The clearing smells like pine sap and singed bark. One of the trees is still smoldering from the Dragon's overly dramatic landing. A pine cone crackles in the ashes like it's dying for emphasis.
He's curled low to the ground, wings folded, tail twitching slow and irritable. I'm across from him on a mossy log, wrapped in a half-burned bed sheet and the kind of regret you can't pawn.
His voice, when it comes, is quiet. Too quiet.
"Were you really going to marry her?"
I don't answer right away.
Then: "No."
Then: "Yes."
I groan and scrub my face. "Okay. Maybe. I don't know."
He doesn't look at me.
I tug the sheet tighter. "At first, I was just playing along. Looking for the right moment to slip out. Maybe steal a candelabra. Something tasteful. Silver."
He grunts. That much tracks.
"But then… there was pampering. There were silk robes and honeyed figs and people rubbing scented oil into places I didn't know had nerves. And she was kind. Sweet. Stupid, sure, but… soft. And I thought—maybe just for a moment—what if I stopped running? What if I let myself… stay?"
Still, he says nothing.
Then: "I would have missed you."
It hits like a stone in the chest. Not loud. Just heavy.
I look at him. He's staring into the fire like it'll explain something he can't say out loud.
I open my mouth—some instinct tells me to deflect. Joke. Shrug. Make it nothing.
"Yeah, well, you'd miss the noise."
"You'd miss stealing my figs."
"You'd miss being right."
But none of them come out.
So I sit there, holding silence like it's breakable.
And then I move.
I stand. Step across the mossy ground. My sheet catches on a twig and tears a little, but I don't care.
I walk up to him.
And hug him.
Not dramatically. Not as a punchline. Just press my face into the warm curve of his shoulder and fold myself into that ancient, fire-scarred hide.
"Thank you," I whisper. "For coming. For looking. For dragging me out of that ridiculous, perfumed nightmare."
He exhales, long and slow. His body settles beneath me like a hill that finally stops trembling.
"Someone had to," he mutters.
I smile, against his scales.
And this time—I don't pull away.