Page 31

ALICE

F enrother’s pronouncement stops me momentarily in my transition from wing to wing.

It is not what I expected from him at all.

He thought I was something almost from another planet not so long ago.

He didn’t understand my anatomy or what I was.

Only that as a human, I posed a possible danger to him.

But now I am a sunset, a thing of beauty.

I’m not sure what to make of it all.

Fenrother holds his other wing tightly to him.

I’ve noticed before he favours his other one, using it to hold open doors or the thick clawed hook at the shoulder to take hold of things.

I know he can fly—after all that’s how I got here—but he does not want to show me his other wing.

I trace my fingers down his back and over the muscles where his wing joins the rest of his body.

I can feel Fenrother weaken slightly, and I press my advantage.

If he can be spellbound by me, surely I get to look at all of him?

Like before, when I press lightly on the outer edge, he swings it open, almost as if he cannot help himself.

This one does not rise like the other.

There is resistance.

Fenrother is resisting me.

I smooth my hand over the pretty membrane.

It has a sheen like his scales, and I love the way I can see my hand through it, the thin veins which spread like a map of who he is livid under my touch.

But as he expands it further, I see what he doesn’t want me to see, even if he is unable to help himself.

The bottom portion is ragged, and the centre is criss-crossed with scars, making the wing significantly thicker.

“What happened to you?” I whisper as I trail my fingers over it.

Fenrother snaps the wing shut.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he growls, pushing away from the fireplace.

“I didn’t say…”

But he’s already backing off, the look in his eyes similar to when we first met, guarded and angry.

“I have to go check on the defences,” he says, swirling away from me in a swish of wing and tail before he becomes the Wyrm, huge, even in the great hall, swarming out and into the courtyard.

I see him through the large arched windows as he climbs up and up towards the roof of the castle.

Fenrother is gone, leaving a Wyrm-shaped hole behind him and my head deep in confusion.

I know all of this is new to him.

I know he learnt from books and more recently by following his instinct, but I still don’t know what he wants.

And what’s worse, I don’t know what I want either.

Other than to be told I am as beautiful as a sunset by a big idiotic dragon who hasn’t a clue.