Chapter 11

Queen Cactus gave a mental yawn as she turned her focus to the small window carved into the sandstone wall. The monotonous voices of her fellow Queens fade into the background as she stares wistfully at the rolling sand dunes in the distance. I don’t really need to know about the fortification measures that the AquaDragons have taken. It’s not like there is a war going on. I mean, ugh.

She listens back in on the conversation going on.

“—well, maybe we should try to take more of the sandstone from here and use it to shore up our palace,” Queen Hurricane says, nodding pointedly towards Cactus. Uh-oh. Did I miss something?

“Uh-ahem. Y-es. Sure. That’s fine,” Cactus says, shrugging. We’ve got plenty of sandstone.

“OK. Then that solves that issue. Now, Constellation, I wanted to talk about the issue of the border,” Sabertooth declares, turning to the NightDragon queen.

Every dragon goes silent, watching with amusement as the NightDragon continues staring into the mirror on the wall, oblivious.

Sabertooth rolls her eyes then clears her throat with authority. The pitch black dragon whirls around, seeming to shrink under the gaze of all the other queens.

“Sorry, what were we talking about?”

“The borders. We were talking about the borders.”

Cactus rolls her eyes, and turns back to the window, just in time to watch a bronze and blue comet hurtle out of the sky, crash landing on the sand in the courtyard below. Only one thing could have those colors and it would be odd if she didn’t recognize the scales of her own dragonet.