I told you Hen’s name before I left—he didn’t usually kill people who called him by name—and you said, woundedly, “You’re leaving me here?”
“Yes,” I said.
Dragons were not especially vicious; in truth, I was not even sure they breathed fire. They reminded me more than anything of the whales I’d once seen in the coves of the Slant Sea: vast and placid, wholly alien.
But there was always the chance this dragon had learned to be vicious, over the years, and the idea of you standing nearby, unarmored—no.
Yet you argued with me! You told me I couldn’t slay a dragon alone; I assured you that I could. You begged to come with me, although you looked nearly sick with fright as you said it.
I had never minded a coward at my side, in battle. A coward is reliable, in his way—every choice he makes is the one that serves him best. I didn’t know what to do with whatever you were.
In the end I said, roughly, “Stay,” and you did, though I felt your eyes follow me until I disappeared into the low, shifting clouds.
It was not hard to track, even in the mist. There were scuff marks on the stones where a long, scaled belly had scraped past, and furrows in the earth where something huge had launched itself into the sky.
The marks led me to a cleft in the mountaintop too shallow to be called a cave, too huge to be the den of a bear or lynx. The air around the entrance smelt of snake piss.
I did not slow down or even soften my steps; dragons were torpid in winter, like adders. I simply ducked beneath the granite ledge and there it was, coiled over itself like an enormous serpent. The last dragon in all of Dominion.
It was not the largest I’d seen—there had been one on the Isle of the Penitent with wings like a pair of ship’s sails—but I thought it might be the oldest. Its claws were cracked, the points worn and blunted. Its scales, once lightning-white, had turned translucent, like old teeth. That must be how it had survived the dragon hunts—in the mist, it would disappear entirely.
It was sleeping. I was so close now that its breath fogged my armor, obscuring its own reflection. I drew my sword with only the meanest whisper of steel on leather, wrapped both hands around the hilt—and hesitated.
I had sworn once, in the ashes of the Black Bastion, with the warm fluids of my own eye oozing down my cheek, that I would never again take a life in the queen’s name. But it was not for the queen that I lifted my blade, nor even for Dominion. It was for you, with your rook’s voice and your doe’s eyes and your long, fine fingers. You, who waited down the mountainside, a pen held in shaking hands, for the hero of his story to return.
The dragon opened one eye. Its iris was a shadeless gold, like all dragons’ eyes, like mine. My reflection was distorted on its surface, so that all I could see was my own gauntleted hands.
I aimed carefully—there was no need to hurry—and drove my sword deep into its pupil.
There was a turgid pop as the sword broke the jellied surface of the eye, then the gristle of tendons snapping and the long slide into the soft tissue of the brain. A great shudder moved down its body. Its limbs and tail thrashed, and something whipped hotly across my brow.
It screamed. They always scream, at the end: a long, unearthly wailing that goes on and on. It was a sound that brought men to tears, or to their knees. Once I had seen a grown soldier drop his spear and shield and walk west. He had not returned.
I stood and listened with my head bowed, letting the sound burrow deep, letting it hurt, because when it was done there would be no more dragons in Dominion.
Quiet fell. I slid my blade from the eye and wiped it clean against the scales. Then I shoved at the cooling meat of its body, heaving the coils aside, boots slipping in clear ichor and strange-smelling blood. It took days and days to burn a dragon properly, but Yvanne insisted.
I’d never found any gold or treasure in a dragon’s den—I had always suspected those tales were invented, to spur the hunt—but there, wedged in the very back of the den, was a small, fine casket. And inside the casket, there was a cup.
What an absurd, gaudy thing, to hold the hope of a nation. And yet this was the reason you had come back, the reason Yvanne would live and Dominion would prosper.
I wanted, suddenly and violently, to cast it off the mountaintop and let it rust at the bottom of some nameless ravine, forgotten.
Then I heard you crashing through the trees, breathing hard. Why can you never do as you’re told?
You smashed into me before I could catch you. When you staggered back, I saw your eyes were white-rimmed, your cheeks bloodless.
“Una! Are you alright?”
“Of course.” Had you really thought I wouldn’t be?
I waited for you to ask after the cup or the dragon, but you didn’t. You frowned and licked your thumb. Your fingers splayed carefully over my cheek while you rubbed at my forehead. It stung.
Eventually I said, “The grail. I have the grail.”
I held up the cup and you cast it a brief, baffled glance, as if you’d forgotten all about it. “Oh,” you said. “Good. Now sit down and let me see to that cut.”
Later, as we rode away from Cloven Hill, you asked me if the dragon had been terrible, and I told you it had been beautiful.
