A journey?

Einin stared at the dragon.

To run wild and free. To see some of the wide world…

No woman from Downwood had ever gone farther than Morganton, and that was Einin’s own aunt back when she’d married a fletcher. Most women never traveled beyond the surrounding village markets. Einin knew plenty of people who’d never once left Downwood.

At least she’d gone to the markets in the nearest villages as a child, with her father, to sell goat cheese and milk.

She had dreamt of faraway places all her life, tried to imagine the people and palaces from the tales of the few stray travelers who’d come through her village. The traveling tinker always told such stories! And returning soldiers too, although their tales were much darker. The traveling priest shared little, the darkest tales yet, mostly about the burning of witches.

There had to be more. There had to be such wonders!

“What journey?” She tilted her head, her heart racing with cautious excitement. “To where?”

The dragon said, “Hmpf,” and kicked a shredded old shield out of his way, looking after it as if it held great interest. Embarrassed? No, Einin thought, could not be that. Not this dragon. Probably not any dragon. They were a murderous and conscienceless lot, down to the last one.

Yet he examined his sharp talons with undue attention as he said, “A bit back, I offended someone.”

This she could believe. “And you’re going to offer an apology?”

Once again, that did not sound like the dragon she knew.

Yet Draknart nodded. “Something of the like.”

Einin’s mouth gaped. The priest kept preaching about miracles. This might yet be the first Einin ever saw. Where the priest had failed, the dragon might yet make a believer out of her.

She narrowed her eyes at the beast. He wanted to go somewhere, this she believed. But traveling companion her bony arse. He wanted to take her along for the easy swiving, then would eat her the first time he couldn’t find anything better. She’d be nothing but road provisions, eaten for lunch like she’d eaten her small store of food on her way to the cave.

Yet would a long journey, out in the open, not provide more opportunities to escape than the closed-in cave? She had returned to the dragon. She had fulfilled her part of their bargain. If the dragon had failed to eat her posthaste, the fault was his. She considered herself free of their agreement.

Free. Her heart leaped.

“The roads are dangerous,” she said, thinking fast. “I will not go without a blade.”

“We will not be going over the roads.”

A moment or two passed before she understood his meaning. She swallowed hard. Flying. Did he mean to carry her in his talons like an eagle carried its prey? She imagined the ground rushing far below her and grew dizzy from the thought.

“I’ll stay and clean the cave while you’re gone,” she offered as her courage evaporated. Maybe he would never return, and she could yet have his cave.

His bottomless eyes grew amused. He licked his chops. “I think not.”

She pressed her lips together. ’Twould be unwise to curse him out. She was smart enough to understand her choices. Go along and be eaten later, or be eaten for breakfast before the trip.

“I will not go without a blade,” she repeated. She had to stand her ground on that at least.

“I’m the only protection you will need.”

“And if you leave me at a campsite and go off hunting? What if I’m set upon by bandits?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Then he grunted. “Fetch a small sword, if you must have it. Not a broadsword, mind you. Something you can easily lift.”

She pulled her britches and boots back on first. She didn’t like the way the beast eyed her legs. Fully clothed again, she hurried toward the spot where she had dropped her brother’s sword. She could wield a broadsword, but she preferred a familiar blade.

A few moments passed before she found the weapon. As she had no scabbard, she stuck the sword into her belt, the pommel holding it in place.

Weapon or no, she hesitated instead of walking back to the dragon. There was still the small matter of flying. Her heart suddenly pounded in her chest. She’d never been higher off the ground than the roof of her hut that sometimes needed the thatching patched.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the fairy circle at Fern Lake, past the Black Hills.” He stalked closer.

Then, before she could back away and reestablish the distance between them, his barbed tail snaked out and wrapped around her waist. The next she knew, she was flying through the air, and then she was sitting on his shoulders.

“Ay!” She wrapped her arms and legs around his muscled neck as he lumbered out of the cave, his body swaying. “Wait!”

He did not. Instead, he unfolded his enormous blue-black wings, and Einin could do naught but gape, her breath caught. He wasn’t a handsome creature in dragon form, but even she had to admit that the wings were majestic.

He flapped them once, twice, then dipped into a crouch. “Hang on, sweeting.”

His enormous muscles flexed and bunched between her thighs. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she was all that ready to travel the wide world. All those years she’d dreamed about going on a journey, she’d envisioned herself walking, or at most, in a horse cart. Not on the back of a fearsome dragon! Not in the air, at risk of plunging to the ground at any moment.

