Chapter 9
Nine
He knew it had been a mistake. He was too close. Too curious. Too trusting.
Even now, nestled deep within the forest, he could feel the echo of her gaze etched into his scales like a spear logged between his scales. A human’s eyes were wide, soft, unafraid.
He’d seen that look before, long ago, just before the sword came down.
He paced the perimeter of the trees, restless. Fool, he snarled inwardly. He hadn’t meant for her to catch him.
He was only meant to watch. Like he always did.
From a distance. Unseen, unknown. That was how he had survived when the rest of his kind had not.
But the girl with the lake-colored eyes was not like the rest, and that frightened him more than a sword.
Not because she was different, but because he wanted to believe in that difference.
He shouldn’t have left her gifts. The rose. The stone. And yet…watching her cradle them, cherish them, had twisted something tender and long-dead inside him. Something he could not name.
He ground his teeth together, breathing hard through his nose. Smoke curled around him as heavy as the shadows. The trees trembled faintly with the rise of heat in his skin.
Let them come, he told himself. Let them see what’s left of the dragons.
He would raze her village if he had to. Turn their crops to ash. Crush their stone houses beneath his claws. He’d promised himself, long ago, that he would never let another human take anything from him again.
And now he’d shown himself. For what? A scrap of kindness from a strange girl with trembling hands?
He waited, crouched and coiled like a predator, golden eyes unblinking as the hours bled together. But no torches came. No men with spears. No screaming. Just…birdsong. Dawn.
A trick, he thought. They wait until she returns. Until I come again.
The hours crawled. Hunger gnawed at him, but he didn’t leave. His wings twitched. His tail lashed slowly through the loose dirt. Still, the forest remained untouched by human footfall.
By midmorning, he felt the buzzing in his nerves. An old instinct. The one that always came before betrayal. The itch in his scales that told him when death was coming.
He snarled low in his throat.
But then, just as the sun reached its zenith, he heard the crunch of leaves. He stilled. There. A figure stepped into the clearing.
She walked slowly, carefully, as if sensing something unseen. Her satchel was slung over her shoulder, but she made no move toward the usual clusters of herbs. Instead, she moved toward the water’s edge.
No weapons. No soldiers behind her. Alone.
That made no sense. It defied sense.
Humans were cruel. They were greedy. They feared what they didn’t understand, and then they destroyed what they feared. That was the law of the world. The way things had always been.
And yet he could smell no blood on her. No steel. No scent of deceit. Just crushed herbs, meadow dew, soft soap, and the faint salt of old tears.
He did not move. He stayed shrouded in the trees, breath caught in his throat.
She smiled at the lake. He narrowed his eyes.
Why? Why hadn’t she brought them? Why hadn’t she screamed? Why did she…sit?
He watched her hum under her breath as she began picking wildflowers from the water’s edge. She braided a few together in a clumsy, uneven circle and held it tenderly in her hands as she waited.
For him, he foolishly assumed.
He could not bring himself to come out of the shadows for fear of what might come next. Instead, he watched her until the sun began to fall. She would return to the village soon.
And all the time, she sat alone. Unarmed. Gentle.
He saw a wetness on her cheeks as she set the flowers on a rock and returned home.
By the time he returned to his cave deep in the heart of the mountain, the sun had died behind the horizon and the stars had crawled across the sky to take its place.
He curled into the far end of the cave, wings folded tight, the walls of his hoard glinting dimly in the dark. But none of the gold, none of the jewels, none of the treasures that once filled him with comfort brought any peace tonight.
For the first time in years…he felt uncertainty. He hated it. And yet he would be at the lake again tomorrow.
Just to see if she came back.