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“It’s almost as if you had that title ready and waiting.”
She laughs, but the sound fades almost instantly, along with her smile.
“What is it?” I keep my voice low. “What did you remember?”
“It’s nothing. Only… my mother had a few names for me. She’d save them up and use one occasionally, under her breath so no one but I could hear. They weren’t flattering.” She draws in a breath, lets it out slowly. “But then I would go down to the kitchens, and the cooks and everyone made me feel so welcome. The head cook, Myron, was a big, burly fellow who loved a good story or song, so there was always someone spinning a tale while everyone listened and worked. Or one of the staff would teach us a new song, and we’d sing it together. Myron always said, ‘Stories and songs make labor lighter.’”
“You are anxious for his well-being.”
“I’m worried about all of them.”
“I’m sure they miss you as well.”
She’s playing with the floating petals, stirring them with her finger, and all the while drifting closer to me. I’m not sure she even realizes she’s moving in my direction.
“What about you?” She cups water in her hand, blows lightly on the petals to make them flutter. “Tell me some of your good memories.”
“You don’t care about the lives of dragons.”
“Maybe I didn’t before,” she says softly. “But now I do.”
Reluctantly, I begin to speak of Varex’s hatching, of how my siblings and I learned to fly, of the patience with which my mother instructed us. Once I begin, it’s difficult to stop, and I tell her of Vylar’s affinity for strategy, how she would invent countless games for us hatchlings to play. I reminisce about my father’s fondness for eels and the lengths to which he would go to catch them. I tell her about the flights my mother would take with Varex, how she enjoyed lightning storms and moonless nights.
Even after we leave the pool and wrap ourselves in the blankets, I can’t seem to stop telling her everything. I recite a stanza of a poem Grimmaw composed, roughly translated from Dragonish, and I tell her how Mordessa and I became Promised at the urging of our families.
Between my stories, she shares more of hers—tales of the fierce hunting dogs in the palace kennels who would lick her hands and whine for her attention. Tales of plump human babies and toddling children whom she seems to love almost as much as their own parents do. Tales of sneaking around the palace, performing mundane tasks with the servants because she enjoyed being busy, feeling useful, and helping to lighten the burden of their duties.
As we sit side by side in the cave, with our memories between us, our losses become a little easier to bear. And when we finally lie down, overcome with weariness, Serylla scoots close to me in her blanket and begins to sing a haunting tune about wings and teeth, wind and sea, whispers and darkness. Without asking, I know it’s a song she crafted herself, after I brought her to this island. My throat tightens, because she told me she never sings her compositions for anyone, and yet she is singing this, for me.
Tears slip from my eyes in the gloom—tears of affection, of admiration, of wonder, because never have I heard a song that more perfectly embodies the wildness, the danger, and the beauty of Ouroskelle.
I wake in the middle of the change, with magic vibrating along my limbs. Hastily I scramble away from Serylla and lunge out of the cave, just as my dragon form bursts into existence.
There is a half-instant, during the transformation, when I am bodiless. I am nothing. It’s the most frightening thing I have ever experienced—akin to death, I imagine.
When it’s over I shake myself, flaring my wings. The wounds where the voratrice tore out my scales are healing, and they don’t pain me anymore, but it will take weeks for the scales to grow in completely.
Frustration clamps its burning claws onto my spirit, and I whip my tail savagely, opening my jaws and spewing a trail of fire across three of the pools until steam rises from them in great plumes. Singed petals flutter through the air, crumbling to ash.
Nothing is going as planned. Since my father died, there’s been one disaster after another, and every time I try to regain control of the situation, I fail. I’m sick of it. I’m not used to slogging through so many emotions at once; I can’t sort them like shells or line them up like bones. I’ve tried to tuck them away, like dark treasures in the back of a cave, but they come roaring back out, swamping me, weighing me down. I slept, and yet I’m exhausted. We had a blissful evening, Serylla and I… yet in the light of the new morning, now that I’m back in my usual scaly skin, our time together seems as distant as a dream. The quiet peace I felt evanesced during my abrupt waking, and now all I feel is rage.
Serylla shuffles to the cave opening, flushed and sleepy, wrapped in a blanket. “You’re a dragon again.”
“Obviously.”
She frowns. “You’re grouchier than usual.”
“I don’t like this,” I snarl. “I hate being forced to switch between bodies. It’s unnatural. I should have punished the enchantress.”
“Beyond forcing her to be Ashvelon’s life-mate?” She quirks an eyebrow. “I think that was punishment enough.”
“It was for her own good. And he’s in love with her, can’t you see that? You’re human—you should be able to read the fucking signs and understand when someone is violently, horribly, wretchedly in love.”
“Goodness.” She blinks at me. “You make it sound so terrible.”
“It is terrible. Pack up your things. Let’s go.”
“I want to bathe in the hot spring again.”