“No! No! N—” The dragon launched into the air, and she dropped forward to lie against his neck, moaning, her arms wrapped tightly around him.

“Nothing to it.” The great beast laughed.

Einin held on for dear life as the dragon ascended.

Draknart soared, the small weight on his back unfamiliar yet not unpleasant. Einin’s slender arms closed around his neck, her curves pressed to him. Predictably, the man inside the dragon demanded to come out to play. Draknart grinned. Mayhap they could play some more tonight, as they had the night before—as long as he didn’t go too far. He flew faster and faster at the thought, as if he could somehow reach midnight sooner. He slowed only when he heard some strange sounds from her.

Was she crying? Had the fear broken her at last? But instead, her thighs squeezed the base of his thick neck as if she were riding a horse and urging it to greater speed. Then the noise came again—sounding suspiciously like laughter.

He had to turn his head to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. He had little experience with joy as a human emotion. He couldn’t remember a single human laughing in his company ever. He stared at Einin as another peal of tickling sound came from her open mouth, the sparkle in her eyes unlike anything he’d ever seen.

That pure sweetness and lightness struck him straight in the middle of his chest. He couldn’t turn from her. Good thing he was flying high above the tree line, or he would have crashed into a tall oak and broken his damn neck.

Aye, but she was a find. The gods themselves hadn’t heard music like her laughter. Draknart could have listened to the sound until the end of his days. Belinus was going to be so grateful for her, the god was not only going to lift the goddess’s curse, but probably gift Draknart with treasure.

He watched Einin for another moment before turning forward at long last, sure of his plan, eager to become once again a proper, true dragon.

He flew through the morning, landing at midday only because she shouted at him that she had to make water. He set her down in a clearing.

His gaze followed her feminine form as she walked toward the woods, stretching stiff limbs. She looked back at him from the edge of the tree line, just a quick glance over her shoulder, but he caught the speculative gleam in her eyes. She meant to run. She’d brought that sword for a reason. She was nothing if not tenacious, even in the face of formidable odds.

Aye, she was a fine lass. Part of him wished he could keep her. She made life more interesting for certain. If Draknart had someone like her, maybe he wouldn’t feel compelled to sleep years away. But she wouldn’t want to stay with him, not in his dank cave. And she’d go back to her village over his dead dragon carcass. He wouldn’t let her, not to people who’d scarred her silken skin with whips. But in Feyland…in Belinus’s palace, under the god’s protection, Einin would be safe and happy.

She paused at the edge of the woods, her shoulders tense, her right hand hanging near the pommel of her sword as she scanned the forest. Planning which way to run? Draknart wouldn’t have minded chasing her through the woods for a spell, but they had no time to waste.

He sniffed the air, then called after her, “Brown bear sow to the east with two cubs. A wolf pack to the west.”

She stiffened as she looked back at him again. Her slim throat moved as she swallowed, indecision creeping into her eyes. “Close by?”

“Don’t wander far.”

Her body near vibrated with frustration. Then her shoulders slumped. She was not the type to give up, but she was smart enough to bide her time.

She didn’t go far into the forest. She hid herself behind some bushes, steps from the edge of the clearing and did not dally, but hurried back. When her stomach made an odd sound, she pressed a hand against her middle. Several moments passed before Draknart realized that she had not eaten since she had returned to him.

Hunger.

The first time he had this problem with a human. Never before did he have to worry about feeding lunch to his lunch. Except, Einin was now a gift, and as such, she needed to reach Belinus whole. A half-starved gift wouldn’t do at all.

“We’ll eat when we stop for the night,” Draknart told her.

Her hand moved near her sword again.

He shook his head. “I’ll hunt in the woods. I did not bring you along for a bite to eat. I swear.”

When she relaxed, he reached for her with his tail so he could resettle her on his neck.

“I’d rather do it myself,” she told him, and then she climbed up onto his knee and from there to his shoulders.

Soon they were airborne again. When he spotted a nest full of eggs high up in the trees, he swooped low and fetched them for her, nest and all. The small slurping sounds she made as she drank them filled him with contentment.

He allowed her another brief respite at dusk, then took her to the sky once more, impatient to reach Belinus. The wait had been too long, a century without true hope. Anticipation burned through Draknart as he flew. He was as eager for the lifting of the curse as a young dragon pup for his first deer herd.

He stopped only when midnight neared, at the ruins of an ancient castle, alighting in the window of its only remaining tower. The roof was missing, but the night was clear, no clouds to threaten rain.

