Then the light blinked out, and for several moments, Einin couldn’t see anything, until her eyes once again adjusted to the dark. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest, they probably heard it back in Downwood.
Draknart strode into the tower in silence, then up the stairs. He had nothing to say? Sure, she was struck speechless, but Draknart! Lord Draknart! And a castle!
But, of course, this wasn’t what he wanted. He hadn’t gone to the gods for a castle. He’d gone to be returned to dragon.
When a couple of wolves howled in the woods behind her, Einin finally found the strength in her legs and hurried inside. Focusing on Draknart was easier than trying to comprehend her own unlikely change of fortune. Lady Einin? No, that couldn’t be. That part had to have been a dream. Or she must have misheard it.
She came out of the staircase and into the tower room just as Draknart spit fire on a few pieces of broken furniture by the wall. She was so exhausted that she lay on the floor, too tired to care about how hard the stones were or how cold she was. She curled up, hugging her knees to her chin. She would think about everything that had happened, in the morning. Maybe when her brain was fresh, it could make more sense of all this.
Draknart stared into the fire, the flames illuminating his large body, every tense muscle.
“I am sorry,” she told him, “that the goddess took your dragon shape.”
He looked at her but said nothing. Instead, he rose, strode to the window, and looked out into the night.
Exhaustion washed over Einin. For a moment, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was dragon, turning his great body from the window to look at her, the scales of his tail scraping on the stones.
Midnight.
“Draknart!” She scrambled to her feet, blinking rapidly.
He growled, his lips pulling back, the light of the fire glinting off his fangs. “The goddess reversed the curse. Man from dawn to midnight, dragon from midnight to dawn.”
“Why?”
His great dragon body shook with fury, his talons digging into the stone floor. Smoke curled from his nostrils. “A jest, I suspect.”
Einin’s heart clenched. He would now be human for much more of the day than he was dragon. The goddess had doubled his curse.
She drew back until her back was to the wall, expecting him to rage and blow fire, to bring the tower down around them. He hated being a halfling more than he hated anything.
Instead, he watched her, and measure by measure, he calmed, holding her gaze, the fight and tension going out of him. His black dragon eyes turned thoughtful. After a few more moments, he lay down in the middle of the room and opened one wing in invitation. “It is late. You are tired. I will keep you warm in the night. Come.”
She stared at him, stunned. But she inched closer and snuggled against his warm dragon body. His wing, like a blanket, draped around her.
“Do you wish,” he asked above her head, “to stay and become lady of this castle?”
Her heart pounded. He must mean without him. At one point, before dawn, he would fly away. Now that he could fly again, why would he stay?
She looked up at the broken rafters and the holes in the roof. She knew how to repair thatching. She had no idea what to do with shingles. She was no stonemason either. “You mean be lady of this ruin?”
“I am dragon. Do I not have a hoard? Ruins can be rebuilt.”
Her head snapped up. She stared into the dragon’s midnight eyes. “You have treasure? Where?”
“Under the hill. Why do you think I live in that cave if not to guard what’s mine?”
“And you would use your hoard to rebuild this castle?” She watched him with suspicion. Dragons did not part from their gold for any reason, said the old tales. Did he think to claim the castle for himself and make her leave?
“I would rebuild this castle if it be your wish, Lady Einin,” he said.
She gaped, then gave a startled laugh. “I’m no lady.”
“I’m no lord.” He held her gaze. “Do you think you could live with a cursed beast such as I?”
“Why? What do you need me for, powerful as you are, whether man or dragon? Once word spreads that the castle has a new lord, maidens will flock to the gate. And all of them will be more biddable than I.”
“I don’t want a biddable maiden. I want the one who knows where the heart is in a dragon.”
“Exactly! I tried to kill you in your cave.”
“You could try again,” he said in a wistful tone. “I enjoy the sparring. I know you want to be wild and free, but we could be wild and free together. I would take you flying in the night sky. I would love you until my dying day.”
Her throat went dry. Her heart hammered. “You never said you loved me.”
“I hunted for you. I let you sit on my back while I took you flying.”
“You didn’t eat me,” she added, recognizing the signs of dragon courtship now, in hindsight.
He beamed. “I wish to pledge my life to keeping you safe.”
The images flitting through her mind took her breath away. Suddenly, she wanted all Draknart was offering: a home that truly belonged to her, a mate who didn’t want to change her, and true freedom. Yes, she wanted it all. But as she watched Draknart, she felt disinclined to capitulate overly fast. The dragon was arrogant beyond words already.
“Keep me safe?” She fixed him with a haughty look. “I am the best swordswoman in the Black Hills.”
“You are the only swordswoman in the Black Hills.” He drew her closer. “My hoard and my sword are yours, my lady. Dragon by night, and man by day.”
She shoved him, but only just a little. “I don’t need your hoard and your sword. I have a sword of my own. I’m staying because I love you, you daft beast.”
He laughed, shaking the rafters, then rolled onto his back and smiled up to the night sky through the gaps in the ceiling with stunning, undiluted relief. “Thank the god and goddess.”
