When she relaxed, he reached for her with his tail so he could resettle her on his neck.
“I’d rather do it myself,” she told him, and then she climbed up onto his knee and from there to his shoulders.
Soon they were airborne again. When he spotted a nest full of eggs high up in the trees, he swooped low and fetched them for her, nest and all. The small slurping sounds she made as she drank them filled him with contentment.
He allowed her another brief respite at dusk, then took her to the sky once more, impatient to reach Belinus. The wait had been too long, a century without true hope. Anticipation burned through Draknart as he flew. He was as eager for the lifting of the curse as a young dragon pup for his first deer herd.
He stopped only when midnight neared, at the ruins of an ancient castle, alighting in the window of its only remaining tower. The roof was missing, but the night was clear, no clouds to threaten rain.
“What’s this?” she asked as she slid from his shoulders and surveyed the ruins the moon bathed in silver.
“Castle Blackstone.” Draknart snatched a couple of pigeons from what remained of the rafters, gutted them with a talon, then roasted them with a few puffs of fire.
Einin’s eyes flared with hunger.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She sat and ate one, watching him carefully the whole time. He ate the other one—even if the small bird wasn’t worth the bother—just so the lass wouldn’t worry that he meant to eat her.
After they finished, she walked up to one of the windows while he cleared a spot in the middle of the space. He swept away rocks, chunks of wood, and dead leaves with his leathery wings, then dropped to the stones and stretched.
Einin kept looking out, awe on her half-turned face as if she had never seen anything half as grand as the broken drawbridge over the swampy moat, the collapsed guard towers, and the rock-littered castle yard. Although, with the vast forest surrounding it all, everything bathed in moonlight, Draknart had to admit, the place had a certain charm.
The wistful, wonder-filled expression on Einin’s face made him want to show her the world. He huffed and shook off the thought. He’d show her Feyland. Belinus could show her the rest.
“What happened to the castle?” she whispered without taking her gaze off the scenery before her.
He hesitated for a moment. ’Twas not a pretty tale.
“Some decades ago,” he said at last, “the old lord of the castle took a young bride. He was a rough man, a hard man. He beat his dogs and beat his horses. He beat his servants too. One night, after too much ale, he beat his young wife to death.”
Einin turned to stare at him, folding her arms around herself.
“The bride’s brothers came and took revenge. The siege collapsed the walls and killed most of the men. The rest left.”
Einin shivered.
He opened a wing. “Come and rest.”
She cast him a doubtful glance, but she came away from the wall. She did bed down, but at a far distance from him. He folded his wing again. She watched him and seemed to be waiting for something. Midnight?
“You don’t like being a man,” she said after a little while.
“I hate it with the fire of a thousand dragons.”
“Because to be dragon is to have flight.” Her tone turned wistful.
“To be dragon is to be free.”
Her forehead furrowed, then after a moment, it smoothed out again. “Because if someone tries to take away your freedom, you can eat them?”
’Twas part of it, so Draknart nodded.
The furrows returned, and her arms moved, flexed. She looked at them in the moonlight, then pressed her lips together. “So the stronger you are, the more freedom you have.” She sighed. “’Tis why men have more freedom than women.”
Draknart had to think about her words. “Being strong helps. Yet the birds are free in the trees, and the fish are free in the lake.”
Silence stretched between them.