“What’s this?” she asked as she slid from his shoulders and surveyed the ruins the moon bathed in silver.

“Castle Blackstone.” Draknart snatched a couple of pigeons from what remained of the rafters, gutted them with a talon, then roasted them with a few puffs of fire.

Einin’s eyes flared with hunger.

“Go ahead,” he said.

She sat and ate one, watching him carefully the whole time. He ate the other one—even if the small bird wasn’t worth the bother—just so the lass wouldn’t worry that he meant to eat her.

After they finished, she walked up to one of the windows while he cleared a spot in the middle of the space. He swept away rocks, chunks of wood, and dead leaves with his leathery wings, then dropped to the stones and stretched.

Einin kept looking out, awe on her half-turned face as if she had never seen anything half as grand as the broken drawbridge over the swampy moat, the collapsed guard towers, and the rock-littered castle yard. Although, with the vast forest surrounding it all, everything bathed in moonlight, Draknart had to admit, the place had a certain charm.

The wistful, wonder-filled expression on Einin’s face made him want to show her the world. He huffed and shook off the thought. He’d show her Feyland. Belinus could show her the rest.

“What happened to the castle?” she whispered without taking her gaze off the scenery before her.

He hesitated for a moment. ’Twas not a pretty tale.

“Some decades ago,” he said at last, “the old lord of the castle took a young bride. He was a rough man, a hard man. He beat his dogs and beat his horses. He beat his servants too. One night, after too much ale, he beat his young wife to death.”

Einin turned to stare at him, folding her arms around herself.

“The bride’s brothers came and took revenge. The siege collapsed the walls and killed most of the men. The rest left.”

Einin shivered.

He opened a wing. “Come and rest.”

She cast him a doubtful glance, but she came away from the wall. She did bed down, but at a far distance from him. He folded his wing again. She watched him and seemed to be waiting for something. Midnight?

“You don’t like being a man,” she said after a little while.

“I hate it with the fire of a thousand dragons.”

“Because to be dragon is to have flight.” Her tone turned wistful.

“To be dragon is to be free.”

Her forehead furrowed, then after a moment, it smoothed out again. “Because if someone tries to take away your freedom, you can eat them?”

’Twas part of it, so Draknart nodded.

The furrows returned, and her arms moved, flexed. She looked at them in the moonlight, then pressed her lips together. “So the stronger you are, the more freedom you have.” She sighed. “’Tis why men have more freedom than women.”

Draknart had to think about her words. “Being strong helps. Yet the birds are free in the trees, and the fish are free in the lake.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then she said, her voice full of melancholy that was unlike her, “At the village markets, I’ve seen birds in cages that could not fly away. I’ve seen fish sold in barrels.”

Draknart watched her. Most often he thought about her kind as reasonless vermin. They lived in villages bound by rules. They bent the knee to their lords and their priests. Could Einin value freedom as much as Draknart did? ’Twas an odd thought to have about a human.

“You wish to be free?”

“More than anything.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “To choose for myself. Always. To choose the path I take.”

A twinge of guilt cut through him. She did not choose to go to Belinus. Yet he was fair certain she would, if given the choice. To be the god’s favored one was an honor. She would be safe in Feyland. She would see neither hunger nor whippings. Aye, when Draknart handed her over, she was going to be grateful to him.

She had her eyes closed. Draknart closed his own. At first, he heard the wind and the wolves, a brook in the distance. Then, after a while, he heard her teeth chatter.

He opened his wing again. “Come on, lass. You survived being given to a dragon as sacrifice. No sense in freezing now.”

He waited. She fixed him with an uncertain look, but then she stood and came over, carefully laid herself under his wing, with her back to him, but making sure her back did not touch his body. She held her breath when he settled his wing over her as he would a blanket.

The clamoring of her heart slowed first, and then her breathing. She was asleep by the time midnight came and Draknart turned to man. He pulled her closer to the heat of his body and kept his arms around her. He was hard against her but did not try to seduce her. Her back pressed to his chest, he breathed in her scent. She smelled faintly of roast pigeon. What dragon could find fault with that? For a while, he just watched her sleeping and enjoyed the sight of her all soft and relaxed. Then he slept.

The next day, they took to the sky once again. He pointed out a proper town—few and far between in the Black Hills. She exclaimed over everything with far too much excitement. A stone bridge. A windmill. A rich merchant on the road in a wagon pulled by a team of six matched gray oxen. Which, were he alone, Draknart would have eaten.

