Page 34 of The Dragon King’s Pet

“How old are you?” she asked innocently.

“I am one thousand, three hundred and thirty-nine years of age.”

“No, you’re not.” She said it so matter-of-factly, rejecting the possibility outright. “You are not over a thousand years old. That is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous or not, that is how old I am,” Casimer said smoothly. “In our realm, age is highly honored. Unlike humans who grow weaker with time, a dragon only becomes stronger.”

“So you don’t die of old age?”

“Die of old age?” It was Casimer’s turn to snort with disbelief. “To say that here would be like saying, do you suffocate with too much air? Age brings more wisdom, more physical prowess, more power. That is not to say dragons do not die. There are many things which can take our physical forms. Injury, of course, being first among them. There are various illnesses too, unfortunately. Most dragons do not reach a thousand years old.”

“So you could live forever?”

“Eventually I would become something other than myself,” Casimer explained. “Somewhere around five, to perhaps ten thousand years of age I would lose myself and become an eater of worlds. I would have all my dragon instincts, but no walking form and no powers of speech.”

“That sounds almost worse than dying,” Mika said softly.

“It rarely happens. The world eaters are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. But they are also exceedingly dangerous. Your father would know that better than anybody. He was the last to have contact with one.”

“Really?”

“You know so little,” he sighed. “Your parents did you a great disservice by keeping your true nature from you, and the truth of the world from which you came.”

“They probably thought it was best for me.”

“Probably,” Casimer agreed.

“So you won’t become one of those eaters of worlds?”

“Not for a very, very long time, and I doubt it will happen at all. The generals will not allow it.”

“How will they stop it?”

“Even the greatest king can be assassinated,” Casimer said. “The last three leaders in my lineage fell to the sword of their own guard.”

“That’s awful!” Mika screwed her face up. “Why?”

“To stop the king from turning into a beast of incredible hunger and destroying the city and those who live in it. The birth of a world eater is the rising of a kind of god, and comes at the cost of much life. This city has stood for almost ten thousand years because of the blades of those assassins. My bladesman is also my bodyguard. For the moment his blade protects me. In the future, he will turn it upon me.”

“No!” Tears welled in Mika’s eyes. “He can’t!”

Casimer pulled her close and hugged her. In an instant she had become inconsolable, sobbing with every bit of energy she had. He was surprised by the emotional force of her reaction to the topic of his passing. There was fondness between them, of course, but her tears betrayed much deeper emotions still.

“You are the sweetest thing,” he murmured, kissing her tears away. “Do not be so sad. It will not happen in your lifetime.”

“But I don’t want it to happen ever,” she sniffed. “I don’t want anything bad to ever happen to you.”

Casimer felt something inside him shift, some intangible switch that he had not known nested inside him, which made him feel a rush of sudden tenderness he did not know he was capable of. This girl, this innocent who gave herself to him in service of her desire, was not spreading her legs because of some human compunction. She had fallen in love with him.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I should not have told you that. It does not matter what my end will be, Mika. It matters what my life will hold.”

“It matters some,” she said, sniffing.

“Pet, I adore you,” he said, his tone fond and loving. “You have such a limited notion of time. You have not had even twenty years in which to come to terms with your existence. And yet you rush for everything, for sex, even for the knowledge of death—though that is still so far off for both of us. Do not mourn the future. You have yet to understand the moment.”

In the mid-distance, the orgiastic cries of the mating dragons floated through the air as another male spent himself inside the Lady Sapphire.

Mika managed a tearful little smile. “We’re talking about dying and in there, someone is being made.”