But on the fourth day, the rage comes.
It starts as a tremor in my chest, a heat that has nothing to do with my fire. And then it builds, and builds, and builds until I can't contain it anymore.
I roar, and the sound shakes the very foundations of the castle.
She didn't choose me. She didn't choose our bond. She's going to deny what we are, what we're meant to be, and there's nothing I can do about it.Nothing.
The shame crashes over me in waves. I didn't protect her. I failed her. I let them take her, and I was too weak, too pathetic to stop them.
And the despair, God, the despair. It's a black hole in my chest, sucking everything good and light into its depths.
Something breaks inside me. Something fundamental and necessary.
I destroy the castle. I start with fire. Great gouts of flame pour from my jaws, and I set everything ablaze. Tapestries, furniture, the wooden beams that support the ceiling. Her beautiful nightgowns. The silk sheets. I watch it all burn, and the heat feels good against my scales. Cleansing. Purifying.
But it's not enough.
I smash through walls with my tail, reduce stone to rubble with my claws. My wings sweep through rooms, knocking over everything in their path. I tear down the towers, rip apart the battlements, demolish everything I've built over centuries.
The castle crumbles around me, and I don't stop. Can't stop. Because if I stop, I'll have to think about what I've become. What I've always been.
A monster.
This is what I am. This is what I've always been.
The monster in her story.
I stand in the ruins of my castle, surrounded by broken stone and ash, and I see it clearly for the first time. She deserved so much more than this. So much more than me. She deserved someone who could actually protect her, who could give her the life she wanted, who wouldn't trap her in a castle and call it love. Who would actually let her choose. Someone she would choose back.
She deserved everything, and I gave her nothing but a cage. Violated her body every day.
The knights come a week later. Or maybe it's two weeks. Time has lost all meaning.
I hear them before I see them. The clank of armor, the nervous whinnying of horses. They're here to capture me. Someone's offered a bounty, apparently. The dangerous dragon who destroyed his own castle, who's gone feral in the forest.
They're not wrong.
The first group of knights dies quickly. I don't even shift fully into my dragon form. I just let the fire come, let it pour from my jaws until there's nothing left but scorched earth and melted metal.
The second group lasts longer. They have mages with them, magic users who think they can bind me. I kill them slowly, savoring their screams. My claws tear through armor like paper. My tail crushes bones. My teeth find throats.
I'm covered in blood. Theirs, mine.
More knights come. They always come. And I kill them all.
Between the attacks, I lie in the ruins of my castle and think about Adelaide. I'm obsessed with her, with my memories of her. The way she looked sleeping so sweetly and peacefully. When her lips would shift ever so slightly before she would come. How she looked at me with her amber eyes full of fire and anger when she woke.
I replay every one-sided conversation, every interaction, searching for the moment I became the villain instead of the hero. Maybe I was always the villain. Maybe I just didn't want to see it.
I cry. Great, shuddering sobs that shake my massive frame. Tears that could fill rivers. The grief is endless, and I drown in it willingly.
She's gone. She chose someone else. And I'm here, alone, exactly as I deserve to be.
My wings are tattered now, torn from battles and neglect. My scales are dull, caked with dried blood and ash. My tail drags behind me, too heavy to lift. I'm a shadow of what I was, a broken thing pretending to be a dragon.
The bond is still there, but I don't reach for it anymore. What's the point? She made her choice. She's happy without me.
And I'm here, in the ruins of everything I built, everything I destroyed, waiting for the next group of knights to come and try their luck. Waiting for the day when one of them finally succeeds.
