Midas paced in his natural form. Endlessly. His claws left long gouges in the stone. His wings trembled from exhaustion. His eyes, once proud and golden, had dulled into something panicked and hollow. He was a creature built to reduce cities to ash—and he could donothingto stop the cries of his sons.
“I don’t know what to do,” Elowen whispered, voice hoarse with sleeplessness. “They won’t latch, Midas. What is wrong with them?”
She knelt in the nest, one child cradled against each shoulder, her gown stiff with dried blood from where their noses had bled. Both boys were slick with sweat and tears, and neither one responded to soothing words or herbal balm. They clawed at their own skin, their heads, their backs, as if something inside was hurting them.
Unable to shift, Midas stood at the edge of the nest, rigid with fury—notat her, never at her—but at his helplessness. Hisuselessness. He had lived through war, famine, betrayal. But nothing had ever broken him like this.
They're not sick,Midas murmured to himself in the cadence of his language.Not…wrong.
Elowen cried softly, nearly in despair. “Why won’t itstop?”
He didn't answer. Because deep inside, he feared he knew the truth. He had known the time would come. Hadprayedit would come. But not like this. Not with terror and blood and agony.
It took three nights before it all made sense.
Elowen had drifted into a brief, fitful sleep, one arm looped protectively around Auric’s tiny body. Midas sat beside her in dragon form, wings draped like a sheltering canopy, eyes unblinking.
A new scent hit his nose.Blood.Fresh. Sharp. He rose, panic gripping his chest.Had something entered the cave? An intruder?
But the scent washere. Beneath his wing. Fromthem.
He bent low. A soft whimper escaped Kalen’s lips—and then, as if a dam burst, a scream followed.
Elowen jolted awake, clutching both boys to her. And there, smeared across their bedding of soft furs and wovencloth, wasblood. It soaked the boys’ backs and pooled beneath them.
But neither was crying anymore. They blinked up at her, their small faces dazed but calm, as if the agony had finally passed and a rush of relief had soothed them. She looked down, and her breath caught.
Tiny horns, the same burnished obsidian as their father’s, jutted from beneath sweat-matted curls. Still soft, not yet fully grown. And from their shoulder blades emerged the bare beginnings ofwings.
Not human.Dragon.
Elowen clutched a hand to her mouth in pure disbelief. “Midas…” she whispered.
But he was already moving, his massive head bowing down to examine them, to sniff, to touch his snout against the blood-slick horns. His great body shook from something like awe. His childrenweredragons, and not just in name or eye or instinct. In body, in heart, in soul.
He gave a soft, reverent sound. A note from the dragon tongue that Elowen had come to recognize as‘I am pleased’.
Kalen cooed at the sound like it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard in his short life. Auric smiled and curled his clawed toes, listening intently to the grumble from his father’s throat. And just like that, the world was right again.
Elowen and Midas lay curled on either side of the boys, watching them sleep at last—tucked beneath a blanket despite the blood stains, each twin’s tiny wings twitching as they dreamed.
“I suppose you’ll be teaching them to fly soon,”Elowen said, brushing the soft horns with a gentle fingertip. Then, her voice broke with the unending love for her family. “Don’t let them forget about me while they’re reclaiming the skies with you.”
Thirty-Four
Tuckedinto their nest of blankets and moss, the boys slept like creatures that knew they were capable of ruling the skies.
Elowen watched them for a long time before she rose from the floor, stretching with a soft sound of effort, and padded barefoot across the stone to where Midas lay at the cave’s edge in his dragon form—coiled like a question mark, head resting near the fire. She climbed onto his foreleg without a word and settled into the crook of his body, curling against his chest like a second heartbeat.
He shifted, his breath stirring her hair, and wrapped his tail around her like a ribbon. It had become pure instinct, to wrap himself around her and the boys while he rested.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the hush between the flames and the breaths escaping from their chests.
Then Elowen spoke, voice low and hushed as to notdisturb the children. “Do you ever wonder how we got here?”
Midas blinked one golden eye open. She smiled and continued. “It feels like a story someone else might have told me. A woman and a dragon in a cave and two little miracles.” Midas huffed softly, his breath warm against her arm. “I think I would’ve wanted to believe it. And now that it’s real…”
He remained quiet, simply listening to her voice. She reached out and ran her fingers along one of the larger scales at his chest—worn smooth with time, edged in gold. “I never thought I’d have children,” she murmured. “When I was in that village, I was too wrong for love, and somehow I began to believe it. That place took too many pieces of myself to ever be whole enough to raise someone else.”
