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Wren screamed and dropped to her knees, the wet earth seeping through her leggings. Trove settled around her, placing his heavy head over her lap and protecting her back with his gargantuan body. She stared at the beautiful creature that offered her protection and comfort. She didn’t deserve it, and yet Wren couldn’t find it in herself to move away.

His warm breath heated her thighs and belly as he stared up at her—the silent sentinel.

“How are you—why are you here?” Wren bit out, still not quite believing what she was seeing. What she was experiencing. Trove was here, far away from the sea, and he had saved her from Arrik.

He had saved her from imprisonment or worse.

Trove wouldn’t have had to save you if you’d taken care of your husband.

Husband…more like personal devil.

The dragon responded by trilling out a few notes, then closing his eyes before humming in a much deeper, plaintive tone. The song was disjointed and keening, but it was enough to cause her tears to fall in earnest. She clutched at Trove’s fin-covered head, openly mourning regardless of who might hear her.

After all: who would dare attack a dragon?

“Thank you for saving me,” she cried against his scales, chest heaving with every breath. “I don’t deserve it, but th-thank you.”

Wren felt like she was breaking into a thousand pieces. So much loss, and for what? Greed. She’d made a promise to herself in the Verlantian palace to move forward and gain justice for her family—for her people.

You failed.

When the chance came, she’d shied away.

Would she be forever haunted by her past? The loss of her family seemed to make it impossible for her to struggle out of the quagmire that meant to drag her down into despair. Not only that, but her mind had begun to crack.

“I saw Rowen in the pirate city,” she found herself telling Trove, who was still singing his sad song. “And before, too. IknowI saw him.” Even now, his face was seared into her memory. She hung her head. “Leif claimed that he believed me…but how could he? Rowendied.” Wren clutched her head and glanced at Trove. “I’m chasing ghosts and showing mercy to monsters. What is wrong with me?”

The dragon flicked his gaze to Wren, slit pupil expanding for a fraction of a second as if in answer.

“Everything?” Wren choked on a garbled laugh. “You’re not wrong.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. “If Rowen was here, he’d tell me to stop whining and move forward.”But he’s not here.Wren dropped her hands onto the ground on either side of her hips and dug her fingers into the wild grass. “He was my friend, my confidant, my love.” She smiled despite the tears. “He could swim as well as any dragon. Well, almost,” she added on, when Troveharrumphedin indignation.

Wren gazed out in front of her, focusing on nothing. “Why do I keep seeing him? Is it the guilt? Does he have a twin I don’t know about? Am I simply going mad?”

The latter seemed the most likely.

Of course, Trove had no answer for her, but now that Wren had opened up the floodgates of her mind, she found that she couldn’t stop confiding in the beast. All her thoughts and feelings of the last few months burst free.

“I wouldn’t be seeing ghosts if I’d saved my people in the first place. If I’d protected them. Now the Dragon Isles will be ravaged for jewels and slaves and God knows what else, all because I’m not there to help them.”

“You take too much on, daughter.”

She blinked hard as the memory of her mother’s advice echoed through her mind. “Logically, I know everything is not on me, but…” Wren gritted her teeth and shook her head. “I’m all that’s left. Britta is just a child. She has no one else, and neither do my people.”

Trove stopped singing, lashing his tail painlessly against Wren’s side. He was listening, and he could understand in his own way, and that was all that mattered to Wren. She’d kept everything bottled up for so long, it was a relief to finally speak it.

Her bottom lip wavered as she prepared to bare an ugly truth, one she didn’t even want to acknowledge but had to. One that would lead to her downfall and potentially her death.

“I can’t kill him,” she said, whisper-quiet, into the scales that adorned the top of Trove’s head. Wren traced soft circles against their luminous surface. Part of her heart broke at the confession. “The prince, I mean.” She couldn’t bear to say his name out loud. “Somewhere in that prison of a palace, part of me began to trust him. I don’t have feelings for him…but we have a bond I can’t explain.” There was something there. Something intangible and unknowable between the two of them. Something dangerous enough that Wren reallyhadalmost kissed the prince, before coming to her senses and knocking him to the ground.

She wished that “something” would disappear forever.

Her stomach churned and bile burned the back of her throat. “He destroyed my world and yet…I couldn’t kill him.” She began to tremble. “I won’t kill him.”

It was ugly.

Unfortunately, it was true.

A song fell unbidden from her lips; her trembling slowly passed as the sun moved across the sky. Trove joined in.