In fact, of all the things in town, without Einin, he would have noted only the oxen. Her enthusiasm made him notice things he would have otherwise missed. She made him see the world anew.

They barely traveled, however, when a thunderstorm forced them to land. They waited out the storm under an old wooden bridge. He found Einin another batch of eggs, and since they were on the ground this time, he baked them in his fire, right in their shells. She offered him half.

He shook his head. They amounted to even less than the pigeon the night before. “Not worth the bother.”

She tried to hide how happy she was with his response, secretly pleased that she did not have to share, and Draknart tried to hide his smile. He liked feeding her.

“Tonight, we’ll dine on fresh-caught fish,” he promised.

She did not complain. She gave thanks for the eggs.

The lashing rain and blinding lightning refused to stop. The bad weather lasted most of the day, but he almost didn’t mind. While they huddled together, Einin entertained him with tales from her village. ’Twas dark by the time the storm passed, and nigh midnight by the time they reached Fern Lake.

Draknart’s landing was controlled, but his wings stirred up the fine sand on the lakeshore nevertheless. Everything was dry here. The storm had missed this side of the lake. Einin coughed as she slid to the ground from his neck, and he remained still so he wouldn’t stir the sand again.

She walked away with a stiff gait, then stopped to stretch her shapely limbs. The dragon now knew the feel of those long legs wrapped around his neck. The man in him demanded to know the feel of them wrapped around his waist.

She was a fine woman. Belinus would grant any request for a gift such as she. Yet the eager anticipation Draknart felt when the idea had first occurred to him had dissipated since.

The change was upon him before he could think much more about his suddenly dark mood. He was man again and as naked as a newborn babe. He stretched, the change leaving his joints achy as always.

Einin turned from him, quickly enough to nearly trip. She coughed as if she were choking on her own spittle. She hurried toward the water, nearly at a run. Since she was heading straight for the lake, she was clearly not running away, so he let her go.

He rolled his neck, watching the slim outline of her back, that thick red braid reaching to her shapely arse that popped into his mind a lot more often than was comfortable. His body was hard and ready. He’d never before been naked with a maiden and not had her. His body pulsed with the need to have Einin under him as he seduced her. He wanted to be looking into her amber eyes as they widened with pleasure. He craved the tight heat of her body squeezing his…

Shite.

Sweat popped onto his forehead. She is for Belinus. Belinus, the god. The sooner Draknart handed her over, the better.

The moment she finished drinking, he called to her. “Come. This way.”

He headed into the woods. The fairy circle was just a short way down a deer path. As fast as he’d flown, they had missed twilight. As the sun dipped below the horizon to visit another world, so could travelers pass into Feyland. They wouldn’t be able to enter the gate today, but he wanted to see it before he went fishing.

The stones drew Draknart. They drew creatures of the old world: dragons, fairies, trolls, and everything wild. They repelled most everything human and domesticated. The average man could go in search of the stones and get lost in the forest for weeks.

The path wound around a large rock formation that blocked the view of the glen ahead. Then he came to the clearing at last, and an enraged, beastly growl rumbled up his chest as he strode forward.

Nay! Not after all those cursed decades! Not when he was so close to freeing himself from the damned curse.

The great stones of the fairy circle lay toppled over like storm-crushed trees.

No way in.

He stopped within reach and tossed his head back, shouted his rage to the dark sky, waking the birds in the trees. He would murder the men who had done this. He would pick off their limbs one by one. Slowly.

He picked up the nearest stone, then hurled it, and then another and another, their crashing weight shaking the ground. His chest heaved with murderous rage.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he quit and turned to look for Einin. Then he roared again, because she was nowhere to be seen.

If she ran, gods help me…

He scented the air. When he caught her scent nearby, he calmed some. She was just hiding behind a tree.

“Come out. I will not hurt you, lass.”

She did so with caution, stopping as far from him as the clearing allowed, hesitating. Her gaze cut to the stones, then, filled with questions, returned to him. Her voice held undisguised awe as she said, “That’d be the fairy circle, then?”

Draknart wanted to pull trees up by their roots. He restrained himself. “Aye.”

“Who would destroy such a wonder?”

“Men.” He could smell a faint trace of their scent.

“Why?”

“Why do men do anything? They have no more reason than sheep.” He ground his teeth, plotting bloody murder. “I’d wager one of their priests was involved.”

