“Maybe you’ll just change into a dragon completely?” I asked, clinging to every shred of hope, because I realized I’d rather have him in any shape at all than lose him completely.
Timur’s shoulders rose with a long, deep breath.
“That’d be the same as dying,” he exhaled.
“Why?” I cried out in anguish.
“Avirutudragon is an animal, Elaine, guided only by instincts, with no intelligence or self-awareness. If my body is changed and my mind is gone, what will there be left of who I am?”
“Nothing,” I breathed out through the tears squeezing my throat.
“Nothing.”
“But there has to be something we can do,” I argued. “There is magic in this world. Hags, mages. We have gold now, and we’ll make more?—”
He took my hand from his shoulder, gently wrapping the bare bones of his fingers around it.
“The gold is for you, my sweet. When I’m gone?—”
“Stop it! Don’t say it.”
As if I could stop the inevitable by simply not talking about it. I stepped in front of him, but it wasn’t close enough. Shoving the bag of gold off his lap, I climbed onto his chair and straddled his thighs.
“I’m not giving up, Timur. There must be something we could do to stop this.”
He ran his hands up my back, the touch of his fingers and his claws light as a feather.
“I’ve tried it all, Elaine,” he said. “There was a time when I had money. I had powerful friends. For years, I searched for a cure, or a curse, or anything that would stop or reverse this, to make me ‘me’ again.”
I drew in a shuddered breath, dreading what he’d say next.
He lifted a loose strand of my hair on one of his claws and gently moved it behind my ear.
“The search with all its disappointments was almost as devastating as the poison eating through my body. Hope can be a wonderful thing, Elaine. But it can also destroy us. I’m not doing it again. I’m done searching. There is no use. Nothing canbe done. The poison should’ve killed me ten years ago. Instead, it gave me some time to make amends with people and to make peace with death. That’s how I choose to look at it now. It gave me time to find you. All I want now is to have enough time to make sure your future is secure.”
“But…I-I can’t lose you,” I whimpered, burying my face in the side of his neck.
It hadn’t even registered with me that it was his right side until the hard bumps of the bone on his shoulder pressed into my cheek. I didn’t move away despite that.
Sorrow burrowed into my chest like an ever-tightening screw. At first, I selfishly mourned my impending loss. With Timur gone, I’d be alone. In the short time we’d been together, he’d become such a big part of my life, I didn’t know how I could go on without him. He was responsible for every aspect of our survival, and I had no idea where I would even begin to do it all myself.
He stroked my back soothingly, silently, letting me work through the motions on my own or ask for his help if I couldn’t deal with it alone.
Then my sorrow spread wider, encompassing not just my entire being but this entire world that would be so, so much worse without Timur.
Timur didn’t deserve this. From the moment we met, he’d been respectful and supportive of me in the city fueled by cruelty. He could’ve coaxed, lied to, manipulated, or even forced me for his own gain, and no one in Ashgate would’ve stopped him.
But instead, he treated me as his equal.
My throat tightened painfully, and I swallowed a sob.
“It’s not fair,” I muttered against his neck. “You don’t deserve this.”
He remained silent, letting his hands comfort me because he had no words of hope to give me. I pressed my body to his. Tasting salt on my lips, I realized I’d been crying into his neck. I leaned back and wiped my tears from my cheeks.
“It’s not fair…” I breathed out again.
I tried to wipe my tears from his neck too, using my hands first, then my lips, tasting the salt of my sorrow on his warm skin.
