet dragons would need places to go and guides to get them there. And dragons who wanted to meet people, like Artegal and the young ones gliding around the caverns, would need guides too. It was new territory, and someone was going to start up a business like that sooner rather than later. Might as well be someone who’d actually talked to a dragon, right?

She agreed. Artegal liked the plan, too. It might take time, but he was sure they could make it work. Meanwhile, Jon came back to visit.

“Are you sure you can carry us both?” Jon asked Artegal for the fifth time.

“You are not so very big,” Artegal said with a huff. Kay, making last adjustments to Jon’s harness, laughed.

“You can still back out,” Kay said.

“No. I’m going to do this. Really I am. Seriously.”

“Up, you two,” Artegal said, rumbling.

Kay climbed up first, then helped Jon. She was worried that carrying two of them might wear Artegal out. He admitted he might not be doing any corkscrews with two riders. But Jon wanted to try riding, and Artegal wanted him to try, so here they were.

Pol and Gavin launched, laughing and calling back taunts, but Kay ignored them. She carefully showed Jon how to secure himself, hooking his harness into Artegal’s. Even if something terrible happened, if the dragon went upside down or the riders fell unconscious, they wouldn’t fall.

“Ready?” Artegal tipped his head back and asked.

Jon cupped Kay’s face with his gloved hand and kissed her. The touch was full of heat and excitement, and she squeezed his arm.

“Ready!” she called.

Artegal spread wings like sails and pushed off with powerful hind legs, and they soared ever upward.

I always had a pretty good idea what happened after the end of Voices of Dragons, but when the publisher of that book decided against publishing the sequel, I set that idea aside. I had a lot of other stories and books to write, and just didn’t have time to dwell on it. It’s been years now since Voices of Dragons hit the shelves, and I still get questions all the time about the sequel. Finally, I have an answer to those questions. Thank you to everyone who asked. I probably wouldn’t have written this at all if you hadn’t been so persistent.

Now, I can guess what the next question is going to be: are there going to be any more adventures of Kay and Artegal? I know lots of people who said the first book ended on a cliffhanger will say this book does too. But I confess, I’m not planning any more stories set in this world. It took me long enough to finish Refuge, and I have many, many other stories to tell. Right now, I like to imagine Kay and Artegal soaring off into the sunset of a happier world.

Again, thank you for reading.

Read previous adventures of Kay and Artegal in

Voices of Dragons

More Books by Carrie Vaughn

Carrie’s Website

Carrie’s Newsletter

Carrie Vaughn is the New York Times Bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio advice show for supernatural beings. She’s also written the Golden Age superhero novels, the contemporary fantasy Discord’s Apple, and the young adult novels Steel and Martians Abroad. She’s a contributor to George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, and has written upward of 80 short stories for various anthologies and magazines. She attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop in 1998, and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2011. Carrie had the nomadic childhood of a typical Air Force brat, but managed to put down roots in Colorado. She collects hobbies and entertains a fluffy attack dog named Lily.

Refuge of Dragons

by Carrie Vaughn

Copyright © 2017 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: Joe Campanella

Copy Editing: Molly Tanzer

Interior design and formatting by:

www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com