Blood of Requiem (Song of Dragons, Book 1)

12. GLORIAE

GLORIAE

They were gone.

Once more they had escaped her. Once more she had failed.

Gloriae stood over the smoldering hut, staring at its embers, and her eyes burned. Whether they burned from smoke or tears, she did not know.

She kicked the embers with her boot, searching for something, some clue, some answer... to what? Gloriae didn't know. There was a riddle here, a secret, but she knew neither the answer nor question.

A wind blew, streaming her hair, a hot wind smelling of

smoke and blood. She stood alone; she had sent her griffins to scour the beaches, islands, and forests, to burn and destroy whatever they could not search. Her father had joined them, trembling with rage.

"What did she say, Aquila?" Gloriae asked her griffin. The beast stood beside her, lion body singed, feathered breast cut with Kyrie's claws. Aquila cawed and scratched the burnt earth.

"The silver one, the female," Gloriae said. "She spoke."

Suddenly Gloriae was trembling, and she clutched her lance and gazed at its bloodied tip. She had wounded that silvery beast, driven her lance into its flesh, and it had opened its evil maw and spoken in a voice too soft, too delicate, too... familiar. Those words still echoed in Gloriae's mind.

"Gloriae, I—" it had called, and here griffin shrieks and fire had drowned its words. "—your mother!"

Gloriae closed her eyes, the wind stinging her face, the smoke stinging her nostrils. A tremble took her, and she had to lean against Aquila. A dream came unbidden to her mind, but not a dream as those which invaded her sleep; it filled her like a spell. She was a child. She walked between pillars in a birch forest, and the leaves were golden like her hair, gliding around her, scuttling against marble tiles. She held her mother's hand and wore no armor, only silk.

"Mother!" she spoke in her dream, and she saw her mother's eyes gaze down upon her, lavender eyes, loving, and Gloriae played with her mother's hair and laughed.

Gloriae opened her eyes and stared back at the burnt forest. She trembled and clutched Per Ignem's hilt.

"A memory," she mumbled. "A memory, no more."

She knew not its place nor its time. Her mother had died when Gloriae was only three. Gloriae had thought that no memories of the woman remained, but here this vision had come to her, and Gloriae knew it to be from those first three, joyous years of her life.

She looked at her bloodied lance and tossed it down in disgust.

"Gloriae!" the weredragon had spoken. How dared it speak her name? What kind of devil spoke with such a soft, beautiful voice? Only the greatest evil would mask its true nature with such a voice, Gloriae knew. And what did it mean?

"I—" Shrieks and fire. "—your mother!"

"The weredragons killed my mother," Gloriae whispered, jaw clenched, staring at the hut's embers. "I know the story. My father told me. They kidnapped her, tortured her, and ate her." She screamed, drew Per Ignem, and stabbed the ashes. "How dared one speak of my mother?"

Then Gloriae knew. With trembling fury, fury more white and burning than the embers, she knew the answer. That silvery dragon, that Lacrimosa as the others called it, had been the one. It had killed Gloriae's mother. It had taunted her mother with that soft voice, had ripped into her with claws.

"'I killed your mother,' it tried to say." Gloriae spoke in icy hatred, and Aquila cawed and retreated several steps, wincing as if expecting a blow. "Come, Aquila. We fly."