Chapter 8: The Hold

Year Six. Ysmera was thirty-two, and the mountain was the only place she could laugh.

The old hold stood on a shelf of black rock above the clouds.

It had thick stone walls, a roof of dragon-scale slate and one kitchen with a fire that never went out.

Her nurse had grown frail, and a pair of hold-keepers had come to help.

But the child ran the place.

"Higher!" Fia shouted. "Mama, higher!"

She was six years old, brown-haired and gray-eyed, with a gap where her front tooth had been.

She sat in the front of Ysmera's saddle, strapped in with a leather belt much too big for her.

Ysmera had told her once that she must call her "the lady," in case a stranger came.

Fia had called her Mama from the first day, and Ysmera had stopped correcting her by the second.

The old red dragon climbed through a gap in the cloud.

Sunlight hit them, and the world fell away into gold.

"Look at it!" Fia cried. "We are above everything!"

"Hold the horn, not the reins."

"I'm holding it! I'm holding it so hard!"

The dragon rolled gently to the left, and Fia shrieked with laughter.

Ysmera held her small body against her chest, and her own heart swelled until it hurt.

Six years she had hidden this girl.

Six years of letters carried in secret.

Six years of long dark flights over three ridges.

Six years of pretending at court to be the hard, cold wife of a clever man.

This was the only warm hour in any of her seasons.

"Mama?" Fia said, as they glided down.

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