We’d tried everything.
Bought a fake—turned out to be from a soggy pond wyrm.
Tried to conjure one—summoned cursed maggots from the Great Library’s rectal index.
Considered robbery. Considered lying. Considered maybe just dying and letting the hag stew us into tea.
None of it worked.
I sat cross-legged in the dirt, fingers tangled in my hair, trying not to scream.
The sky had that pre-dusk bruised look. One more sleep till the full moon. One more night before the hag ca calling with her ladle and her debts and her particular way of pronouncing “consequence.”
“I’m out of plans,” I said flatly.
Dragon didn’t respond. Just sat there, wings slack, tail twitching. Looking like an overgrown, traumatized paperweight.
“I an it. That’s the end of the list. We ticked all the boxes. Bought, forged, begged, ran. All we’re missing is sacrificing a virgin, and I’m fresh out.”
Still nothing.
I threw a pebble at him. “Say sothing.”
He sighed. Deeply. Like the wind leaving a cathedral.
Then, low and reluctant:
“There is one more option.”
I sat up. “What?”
He wouldn’t look at . “The sanctuary.”
I blinked. “You an—her sanctuary?”
He grunted. Noncommittal. Unhappy.
I squinted. “What, the real one? Aunt Threxaval’s crystal doom-castle?”
A reluctant nod.
I stared at him.
“But that’s at the edge of the world or... so pocket dinsion held together by contempt and bone chairs.”
He glanced at sideways.
“It’s three valleys over.”
I blinked. “You’re fucking kidding.”
He shook his head once.
“You an to tell ,” I said, “that the divine monolith of aesthetic tyranny, the throne of ancestral dread, the bone-eating dragon matriarch’s sumr vacation lair... is literally within walking distance?”
He exhaled like soone peeling off a trauma scab.
“We’re a local brood.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“And you didn’t ntion this why?”
“Because I didn’t want to go,” he snapped. “I still don’t.”
“But it’s right there!”
“Yes. And that’s exactly the problem.”
I tilted my head. “You’re scared.”
“I am not scared,” he growled. “I am... battle-weary from a lifeti of calculated humiliation at the hands of a creature who corrected my offering bowl placent at my own hatchling dedication.”
“...That’s not a thing.”
“It is in our family.”
I shifted to face him. “Wait—how many tis have you actually been to the sanctuary?”
He didn’t look at .
“Too many,” he said. “My first molt? Judged. My first crush? Mocked. My first attempt at poetry? She read it aloud to the Council of Ashes and annotated it in real ti with a pointer made from one of my uncle’s ribs.”
I blinked.
He went on, as if pulled into so internal slideshow of horror.
“She calls ‘Junior.’ Still. Every ti. Once, I brought a perfectly respectable sacrificial goat—white coat, golden eyes, divinely sanctioned—and she sniffed it and said, ‘Pedestrian.’”
I pressed my lips shut to avoid laughing. Barely.
“I brought her a gilded relic once,” he said. “She didn’t even unbox it. She just nodded to one of the servants and said, ‘Return it to the gift shop. With sha.’”
I was shaking now.
“Every ti I visit,” he continued grimly, “I lose ten years off my pride. I go in a dragon. I co out a cautionary tale.”
“And yet...” I said, standing slowly, “we’re going.”
He looked at , wounded and betrayed.
“Saya, I don’t think you understand what it ans to stand in her presence. It’s not awe. It’s not fear. It’s the sensation of being edited in real ti.”
I stepped forward. “We don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“No,” I said. “Not anymore. We’re out of cons. Out of luck. Out of ti.”
He was silent for a long mont.
Then, quietly:
“If she makes recite the Elegy of Bone in front of her vassals again, I’m turning you into soup.”
I smiled gently.
“I’ll add glitter to it.”
He groaned.
I slung my pack over my shoulder.
“Three valleys, right?”
“Yes,” he muttered. “Each one more judgntal than the last.”
“Let’s go.”
He stood reluctantly. Wings twitching. Tail low. Like he was marching into a childhood playroom where every toy had been replaced with a performance review.
“Do not speak unless spoken to,” he said.
“Copy that.”
“And if she calls you ‘delightfully rustic’—”
“I run?”
“You bow.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
We flew.
Three valleys.
Three stages of emotional decay.
Toward a dragon who nas her teeth and destroys reputations with punctuation.
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