Draknart leaned closer to the stones to catch more of the scent so he could hunt down the villains. His dragon blood demanded a swift dispensation of justice. He would—

Wolves howled in the distance.

Einin took several hurried steps toward him.

Draknart sniffed the stones one last time, the scent faint. The men had been gone for days, perhaps as long as a sennight, and he could not fly until first light.

Einin rubbed her arms against the chill of the night. Her stomach growled. She kept looking in the direction of the wolf howls.

“We’ll return to the lake.” Draknart swore under his breath as he strode back to the path that had brought them to the circle. He went slowly, to make sure she could keep up with him in the darkness.

On the sandy beach, he picked up enough driftwood to last the night, then built a fire. He could cough up a spark or two even in his human form when he tried hard enough. When the goddess had cursed him to be halfling, she also had to bless him, to keep balance. So she’d blessed his human form to retain some of his dragon abilities: keen eyesight, sharp smell and hearing, extraordinary strength, and the odd spark here and there. Not enough. Not nearly. He didn’t want to be a man with a dragon’s senses. He wanted to be dragon.

“You can wash up, if you’d like. I’ll keep track of the wolves,” he told Einin, then he went back to the woods for the rabbit he scented nearby. Just now, he didn’t have the patience to start fishing as a man.

The hunt was short. He was barely away from Einin at all. When he returned, she was knee-deep in the water, her britches rolled up to midthigh. Draknart dropped the rabbit next to the fire and turned his gaze from the strip of Einin’s bare skin that caught the moonlight.

She hurried out of the water, rolling her britches down, avoiding looking at his naked body. She used her sword to skin the rabbit first, then to gut it, then she ran a sharp stick through the small carcass and held it over the fire.

She was quick and efficient. Draknart left her to her task and set her from his mind. ’Twould not do well to dwell on the thought of spending another night with her. He had enough problems. He strode to the lake and walked in, ducked under the water, and held his breath, swimming far and fast, his mind a hornet’s nest of questions.

As the fairy circle has been destroyed, can it also be rebuilt?

The stones, yes, he could put them all back together. But what about the magic of the place? Would Belinus himself be needed for the opening of the portal? Were the circle whole again, would he come?

Draknart swam as he thought. When he surfaced, nearly in the middle of the lake, he still did not have an answer. Nor did he gain it while he swam back. As he walked to shore, he shook the water out of his hair, then returned to Einin.

He dropped next to the fire, opposite her. She immediately offered a hind leg to him on the tip of her sword. He shook his head. He was tired of bite-sized meals.

She kept her gaze on him as she ate a juicy strip of roasted meat. “Do you not eat when you’re a man?”

He ran his tongue over his incisors. “I dislike the dull teeth and lack of claws. Hunting and eating like this isn’t worth the bother.”

She ate half the rabbit and left the other half for morning.

“Thank you for my dinner,” she said, then her gaze hardened, sharpened as she added, “When you turn into dragon at dawn… Do not put me in your mouth while I’m sleeping. Not even just to taste me.”

He grunted.

She would not move her gaze from him. “How would you feel if someone put you in their mouth while you slept?”

For the love of dragonkind… Her words heated his body and had him hardening all over. “I would not mind.”

“I do.” She fixed him with a glare, her hand moving to the pommel of her sword so as to leave no doubt that she would defend herself.

“Aye,” he said with a grunt of displeasure. “I will not taste you again.” He couldn’t resist adding, “I give you my word as a dragon.”

She gave a brief nod, then curled up next to the fire and closed her eyes.

He watched her for a while—soft cheeks, graceful neck, full lips, and lovely hips, those long legs, encased in nothing but britches. The longer he watched her, the hotter the fire felt. The more he wanted her. Since dragons, in general, weren’t known for their self-restraint, he stood and strode into the forest.

He wasn’t tired; he’d woken up from a long slumber mere days ago. He wasn’t hungry for meat; the deer herd he ate after he’d awoken filled him up. He stalked through the forest for a while, hoping he might come across a bear he could wrestle for entertainment, but the bears stayed out of his way, so he returned to the fairy circle, doing his best to keep his mind off the maiden sleeping by the fire. He kept track of the predators in the area by their scent. They’d scented him too, so none neared. Einin was safe.

Draknart stared at the toppled stones for a few moments, then, gritting his teeth, he stomped to the nearest one and heaved until he righted it. Mayhap he was sentimental, but he’d seen those stones erected. The men and women had been coarser and at the same time more refined than the ones in the villages now. They had respected the old gods and followed the old ways. There had been something sacred in their creating of the stone circle, so Draknart had watched them from the shadows and hadn’t eaten a single one.

