And then they sent him away.Marin didn’t say that out loud. She was certain Dax was thinking it. She wanted to take his hand, but after the awkward conversation in the hallway the day before… “How about after that? At the conservatory? You fell in love with it at some point. I can see it in your eyes every time you play.”
Surprised, he glanced at her. “You can?”
It was so obviously true that she nearly rolled her eyes at him. He radiated joy when he played. “What do you think about when you play?”
“I don’t think. I just do. That’s when it’s the best, when I’m fully in the moment, in the music. I am the music, and the music is me.”
“Those are the best days on the sea too,” Marin said. “One with the wind and waves.”
He smiled. “You keep thinking we’re dissimilar, but we’re not.”
She didn’t reply to that. Iovar’s words echoed in her head again:You’ll give up dreams for her, and she won’t replace them.Instead of returning Dax’s smile, she glanced out at the water—the blue ocean stretching out, calling to her. There was so much variation in the blue of the sea from the white of the breaking waves and the pale blue as they pulled away from shore to the dark green that hid seaweed just below its surface to the blue that rivaled the sky and more. It was a patchwork of beauty that she never got tired of, with moods and promises and dangers and invitations. “Play the dragon something you love. Not something you think she’ll love. Not something that’s important or influential or unique or whatever. Just something that makes youfeel.”
He’d stopped walking.
She turned and looked at him, wondering if she’d overstepped. He was the musician. It was his choice what to play. She barely knew the difference between a guitar and a lute. She opened her mouth to apologize, but something in his expression stopped her. He was looking at her with a kind of wonderment, like she’d said something brilliant.
“I can do that,” Dax said at last, and he resumed climbing up the trail.
Overhead, several dragons were soaring around the mountaintops, but none were the golden dragon with red wings. They walked in silence, both wrapped in their own thoughts. Or not actual silence,since their guide hadn’t stopped chattering, but Marin wasn’t bothering to listen to him and he was talking to Ree anyway.
As they rounded a corner of the trail, Marin saw her: the queen. She might have been one of many queen dragons on Ilreka, but Marin didn’t care about the rest. Right now and probably always in her mind, this wasthequeen.
Keva was appropriately massive, with the bulk of her dominating the mountainside, as vast as any boulder, but far more golden. Or gold. She wasn’t merely golden-colored; she looked as if she were cast out of gold by a master craftsman. Each scale gleamed with as pure a color as the sun, and her wings were as red as fresh-spilled blood.
She was, in a word,dramatic.
“Wow,” Ree said.
At the sound, the queen dragon swiveled her massive head to regard the humans and wax myrtle shrub who dared approach her, and Marin had never felt so small and insignificant, which was saying something since she spent most of her time with a massive sea serpent. Objectively, Perri was longer from snout to tip of tail than Keva, but he spent most days submerged in the sea. Keva was fully displayed on the mountainside, and she… she was alotof dragon.
Marin very much hoped she liked music and not musicians, or this could be a very large mistake. She swallowed hard and clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking.
Their guide, Marin noticed, had finally stopped talking.
The dragon was coiled around Marin’s sailboat. Glimpses of the hull and deck were visible around the bulk of the beast’s body. No holes that Marin could see, which was a relief, but the mast was snapped, and the sails were in tatters.I can fix it.
Hands still clasped hard, Marin stepped forward. Surot had told her the opening words to say. “Greetings, great and powerful one,” she said in the voice she’d trained for shouting across roaring wind. “We come to honor you—and to offer a trade.”
The key, Surot had said, was to be both respectful and direct.Dragons wanted to know what it was you wanted right from the start. Never waste a dragon’s time.
“That is my boat,” Marin said. She pointed to the dragon’s prized possession. “It was torn from us during a magic storm and flung up here. It belongs in the sea with me and my crew.”
The dragon coiled tighter. Smoke rose from her nostrils.
“I appreciate your taking care ofSilverfor me while she was here,” Marin said. “You’re a noble dragon who… is good to boats.” She hadn’t fully planned this out and regretted that now. “Um, okay, I know you don’t have a hoard yet, but I think it’s because you haven’t found what you truly love. So I… we… want to offer you something we think you might love: music.”
The smoke hadn’t become flame. Marin took that to be a good sign.
She pushed on. “This is Dax. He is the finest composer in the Crescent Islands, and he is going to play you some music.”
The dragon tilted her head, and she reminded Marin of Perri:I’m listening,she seemed to say.
“To be clear: he’s only visiting Ilreka. He’s not staying. You can’t hoardhim. But you can keep his music. Inside you. You can keep how it makes you feel and how it changes you.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Dax was also staring at her with an expression that was very similar to the dragon’s. In a lower voice, she asked, “What?”
He smiled. “You understand.”
Yes, she did, but dragon? Sailboat? “Dax…”
