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My mind was my enemy. Mother was right. All the dreams of such creatures I’d had must truly have been a sign of some evil within, and now my mind would be my end.
“Oh, for the love of the Goddess,” a deep voice spoke with a hint of amusement.
I didn’t have time to figure out the source before it dropped me. A yelp escaped my lips, but my feet found the ground before the sound materialized. I crumpled to my knees, my legs still weakened from all that had happened to me.
I lifted my fists and steeled myself for the attack, but none came. I frowned and squinted up at the beast. He breathed hard, his massive body laboring while his nostrils flared with the effort. For a moment, he just stared, then abruptly, he moved.
I cowered, my voice too raw from the smoke to make a sound. He moved past, bending low to dip his enormous head to a stream. I sidestepped to get as far away from the creature as possible and used his distraction to take in his vast body and wings.
WINGS!
It had looked like the gatekeeper of the Valley of the Dead as it swooped in and stole me away. But now? He was majestic. Mother always said Uriel would be beautiful. Like the Goddess had hand-painted him.
I didn’t want to look too closely at the fascinating details only for him to turn around and swallow me whole, but now that those huge, savage wings that had lifted us into the skies were folded so neatly against his sides, they seemed almost delicate, not fearsome.
They were a deep indigo and tipped at their joints by sharp points that glimmered like jewels in the sun. Their matte, leathery texture contrasted with the rest of his body, which was covered in shimmering scales in a whole spectrum of purples, blues, and jades that seemed to shift in the light, the way the oil from a lamp does when it is spilled on the surface of water. It set me on edge. He was much too beautiful for a monster.
He took a long drink while I took another sidestep. But what could I do? Run? Fight?
What could I actually accomplish if he turned to feast on his prize or?—
His chuckle vibrated the loose stones beneath my feet this time. I shook my head in refusal. Monsters didn’t chuckle.
By the Goddess! Monsters didn’t exist!
My imagination must have been running wild in death. It was the only explanation that made sense.
“Then, who just saved you from that fire, Sol?”
The monster turned his vast body to face me again and just stared…expectantly? His seemingly endless tail snaked lazily past as he settled on his haunches, brushing my foot as it went.
I staggered back. It must have the herbs. I was hearing and seeing and even feeling this awful creature I’d dreamed of since childhood because I’d inhaled the herbs. That was all this was. It couldn’t be more.
“Awful?”
I gasped, then glanced around.
“I—I—How are you doing that?” I demanded, immediately shutting down the weak stammer that was threatening.
It had to be him speaking to me. We were alone. But how? He wasn’t even speaking, he was thinking, and it was…entering my head? I hated it. It felt itchy.
“Doing what?”
“Putting words in my brain.” I had to be hallucinating. Visions to trick me in my last breaths.
“It’s called a bond, Sol.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. How are you doing it? How can you put thoughts into my head?” Was he putting the visions in my head, too? Did it make me mad to speak to a creation of a fever dream? I probably shouldn’t be trying to make sense of a hallucination. But I had to know more.“Are you a servant of the great betrayer?” If mother was right about my dreams, I’d hurl myself off a cliff. I couldn't bear it.
Confusion flickered in his expression and then he laughed again. “We have a bond, so we can speak to each other’s minds. It’s the only way we can communicate when I’m in my dragon form. Do you truly not know any of this?”
“How would I know any of this?” I said through my teeth, unwilling to let him see my fear and confusion, though it threatened to pour out of me. “And what in the name of the Goddess is a dragon form?”
His expression changed, becoming almost sinister with massive teeth on full display while his laugh curled his mouth and vibrated through the soil. “Still cute and fierce to your core, I see, Sol.”
Indignation swelled in my chest. “Are you mocking me?”
“Mocking you? No. You just amuse me. I rescued you from certain death, and in thanks, you call me a monster and believe I am a servant of the great betrayer. Not to mention some of the deeply fascinating if not twisted scenarios you seem to have imagined involving you being my captive.”
