A Tale of Caution
Once there was a slave named Lillian. Like all well-trained slaves, she kept her head down and did as she was bidden. She waited on the dragon queen with patience and care, dressing and bathing her, plaiting her long hair and sprinkling her neck with the finest rose water. Like all well-trained slaves, Lillian was invisible.
The second son of the dragon queen was named Rayan. Like most young draksors of high rank, he wore only the finest clothes and drank only the finest wine. He bet on the strongest dragons in the pit and broke in the most unruly of stallions. Like any handsome son of a dragon queen, Rayan caught every woman’s eye.
One day, returning early from a desert ride, Rayan strode through his mother’s orange grove and stopped short. Someone was singing. Someone with the voice of a nightingale.
Rayan paused, unseen, beneath the blooming trees. He watched, transfixed by the sight of a barefooted slave as she spun on her heel, her plain dress twirling around her as she danced to the tune of her own voice.
Every day after, Rayan returned to the orange grove to wait for his mother’s slave. He only ever meant to watch her. He never meant to be seen.
But Lillian saw. Her dance paused midstep. Her song broke midtune.
Lillian fled.
Rayan pursued, trying to explain: he hadn’t meant to find her that day beneath the blossoms. He hadn’t meant to return every day since. He only liked to watch her dance, to hear her sing. The sight of her was like a still pool. Like a calm and soothing place.
Lillian stood with her back against the wall, trembling and wide-eyed, refusing to look him in the face. She fell to her knees, begging. It confused Rayan, who kept telling her to rise.
And then, all at once, he understood.
She thought he’d come to take her against her will. The way a stallion takes a mare.
The thought struck like a blow.
This time, it was Rayan who fled.
When Lillian looked up, she found herself alone. She picked herself up from the marble floor of her mistress’s salon. She looked and looked for the son of the dragon queen—but all trace of him was gone.
The next morning, Lillian woke to a bouquet of orange blossoms—delicate white petals in the shape of a star—and a note that said, I’m sorry.
Lillian returned to the orange grove. She found Rayan waiting, his back to her, looking up into the dark green boughs above. She could have left right then. He never would have known.
But she didn’t.
Lillian said the name of the second son of the dragon queen, and Rayan turned. His face changed at the sight of her, filling with light. When he stepped toward her, she didn’t run. She let him look. And as he looked, Lillian reached to touch his hair, his cheek, his throat.
After that day, their eyes met across courtyards. In dark and narrow halls, their hands brushed. Beneath the cover of night, in secret gardens and forgotten alcoves and tucked-away terraces, Lillian and Rayan gave themselves to each other.
It wasn’t long before a child grew within her. But such a thing was not permitted for a queen’s slave.
Betrayed by a fellow skral, Lillian came before her mistress, begging for mercy. When Rayan found out, he was beyond the city walls with his stallion. He raced back through the narrow, cobbled streets. He ran through the palace corridors. He burst into his mother’s throne room.
“I love her,” Rayan confessed. “I intend to marry her.”
Perhaps it was his youth. Or perhaps it was the foolishness of love.
His mother laughed in his face.
Rayan tried to defend himself. What he felt for Lillian was not infatuation. It wasn’t even love—it was something more. Love happened between a man and his wife. But the day he found Lillian in the orange grove, Rayan felt like the First Namsara laying eyes on his hika—his sacred mate, his holy match, fashioned for him by the Old One.
Lillian was his hika, Rayan declared.
His mother told Rayan to get out of her sight.
The dragon queen waited for the baby to be born, but no longer. She dragged her slave to the heart of the city and burned her alive in the public square while her son watched, held back by soldats, helpless to stop it.
Three days later, Rayan took his own life. He left behind a wailing baby girl. A girl who bore the name her mother gave her: Safire.
Three days after that, the queen was found dead in her bed. Some say she died of shame. Others say she died of grief. But whatever killed her isn’t the point. The point is this:
The son of a dragon queen dared to love a slave, and it did not end well for anyone.