The Last Dragon Song

The stone remembers more than I do—kings and queens, riders and dragons, grief and laughter and the thudding joy of festival drums. Today it carries only my footsteps. Soft. Careful. Like I’m afraid to wake the past.

The torches never go out here. They burn with dragonfire—steady, golden, a warmth that settles in the bones. Their light runs across carvings on the walls: wings unfurled, tails spiraling, scales like rivers of hammered stars. When I was small, I used to trace those spirals with my fingertips and pretend the stone would whisper its secrets back. Now I walk with my hands tucked into my sleeves and try not to touch at all.

We’re in the sky, if you’re wondering. The whole city is a crown of stone set upon a floating rock above the Abyssal Deep. The wind rises from the nothing below and braids itself through the streets, through balcony gardens and rope-anchored markets and the high roosts where the great ones land. You can hear it singing in the iron rings and banner cords. The old songs say the wind learned its voice from dragons. Having heard a dragon sing, I believe it.

If you’ve opened this book—and you must have, since you’re here—it’s because you want to know who I am.

I’m Jeanette Valemere.

No titles. Not yet. Not from my mouth. Titles are best when someone else gives them, and you’d rather they hadn’t. (I’ve walked past that throne a hundred times and still can’t bring myself to sit.)

What else? I was a happy child once. I believed in dragons because my grandfather did, and when a man like Eric Valemere believes, the world seems simple and bright. He told me stories by lamplight with his voice all warm and worn at the edges, and when I was very little he said, this is our secret, sweetie, and touched the bottom of my foot where the mark was, and I promised not to tell a soul.

I kept that promise until he died. After that, I told everyone until no one would listen.

But that’s running ahead.

If you’re going to walk these halls with me, you should know the people whose names still echo here.

There’s Elyndra (eh-LIN-drah), the wood-elf with forest in her hair and patience in her hands. I can still feel the rough bark where she steadied me the first time I slipped climbing. She loved me like a sister and, later, doubted me like one too. Elyndra still walks like the forest—quiet until you realize you’ve always been listening.

Haruhi (HAH-roo-hee) will complain if I don’t tell you she’s beautiful. She is. Satyr-wild, bells at her hips, curls like a riot, laughter sharp enough to cut sorrow into pieces small enough to swallow. If there was a dare in the room, she found it. If there was music, she made it. She calls me Jeanie even now, and I pretend I mind so she’ll keep doing it. (If she were here, the bells would already be echoing down this hall.)

Thalos (THAH-los) is cyclops and stoneborn, taller than the doorframes that never bothered to be taller than him. People think a single eye can’t soften, but his does. He used to scoop me up like I weighed as much as a thought and set me on his shoulders so I could see the world the way giants do. Thalos doesn’t speak unless words will be better than silence. When he does, you tend to reconsider everything.

Coren (KOR-en)… You’ll meet him properly later. For now, let me be kind and say he wanted more than he was given. Ambition can be a lamp in a dark place—or a wildfire.

Zevrin (ZEH-vrin) deserves better than a line. He was a Stormrend, lightning in his blood and a steady hand on my shoulder whenever the world tilted. If dragons can smile with their eyes, he did. I will not talk about the day his eyes closed. Not yet.

And then there is Veydris Veyndar (VAY-dris VAYN-dar). My dragon. My bond. My—well. We’ll get there. You can’t rush the first note of a song. You’ll hear it when you should.

If you’re worried about pronunciations, don’t be. I’ll keep reminding you, and by the time we’re done you’ll be saying them like you were born here.

The city breathes around me as I walk: spice smoke from the lower markets; salt carried up from the Deep; the faint resin-sweet scent of oiled leather from the glider forges; the clean mineral bite of the Echoing crystals that lace the palace spine. Below, somewhere beyond the bright courtyards and the wind bridges, a vendor is arguing cheerfully about the price of pears. Above, somewhere past the roosts, a shadow wheels and resolves into a dragon heading home.

Home. It’s a difficult word. For a long time, “home” was two places and one secret. You don’t realize how heavy a secret is until someone tries to take it from you.

I could show you the throne room, but I don’t want to. Not yet. The great doors are carved with scenes of King Aurevion Veyndar and his mate, Queen Sylara—his scales bright as daybreak, hers as deep as midnight at sea. They were not carved to be mourned; they were carved to be admired, and I am not ready to admire what I miss. My grandfather—Eric—stood at Aurevion’s side for longer than seems fair for one lifetime. They made choices together with the clean certainty of people who loved their world more than themselves. When he laughed, Aurevion, the floor hummed. When he sang, the wind forgot its own song to listen. When he fell—no. Not yet.

