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Lifting my head, I turn to see what she is eating. “Are you hungry?”
She half-chokes, but manages to swallow whatever is in her mouth. “Um… no.”
“But you were eating.”
“Medicinal herbs.”
“Are you ill? Was I too rough with you?” I rise, my wings flaring with anxiety.
“No, no! It’s nothing like that. It’s…” She winces, averting her eyes. Then words spill out in a rush. “It’s just that I’m not ready to carry dragon eggs. The herbs I took are to prevent your cum from making me pregnant.”
Disappointment washes through me like a sweep of cold rain. “They will make you permanently infertile?”
“No! They will be in effect for a few hours, and they’ll end anything that may have started. But I’ll be fertile again after that.”
“I see.” I flatten my wings against my back and rest my muzzle on my forepaws. “I understand why you took them. It is your right to protect yourself from a future you don’t want.”
“Kyreagan.” Her tone is gentle, sympathetic. “I know how much this means to you. I just need a little more time to consider it. That’s all.”
I close my eyes, wishing I could return to the dream I was having, in which I bred her successfully and we were raising a family of small dragons together…
“You’re sad now,” she says, her voice soft with pity. “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have taken the herbs. We can try again once you’re in human form—”
“Don’t feel regret on my account.” I rise abruptly, gazing at her with all the fierce adoration in my heart. “What I was planning to do, forcing you to take dragon form—I was wrong about all of it. You shouldn’t agree to anything you do not wholeheartedly desire. Your happiness means more to me than any offspring—and so does your freedom. When this storm is over, I will return you to the mainland. We’ll go south, far from Vohrain, and I will give you treasure from my hoard so you can purchase anything you need. Perhaps you can have a small farm of your own, marry a kind human, have his children. You can do everything you wish for. That will please me, Serylla, and nothing else. I will live out my days in peace on Ouroskelle, knowing that you are safe and happy. It is enough—” I hesitate, because she’s climbing into the nest, her eyes fiercely aflame, and she looks so beautiful that I rasp out the truth— “It will have to be enough.”
“You would do that?” She seizes my muzzle between her hands. “You’d let me go? Even if I don’t give you a single hatchling?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Fire roils inside me, churning, swelling, threatening to unleash itself. I swallow it down.
“Speak, Kyreagan,” she urges. “Tell me. You refused to release me before. Why would you agree to it now?”
“I have become… attached,” I growl, bristling.
“How attached?”
“Deeply attached.”
“If you were just attached to me, like a possession, you’d want to keep me here. You wouldn’t be talking about setting me free. There’s more to it.”
My growl intensifies.
She nods, with a little half-smile. “Yes, and?”
I wrench my head from her grasp and spew a focused line of fire out into the storm. The rain sizzles into clouds of steam which billow into the cave, shrouding us both in wisps of fog.
Serylla steps through the mist, small and strong and determined. Her true self, not the person she pretended to be when I first brought her here.
“What else, Kyreagan?” She looks up at me, sweet and fearless, and I am enthralled. I am undone. I have been, ever since Vohrain’s king told me he wanted her.
“It grows worse with every passing day,” I confess. “I did not ask for it. I do not deserve it.”
“Name it,” she says.
Through a snarl, I mutter, “Love.”
