Chapter 46: THE BLACK DRAGON

DIANA’S POV

Vharos was larger than Diana remembered, but that did nothing to make him feel unfamiliar.

The cavern disappeared around the edges.

Black scales.

A wing.

The scrape of iron.

Diana could not tell whether she was looking at Vharos or remembering something else on top of him.

Alma touched her elbow.

"Princess."

Diana had stopped before the iron line.

Good.

At least her feet still followed instructions when the rest of her did not.

Vharos watched her.

The old dragon lay across a broad shelf of dark stone.

Diana had known he was ill before entering.

Knowing was different from seeing it.

The dragons above the Citadel carried their bodies as though the world had been built with enough space for them. Even the wounded patrol dragon had filled the treatment court with restless strength.

Vharos looked powerful because of what he was, but exhaustion had settled into every movement.

One foreleg rested at an awkward angle beneath him. His ribs showed more clearly than Diana expected beneath the black scales, and the effort required to keep his head raised was visible in the slow tension along his neck.

Medical cloth, water vessels, and treatment cases had been arranged against one cavern wall. None looked temporary.

People had been caring for him here for a long time.

Diana had imagined Raigoro’s dragon before she knew his name. Some enormous black creature hidden beneath the Citadel because Blackharrow considered it too dangerous for ordinary halls.

She had not imagined an old dragon deciding whether lifting his own head was worth the strength it cost.

Even sick, he filled the cavern in a way the Muster dragons never had.

His ribs moved slowly beneath black scales. Old scars crossed his neck and shoulder, and one horn was chipped at the tip.

His folded wing stretched farther than Diana’s entire apartment.

Diana searched the cavern for chains and found none.

She had been looking for them without meaning to.

No iron circled Vharos’s neck.

Nothing fixed his legs to the floor.

The keepers carried guide lines, but none had been attached to him.

If Vharos remained in this cavern, illness kept him here more effectively than restraint did.

The difference disturbed Diana.

The dragon beneath Valence had been chained.

Until the Muster, Diana had known too little about dragons to understand what that meant beyond fear. She had now watched Blackharrow inspect, feed, treat, argue with, and care for dozens of them.

None had worn chains like the ones in her memory.

Whatever had happened beneath Valence had not been ordinary dragonkeeping.

Master Clair stood several paces ahead.

"Vharos."

The dragon ignored him.

His eyes remained on Diana.

The dragonstone became hot.

Diana caught it through her dress.

Vharos lowered his head, bringing one dark eye closer to her level as though trying to see her more clearly.

Master Clair noticed.

"Your Grace, one step forward."

Diana looked at him.

"One."

The iron line lay beneath her boots.

She crossed it.

Vharos drew in a long breath.

The sound filled the cavern.

Diana stopped.

Master Clair watched the dragon’s chest.

"Another."

Daric said, "Is that necessary?"

"For what we are testing, yes."

Master Clair looked toward Diana.

"But only if Her Grace agrees."

Diana appreciated that enough to resent the timing.

She took another step.

The dragonstone burned harder.

Vharos tried to lift his head farther.

The movement stopped halfway.

His foreleg shifted as though he meant to push himself higher, but Master Clair immediately raised one hand toward the other keepers.

Nobody approached.

Vharos abandoned the effort on his own and lowered his weight again.

Diana watched the muscles along his foreleg stop trembling.

He had been trying to stand before she entered.

Seeing how much even this smaller movement cost him made the roaring above the gate harder to understand.

Something about Diana’s presence had made an animal this exhausted spend strength he did not possess.

Pressure gathered beneath the scar at Diana’s throat, accompanied by a familiarity she could not explain. She had no memory clear enough to justify it.

Vharos shifted his foreleg.

Two keepers tensed.

He did not rise.

His head lowered farther.

Diana saw the left wing more clearly.

An old scar cut unevenly through the black scales near the upper edge, where the new scales had grown back differently around it.

Then, Master Clair, Daric, and the marked floor stopped mattering.

Stone broke above her head.

A black wing dropped.

Something struck it.

The dragon twisted around the child beneath him.

Diana stopped breathing.

The cavern returned.

The scar remained.

Her hand lifted toward the shape of that old wound in the air between them.

Alma whispered her name.

Only the first word.

"Princess."

Diana lowered her hand.

Vharos made a quiet sound deep enough for Diana to feel through the floor.

Diana knew that sound too.

She had heard something like it through the dragonstone on the morning of the wedding, far away and buried beneath stone and years.

Master Clair looked toward Daric.

"He has not made that sound in months."

Daric did not answer.

Vharos’s eyes had not left Diana.

She wrote without looking down.

SCAR.

Master Clair came closer to read.

"Yes."

Diana pointed toward the wing.

"You recognize it?"

Her chalk stopped.

Everyone waited.

Diana stared at the old wound.

Recognize required certainty.

She had only a six-year-old girl’s fragments: fire, falling stone, and a dragon who had protected her.

She wrote: I HAVE SEEN ONE LIKE IT.

Daric read the slate.

"One like it?"

Diana looked at him, then back at Vharos.

The dragon moved his head closer to the floor.

Master Clair lifted one hand.

"Stay where you are."

Diana obeyed.

Vharos stretched his neck forward slowly.

The guards behind Diana tightened their grips on their weapons.

Master Clair looked back.

"Do not draw."

No one did.

Vharos stopped several paces from Diana.

He was close enough now for Diana to see old cracks along the scales near his jaw and how tired his eyes looked.

Diana was still afraid of him, yet the exhaustion in his eyes hurt to see.

Vharos closed his eyes.

Diana remembered a black wing over her head.

Her mother’s hands pulling her away.

She took one small step closer before realizing she had moved.

Master Clair did not stop her.

Vharos opened his eyes again.

Diana had spent most of her life around people who stopped using her name and eventually behaved as though she had never been there. Vharos kept watching her with unmistakable recognition.

Whatever he remembered, it included her.