Even the old gods had come to the circle, their curiosity aroused. The clearing had been a holy glen of theirs to begin with. They were so pleased with the humans’ gift, they made the stone circle into a gate.

Draknart lifted and heaved boulders that had taken ropes and oxen to raise back in the day. He put his shoulder into the work, uncaring of cuts and scrapes. Only when the circle stood once again, the sky lightening with the first rays of the sun, did he return to Einin.

By the time she sleepily blinked her eyes open, he was once again a dragon. The moment she saw him, her hand flew to her sword. But a heartbeat or two later, she relaxed, letting go of the weapon.

She sat and yawned, then stretched. The effect of her body in those damned formfitting britches was the same on Draknart as it had been before. The man inside him stirred and wanted to claim her.

Gods help him. Make the day go fast.

“Do we return home?” Einin asked, her gaze calculating.

“We stay another day,” he told her. They needed to wait until twilight to see if the restored fairy circle would work.

She turned toward the lake, thinking deeply about something, her shirt stretched over perfect breasts perfectly outlined in the muted light of dawn. She raked tiny white pearls of teeth over her full, ruby bottom lip.

“I’ll go look around from above,” Draknart said and launched to the air to fly a few circles.

He spotted a bear—the one that had been too cowardly to challenge him in the night—a large pack of wolves, as well as some smaller game, but no men, not nearby at least. The nearest village was on the other side of the lake.

Draknart did go for a visit. He dipped into a low flyover when he reached the ragtag collection of huts—much screaming and running about—but he did not scent the ones who’d destroyed the fairy circle. He didn’t set as much as a single thatched roof on fire. He was a picture of fairness and self-control, he was. Einin couldn’t find a fault in him this morning.

By the time he returned to her, landing in the middle of their small beach, she’d washed her face, rebraided her hair, and eaten the second half of her rabbit.

“What will we do today?” she asked, with only a hint of wariness.

“How about I take you flying?” Their flights had made her laugh before. He wanted to hear the sound again, although, the feel of her slim thighs clamped around his neck was likely to give him a heart attack.

Too late to back out now. He’d already made the offer.

The wariness disappeared from her eyes, replaced by enthusiasm. “Yes! Please. I mean, thank you. I would like that.”

She hurried to him, and Draknart held still while she climbed his scaled body, no matter the thoughts those small hands all over him put into his mind.

“Ready?”

“Aye!” Then, when he launched into the air, she squealed with delight.

He flew a lazy loop around the lake. They had plenty of time. “How ’bout a swim?”

Einin shouted toward his ear, but the wind whooshed by too loudly for him to hear her as he dove for the water, then under the lapping waves. Her arms and legs tightened around his neck. The muscles of her thighs squeezed him. Pleasure tingled through his body. But then she gripped tighter and tighter, her body communicating a different mood from his.

He bumped back up to the surface and floated. “What is it?”

She gasped for air. Coughed. “I can’t swim.”

“All living things can swim.” Some might not like the water, but they could all paddle along enough to save themselves in a flood.

She coughed some more as if in distress, so he held her safe with one wing as he shifted to his back and stretched out on the water, plopping her back on his belly. At least they could see eye to eye this way.

She lay flat on top of him, all wrung out, holding on for dear life. “I never learned. The creek near the village is too shallow, and even the closest lake is too far away.”

Draknart regarded her with curiosity. Humans could not swim unless taught. Huh. They were weak as a species with many shortcomings. He had high hopes that someday, they’d disappear altogether. A heavy flood might help—the gods willing. They could all drown for all he cared.

He floated slowly around the middle of the lake. After a while, Einin’s death grip eased, and she relaxed against him. Then more time passed, and she turned onto her back, trailing her hand in the water that reflected the wispy clouds above.

“It’s peaceful here,” she told him.

“You like it, then?”

“I’ve never been this far from the village before.”

He heard the smile in her voice. Why it should please him to have pleased her, he couldn’t fathom. Yet a rare contentment came over him. Should the high floods come, he was glad she would be with Belinus. The god would keep her safe. And should Belinus have sent her back to her village by then, Draknart decided he’d swoop in. The waters could wash away all mankind, for all he cared, but not his Einin.

The sun warmed his belly pleasantly, but not as pleasantly as her body. When he could smell her light, sweet sweat, he splashed some cool water on her with a wing. And when she laughed, he did it again, playing like a dragon pup, a long-forgotten feeling. He only stopped when her stomach grumbled again.

