Chapter 29

“Stupid dracolings,” Ricky muttered as he freed his left arm from around Ronan.

He reached into the pack on his chest and withdrew a dark green dragon’s egg with golden tipped scales. He handed it to Ronan. He then withdrew another egg. This one was mostly a pale white-grey with violet tips on the scales, and it went to Micky.

He then extracted one more egg. This one was larger than the other two, and it was a metallic black with lighter shades of grey radiating down to the white tips of the large scales.

The egg in Ricky’s hands shook violently. They all watched in utter fascination as it cracked with a loud metal popping from metal sound. A minute later it wiggled again, and the top third flew off. This time it sounded like metal being sheered.

The shiny black head of a dracoling stretched up, and it screeched loudly in indignation. It blinked at Ricky with its coal back eyes, and he felt the bond form. Ricky tipped the egg on its side and let the baby wiggle and kick its way clear of the shell. Once free, it lay in his lap gasping, as it learnt to breathe air.

“Hetty, run and get some camla meat, please, short, thin slices work best at this stage,” Ricky said calmly.

Hetty didn’t hesitate, and she shot off her chair to run to the kitchen.

“Oooh, my baby is hatching,” Micky squealed excitedly.

The trio watched as her egg started shaking and shivering. Shadow rested in Ricky’s lap as she watched her sibling being born. Without thinking, Ricky laid a protective hand over her and offered her some warmth. She was content to be where she was.

In a few short minutes, Micky had a silver-grey baby with a violet streak that ran from between its cute little ears down its spine and along the top of its tail. In comparison, Shadow was mostly black with dark grey-sides merging into a thin strip of white along her underbelly that ran from breast to anus.

Ronan’s dracoling, Peridot, was dark green along his spine and shaded to a wider strip of gold on his underbelly than the strip that Shadow had. He was quite handsome and once on his feet he preened to show off his magnificence. Violet and Shadow were not that impressed by their brother, they were just hungry.

Fortunately, Hetty arrived back carrying a large bowl filled with thin strips of camla meat. All three dracolings turned to her as they smelt the meat. Shadow went to leap for the bowl, but Ricky said in a tone that was to be obeyed. “Patience, Shadow. Peridot and Violet wait. Your mothers will help feed you.”

The dragons had turned to Ricky while he spoke and all three settled on their back legs, folded their wings into their sides and waited with their tail tips flicking in anticipation. “Now, no snapping, we will feed you until you are full.”

Ricky went first and held out a strip of meat for Shadow so that it danged down. She opened her mouth wide and let it slip down her gullet gulping as required to get it down. Micky and Ronan were soon feeding their babies in the same manner.

All four people were surprised by how much the three slim, 30cm long dragons managed to swallow.

Once the babies were fed, Ricky let Hetty hold Shadow.

He went off to find the materials best suited to make a bed for dracolings.

Hetty had to chuckle. “I didn’t think I’d have to go through this again.”

“Again?” Micky asked as she petted the hot creature that was curled up in her lap contented to let its bulging stomach do its job.

“Yes, the first time he brought Silver here I nearly fainted dead away. If Ricky is on the island, he comes to town once a year for a couple of weeks, as he does have several businesses that he runs.”

“As part of my duties, I look after them for him when he is away. He has several of those marvellous viewing screens of his in a secret cavern under the house. I can leave him messages if I need to see him sooner. I guess the mirror he gave me will work the same.”

“Sometimes, I even get lucky, and he answers my call. Otherwise, we have arranged that once a month he would call me and check-in. It is only when he goes on one of his longer voyages that I can’t contact him. For some reason, he hasn’t been away from the islands in the last twenty-five years.”

“So, Silver has been here with him. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. He has a very soft spot for her,” Micky commented.

“Yes, that is why I’m surprised he mated with her,” Hetty replied.

“From what he told Queen Fleur; he didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Apparently, he has dragon blood in his system, and he is affected by a dame coming into season just like the drakes are.”

Hetty nodded. “Yes, I could see that being a problem for him. He cares very deeply for those he loves even if he does try to hide his feelings. Your question before about his wife; he didn’t exactly lie to you. I think in the beginning, he did love her, but not towards the end.”

“I came into his service about five years before she died. They had been living here for two years. It was Kineta that had insisted on such a large house. Even by then, there were cracks in their relationship. He tried so hard to please, but she just treated him like dirt, like his grandmother did. I’ve never heard that woman say a kind word to him.”

“If it wasn’t for his love of Matty, I think he would have retreated to his tree home many years before I came onto the scene. Kineta was heavily influenced by her family and Queen Angeni, and her perceived place in court. She seemed to believe every lie she was told about Rickard.”

“Even though Rickard was considered a bastard, he was still in line for the throne by the direct descendants’ law. As far as Angeni was concerned, Matty was her heir, despite who her father was. Legally she could nominate her over her father, and she intended to do so.”

“I don’t know why Angeni blamed Rickard for Matty’s death. He did everything in his power to pay the ransom. From what the Shields told me later, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d had the crystals here to hand over. Mother and daughter had both been raped and brutalised long before he was even given the ransom note.”

“I’m still not sure what Prince Byron truly wanted from this house. I believe the crystals were an excuse. He wanted access to the safe. He and his men ransacked the place and took four days to do it. They left me tied up for days, and I’d have died if Shield-Captain Smith, who was investigating the case hadn’t become suspicious and broke in.”

“Prince Byron was long gone by then. Ten days later, when an exhausted Ricky got home, his family had been dead for at least that long. No one but Ricky and Shield-Captain Smith believed me that it was Byron and his friends who had beaten and raped me and ransacked the house.”

“After Ricky buried his family and had a terrible fight with his grandmother that he wouldn’t talk to me about, he sat me down, went over all of his books and showed me a lot of boxes of crystals that he had put together.”

“He then went downstairs into the basement and did some magic. He dug out a cavern as deep as his house is high and made these little pools that had lava in them, and he planted crystals in the roof. He told me to give them a year to grow.”

“Then I should have enough crystals to meet his commitments until I could harvest the crystals while he was gone. He kissed me goodbye and left. I’ve never understood why he trusted me to do as he asked. I could have sold off the crystals he gave me and been a very rich woman,” Hetty said.

“Yes, but you didn’t. I still trust you as much today, as the day I gave a beaten-up little river-rat a job in my kitchen,” Ricky replied as he came back into the room.

Hetty chuckled, “You do have a habit of taking in strays.”

Ricky bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “And sometimes that actually works out well for me.”

They all watched as he went over the fireplace. He slid the large convex and oval, metal dish into the space above the fire and it hovered there. He upended the large sack he had into the dish and then coated the bottom with crushed Quaz crystals.

“Bring the dracoling over here, girls,” he told them.

They did, and the dracolings happily climbed into the dish. They circled like kittens and then curled up around each other to sleep on the glowing crystals.

“They will most likely need feeding again in about four hours,” Ricky told the girls.

Hetty sighed, “I’ll do the first watch. At least this time we have the girls to help even if there are three of them.”

“I’ll do the next one,” Ronan volunteered. It wasn’t hard to tell that the dracolings fascinated her.

“Fine, the next one is mine,” Micky said.