Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
At first, Elowen thought she was imagining things.
The way their clothes grew tighter, how their once-wobbly heads now held steady with uncanny strength.
But as she laid the boys down beside one another on the soft pelt-lined floor of the cave, her brow furrowed.
Their limbs had lengthened. Their tiny bellies had filled out.
They had been born scarcely a full moon ago…
and yet, they looked more like human toddlers than newborns.
She brushed a finger down one of their arms, then glanced at Midas, who stood nearby with a haunch of meat balanced on one shoulder. His eyes flicked toward her immediately, and then toward the boys. His steps slowed.
“They’ve grown,” she murmured, not quite a question.
Midas stepped closer, setting the meat aside. He lowered himself to one knee beside her and studied their sons with a narrowed gaze. For a long moment, he said nothing, merely watched them with intense focus. Then he exhaled a soft puff of warm air.
“Yes.”
Elowen looked up at him sharply. “You’re not worried?”
A slow smile curled across his face, sharp-toothed and gleaming with pride.
“Dragon,” he said. He reached out and gently touched one of the boys’ legs, marveling at the steady kick it gave in return. “Good seed. Good bones. Strong.”
Elowen blinked, startled. “You think it’s…a good thing?”
Midas gave a small, emphatic grunt of agreement. “It means…” he said, tapping a clawed fingertip gently to his temple to find the words. “Fly sooner. Bite harder. Hotter fire.” He turned to her, eyes bright with pride. “They are mine.”
Elowen wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The thought of her sons soaring through the skies—flying, for heaven’s sake—was still almost too much to process when her womb hadn’t yet adjusted to the emptiness.
“But they’re not even crawling yet,” she whispered.
Midas said. “Soon they run. Then I lead them to sky.”
He said the last word with such reverence that it caught her breath.
She looked at the boys again, at their sharp golden eyes blinking slowly, at the faint flickers of shimmer beneath their skin.
She hadn’t imagined that either. In the right light, it was there—scattered patches of something like scale beneath their soft baby flesh.
Midas sat beside her now, watching her closely.
“You have fear of this?” he asked, softer.
She hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just…didn’t expect them to grow so quickly. What if it means they’ll age faster than humans? Faster than my heart will accept?”
Midas frowned, processing her words. Then, without speaking, he reached out and cupped the back of her head with one large, warm hand, pulling her gently until her temple rested against his chest. His heartbeat was slow and thunderous beneath her cheek.
“Dragons live long. Do not fear time.”
Elowen nodded slowly, curling one arm around his side as she closed her eyes. The boys shifted in their sleep, and Midas tucked a fur more securely around them both.
That night, just as Midas and Elowen fell into deep slumber, they were awoken by the shrill, pained cries of their boys.
And the screaming did not stop.
Not at dawn, when the first light touched the mouth of the cave. Not at dusk, when the fire burned low and Midas wrapped his wings tight around the family nest. Not even in the deepest hours of night, when the wind outside howled through the mountain.
Auric wailed until his voice cracked. Kalen thrashed and kicked, sobbing as if something inside him were trying to claw its way out. Their little bodies curled and jerked in spasms neither fever nor injury could explain.
Midas paced in his natural form. Endlessly.
His claws left long gouges in the stone.
His wings trembled from exhaustion. His eyes, once proud and golden, had dulled into something panicked and hollow.
He was a creature built to reduce cities to ash—and he could do nothing to stop the cries of his sons.
“I don’t know what to do,” Elowen whispered, voice hoarse with sleeplessness. “They won’t latch, Midas. What is wrong with them?”
She knelt in the nest, one child cradled against each shoulder, her gown stiff with dried blood from where their noses had bled.
Both boys were slick with sweat and tears, and neither one responded to soothing words or herbal balm.
They clawed at their own skin, their heads, their backs, as if something inside was hurting them.
Unable to shift, Midas stood at the edge of the nest, rigid with fury—not at her, never at her—but at his helplessness. His uselessness. He had lived through war, famine, betrayal. But nothing had ever broken him like this.
They're not sick, Midas murmured to himself in the cadence of his language. Not…wrong.
Elowen cried softly, nearly in despair. “Why won’t it stop?”
He didn't answer. Because deep inside, he feared he knew the truth. He had known the time would come. Had prayed it would come. But not like this. Not with terror and blood and agony.
It took three nights before it all made sense.
Elowen had drifted into a brief, fitful sleep, one arm looped protectively around Auric’s tiny body. Midas sat beside her in dragon form, wings draped like a sheltering canopy, eyes unblinking.
A new scent hit his nose. Blood. Fresh. Sharp. He rose, panic gripping his chest. Had something entered the cave? An intruder?
But the scent was here. Beneath his wing. From them.
He bent low. A soft whimper escaped Kalen’s lips—and then, as if a dam burst, a scream followed.
Elowen jolted awake, clutching both boys to her. And there, smeared across their bedding of soft furs and woven cloth, was blood. It soaked the boys’ backs and pooled beneath them.
But neither was crying anymore. They blinked up at her, their small faces dazed but calm, as if the agony had finally passed and a rush of relief had soothed them. She looked down, and her breath caught.
Tiny horns, the same burnished obsidian as their father’s, jutted from beneath sweat-matted curls. Still soft, not yet fully grown. And from their shoulder blades emerged the bare beginnings of wings.
Not human. Dragon.
Elowen clutched a hand to her mouth in pure disbelief. “Midas…” she whispered.
But he was already moving, his massive head bowing down to examine them, to sniff, to touch his snout against the blood-slick horns. His great body shook from something like awe. His children were dragons, and not just in name or eye or instinct. In body, in heart, in soul.
He gave a soft, reverent sound. A note from the dragon tongue that Elowen had come to recognize as ‘I am pleased’.
Kalen cooed at the sound like it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard in his short life. Auric smiled and curled his clawed toes, listening intently to the grumble from his father’s throat. And just like that, the world was right again.
Elowen and Midas lay curled on either side of the boys, watching them sleep at last—tucked beneath a blanket despite the blood stains, each twin’s tiny wings twitching as they dreamed.
“I suppose you’ll be teaching them to fly soon,” Elowen said, brushing the soft horns with a gentle fingertip. Then, her voice broke with the unending love for her family. “Don’t let them forget about me while they’re reclaiming the skies with you.”