“So you know, that kiss… I’m not pushing for more—I know you don’t think we have a future—but I need you to know that the reason I kissed you back wasn’t because it was a ‘high-emotion moment.’ It wasn’t even because you’re beautiful. You are. But that’s not why…” He took a deep breath as if he’d find the words he wanted in the oxygen. She felt Ree, the guide, and the dragon all staring at her. Dax positioned himself on one of the rocks and swung the guitar in front of him. “I kissed you—and I wanted to kiss youagain—because you’reyou. I keep trying to tell you: you are extraordinary, exactly as you are.”
She stared at him and felt as if a wave had slammed into her. She wasn’t certain she could breathe. Or think.
“Marin, you deserve the whole wild, beautiful sea. No man and no dragon should ever take that away from you. I am going to get your sailboat back.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he began to play.
At first it was a simple melody.
Inhaling shakily, Marin felt her cheeks heating up. She knew this song. She had a vague memory of it being one of the songs that the server had sung at the Kraken’s Nest, while Dax was playing for their supper. That felt like ages ago, but apparently Dax had memorized it.
It was a love song.
He added in a harmony, while still plucking the melody, and then he layered in a rhythm with his foot tapping on the rocks and the heel of his hand slapping into the body of the guitar. And then once he’d complicated the song, he closed his eyes and began to vary it.
Soon a sweet solo melody sang out above the swift notes—it was melancholy, and it made Marin think of just after sunset, when the last of the liquid gold had dissolved into the horizon. It was the gray before the stars, the deepening blue and the blurring of shadows.
He played the stars, the feel of them spreading across the sky. Under his fingers, the song transformed yet again, the notes singing of the silence of the night that isn’t a silence. It’s full of whispers and dreams and regrets and memories.
Somewhere in all of it, Marin realized she was crying. She didn’t know why. She touched her cheek and felt the dampness, and then she lowered her hand and just let herself cry.
The dragon had closed her eyes. Her head swayed with the still-beating rhythm of Dax’s music, and her tail swayed side to side.
Marin didn’t know how long he played, or how long they listened, captivated.
But when the music brightened like the dawn, Dax began to sing, softly, sweetly, the words of the love song:
“I see you, truly, deeply,
I see you, inside and out,
I see your fears, your doubts, your shame, your guilt,
I see your joy, your hope, your dreams,
And I love you.”
And then the chorus:
“You are my sunrise, my sunset,
I’m not the same since we met.
You are my future, all that I dream,
And I… I, I, I am the one who makes you seen.”
The guitar stopped.
It was only his voice.
And then silence.
The dragon opened her eyes. She stretched her bloodred wings, and she clenched her talons around the hull of Marin’s boat. With a mighty flap of her wings and push of her muscular hindquarters, she lifted into the air, carrying the sailboat upward.
Marin watched as the queen dragon flew with the boat away from the mountain, over the forest, and out above the sea. And then the dragon circled, spiraling lower, and she placed the damaged but still beautiful sailboat gently, very gently, onto the water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
