The familiar scent in the air doesn’t change. Salt. Wind. Faint citrus. Skin warmed by exertion.
She steps to our side, her fingers never breaking contact with our scales.
The spines along our back lift in warning. Our wings flex, casting shadows over her slight frame. One sweep would send her skidding across the basin.
She huffs. “You’re doing that broody internal monologue thing again,” she says, her eyes finding mine. “It’s loud enough to wake the dead. You won’t hurt me, Theo. You could, as you say, end me with a flick of your wing. But then you’ll never get to feel the brush of my fingers against your skin and scales again.”
Something inside our ribs stutters. She can hear us? I feel him coil inward, guarding the hollow places we carved out in grief.
Mate.
Not possible. Dragons don’t mate with maidens.
No longer a maiden. She is made both as before and new.
Idol?
Her hand slides along our flank, over the thinner hide where heat pulses strongest. The contact burns and steadies in the same breath.
“I’m not an Idol,” she mutters. “Don’t insult me.”
Our jaw tightens until the hinges ache. Smoke curls across her shoulder, and yet she doesn’t flinch.
“If you’re going to stay a dragon,” she says, her voice losing its edge, “then look at me.”
She moves around to our front and glances between our eyes. “Really look at me, Theo.”
Looking means seeing. Seeing means remembering. Remembering means standing in the moment she fell all over again.
The dragon resists, pushing for sky, for distance, for the clean violence of flight where memory cannot follow.
“Don’t run from me.”
Our eyes narrow. Focus sharpens. Not on the outline of her, but on the real Daphne. Hair tangled from the climb, face streaked with the ash of my rage. Cloak scorched at the hem. Chin lifted, though her hand trembles where it rests against us.
Breathing. Alive. Strong but vulnerable.
Protect her.
Always.
Our claws grind deeper into the earth, and the fire in our chest wavers. The kneeling was not thought; it was instinct. Our weight lowering without command, spikes settling, body curving around her shape. Not in surrender—that’s not what she needs or wants. Shielding.
She presses her forehead against ours, and for a moment, the world narrows to the point of contact, to the heat of her skin against scale.
“I can’t do this without you.” Her breath washes over our jaw.
The dragon surges, desperate to break the contact, to fling us both into the sky and let distance swallow the choice. Our wings stretch, ready to lift. I fight him and the war raging in our minds. To accept she is here leaves us vulnerable, because if it’s true, if this is her, then my heart is held once more in the palm of a hand that can be easily broken.
I hold him steady. I’m already broken. I have to take this leap and hope she catches me, because Idols help the land if she is a false woman.
Our head lowers, the tension in our neck draining in a slow release that leaves us exposed.
Her fingers slide along our jaw, not claiming, not demanding, simply there. “You stubborn, overgrown, dramatic lizard.” She rests her forehead against ours once more, and this time, I feel the tremor she tries to hide. “Come back to me.”
The fire in our chest gutters and reshapes. The heat that wanted to consume twists into something heavier that settles behind our ribs instead of erupting from them.
The dragon does not rise. Neither do I. But the space inside the scales shifts, and for the first time since she fell, the silence is no longer empty.
