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“I would never leave you.”I think she frowns.“My pain binds me to the waters. The longer I am out of the water, the more unbearable the pain of my wounds.”

“Oh.” Something tugs inside my stomach. An uncomfortable tightening. “The water eases your discomfort?”

She nods, but says,“Come.”

I follow her again as she sets off for yet another tunnel. I can’t begin to know how deeply beneath the Underworld we travel now, or how the pools of inky water have not flooded these tunnels. I suspect, like so much that sustains the Underworld, it has something to do with magic.

I should feel uncomfortable or at the very least nervous for wherever it is I am being led, but I don’t. With Hydra, I feel only security. I feel only safety.

When my bare feet begin to ache and my muscles sing with exhaustion, I ask, “Where are we going?”

Hydra stops to peer at me. Again, she inhales.“You are in pain.”

“My feet are sore.” I brush off the pain with a flippant wave. My pain cannot measure her own, and I feel guilty for feeling it at all.

She lowers her big body to the floor.“Climb on.”

I feel my face singe hotly. “I can’t ride you.”

“Of course, you can.”

“No.” I shake my head. “You’re in pain, too.”

“My pain is centuries old. In all the millennia I’ve lived with this pain, you were the only relief I ever knew.”She lowers her heads.“Please, climb on.”

With nothing for it, I sigh and move closer. My palm connects first with the shimmering scales of what I would call her hip. Her tail is thick and fearsome, tipped at the end with a barbed ball. The barbs split into a divide of two, running the length of her tail to extend slightly outward. If she were to whip her tail to the side, she would easily impale any foe.

Unable to help myself, I stroke my hand down the length of her body to her tail. A rumbling purring sound echoes from deep inside her and I smile. “You sound like a kitten.”

“You once told me you like those.”

“I do. Very much.”

“You should tell Hades you would like one.”

“Do you think I could have one here, in the Underworld?” When I continue to stroke down the length of her tail, coming closer to the barbs that extend outward, they suddenly snap down to blend with the rest of her tail in a ridge rather than the spikes.

I gasp. Hydra laughs a deep and beautiful sound.

She tells me,“Anything your heart desires, Hades would find a way to give it to you. Besides, there are plenty of animals in Asphodel City.”

I’m still stuck on her spikes having shifted like that. “How’d you do that?”

She laughs again. I really love the sound.“I don’t want to hurt you. Now, climb on.”

I do as she says, climbing slowly onto her back and settling between her wings. There’s a slightly translucent quality to her wings. Not transparent, but close. I’m reminded of holding a leaf up to the sun, and the way I could see the veins of life inside theleaf within the green. Her wings are like that. She’s so beautiful. So powerful.

“Are you a dragon?”

“Some have called me by that name.”

“But are you?”

“I do not know. I am me.”

“But you breathe fire?”

“No.”She begins to move, and I hold onto the spikes that band around her neck, like a necklace.“I breathe like you. But there is fire inside me, fire I can expel if I wish.”