If the fire burns hot enough, anything can burn.
Fortunately the walls that surround me are not ones that support the temple. The ancient grout melts first, and the hot stones start falling away as the dragon pushes his way inside.
And I see him, for the first time since that day our eyes met across a crowd.
As beautiful as ever.
He looks just the same—the same slight build, the same wild blue hair, the flawless pale skin that practically glows.
Those icy eyes, though—
This time, he’s looking on me with something like wonder when he says, “You’re alive.”
I blink. “You knew that. You talked to me.”
“I was never sure if you could hear,” he says quietly, his voice at odds with his stare, which is... hopeful? Desperate? No:
Hungry.
It takes me aback, becauseheturned away frommeall those years ago. What could he possibly want from menow?
“And it is still different,” the dragon says, “to have believed something for five hundred years, and to finally see proof.”
My eyes widen, my train of thought fracturing. “Fivehundred?”
I knew I wasn’t fully aware of the passage of time, but...
I’mfive hundred years old.
What must the world look like now? How much has changed—
And how much hasn’t?
How much has been in stasis like me?
The dragon opens his mouth, but then a shadow crosses his expression. “I don’t have time to explain,” he says like it physically pains him. “There are priests coming for me—”
“I know. That’s why I opened the temple. You needed sanctuary—”
Now he looks stricken. “Forme?”
I feel slow and stupid. This dragon and I have never actually met, I realize, and what felt so obvious to me in my trance seems somehow ridiculous faced with an actual person. But—
“They can’t have you,” I tell him.
The dragon stares at me.
And then arrives at a decision.
“No,” he says. “They can’t haveyou.”
He takes off a pack, puts it in front of me.
“I wish we had more time,” he says gruffly, “but this will get you started.” The dragon struggles for a moment and finally says softly, “Be well.”
And then he’s gone, back down the hall of the temple, his footsteps retreating fast.
I’m so stunned by the suddenness that it takes me a minute to react.
