The Adamantine Palace Read Online Free PDF

hunt.
    Mistral took a few steps towards Silence, barging into him, and growled. Silence hissed again. The dragons were sensing the moods of their riders. Mistral was probably hungry too, and most of the other dragons were eating their first kills now. The scent of blood was in the air, mixed with the sounds of cracking bones and tearing flesh and heavy dragon breathing.
    ‘Would you like to swap, mother?’ asked Almiri, still shouting to make herself heard. ‘Have a proper mount for the hunt?’
    The offer was tempting, but Shezira shook her head. ‘It’ll be dusk before you’re finished here and I need to get back to Valgar’s eyrie. I should be keeping an eye on Lystra, in case she does something stupid.’
    ‘You should have let her come.’
    ‘A week before she’s supposed to kneel before Jehal? You know what she’s like, especially when she’s got Jaslyn to goad her on. I want to present her the way she can be, perfect and beautiful, not the way she usually is , saddle sore and covered in bruises. No. It was nice to fly with you for a while, but I should go.’
    Almiri smiled. ‘It’s a pity, though. I would have liked the four of us to fly together one last time.’
    The words cut, although Almiri surely hadn’t meant them to be cruel. It seemed only yesterday that she’d given Almiri away to King Valgar. Which had been hard, but at least their clans had been intertwined by blood for centuries and their realms were close. Besides, Almiri was the oldest. She was the heir to the Throne of Sand and Stone, and letting her go had been right and proper. And she’d still had Jaslyn and little Lystra.
    Somehow, over the years, she’d lost Jaslyn to her dragons; now she was about to lose the last of her daughters to a prince she barely knew, to live in a palace more than a thousand miles away. A necessary arrangement and certainly not without its benefits, but once the marriage was made, Lystra would be a stranger to her. She was going to have to get used to the idea.
    Almiri must have seen something of Shezira’s thoughts in her face, for she added, ‘Once you sit in the Adamantine Palace, you’ll be able to summon all of us as often as you like. You can have as many hunts and tournaments as you want. Prince Jehal will have to bring Lystra with him if you tell him to.’
    Which was all true, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it would never quite be the same. She sighed. ‘There will be a day, Princess. One day. Would you spare Mistral half your carcass? He’s restless.’
    Half a snapper was little more than a snack for a monster like Mistral, but it seemed to settle his mood. With a pang of regret, Shezira left the hunters to their fun. She turned him on the ground, cumbersome and slow as he was, and then he started to run. That made the other dragons sit up and take notice, for the footfalls of a running war-dragon could shake the earth enough to shatter houses, and it took a lot for a beast like Mistral to take to the air. When he did finally spread his wings and soar into the sky, though, all his ungainliness was gone. Shezira had him circle once above them and tipped a wing to wish them luck. Then she put the mountains and forests to her back and headed out over the plains. She allowed Mistral to set his own pace, and let herself enjoy the feeling of the wind in her hair and the utter sense of being alone. It wasn’t often that she had the skies to herself, and yet she had long ago come to realise that that was what she enjoyed most. That was when she was truly free, free to pretend she had no titles, no burdens, no family, no daughters to marry off, no plotting nephews to watch, no subjects to rule, no obligations, no responsibilities . . .
    Catching herself thinking these thoughts made her laugh. And here I am, set to become the next Speaker of the Realms. Would I really turn my back on that if someone told me I could? Would I really take Mistral and fly away across the Stone Desert to the