All night, he sat there—immense and silent—unable to leave the lake’s edge. Not even to return to the mountain and the comfort of stone walls and gold hoards that never betrayed. He could not go, because he was afraid.
Afraid that if he moved, the crown would fall. That if he left, this…strangenessinside him would go with it.
He rememberedeverything. The first time he heard a human scream. The way their arrows pierced his mother’s flank. The last time he saw his brothers fly. The ache in his throat as he roared their names for the final time.
A phantom ache pulsed along the old wounds beneath his living armor. He remembered the humans chanting around the firelight as they told stories of the slaughter.
He had watched them grow old and weak and angry. Watched them build cages around themselves and call it civilization.
And now, one of them gave him flowers.
It should belaughable. Insulting, even. As if such a thing could change anything. As if kindness could undo a hundred years ofgriefandcruelty.
But when she touched his scales, she did not flinch, nor curse him, nor beg him for favors.
She simply said,thank you.
The dragon closed his eyes, and for the first time in decades, the fire inside him flickered not with fury, but withconfusion.
Heknewshe would not keep returning. She will break, like all humans do. She will tell someone. Or they will follow her. Or she will disappear.
Theyalwaysdisappear.
But still…
He pressed his tail more tightly around himself and rested his head atop it, careful not to disturb the crown. The petals brushed against his brow with every breath. It was unbearably soft.
He wondered, not for the first time, what her name was. He wondered what would happen if he asked, not that he could speak her language to do so.
And then he growled low and long into the ground, ashamed of the thought. It isdangerous, this wondering. This yearning.
Still, he did not remove the crown.
He let it stay as the stars rose, as the night stretched long and cold around him. And though hunger gnawed at his bones, though his hoard lay unguarded in the dark, he did not leave the lake.
Because the human girl gave him something that could not be bartered or stolen. Something she had madeforhim. Something that was trulyhis.
Twelve
The last dragonhated the humans.
The sound of their voices still haunted him in sleep. Their laughter. Their screams. Their hymns to false gods while they wiped out his kind. He remembered all of it. Every cruel thing that fell from their lips, even if he did not have the knowledge to understand the language.
He had seen them rip scales from dying dragons and wear them as armor. He had watched them hammer bones into weapons, boasting of their power. He had seen them light fires in the nests of unhatched eggs and heard the hatchlings shriek as fear stole air from their tiny lungs.
He had hated the humans for so long, that hate had become him. It was in the marrow of his bones, in the flames behind his teeth, in the sharpness of his claws. He lived on that hate. He thrived on it. It constantly reminded him that he still existed, and that something of his kind still remained.
And yet…that human girl defied it all. She looked at him asif he were something equal, not a monster to be feared. She spoke to him softly, brushed his scales with her equally soft fingers.
She should have run, or called for her kind to strike him down. Nothing about her made sense, which made her the most dangerous human of all, and it terrified him.
Because he began to wait for her. He began to hope she would return. He began listening for her footsteps near the lake in the early morning and paced as he waited for her to emerge from the tree line.
His thoughts wandered when they shouldn’t. Even now, resting among his hoard, surrounded by glittering things, he was not thinking of gold.
He was thinking of her. Of her voice. Of her tenderness when she dared touch him, and her thoughtfulness of making him a crown of flowers. How small the little gift was, and yet how immense it felt to be given it.
The dragon shifted, the piles of gold sliding against themselves like sand. He stared into the shadows of his cave as he tried to recall the sound of her voice saying anything that might have been her name.
