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Fuck. Him.
I opened up to him a little, and he used my confession to wound me. He’s beating me at my own game.
I set the meat back on its cloth wrapping, wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, and draw myself up to my full height. “What I deserve is to live my life the way I choose, instead of being subjected to a magical transformation without my consent. If you think forcing the females of another species to become dragons is being a good prince, you’re wrong. In fact, I think you’re quite possibly the worst ruler your clan has ever had. You involved them in a war, got half of them killed, then ordered the other half to become the kidnappers of helpless women. You have failed them. And because you led your clan to war, the deaths of the female dragons—your Promised, your grandmother, your sister—they’re all your fault.”
I did it. I hurt him back. I see it in the flare of his eyes, the orange glow of his nostrils. Dragonesque though his features are, I can read them as clearly as I can read my own heart. I know the signs of internal agony.
Regret rushes through me almost immediately. Not because he doesn’t deserve the pain, but because I don’t want to become the person I’m pretending to be—selfish, demanding, callous and cruel.
Why am I even doing this? It seemed like the ideal strategy at first, but now, with what I know of the situation—is this even the right tactic? What do I truly gain by taunting him, other than a perverse satisfaction?
The black dragon doesn’t say a word. A moment later he dives off the ledge and soars away into the darkening sky.
Well... I fucked that up. No way is he bringing me firewood now. I’m alone in the cave, gazing out at mountains clothed in purple shadow.
I could swear I hear music echoing from somewhere far below. Cautiously I crawl to the edge of the cliff and peer down. Sure enough, there are two campfires glowing like fireflies.
The other kidnapped women are celebrating, or at least putting on a brave face during their captivity. I’m sure they don’t want to stay here and turn into dragons, so they must have some alternate strategy for getting themselves out of this. Or perhaps the people of my city were worse off than I thought, and escaping right before Vohrain’s final invasion felt like salvation to them. I can’t be sure, because I can’t reach the women, or speak to them.
The dragon’s comment about my mother, coupled with the sight of the campfires, wrecks me. I’ve only cried a little since my capture, but I’ve been growing more and more brittle inside. Bantering with the dragon distracted me today, but he’s gone now, and there’s no one to defy or to tease. Nothing to take my mind off my wretchedness.
A desolate thread of music twines through my heart—the sigh of strings, the hollow murmur of pipes, and the distant voice of a woman mourning in clear, wistful notes. Sobs swell in my lungs, pressing outward. I try to hold them in, but that only makes them uglier when they explode out of my throat, horrible and jagged. My whole body convulses while tears trail down my cheeks and drip from my chin. I bow over against the stone floor, weeping.
A heavy, rhythmic sound penetrates my thoughts. Wingbeats.
The black dragon sweeps into the cave before I can pull myself together. I look up at him, my face slicked with tears.
He opens his claws, and a bunch of dry sticks roll onto the floor. He nudges them into a pile with his snout, blows a puff of superheated air to set them alight, then takes off again without a word.
I stare at the flickering fire, dumfounded.
After what I said to him about his loved ones… he brought the firewood anyway.
I scoot toward the fire, collecting my remaining hunk of meat. I nibble at it while the tears dry on my cheeks. I still ache inside, but the sharpest pain has eased, salved by that simple act of kindness.
Slowly, my energy and my courage return. My interest was piqued when the dragon pulled the clay bowl from some inner recess of his lair, so once I’ve finished my meal, I explore the cave more thoroughly by the flickering light of the fire. In a cleft at the back of the cave, I find several rudimentary clay bowls. One bowl contains multicolored seashells, while three others are overflowing with pieces of expensive-looking jewelry. A small dish contains the teeth of numerous animals—predators, I think. I recognize the fangs of vipers, the triangular teeth of sharks, and the canines of some wolflike creature.
Nearby lies a thick cord woven of grass or seaweed, with bones tied to it. I suspect they are the claws, toe-bones, vertebrae, or teeth of dragons. Each one bears symbols like the ones that decorate the cave. They look like relics—recent ones, I would guess. Perhaps they’re from some of the deceased female dragons. The prince did mention something about “collecting bone-tribute from the dead.”
On a stone shelf chiseled into the wall sits an enormous tooth etched with symbols, and beside it rests a large ebony claw, with white markings scratched onto its surface. Bits of shiny shells and a few coins are scattered around the tooth and the claw.
I recognize a shrine when I see one. But these losses aren’t recent—there’s a light coating of dust on the objects. Perhaps these came from his parents. He and his siblings obviously inherited the leadership of this island, so their parents must have died.
My gaze drops to the clay bowls again. I suppose the dragons occasionally need to store things. With their forepaws and talons they could fashion these rudimentary dishes, and with their heated breath, they wouldn’t need a kiln to fire the pottery.
The discovery of the relics sobers me, and I return to the nest burdened by the thought of all the deaths caused by the war. I begin to imagine that I hear the rattle of wing-bones and the hiss of spectral dragons, tethered to this world by the mementos their prince has kept. The eerie tune my mind generates to accompany my morbid fantasy doesn’t help matters.
When the black dragon returns, I’m actually relieved to see him. The fire is low—thank god he came back before it went out, or I might have perished from fear of ghost-dragons.
He stands on all fours on the opposite side of the fire and flares his wings a bit to catch the residual heat. The hollows beneath his wing joints look rather damp, and his scales are shinier than usual.
“Did you bathe?” I ask.
He gives me the side-eye and shakes himself slightly before prowling over to the nest. He prods at the gaps where the soiled chunks were removed, clearly irritated by the resulting asymmetry. But he gives up his fussing after a few moments and curls up in the nest, his thorny black tail draped over the edge, trailing on the stone.
Apparently we’re sharing the nest tonight. Which isn’t a problem, since it was built to accommodate two adult dragons and a hatchling or two—but somehow, lying down near him feels too vulnerable. Too intimate. I can’t stop thinking about how he licked my cheek, my neck—be a good fucking girl—
Oh god.
