Her skin hung in loose, papery folds from her skeletal frame, spotted with the dark bruises and mottled patterns of extreme age. The supple flesh that had pressed against mine transformed into something ancient and corrupted, as though time itself had accelerated around her alone.
Her laughter—a hideous, bone-chilling cackle that scraped against my ears—echoed across the still surface of the lake, bouncing back from the surrounding trees and multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Surprised, pretty lordling?" she wheezed, her voice no longer musical but cracked and ancient. Those thighs I’d worshipped with my mouth now appeared as withered treelimbs, skin hanging loose from brittle bone. "Did you think power comes without a price?"
I scrambled backward, spitting frantically to rid my mouth of the taste that had turned from honeyed sweetness to something putrid and rotten. My stomach heaved as I wiped my tongue against my sleeve, desperate to remove all traces of her.
The hag propped herself up on bony elbows, making no attempt to cover her sagging, desiccated flesh. Her breasts hung like empty pouches against her ribcage, and her belly folded in wrinkled creases. Yet her eyes—those remained unchanged, violet and piercing, holding knowledge that seemed to stretch across centuries.
She gestured toward the sword that lay between us on the grass. "The sword reveals what truly is, what must be. Your time wanes." She seemed to draw strength from my growing desperation. "Already the dragon grows stronger; your power fades. Soon another will sit upon your throne while you fade into legend."
"I am Arthur!" I roared, my voice echoing across the water. "Chosen by the sword, rightful king of Logres!"
"Was," she corrected, her cackle building to a shriek that sent night birds flapping from nearby trees. "Youwerechosen. Youwererightful. But the sword has made another choice, and no amount of denial will change its mind."
Before I could respond, agony unlike anything I’d ever known tore through my chest. Not the sharp pain of battle wounds or the dull ache of old injuries—this was something alive, forcing its way out from the cage I’d built around it.
No. Not now. Not here.
Fire erupted along every nerve as my bones shattered and reformed, each crack echoing through my skull like thunder. My spine curved and lengthened, vertebrae multiplying withsickening pain that drove me to my knees. I gasped for air, but my lungs burned with furnace heat.
My skin rippled as scales emerged like jewels breaking through the surface, each one a piece of armor spreading across flesh that no longer felt like my own. Gold and crimson covered my arms as my hands twisted, fingers fusing and extending into talons that dug furrows into the earth.
Fight it! I thought with ferocity.You're the king. You control the dragon—
But the thought dissolved as my vision fractured. Colors I'd never seen before blazed across my sight—heat signatures of every living thing, the pulse of magic in stone and water, patterns of power invisible to mortal eyes.
"Yessss,"Blodeuwyn crooned, her voice transformed into something melodious despite her decrepit form. She rose to her feet with newfound grace, arms outstretched toward the monstrosity I was becoming."Come forth, beautiful one. Take your rightful place beside me."
Wings—great leathery expanses—tore from my back, opening between elongating bones. My jaw cracked, shifting into something that could breathe the fire of destruction. When I tried to speak, to beg her to stop whatever she'd done, only a roar emerged—ancient and terrible.
I am Arthur. I am the king. I am—
YOU ARE DRAGON,the dragon's consciousness thundered through what remained of my mind.
I sat bolt upright, covered in a cold sheen of sweat.
It took several ragged breaths to remember where I was: my bedchamber at Camelot, cocooned in the trappings of power. The pendants of my victories loomed from tapestry-covered walls. My crown glinted on its velvet perch like a patient vulture. Oak furniture, all carved with the Pendragon crest, watched me in silence.
I scanned the room, every shadow a threat. I half-expected the hag to leap from the shadows—cackling, condemning, her prophecy of my ruin dancing on her bloodstained tongue. But no ghost emerged. Just silence. Just the moonlight sifting through stained glass like judgment itself.
Another fucking dream about the white-haired woman.
Guinevere.
It was always her. Her hair like spun moonlight, her voice soaked in certainty. She said she was foretold. She said Excalibur was meant for her. She said I was fading.
Worst of all, I believed her.
Even awake, I felt the weight of the sword’s rejection. My hand—once strong enough to rally a kingdom—curled into a fist. I flexed my fingers. No blood. Only the hard-earned calluses of kingship and war.
But no claws and no scales either. No dragon. Not yet, anyway. But perhaps it was just a matter of time before the beast and I became one and the same.
I crossed the cold stone floor to the window. I pushed it open. I let the night air slice through the sweat still clinging to my skin.
The wind carried roses from the garden below—delicate and vicious. Their scent reminded me of her. Not just her hair or voice, but the heated, forbidden softness of her skin.
My jaw clenched.
