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“I can’t hear you,” he replied in my head.

“I don’t know how to speak in your mind!” I yelled to the skies, knowing it was futile, but it made me feel better.

“I can hear you if you just think it.” There was laughter in his tone. “That’s how I know about those delightful dragon’s captive fantasies of yours.”

“Evil demon,” I thought at him, not sure if I was doing it right and if he could hear me.

“Loud and clear, my Sol,” he confirmed.

I hated this name he was using. Who was he to call me by any other name than the one the Goddess had given to my parents? “My name is Zaria.”

“Sol is how I knew you. You liked it.”

“I don’t believe you.” I still wasn’t entirely sure I believed he was real at all. Monsters didn’t just appear from the sky and kidnap girls.

“Do you really not remember me at all?” he asked with a sort of hesitation that made my brain even more itchy.

“I think you are mistaken, dragon. Let me go. I need to help my family.” I beat my fists on the claws around my middle in frustration.

“My name is Nyx. Tell me you don’t know me.” He ignored my efforts.

“I don’t know you,” I said with certainty.

“You do.”

We fell into silence, which was worse than his mocking.

“Please,” I caved, need taking priority over indignation. “You have to let me go. I have to go back. I don’t know you. You have me mistaken for someone else.”

“I cannot. I just saved you from death, Sol. And I’m not mistaken. I feel you,” he pressed, driving some sort of connection between us. “You can feel it too. I’m sure of it.”

My entire body tingled, and as if a string tied around my chest tightened, I felt it between us. A thread. But it had to be a trick of Uriel.

“I do not know you!” I screamed aloud, then descended into a coughing fit that left me seeing black spots in my vision. Hot tears pricked my eyes, and before I could stop them, they trickled down my face.

“Take me back. You can save them, too,” I begged, pride be damned.

“They’re gone, Sol,” he said softly. “It’s too late. I only just got you out.”

I sobbed. They couldn't be gone. They were all I had.

It wasn’t a great life. It was hard living, and there was not much in the way of affection, but I knew they loved me in their way. They held strong beliefs, and we lived with other like-minded fae in a remote community.

We didn’t mix with the outside world. Some of the fae would occasionally travel to trade our harvest for provisions with distant towns, but the outside world was full of evils that my parents had left behind. So the sudden realization that I had been taken out of the safety of the compound into a world my parents had deemed too corrupt and rotten to continue living in was chilling. I had never left the compound before, and I was alone, in the clutches of a winged monster, being taken to the Goddess only knew where.

We flew in silence as I began to grieve.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long while.

I didn’t reply. I had nothing to say.

What was he sorry for? Destroying my home? Murdering my family? Abducting me?

“It wasn’t like you think,” he countered.

“Get out of my head,” I snapped.

Rage, the likes of which I had never known burned inside my veins as we flew on in silence.