“Let us hope they’ll stay away.”
He shook with laugher.
“Stop that!” She shoved him harder. “Don’t you collapse our only standing tower. This will be our bedroom when the castle is rebuilt.”
His laughter softened to a chuckle. And then he sighed such a heartfelt sigh of contentment that Einin’s own heart, filled to the brim with love already, nearly overspilled.
Epilogue
Draknart never grew tired of looking at his castle from the air. The fully rebuilt, majestic structure was a sight to see at the crack of dawn, the four sturdy towers surrounded by mist. He flew in a smaller circle as he aimed for the highest tower where he might land, whooshing over the healthy village that had grown around the castle walls over the past century.
The first tradesmen who’d come to work on the castle’s restoration never left. Instead they brought their families, then invited their relatives when the lord decided his lady should have servants.
As Draknart reminisced, he caught snatches of a conversation in a hut below the tower where he landed.
“You should tell your cousin to come,” a woman said, probably to her husband, the two of them getting ready for the day. “The lord and the lady are kind.”
Draknart did not have to strain to hear the husband’s response, his dragon hearing as sharp as ever. “Fey they are for certain.”
“Aye,” the wife agreed, reverence in her tone. “The elders say they are the very same lord and lady who rebuilt the castle from a ruin at the time of our great-grandfathers.”
“We can all see with our own eyes that neither Lord Draknart nor Lady Einin has aged any, even as we’ve grown older. Certainly, they are beyond mere mortal.”
“Fey they are. Who else could have a dragon as a friend?”
“Bless him for coming and going at night. Gives me a fright, he does, when I catch sight of the great dark shadow. I think I’d be too frightened to see all of him, out in the day.”
“Bless him for not bothering the livestock. He hunts f
ar afield.”
“Bless him for protecting the village.”
Draknart allowed himself a smile. When the fire bell fell from its tower in the dark of the night, he had lifted it back in its place. When snow had buried the village in the middle of this past winter, he melted the ice off the roofs at night with a couple of well-aimed puffs of fire. He was right proud of himself for not setting a single thatched roof aflame. He’d even brought two of the deer he killed toward dawn and left them at the village square, knowing the men would not be able to go into the woods to hunt. He helped where he could. It gave his night flights purpose.
As dawn reached the horizon, he walked down the wide staircase created for his dragon size. He pushed open the heavy oak double doors to his bedchamber and stopped to take in the lovely view of his lady wife in bed.
“Enjoyed your flight?” she murmured, woken by the scraping of the door.
Some nights she went with him. On others, when she was tired from supervising the herb harvest or the bottling of elderberry wine or helping a woman in the village through labor, she stayed home for a full night’s sleep.
The first light of dawn came through the window just then, and Draknart’s dragon body changed to the body of a man. For the past century, he’d been dragon from midnight to dawn, and man for the rest of the day. There’d been a time he would have considered having to spend even more time in man’s skin the worst possible curse. But in truth, his new circumstances allowed him a better life with Einin.
She was happy, so he was happy.
He slid naked under the furs and pulled her into his arms.
“You’re wet,” she murmured against his chest.
“Swam in the lake.” He pulled back a little. “Do I make you cold?”
She pressed herself against him. “Nay. Never.”
He reached a hand under her chin and raised her head to kiss her lips. She was sweeter than honeycomb, his Einin.
“More people are coming up the southern road. Camped for the night. An old woman and her daughter, and the daughter’s children.”
“Accused of witchery?”
“They’ll tell us when they get here.”
After Draknart had flown his hoard to Castle Blackstone on a moonless night and then had the castle rebuilt in the following years, he had offered free land to the tradesmen in addition to their pay. For a while, there were many more men than women. Then two sisters accused of witchcraft escaped a mob who’d chased them in the night with torches.
Einin had offered them safety in the castle. Somehow, word spread, and the following year, another woman arrived, two more the year after, then more the year after that. People said the lord and lady of the castle would not turn any unfortunates away.
Draknart kissed his Einin again and again.
“The baker and his wife think we’re fey,” he said a long time later, pulling Einin against him, her head on his shoulder as he lay on his back.
He looked at their shield carved into the stone above the doorway as it was carved above every threshold in the castle. A shield with a dragon in the middle, on a background of two crossed swords, and the family motto on a pennant above: Wild and Free.
Einin sighed, her breast pressing into his side in a most distracting way. “I should be an old crone by now, for certain. Do you think I am unnatural? The priest in my village used to say—”
He growled. “Never unnatural.”
“What is it, then? The love of a dragon?” Her tone said she meant it as a joke.
“Aye. The love of a dragon, for certain. You should love your dragon with all your heart.”
“Are you my dragon, then?”
“Yours and no other’s.” He rolled her under him and grinned at the catch in her soft breath. “And you are mine, now and forever, my Lady Einin.”
“I am yours with all my heart, my lord dragon.”
He made love to her gently.
And then…
And then his sweet Einin raked her nails down his back and demanded, “Now take me like you did in the cave at Fern Lake.”
* * *
’Twas another year before Belisama visited Einin, on a clear summer night.
