“We trade for it or we work for it.”
She surveyed his face. “You have a job? I mean, what does a dragon do?”
“I protect my loyal subjects, of course.”
She sipped the tea. “Are you kidding?”
“No. That’s what I do. I…my father was a knight, and so I am too. We have always been warriors, and there’s always something to fight.”
“Like those things that came after us when we got here.”
“Orcs,” he supplied as he dumped a spoonful of honey into his cup. “And yes. We used to have other things here, but they’re dead now. We killed them all.”
She asked, in a softer voice, “Have you been in a lot of battles?’
He stared into the cup. The tea was dark, nearly black. “More than I would have liked to have been in.” The words were true. He was a knight by birth and law. He was also the second half of the two rulers who guarded that world. That was also something he had never asked for and was not always sure he had any right to be. He had done his duty, and he had killed hundreds of Orcs and other creatures, but still, he always wondered if, after he died, and his line was gone from that world, anyone would really remember him at all, other than to remember him as his father’s son.
