“I have to do it myself. That's what a Queen does. She saves herself.”
Something in the brightness of his eyes and the way his tines glare brighter than the sun when he smiles, shatters something in her heart. Isra's not sure if it's the faint ache of her throat or the ache in her heart that makes the shadows below her belly seem darker than black. Either way she aches to watch the joy dance in his gaze like a wild animal just let loose from a cage.
It was easier to know him when he was dying and there was blood between them instead of smiles.
Isra knows she'll never feel so bright with adventure (only fury makes her glow now). But she tries to match his smile and pretend that something white and lively is sparking in the dark blue corners of her eyes. “Hopefully in all the ways that count.” Both art and words can burn she thinks, both can die.
Fable lifts his head from his patch of sunlight and adds If either burn I will put them out. Drops of salt-water drip from between his teeth. Isra almost sighs with the sweetness of smelling brine mixed with the floral perfume of a hundred different flowers.
There is only the softness that deepens her false smile to hint that the dragon and the unicorn share something between them that is deeper than all the oceans in the universe. Isra's not yet ready to share with the world how much she loves a young dragon that might turn into a monster.
She wants to ask him about his blade and about Florentine, who loves him and wanted more magic than Isra had to give. Instead she only watches him brush his muzzle to her golden coated leaf with that dead ache in her throat. Barely does she manage to whisper, “it would stay that way forever.”
And for the first time Isra realizes that she kills everything she changes even as she remakes it into something brighter than she could ever be.
@Lysander