Of course, she wouldn’t have been Einin if she didn’t draw her sword at the deity. Draknart was out flying and not expected to return ‘til dawn. Einin hadn’t gone with him. She’d been tired more and more lately, probably old age catching up with her at last. But she didn’t think about any of that as she stood ready to defend her home and the man she loved.
She faced down the goddess. “Don’t you dare curse him again!”
Belisama chuckled, the sound strange coming from a column of light. “I’m not here for his stubborn arse.”
“Don’t you hurt the people of the village either.”
“I can see what he likes in you. All that fire and strength.” She paused. “It’s what made me decide to visit and give you my blessing.”
“I’d rather you didn’t—” But Einin was too late.
Her skin crawled as if a hundred mice ran up her legs. The terrible sensation cut off the rest of her sentence. Then her sword dropped as her arms twisted and her nails turned into talons. Right before leathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades! For a moment, she couldn’t say anything, because her mouth was full of giant curved teeth.
“Why?” she roared when she could speak again, her transformation complete.
“You can’t very well birth a dragon pup in human form,” the goddess told her in a condescending tone, as if she’d expected Einin to have more brains, and she’d been disappointed.
Einin dropped to her dragon belly, the air rushing out of her lungs. “I’m a century old.”
“Perfect for a dragon’s first offspring.”
Einin stared. A baby. A baby dragon. Both. Any child she had with Draknart would likely be a halfling. Joy filled her to bursting. A son or a daughter…
“A daughter,” Belisama informed her. “I don’t expect her to become my priestess, but she’ll always be welcome in Feyland. As long as she doesn’t call me fairy godmother.”
“Thank you, goddess,” Einin rushed to say, but the column of light had already disappeared.
A child.
Einin couldn’t catch her breath. In her dragon form, her laboring lungs sounded like the blacksmith’s bellows.
A child!
She gingerly stood and took stock of her new shape. She wasn’t as large as Draknart, but close, her shiny scales more green than black. As she turned, her tail caught on the bedclothes, and she knocked them all to the floor.
“First thing we’re going to need, is another bed,” she muttered, then headed up the wide staircase that seemed to have shrunk since the last time she’d climbed it.
Long before she was ready, she was standing at the highest point of the tower, on a widened windowsill, darkness gaping below her. Yet nothing could scare her enough to keep her from finding Draknart.
A child. A daughter!
She pushed away and spread her wings.
I’m flying!
It took her only a moment to reassess that sentiment as the stone wall blurred by her.
I’m plummeting!
She batted her wings in panic, her great dragon heart hammering, but at last she caught the wind, and she rose. Still, she was over the fields by the time she relaxed. And when she did… Oh, but the landscape was beautiful by moonlight—different from when she’d been peeking around Draknart’s wings and neck. She was in full control now, flying where she pleased. She grinned so wide, she nearly caught a startled bat in her teeth.
She didn’t see Draknart anywhere, but she did see a man walking up the road toward the castle. And in her excitement to see a new journeyman, she set down right before him, forgetting that she was a dragon.
His sharp cry of “Return to the devil, ye great evil beast!” reminded her.
She recognized his robes then, the robes of a traveling priest. He tried to hit her on the snout w
ith his staff, but she stepped back.
“Haunt these hills no more!” he cried, his triple chin trembling. “I order you to burst into flames and die the agony of hell!”
She blinked at him.
“I will bring an army of soldiers of light. I’ve come to confirm troubling rumors that these hills hid witches. I see now what drew them here.” He tried to hit her again and missed, his small eyes burning with hate. He kept on madly waving his staff, utterly undaunted. “I shall burn you all out! And when you’re burned and the castle is reduced to ruin, I shall sprinkle the ground with holy water!”
It was then that Einin learned the first thing about being a dragon. Dragons were not nearly as patient as humans. She lurched forward and ate the man.
The second thing she learned about being a dragon was that they weren’t bothered by guilt. She was licking her chops by the time a great shadow appeared in the sky, Draknart attacking with a battle cry.
Dragon instinct pushed her to fight. Her human mind told her she didn’t want to hurt him, and she didn’t want him to hurt her. So she forced herself to drop to her belly and present her neck.
He landed on her, his sharp teeth snapping at her throat, but then he sniffed, his dragon nostrils drawing in air over and over. He moved his head enough so he could look her in the eye. “Einin?” He sniffed her again. “Einin!”
“Visited by the goddess.” She grinned at him.
His eyes narrowed to slits with fury. Smoke streamed from his nostrils. “Cursed?” His voice rumbled with anger as he shifted his weight. “Why?”
“Blessed!”
He grumbled as he got off her, then paced, only stopping to tear the ground with his talons. “’Tis no blessing.”
She rolled to her feet and nudged him with her shoulder, nearly knocking him over. She laughed. “We’re blessed with a pup, you great oaf. Or soon will be.”
He puffed smoke at her. “Don’t jest with me, Einin.”
“I’m not jesting.” She flapped her wings. Then she stopped and looked at them, the full wingspan. “Why are my bones aching? Is that a pregnant-dragon thing?”