“Beautiful?” she asked, correcting his usage of the word.
“No. You arebeauty. You are all of beauty in this wretched world. My most precious treasure. My Elowen.”
His hands moved, tentative against the curve of her hip, then the dip of her waist, then where her dress pulled taught against her chest. She sighed and moved slightly. Midas froze, worried he had hurt her.
“No,” she murmured quickly. “It’s okay. You can keep going.”
He did.
His hands moved upward, exploring the shape of her back, her shoulders, her neck. He memorized every sound she made. The way she gasped when his fingers ran along the base of her skull and the way she melted when his thumbs passed the small of her back.
He committed it all to memory until it was etched into his mind as permanently as the mountain itself.
He reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth where he kissed each of her fingers and licked her palm. His fangs, the sharpness of his teeth leftover from his shift, scraped lightly against her skin, but she did not flinch.
His other hand traced back down her spine, one nail carefully drawing circles on her thigh just below her bum.She squirmed against him, and it stirred something deep in him—something he had never felt before. He felt parts of his body stiffen that had never done so, and he suddenly moved her body off of his, ashamed and embarrassed at his reaction.
Elowen didn’t understand at first, his sudden change in mood; not until she sat up and saw the heaviness between his human legs from a slit in his pelvis she hadn’t noticed before.
“Oh,” she said quietly, looking away to hide the pinkness in her cheeks.
“I am sorry,” Midas told her, pulling a quilt over him to hide his shame. “I did not mean…I did not know.”
“It’s alright,” Elowen said, finally meeting his eyes again. She rested her hand over his to assure him she was not mad.
“I did not mean to dishonor you,” Midas said. “It is shameful for dragons to…” he could not find the words, for he was too embarrassed. “Such things are reserved for our mates. There is a ritual and it is sacred.”
“I understand,” she replied, nodding. “Maybe we should…sleep now.”
“Yes, sleep,” Midas agreed, though he had no intention of doing so in this smaller, human form. He moved away from her and shifted into his true dragon form where he was able to control his body easier. Elowen settled on the furs and blankets he had gathered for her, and Midas wrapped himself around her like he always did.
He did not sleep much that night, afraid his body had ruined what his heart treasured so deeply.
Twenty-Six
There had never beena need for sentiment in Midas’ hoard. Not truly. He had amassed riches for decades—gilded chalices, painted ivory chess pieces, mirrors and hair pins. His talons had dug through riverbeds and ruined cities alike, hoarding the memories of the past.
But never had he had the desire to shape anything with his own claws.
Elowen had begun sleeping deeper in her nest, nestled into the curve of his tail, her breath warming the underside of his wing. She decorated their cave with stray flowers and old ribbons, wove bits of his hoard into little nooks and crannies that made the space feel less like a tomb and more like a home.
He didn’t know what to give her in return. All earthly possessions seemed meaningless compared to what she had given him: purpose beyond fire, life beyond survival.
And then, one night, while patrolling a valley far beyond where he normally hunted, he saw a shimmertucked into the roots of a half-dead tree. He landed and used his talons to drag it into the moonlight.
It was a stone, larger than the one he had given her before. It was a muted gray and veined with red and orange shimmer, like it had been kissed by his fire. It was a rough and imperfect stone, but it was perfect in the sense that it could be polished and carved just for Elowen.
Midas carried the stone back with his talons, careful not to crush or crack it. When he returned to the cave, Elowen was dreaming, and while she slept, he retreated deeper into the cave to quietly polish and carve the stone for her.
He tried with the tip of his talons first, but he found quickly that they were too large. Midas took a scale from his own body and shifted into his smaller human form. He sharpened the scale against the cavern walls, grinding it down until it was the perfect tool to etch patterns into the stone.
It took days, which turned into weeks, until he eventually stopped counting the time. He worked slowly and carefully, smoothing every jagged edge and polishing the stone to the perfect shine.
In the stone, he mimicked Elowen’s frame the best he could. Next to her, he carved a more draconic one. Their heads were bowed close, unified as one.
Midas finally approved of what he had carved, and ran his claws over the final piece. He held it gently in his human palms, and wondered if Elowen would see everything he had carved that he didn’t have the words for.
He approached Elowen’s sleeping form and tucked the stone under a pile of coins, where he would keep it until the right moment to present it to her.