“Was the rabbit not enough, sweeting?” He would have thought, as small as she was, a hare would satisfy her.

“’Twas, and I thank you for the meal,” she said, but scanned the water with a wistful expression as if searching for the fish he’d promised.

“You eat every day?” he asked. He was familiar with humans and their ways, but not with every little detail.

A fond look came over her face, as if reliving pleasant memories. “During the good times, even twice a day.”

Dragons ate but once a sennight, could easily go a fortnight, and would survive a full month without a feeding. While they slept the long sleep, they could go without food for years. For certain, as a species, humans were most ill-suited for survival. Draknart didn’t forecast them a bright future.

“Come and gone,” he muttered under his breath. “Mark my word.”

“Mark what?” Einin’s gaze turned to his.

“Never you mind.”

No sense in vexing her just when they were beginning to get along so nicely.

He floated to shore with her and let her off on the sand before turning back into the water. “I’ll see about some fish.”

He swam out and plunged into the deep, came across half a dozen pike, picked a lively one that gave him some sport, and brought it to her. She already had wood gathered for a fire. He dropped the fish, then used a talon to gut it.

“That’s a five-footer,” she said, wide-eyed, heaving to lift it by the tail. “And weighs three stone at least.”

So maybe he was showing off for her a wee bit. He found suddenly that he wanted her to see him as something other than an evil beast. Draknart wanted her to remember him well, after she went to the god.

He lit the fire, and she took care of the roasting, a piece so small, it was hardly worth bothering with. While she ate that, he swallowed the rest of the raw fish.

“I thought you said you didn’t eat every day,” she remarked.

He shrugged. “No sense in letting good food go to waste.”

She’d loosened her braid to dry from their earlier swim, and her hair spread around her shoulders, cascading down her back. Her still-damp shirt now stuck to her skin. The man inside Draknart craved and demanded. He hoped Belinus would come to the circle tonight. Draknart couldn’t trust himself with Einin much longer.

She looked at him over the fire. “Before the curse, could you turn into a man?”

“Aye, at will.” A form close enough to human so humans wouldn’t know the difference. That was how he’d swived the usual virgin sacrifices. Then he’d turned back to a dragon and eaten them.

Einin appeared deep in thought. “Why not stay in the shape of a man and live in one of the villages?”

“If you can be a dragon, always be a dragon,” he told her, a little offended at her suggestion.

“How old are you?” she asked next.

He tried to think back through all the changes of the human world he’d witnessed: the great plague, the wars, the succession of kings. “I’ve been in the hills since before the first villages.”

She stared at him. “But that’s a thousand years, at least!”

Sounded like a lot when she said it like that. “And you?”

“Twenty.”

He’d had stomach aches that had lasted longer. She was such an insubstantial wee lass, ’twas hard to fathom how she managed to fascinate him so thoroughly. Aye, she was small, but her fire and her courage were great. She’d been willing to give her life for her village. A village with people like the cowherd’s wife who’d whipped her bloody. Einin was more of a hero than any of the knights who’d come to challenge Draknart, knights bought by the village, men who fought for gold coin.

She licked her fingers, and for some reason, Draknart found even that interesting. She seemed equally fascinated with him, for she watched him through narrowed eyes. “Are dragons immortal?”

“We can be killed.” He’d seen plenty of his brethren fall.

“But if you’re not killed.” She tilted her head. “Would you go on forever?”

“I am not certain. Dragons are a querulous sort.” He had to think. “I know this, I have never seen one die of old age.”

“What do they die of?”

“A stronger dragon coming by and killing them for their territory.”

She digested this for a couple of moments.

“How about your family?” she wanted to know next.

“I barely remember them. I flew the nest early.”

She hesitated before she asked her next question. “Have you ever had a mate?”

“Not a mate. But I shared a cave now and then with a she-dragon.” Thinking about her always put him in a bad mood, so he didn’t.

“And children?”

He shook his head. “Dragon pups have always been rare.”

“Where is the she-dragon now?”

“When I was…cursed…” Draknart turned from Einin, flopping down onto his stomach and curling his tail around himself. “She disliked it.”

Gruna had tried to eat him several times in his human form, before he’d finally wised up and left her.

Draknart didn’t like those memories. He liked thinking of the decades that had passed since even less. Truth was he’d been lonely. And humans were growing more and more common and annoying.

