Read Online The Queen's Flight (Emerging Queens) by Jamie K. Schmidt - Free Book Online Page A

softly. “If she’s listening to this broadcast, she’d go to Ireland, right? Is that where you would’ve gone?”
    “What?” Carolyn stopped glaring at Reed and turned to Sergei. “No, I would have gone to the Great Wyrm, Niall. He was my boss. Or the dragon embassy.”
    “I feel for the new Queens,” Carolyn said. “I’m sure on some level, all their lives they felt different—like I did. And then pop to shift into a dragon and a Queen.” She shook her head.
    “You don’t think Viola would go back to Smythe, do you?” Carolyn asked Sergei.
    Sergei shook his head. “Viola’s father is in Cassandra’s stable. I’m not sure in what capacity—henchman, lover, employee. Viola could head to Ireland.” The thought of Viola in that viper’s den drenched him in a cold sweat and made him want to reduce the conference table to splinters.
    “Jack, you and Arianna go to Ireland and see if you can waylay any Queens headed to Cassandra’s mountain,” Reed said. “I’ll have some trusted studs head into Choyo and Hui Zhong’s territories to do damage control. Persuade the emerging Queens to seek refuge in the Embassy instead.”
    “What about us?” Carolyn asked Reed.
    “We’re going to go see my mother.”
    “Oh joy,” Carolyn clasped her hands in mock excitement. “Maybe she can trap me in her dungeon again.”
    “See if you can get my tiara back from Mama,” Arianna said to her, before she and Jack left the room.
    Sergei breathed easier when her stench dissipated. “The broken curse is a game changer, isn’t it?”
    “My sister is not like the other Queens,” Reed said quietly.
    Tamping down his hate, Sergei shrugged. “She hasn’t been tested with power yet.” He was telegraphing his feelings too much and if one of the old Queens had been here, they would have called him out on it, and he’d have been punished. “There are a few who believe the only good Queen is a dead Queen.”
    “I get that they were real bitches. But don’t forget it’s a death sentence to harm a Queen.” She shook her finger at him.
    Sergei flashed his teeth at her, just on the side of aggression. “If the stud is caught.”
    “We never found out who murdered Kira,” Reed said.
    “And you never will.” Sergei stared Reed down.
    “Who’s Kira?” Carolyn said.
    “Centuries before you were born,” Reed told her and moved so he was between Sergei and Carolyn. “There were six Queens. Kira was a Blue Celtic dragon who ruled over Greenland. She was found poisoned and slaughtered. A dragon killed her.”
    “Did she go into the weave?” Carolyn said, referring to the universal dragon energy that gave the dragons their magic.
    “We buried her body in sacred ground.”
    “So why didn’t someone ask her who killed her?” Carolyn said.
    Reed and Sergei gaped at her. “What?”
    “Female dragons can sense each other in the weave. All it would take was one of them to go to Kira’s death site and talk to her spirit.” Carolyn got up from the table, obviously unaware that she had dropped a bomb in Sergei’s little world.
    Four centuries of a murder cover-up would be exposed by the first Queen willing enough to step foot in Greenland and claim it as hers. He sank back into his seat at the conference table. They would kill him—it didn’t matter that he’d been under Cassandra’s orders to execute Kira. He’d stung Kira and then ripped her to shreds before the paralysis wore off.
    She’d deserved it.
    Kira’s mind had become unhinged, and she was eating children instead of livestock. But to harm a Queen was death. He agreed to execute Kira on the condition that Cassandra dropped all claim on him and stopped hunting him. He did it for his freedom and to pay back a debt he owed to the humans who’d helped him escape Cassandra in the first place.
    “I think we should call Casimiro,” Carolyn said, breaking Sergei out of his brooding thoughts.
    “Why call that peacock of a dragon pop star? Do you think