There are places in the palace where the stone dips from centuries of feet taking the same path. I follow one of those dips now, past a window where the light pools on the floor like melted gold, past a niche where someone—probably Haruhi—once hid me with sticky fingers and a stolen cookie while Elyndra pretended not to know exactly where we were. I could show you the kitchen with its racks of copper pans and the pastry cook who always pretended she didn’t see us when she did. I could show you Thalos’ favorite balcony for watching storms. I could show you the iron ring where Zevrin used to hook a talon and dangle for the sheer pleasure of being ridiculous and terrifying at once.

It is a city meant for living. That’s important. People like to talk about palaces as if they are only for ruling, but the best ones are for markets and music and scraped knees and lovers quarreling in shadows and mended quarrels the next morning with bread still warm from the oven. We used to say that in this place no one stood taller just because they were born to—they stood taller if they were needed to. Even our prince ran errands, and if you think I’m teasing, you haven’t seen Veydris carry a basket because my hands were full and his weren’t. Equality wasn’t a story we told children; it was a tired back at the end of a good day and a fair hearing in a crowded square and a king who listened more often than he spoke.

If you’re waiting for the part where I tell you I was special—some golden-child prophecy nonsense—I’m going to disappoint you. I was loved. That’s different, and rarer. My mark was a small thing on the bottom of my foot, more of a secret smile than a shout. The first time I rode was after an argument, and the first time I fell off was immediately after that. I have never been graceful. I have been determined, which is cousin to grace in the way stubbornness is cousin to courage.

There is a place along the inner hall where the floor meets a wall of crystal and you can look straight through the palace bones to the sky beyond. I stop there now, because I always do. The crystal hums so faintly you’d miss it if the world were loud. Press your palm to it and you’ll feel the resonance—old songs sleeping, new songs turning over in their dreams. When the Echoing Spires were whole, riders came here before their Second Bond to hear what their hearts already knew and were afraid to say aloud.

Did I hear it? You can’t have my answer yet. Not because I’m cruel, but because it won’t mean anything until you’ve walked a little further with me.

You will want to ask about the other world—the one with school bells and therapists’ clocks and a bookshop window in Japan where a certain book waited as patient as a tide. We’ll get there. Sometimes evil doesn’t dress for the occasion. Sometimes it shows up in its work clothes and gets started.

For now, let me give you something softer to hold.

My grandfather used to say the wind had good manners in these halls. It would bow at the doors and slip around the corners and never blow a page from a book unless you needed a reason to stop reading and laugh. He called me brave girl when no one else was listening and sweetie when everyone was, because he thought titles belonged to deeds and nicknames belonged to love.

I loved him more than dragons. That’s saying something.

Do I sound like a queen? I hope not. Queens, the kind I grew up around, were older than calendars and younger than dawn. They were made of decisions. I am made of a great many things—bread crusts and stubbornness, old stories and new bruises, a laugh I learned from Haruhi and a silence I learned from Thalos and a patience I borrowed from Elyndra and have yet to return. And Veydris—he taught me what listening sounds like when someone is willing to be the storm so you can learn to be the sea.

If you were here, I’d show you where the lanterns are kept and which door creaks and the place the floor stones warm your feet even in winter. I’d tell you which baker will slip you an extra roll if you say please like you mean it. I’d take your hand and lead you up to the highest bridge and let the wind take your hair and your breath away, and then I’d tell you to look down into the Deep and remember that there are worse things than fear and better things than safety.

But you’re not here. You’re wherever you are, with this book in your hands, and I am here with mine.

I could tell you the ending first. I could tell you how the sky went very dark and how the songs cracked and how we forgot, for a while, how to be what we had always been. You wouldn’t understand. Endings aren’t heavy until you’ve carried beginnings.

Stories start with small things. With stolen cookies and muddy knees. With a mark no bigger than a thumbprint on the bottom of a little girl’s foot. With a laugh caught in a kitchen and a dragon pretending not to smile and a grandfather who kissed a brow and said, hush now, it’s our secret.

If you’re ready, we can start this where it needs to begin.

At the beginning.