The first batch he’d seen in the valley threw stones and sticks at him. He thought they were a strange kind of ape, like the ones he’d seen on his longest flight to the south in his younger years.

After he’d eaten the first tribe of intruders, he had some peace and quiet for a while. Then another batch came. They had sharp stones tied to their long sticks that cut his knees. But out of all the people who’d passed through his hills, the current people of the villages seemed the worse.

They had swords now. But they kept their sharp sticks too. And they could shoot them from some contraption from afar. One impertinent little gnat not long ago had nearly blinded Draknart with something they called an arrow. Draknart had questioned the knight for some time about the strange invention before eating him.

At least they couldn’t shoot fire, like he could. If they ever figured out how to do that, he was packing it up and leaving the hills.

As if to prove his point on the overall inconvenience of humans, one stepped out of the forest. He’d come from upwind, and the smoke of the fire had dulled Draknart’s nose.

Draknart flexed his talons as he pushed to his feet and stepped between the visitor and Einin, calling over his shoulder, “You best stay out of this.”

The young man in soldier’s armor strode boldly forward, sword at the ready.

Flying so low over the village had been a mistake.

“I’ve come to kill you, evil beast,” the youth shouted.

They always said the same thing. Draknart swallowed his disappointment. “And who would you be?”

“Jon of Fernwood,” the fool proclaimed proudly. “Dragon slayer.”

Not groaning out loud took some restraint. “Might you not wait with the title until your dragon is slain?”

The youth shot him a look of fury. Then his gaze cut to Einin, her fiery hair and round breasts. His expression changed to that of open desire. “Worry not, fair maiden. I shall save you from this vile beast and make you mine.”

Einin made a sound behind Draknart that he could not interpret, and he could not look back at her face, for the youth charged with the usual battle cry.

Make Einin his? This little vermin? With barely some peach fuzz on his weak chin? Darkness bubbled up inside Draknart. The bloodlust was instant, such as he hadn’t felt since he’d slain Fearan, who’d a century ago come to the hills and thought to take Draknart’s territory and treasure.

Draknart was about to bite the fool little knight in half when it occurred to him that to kill a human while on a pilgrimage to ask the goddess’s forgiveness for killing humans might not be the smartest course of action.

He snapped his jaw shut and contemplated the bastard. He’d never been in a fight before while trying to protect someone as he wanted to protect Einin behind him. He’d never been in a fight before where his immediate goal hadn’t been to incinerate his enemy or rip the man’s throat out with his talons.

That moment of hesitation cost him a painful cut on the wing, clear through sinew and muscle. He held back the blast of fire in his throat.

Instead of roasting the pup, he asked, “Can you swim?”

The startled youth nodded.

Draknart swept him up with his good wing, catapulting him toward the middle of the lake. The knight flew in a soft arch, screaming all the way, then a splash, then sweet silence again.

The fool was probably struggling to peel off his armor. Draknart had half a mind to fly over and sit on his head, keep him under water. He would have, if he wasn’t convinced that the goddess would take drowning a human as badly as she would take eating him.

Draknart failed to comprehend what Belisama liked so much about mankind. Yet she was fond of them, for she kept their kind alive. She was the goddess of fertility. She blessed them with offspring. And she blessed their fields so they could gather in the harvest and go on living and multiplying. And still, instead of worshipping her, many betrayed her for the new god the priests had brought to the villages from the south.

When Draknart turned to Einin, he found her right behind him with her sword drawn.

He narrowed an eye at her. He waited until she shoved her sword back into her belt before he returned to the fire and plopped down onto the sand, taking care to lick his wound clean.

“Have you been preparing to help me or stab me in the back?” he inquired without heat.

“Help you.” She cleared her throat. “Most certainly.”

“You’d say that either way.”

“I would,” she admitted, with a slight twitch of her lips. Then she eyed his injury and stepped closer. “Does it hurt?”

He snorted. The cut was bad, mayhap bad enough to stop him from flying anymore today, but… “It will heal once we step into Feyland.”

Her eyes rounded, her mouth gaped. “You mean to go into Feyland? We haven’t come to just see the circle?”

She thumped down onto her shapely bottom, as if her knees had gone weak.

“We will go in, if we can,” he told her. “I restored the stones, but they still might not work. If they do, the gate will open at twilight. I mean to have the curse lifted.”

He wanted that more than he’d ever wanted anything. And yet, deep down, a part of him suddenly wished that the stone circle wouldn’t work.