Page 25

M elissa

Okay, I get outside and kind of fly right away.

I know it’s disobedient and obviously a problem, but when a girl gets her wings, she wants to put them to use. We are on the sidewalk, with people going back and forth, but I figure they won’t believe what they see anyway. They’ll think it’s a trick. Guide ropes or whatever.

I flap my wings and zoom up next to the building.

Flying feels a little like walking probably did at first. It is an awkward, wobbly process, but it’s already better this time than it was the last. I think I am going to get the hang of it.

“Come down!” Ornix is instantly furious, of course.

“I don’t know how to land!” I yell the words back at him. It’s a lot easier to go up than it is to come down, that’s for sure.

“Just let more time elapse between beats, and make sure you flap before you land so you don’t…”

“Ow!” There is a very unpleasant crunching sound as I land, or not so much land, as fall, right in the middle of the sidewalk. A man on his phone steps over my leg, which is at a weird angle.

“Break both your legs,” Ornix sighs.

“I think I might have broken one of them.”

“Yes. I’d say you have,” he sighs more deeply. “Keeping you in one piece is fast becoming an exercise in what feels like futility. Does it hurt?”

“I think it’s going to. In a second.”

He picks me up ever so carefully and before I know it we are back in that infirmary with an old dragon doctor who also seems unsurprised to see me again.

“I’ve seen fledgling whelps do themselves less damage leaping off the top of the Golden Keep before their wings are fully grown,” he says. “What are you doing to yourself?”

“Experimenting?”

“The wings don’t fit her,” Ornix says. “They keep coming back. This time they’re stronger, but she doesn’t have the natural instinct of how to use them.”

“Hm,” the doctor says. “Interesting.”

“My leg really hurts.”

“Yes. I imagine it would.” The doctor lays his hands on me and closes his eyes. I am between two massive dragonkin, broken again. I have never spent so much time being injured in my life. It doesn’t hurt like it should, and the longer the doctor stands over me, the less it hurts.

“Human bones are soft and easy to heal with the resonance,” he says. “She will be well in the morning.”

“Will it hurt now, or can I take her back to the human realm again?”

“I would have her rest here.”

Ornix sighs. “The seal is getting further and further away all the time. We have no idea what has happened to it.”

“Seals can look after themselves. Your mate cannot. She needs rest, and care, and to be taught to use those wings at the flight range. I would cease the hunt if I were you, sire. I would tend to the needs of this whelp if you want her to survive.”

I am exhausted. I don’t know if it’s growing wings that takes up so much of my energy, or breaking my leg and having it fixed by dragon magic. Any of it would take the energy out of me.

Ornix takes me to bed, to the incredibly ornate room where I am already starting to get comfortable, and he settles me in. My leg doesn’t hurt, but it also doesn’t feel entirely good and properly put together anymore.

“I’m going to get some food for you. Do not move,” he says. “I swear if you move so much as an inch, the punishment will be unspeakable.”

I don’t move. And when he brings food back, I don’t eat it. I am too sick with guilt. I know I have fucked everything up. I’m used to fucking things up, but not like this. I am used to ruining things that are just mine to ruin.

My life, in other words.

I feel like I’ve fucked the whole kingdom up, and maybe the human world too. If people get their hands on the seal, it sounds like very bad things will happen.

“Are you not hungry? You usually eat bread like you’re afraid I just ate the last baker.”

Ornix does notice patterns, I will give him that. Sometimes I think he’s just mean to me, or just annoyed by me, but there’s more—and less to the way he sees me.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve ruined your whole… empire, or whatever.”

Ornix grips my chin and directs my eyes so that I meet his, those great golden orbs that hold so much power and in the past have held so much annoyance, judgment, frustration.

But none of that is in his eyes now. What’s in his eyes now is softer, kinder.

It’s love. I see it, even if he hasn’t said it.

“You have not ruined my empire or whatever. You’re part of it.

The most important part. I don’t care about the seal if it means you are hurt.

Do you understand, Melissa? There is nothing more important to me than you.

Nothing. I will never be too busy for you.

I will never have anything better to do than you.

I will never, ever want anything other than you. ”

I start crying. I never thought anybody would ever say those words to me.

After all the men I chased through college, men and boys who couldn’t even return a fucking text message half the time, and who treated me like I was irrelevant, to find a literal dragon king who values me more highly than any of his riches or powerful artifacts.

I am more of a pain to him than to anybody, and he still wants me, even though every time he tries to take me anywhere nice, I literally turn into a demon.

“Shhhh,” he comforts me, not knowing where my tears truly come from, but also not shying away from them. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Have some bread. You will feel better.”

He’s right. I will feel better if I have some bread.

I have some bread.

I feel better.

Science.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t just be happy with the whole ‘be a brood mate,’” I say. “I know that’s what you wanted. A simple life with a simple mate. You wanted to have a bunch of babies. And I’m probably not even pregnant. All I do is grow wings and break bones.”

“You may not be easy, but we have literally forever to breed. My seed has stopped the aging process for you. You will remain fertile long enough to bear me hundreds, if not thousands of babies.”

“Well, that’s horrific.”

“Is it?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Hm,” he shrugs. “Well, our perspectives never did align in a tidy fashion, did they. Don’t worry, even if you never had a baby, we have Equinox to fall back on as heir.”

“I assume you’re joking.”

“No. The boy is annoying in his own way, but he is blood, and that is all that really matters in these things. It will satisfy history, and any prophecies and such.”

He sounds tired, almost as if he doesn’t really care anymore. I wonder how much weight it puts on his shoulders, being a great dragon king of destiny in a world where everything matters.

“Did you want to become king?”

“It comes with the territory, quite literally,” he snorts, lying down next to me, snuggling me into the crook of his arm so I can rest and eat bread and talk all at the same time.

“But did you want it?”

“I really never thought about wanting it, or not wanting it. I knew it was my duty, and I intended to do my duty. Always.”

“Including taking a human mate and breeding with her?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I did have a choice in that, and I do not regret it, so do not try to paint this in a light in which you are an obligation. You are not. You are a choice. A lively, terrible, badly behaved choice. Now, please, rest. You will need your strength for the next time you try to do something you physically cannot.”