“Why?”
“Because no one will follow us that far.”
She frowned. “You stole me, didn’t you?”
I stopped walking.
The cold wind whipped around us, tugging at my mane, at her blankets, trying to pull her from my arms.
I tightened my grip.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I did.”
I did because she reached for me, trusted me, and she smelled like home in a way nothing else had since I was a child crying in a corner, not wanting to kill my opponent but knowing it was the only way I would survive the night.
She would never know that terror and that choice. I would promise it.
I thought this would be the moment when she realized who–what, I was, truly. She would start to cry, and scream, and send out a true distress call that would have the entire island chasing after my blood.
Instead, Perri giggled. Her little eyebrows waggled and she raised her finger at me. “You’re naughty, Veskor!”
Was she afraid of anything? What a privilege to lead a life void of fear.
“Come, we must keep moving.” I gathered her into my arms, angling my wings and breaking into a run, pushing off into the air. Snow exploded behind us as we rose into the sky.
South, the drakens hunted me. North, the mountains waited. And Perri, small and warm against my heart, looked up at the stars and whispered, “Don’t worry, Veskor. I’m brave.”
I closed my eyes.
“I know,” I murmured.
She was too soft and too honest.
I flew harder.
Perri was quiet for exactly seven minutes—seven minutes of peace, without any commentary, without being asked why snow is white or why my hair was red or why I had wings and she didn’t.
It was suspicious.
Then—
“Veskor?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes.”
She wiggled in my arms so she could lean back and look at my face. Her tiny nose scrunched. “Are you old?”
I blinked down at her. “What?”
“You talk like an old draken,” she declared confidently. “Like Elder Wyrren. Except you don’t smell like soup.”
“I am not old,” I huffed, trying to squint into the oncoming snowsquall. If it was an actual storm, we would have to hunker down for the night. “And … I do not like ...soup.”
I spat the word out like an expletive. What kind of old, decrepit draken ate soup? Were all of his teeth and fangs gone? His claws removed from his finger beds? I’d rather be killed and dead from a glorious battle than old and simply rotting away.
She hummed, unconvinced. “But you make old noises.”
I sputtered. “Old—noises? I do not!”
