Zabina
The Jurdiena forest smells of wet pine and cold earth. I like the smell that nature gives off in the morning dew, the sounds the animals make amongst the trees.
I hide behind a wide oak and press myself against the trunk. The basket is crushed against my chest.
Hunters.
Four, maybe six.
Their steps snap dry branches with the clumsiness of humans who think the forest doesn't listen. They pass metres from me without lifting their eyes from the ground.
They carry bows and arrows tipped with kirys — the only metal that can pierce dragon scales.
Today, they're not here for deer.
I wait until their voices dissolve amongst the trees.
I breathe again, and then I see it: between the treetops, crossing the grey morning sky, a black dragon falls with broken wings, spinning on itself until it vanishes behind the line of pines with a blow that makes the ground shake.
I stay still. A kirys arrow can bring anyone down. I should leave. I should grab my things and return to my cabin without moving for three days. That's the sensible thing. That's what someone who has spent years surviving and running away would do.
I set the basket on the ground and walk towards where it fell.
"Don't go, don't go."
The voice in my head is a constant hammering.
Damn it, I should listen to the sensible girl.
I stop when I see him. The gem on my chest glows. He lies amongst the roots of a fallen tree, in his human form. We dragons change our appearance with the same naturalness with which humans breathe. They don't know we can walk amongst them, take their form, speak their language.
This one is wearing black clothes, torn at the side where the arrow entered. His dark hair is tousled over his forehead and his face is turned towards the sky.
Young.
Younger than I expected.
I approach slowly, as if he might wake at any moment and rip my head off.
I crouch beside him. The wound in his side is deep and still bleeding. I reach a hand towards his neck.
His fingers close around my wrist.
The air leaves my lungs.
His eyes remain closed, but his hand grips with a strength that doesn't belong to someone who has just fallen from the sky. He pulls me towards him. I end up leaning over his body. So close that I can feel the warmth of his skin. That I can see the slow movement of his chest as he breathes. That if I lowered my head just a few centimetres…
I don't finish the thought.
His fingers loosen slowly. One by one. His hand falls to the ground without strength. He is once again the unconscious stranger from a moment ago, as if nothing had happened.
But something did happen.
I straighten up slowly. I bring my wrist to my chest without realising it, covering it with my other hand. I swallow. He's still alive.
That's what matters.
I repeat it to myself twice more, until I almost believe it.
I hear footsteps and draw my hunting knife. It's a deer. I bring my hand to my chest and lower my guard. What a fright.
I look at him again. I won't think about it too much or I won't do it. I transform. My white wings spread out amongst the trees. I hold him carefully in my claws and rise just enough not to brush the treetops and draw the hunters' attention. I was always too small to be a dragon, but in human form he doesn't weigh that much.
I fly low, hugging the shadow of the pines, until the great hollow oak appears amongst the undergrowth.
My cabin.
Built by my father inside the oldest tree in the forest, invisible to anyone who doesn't know it exists.
I slip through the opening at the top and lay him on my bed.
I shift back to human.
I remove his shirt carefully. The wound is worse than it looked from the outside. The kirys leaves a burn around the cut, a dark mark spreading across his skin like roots. If I don't treat it, the poison will reach his heart before dawn.
I place my hands on his side. The gem awakens on its own, as if it had been waiting for this. The heat rises from my chest, flows down my arms and concentrates in my palms. A silver light filters between my fingers.
The wound begins to close, slowly, from the inside out. The kirys burn fades and disappears.
I withdraw my hands. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him. He is breathing steadily. The colour has returned to his face. His features are calm, without the arrogance that black dragons carry stuck to their skin. Like this,
still, he seems almost harmless.
And he is also… very attractive.
I get to my feet and pace. I am a white dragon. Maybe the last one. No one in this forest knows.
No one can know.
Two hundred years ago, the black dragons seized our kingdom. It wasn't a war — it was a hunt. They wanted us extinct, us and the gems we have carried in our chests since birth. One by one they extinguished our flame until almost nothing remained.
My father survived long enough to hide me here, amongst humans, where no black dragon would ever think to look for one of our kind. Before he died he took my hands and told me never to reveal who I am, to dye my hair, to keep the gem still and silent against my chest. "As long as they don't see you, you will be safe, my daughter."
I have been repeating it to myself every morning. And today I have disobeyed. There is a black dragon in my bed, in my cabin, in the only place where I am safe. If he wakes and discovers me, if he sees the gem, if he understands what I am…
His eyelashes flutter. I tense.
His eyes open slowly. Dark, disoriented at first, scanning the wooden ceiling, the curved walls of the tree, the dim light of the lamp.
Then they find me.