The crowd closes around him again. He keeps advancing. But slower now.
Every yard costs him, every step leaves another streak of gold on the leaves.
And for the first time since I've known him, Vyrathion looks mortal.
For a moment I don’t know what to do.
Then my hand goes into my pocket and my trembling fingers curl around something hard.
“Vyrathion!” I yell, my voice shrill and trembling. “Catch!”
His gaze finds me for a moment and I throw.
He snatches the object out of the air and seems to go still.
27
- Vyrathion-
It’s a rock. Black and angular, grainy and ugly.
But it’s heavy. And there’s a seam. A thick seam of something…wonderful.
The rock is warm. Warm from her body.
From Morgan’s body. That’s her heat I’m feeling.
I smash the rock on the head of a nearby enemy, cracking both open.
The rock splits down the middle and I stare into the center of it.
“Oh yes,” I sigh. “Finally.”
It’s gold. Pure and raw, still attached to the worthless granite and quartz around it. But it’s gold.
And it’s enough.
The heat from it floods through me.
For several heartbeats I can do nothing except stand there and feel it. The little nugget is hardly a treasure by dragon standards. If I had seen it a century ago, I might not even have bothered to pick it up. Yet the moment my claws close around it, something ancient and wounded inside me finally begins to heal.
The sensation is relief.
Years of weakness start cracking apart inside me. Years of hiding from enemies. Years of accepting humiliations that should never have touched a dragon. Years of being diminished, trapped in a form that never quite fit. The wounds covering my body suddenly seem distant and unimportant, as though they belong to somebody else.
A tribesman charges me with a sword. The attack barely registers. I notice him only because the sword strikes my shoulder and snaps in half. The warrior stumbles backward, staring at the broken blade in disbelief.
I laugh. The sound comes out deeper than it should. It vibrates through my chest and seems to shake the air around me. Several nearby warriors recoil immediately, and I realize that my voice is already changing.
More heat pours through me. The nugget should not be enough. Any dragon would tell you that. There isn't enough gold here to support a proper Change. There isn't enough mass. There isn't enough value.
Yet somehow it works. As the realization forms, another thought follows close behind.
Morgan found this. Morgan carried it. Morgan saw me dying and gave it away without hesitation.
For a moment the battlefield fades into the background. I remember her standing in front of me in the jungle, refusing to obey. I remember the tears she tried to hide. I remember every ridiculous argument about gold, dragons, monsters and hoards.
She could have kept this nugget. She could have traded it. Hidden it. Saved it.
