Chapter 9: Under the Ember Hall

The stair to the undercroft began behind a tapestry in the old throne room, and no one had used it in years.

The lock turned with a sigh.

I went down with a candle and Torin's cloak over my shoulders, counting steps the way my father had taught me when I was seven.

Ninety, and the air turned warm.

A hundred and ten, and I smelled smoke and old iron and something older than both.

At the bottom the passage opened into a cavern lit by a dull red glow.

My candle guttered and died.

I did not need it.

I had been a girl the last time I stood in this cavern.

My father had held my hand and told me the dragon chose a queen by who was not afraid of her.

I was not afraid now.

I was furious.

She lay in the center of the floor in chains as thick as my waist.

She was a long coil of scarred black scale, gone dull and grey at the edges.

Her wings were bound against her sides with iron bands, and the skin beneath them was rubbed raw and weeping.

Someone had left a bucket of scraps by her jaw, and she had not touched it.

Her ribs showed through her hide.

She was my mother's dragon, and my father's, and mine by right.

I had not seen her in five years.

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