Chapter 11
Eleven
It was nothing but weeds, the circle she had put around his horn. It was twisted together by clumsy hands. Wilted at the edges. The petals smelled of morning dew and faint skin oil. Human-made. Imperfect. Fragile.
The little circle of flowers sat lopsided atop his horn, and though he could shake it off with a single twitch of his head, he didn't.
He did not move at all.
Her scent still clung to his scales. Her warmth lingered like sunlight where her fingers touched his jaw. So gentle. No one had touched him in a hundred years. Not without hatred. Not without fire or steel.
And no one had given him anything.
He stared at the lake, at the ripples where her footsteps disturbed the bank. The flower crown weighed nothing, but his chest felt tight, as if the bones inside him were expanding.
She should not exist. She should not be able to look at him without fear. Should not want to give him something. She should not hum. Should not smile. Should not speak to him.
He did not understand it. He did not know what to do with it.
All night, he sat there—immense and silent—unable to leave the lake’s edge. Not even to return to the mountain and the comfort of stone walls and gold hoards that never betrayed. He could not go, because he was afraid.
Afraid that if he moved, the crown would fall. That if he left, this…strangeness inside him would go with it.
He remembered everything. The first time he heard a human scream. The way their arrows pierced his mother’s flank. The last time he saw his brothers fly. The ache in his throat as he roared their names for the final time.
A phantom ache pulsed along the old wounds beneath his living armor. He remembered the humans chanting around the firelight as they told stories of the slaughter.
He had watched them grow old and weak and angry. Watched them build cages around themselves and call it civilization.
And now, one of them gave him flowers.
It should be laughable. Insulting, even. As if such a thing could change anything. As if kindness could undo a hundred years of grief and cruelty.
But when she touched his scales, she did not flinch, nor curse him, nor beg him for favors.
She simply said, thank you.
The dragon closed his eyes, and for the first time in decades, the fire inside him flickered not with fury, but with confusion.
He knew she would not keep returning. She will break, like all humans do. She will tell someone. Or they will follow her. Or she will disappear.
They always disappear.
But still…
He pressed his tail more tightly around himself and rested his head atop it, careful not to disturb the crown. The petals brushed against his brow with every breath. It was unbearably soft.
He wondered, not for the first time, what her name was. He wondered what would happen if he asked, not that he could speak her language to do so.
And then he growled low and long into the ground, ashamed of the thought. It is dangerous, this wondering. This yearning.
Still, he did not remove the crown.
He let it stay as the stars rose, as the night stretched long and cold around him. And though hunger gnawed at his bones, though his hoard lay unguarded in the dark, he did not leave the lake.
Because the human girl gave him something that could not be bartered or stolen. Something she had made for him. Something that was truly his.