Chapter 19
Nineteen
Elowen woke to warmth at her back. It wasn’t the heat of fire, though one cracked softly nearby in a crater carved into the stone.
It also wasn’t the burn of the lashes down her back, for that was aching and wrong.
This warmth was…different. Soothing, almost like being held in a dream and gently coaxed awake.
She blinked slowly to the sight of moss above her head and the smell of earth surrounding her. And…something else sharp and wild.
She shifted and winced, her body shivering with white-hot pain. She trembled as she moved, and her body broke into a new sweat as her skin pulled tight at her back. The simple act of breathing made the pain worse.
But she was alive, and somehow, she remembered why.
The pain had stolen her cries for mercy, and yet, Midas had still come for her. She remembered the flash of him in the lightning, the way the world went quiet at his approach.
She turned her head, just slightly, and he was there.
He wasn’t sleeping of course. He never truly rested where she was involved.
He was coiled around her like a living barricade, one of his wings hovering above her to block out the light from the fire in case it was too bright for her tired eyes.
His body radiated heat, and his breath was slow and controlled as his golden eyes watched her.
Her lips cracked painfully when she tried to force a smile. He dipped his head at once, the tip of his snout gently nudging her hairline. He inhaled, checking for the stench of sickness, of infection.
“Midas,” she whispered to him, just so that he knew she saw him, that she still trusted him, and that she felt safe there wrapped in his tail. He rumbled back to her, quietly, answering in his own way.
Her lips smacked together, dry and crusty. Midas nudged a shallow clay bowl closer to her mouth with his claw, and even slightly tilted it so that she wouldn’t have to strain to take a drink.
With the burn in her throat cooled by the water, her eyes met his again. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I tried to warn you. I would never hurt you, Midas.” Her throat closed as tears pricked in her eyes once more. “They forced me to make the poison.”
His chest rumbled again, and he simply offered her more water, staying there unmoving until she finished the bowl. His way of showing that he believed her.
With the help of his tail, he propped her up slightly, and that’s when she got her first real look at where they were.
It was a large, cool cave, every inch of the walls piled high with golden coins and other treasures.
In the corner nearest the fire, there was a small pile of what she could only describe as human things: dried meats, a basket of fruits, jars of creams that smelled of potent healing salves, water, and even a pile of clothes, pelts, and blankets.
Not things a dragon would make space for, but things he had gathered for her.
Elowen suddenly began to sob into his scales, hiccuping thank yous in between breaths. Midas simply tightened his tail coiled around her, careful not to shift her too much or too quickly.
She drifted in and out of sleep after that for a few more hours. When she would wake, Midas would always have another bowl of water ready. Once, she stirred awake to find a perfectly ripe pear, crushed by his claws so that she didn’t have to force her teeth through the skin.
And all the time, she clung to him like she was afraid it was all a dream.
It had been six days since Midas brought Elowen to his cave.
Outside, the world moved on, but in the cave, time was slow. Life thinned itself down to the barest essentials: warmth, breath, water, pain, rest, healing.
Midas had not left the cave once.
He had no need to, of course. He had been gathering things for her for weeks now—slowly trying to work up the courage to show her that she had a place amongst his hoard.
But suddenly, that hoard held no pull, not when the most precious treasure he had ever known was an injured, fragile thing nestled in the coil of his tail.
He watched her sleep for hours. Not in a possessive way as he guarded his treasures, but in a vigilant way, for he would not let the cruelty of the world touch her again.
Now, when she woke, she smiled at him. Always smiling. And his tail, scaled and heavy, always moved with her. It was safer than interacting with her with his wings or his claws, for his tail possessed more fine dexterity than the rest of him. It was his way of shielding her.
He could not say it in her language yet, but Elowen could see it in his actions.
Moreso, she saw it in an alcove carved into the cave walls, where the little treasures Midas had shared with her sat like a shrine.
The pretty stone, a fresh rose, one of his scales, and even the dried flower crown she had made for him.
Elowen reached out, her hand trembling with emotion as she brushed her fingers along the delicate dried blooms tinged brown from age.
Midas watched quietly, his liquid gold eyes softening with her gentle presence alone. Her fingers left the flower crown to touch the sensitive patch of flesh just under his eye.
He leaned into her touch, and rumbled to her all the things he wanted to say to her, but did not have the human words for yet.