Page 49 of A Matter of Dragons

“Come,” the dragon growled.

It was almost a whimper, almost like a cry for mercy. Some part of me screamed that I should run, that this was a monster, the very worst type of monster. But my legs pressed me forward, ignoring my reasons and my icy, panicked fear. Something about the ruined, dying monster before me tugged at my heart as if she’d sent barbs between my ribs.

And then I died. The monster’s mouth opened. Flames poured into the night. I closed my eyes against my death. Heat swallowed me whole. The acrid tang of burning wool and leather rose from my shoulders, from my arms. I waited for death to hurt.

But the pain never arrived. The heat subsided, and I opened my eyes. Smoke clouded the air before me, rising in waves from my own body. I blinked down at myself, at the ruins of my travel armor, my leather breastplate that had never held the Royal Crest, and the loose woolen tunic I wore beneath it now reduced to ash and smoldering scraps. But my body—

I raised a trembling hand and touched my bare stomach, my chest, the fluttering curve of my neck. My pulse beat beneath my own fingers, steady and urgent.

Was this death? I raised my gaze to the rocks around me, the ledge where I’d planned to murder the men who’d betrayed me. It looked the same in death as it had in life. I glanced down, ran my toes through the grit at my feet. Was that my body below me, now reduced to an infinitesimal pile of ash? Was this what it felt like to be a spirit?

“Come,” the dragon said again, her voice weaker and softer now, scarcely more than a whisper.

I raised my eyes and met the monster’s gaze. Dead or not, the dragon had fixed her gleaming eyes on what was left of me.

“Come to me,” the dragon groaned. “My child. My daughter.”

Something hidden deep inside of me cracked open. Daughter. No one, monster or human, man or woman, had ever before called me daughter. The word broke me even as it pulled me forward.

“I knew you would come, my daughter,” the dragon whispered as her massive yellow eyes rolled to track my progress. “At the end.”

I fell to my knees before her monstrous head, all scales and teeth. Bolts of pain shot through my legs as I hit the hard stone, and some part of me wondered that I would feel pain even after I had died. I raised my hands, the scarred and the beautiful, and pressed them both against the dragon’s cheek. Her scales were warm beneath my touch, smooth with a gentle curve, like a fine teacup at an elegant afternoon luncheon in late winter.

The dragon groaned, a deep and horrible sound that shook the scales beneath my palms. My eyes stung with tears, and my chest burned as though something of the dragon’s fire had become lodged deep within my ribs.

“No,” I whispered, my thoughts incoherent and stumbling in the swirl of pain and grief the dragon’s voice had somehow unleashed within me. “No. I’ve just found you.”

The dragon’s bright eyes narrowed as though she were trying very hard to focus on me, to fix my face in her mind. Her claws clenched and scrabbled at the stones somewhere behind me. Then her head sank slowly, almost gracefully, to the rocks beneath us.

My grief was so sudden and so powerful it seemed to have come from some other place, from the realm of the dead itself perhaps. Sobs tore from my throat and echoed off the stones; hot tears rolled down my cheeks and soaked my chest. I couldn’t have said what, exactly, I was mourning; only that it was awful, and it was gone, and it could never be replaced.

The warmth slowly ebbed from the dragon’s scales beneath my fingers. She clawed at the ground once more, a rasping growl of talons against scorched scree, and then her body moved no more. My tears slowed, leaving my head throbbing. Spots danced in my vision, but whether they were bits of ash slowly descending to the ground or the after-effects of my sorrow I couldn’t have said. I closed my eyes and bent my head.

I hurt all over. My knees screamed where I’d fallen onto the stones, my legs trembled from my frantic ascent up the mountainside, and my chest felt hollow, wrung out, and abandoned. I pulled in a long, halting breath. Even that hurt; my lips burned and my throat felt tight. I opened my eyes and saw the disgusting scars on my left arm covered with soot and ash and resting atop a dragon.

The remains of a dragon. Her body was perfectly still, now, and her massive, bright eyes had closed. Grief welled up inside me again, pooling from the crack in my chest that the dragon’s voice had opened. A monster had called me daughter. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t possibly be true, but—

I sighed and let my hand drop from the dragon’s jaw. I must be that desperate for a family, for somewhere to belong. Somehow my sad, violent loneliness, the bone-deep ache of an orphan girl raised by His Majesty’s Royal Army, had aligned with the dragon’s dying wish to see her daughter. And it had unlocked some hidden depths of grief I hadn’t even known existed. I pulled my hand to my chest and rubbed my knuckles over what still felt like an open wound bleeding just beneath my breastbone.

Everything hurt, and the dragon was dead. I closed my eyes and tried to force my shattered mind to think. I’d been burned by dragonfire, I must be dead, but—

My eyes opened again, taking in the undeniable fact of my own body. My aching, filthy, scarred, and naked body. If I were dead, would I hurt so much? And the dragon before me had just died. If I were dead already, how could this dragon have also died? Did you die twice? How many realms of the dead were there?

I pushed myself to my feet as my mind spun wildly. Maybe I wasn’t dead, maybe I couldn’t be dead, but how was I alive? The dragon’s fire had burned my clothes off my body. What horrible magic had preserved me? Fear danced up the back of my neck. I took a step away from the dragon’s corpse. I’d never even heard of something that could protect against dragonfire. Whatever had been done to me, it must be powerful. And wicked.

“Rayne.”

My spine stiffened. That voice came from somewhere outside my own mind, beyond the messy haze of memories and pain and desperate grasps at possible explanations. My hand dropped to my waist, to the place where my sword had been before it had melted into a useless pile of slag, and I turned slowly.

Tousled black hair, dark eyes, and a heartbreakingly handsome, hesitant smile. Doshir. Recognition traveled through me like a bolt of lightning. The man from the antiquities shop, from the elven pub, the man who kissed like fire, who seduced me in his garden and then kicked me to the curb.

No, not a man.

A dragon.

“Rayne,” Doshir said again. “You—you’re like me.”

He swallowed, and I hated the way my eyes caught on the gentle rise and fall of his neck. I remembered the feel of his skin beneath my lips, the way his eyes had seemed almost black in the starlight. He took a step forward. I pulled back, hating those memories, hating everything about that night.