He crouched down and leaped onto one of the platforms above. He went to his clothes platform and found the gold jewelry box. He flipped open the lid. Inside was a small curved dagger in a jeweled hilt. He took it and lightly leaped down onto the ground floor again. Tilly’s mouth was agape.
“That is--that jumping and landing thing is way cool,” she breathed.
“Some of us just have to show off,” Marban muttered.
Tilly giggled at the old Swarm Shifter. “You’re normally the center of attention, Marban, you have to give King Valerius some moments, too.”
Marban put a hand to the center of his chest and said with mock shock, “Me? Center of attention? Never.”
Tilly giggled again. She turned back to Valerius who held out the dagger to her. Her eyes were widening again.
“Is that for me?” she asked.
“It is,” Valerius said.
“You would give a girl a weapon,” Marban snickered, but not unkindly.
She took the beautiful dagger out of his much larger hands into her two small ones. She drew the blade out halfway. It glittered.
“Be careful, it is sharp,” Valerius warned.
She nodded and carefully resheathed it before turning it over and over in her hands, looking at the rubies and emeralds set into it.
“It’s beautiful,” Tilly breathed.
“You must have treasures in your lair,” Valerius said, passing along Raziel’s thoughts on this.
His Dragon Spirit did not like to give away anything shiny and the dagger was shiny. But it had never really belonged to them. It felt right that they should pass it on to Tilly.
Tilly looked up at him. “Whose was it? Before yours?”
“She was around your age, but already married,” Valerius said.
“Ick. Married?” Tilly looked horrified.
“People died young back then. Thirty was old so you would be at almost half your lifespan already,” he explained.
“Whoa, that’s freaky.” She looked down at the dagger again and smoothed a thumb over the rubies. “Who was she?”
“I never knew her name. She was a noble and I was one of the hordes that washed over the castle’s walls,” he said, remembering the screams of men and women, the acrid scent of smoke and crackling of fires. “I found her hiding in a crawlspace. She had that dagger.”
Tilly drew in a sharp breath. “You didn’t--no, you wouldn’t kill a little girl, would you? Even if she was married?”
He shook his head. “No, though she was intent on sticking me with that until I convinced her I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
He would remember quite clearly the look of confusion and then hope that had appeared on her cut and bruised face. Her royal robes were tattered. Her hair had fallen around her face. He’d offered his hand to her.
“Come with me,” he had said, “I will get you out of here safely.”
“What about her husband?” Tilly asked.
“Died in the fighting. But he was an old man compared to her. And none too kind to her from what I could tell,” Valerius said. “She did not mourn him. I got her to a sea port so that she could escape from that land. It was all going to be blood soaked and burned to the ground before the year was out.”
“And she gave you this dagger as thanks?” Tilly asked, clutching the dagger to her chest as if protecting the young noble woman she had never known.
“Yes. I did not want thanks. I just wanted…” Valerius’ lips pressed together. “I just wanted to see one thing unblemished.”
Too much death, Raziel rumbled, remembering that time, too. And for the Black Dragon to say that, it meant something.
