Chapter 47: WHAT HE REMEMBERS

DIANA’S POV

The memories returned out of order.

Even the fragments were almost too much.

Vharos breathed across the stone between them, and the first fragment came.

Iron scraped behind her. Two men hauled at a chain thick enough that neither could move it alone.

Diana’s knees weakened.

Alma touched her arm.

"Princess?"

The next memory arrived before Diana could answer.

Men were shouting beneath Valence.

One wanted the dragon moved.

Another said the ward would not hold.

A third voice said something about the king.

Diana could not see the man’s face.

Then Vharos was fighting the chain.

The cavern around her became the old chamber beneath the Valence palace.

Diana reached for the slate.

Her fingers missed it.

Daric moved.

Master Clair stopped him with one arm. "Wait."

Fire flashed from somewhere behind the men.

It had not come from the black dragon.

A flash crossed the chamber.

She had been small enough that a black wing covered everything.

The wing came down.

Stone struck it.

The memory sharpened around the scar.

That scar.

Diana tried to cry out.

Nothing came, and her hand flew to her throat.

Vharos surged upright.

Keepers shouted.

"Back!"

"Vharos!"

The dragon managed to stand, though his forelegs shook beneath his weight and one wing struck the cavern wall as he turned toward Diana.

The guards moved.

Vharos roared.

They stopped.

Vharos had put himself between Diana and the people approaching her.

It was the same position she remembered from childhood: his body between Diana and whoever was moving toward her.

Diana shook her head.

He had misunderstood.

She tried to show him she was safe.

Her hands were shaking too badly for the signs.

Alma moved beside her.

"She’s all right. Stop."

Alma said it to the guards loudly enough for Vharos to hear too. Diana doubted either side considered Alma in command.

Diana forced one hand outward toward the guards.

Stay.

The sign was meant for the people behind her.

Vharos kept his attention fixed on the guards, but the roar eased when they stopped advancing.

Master Clair looked from Diana to the dragon.

"Nobody move."

Vharos lowered his head slightly.

Diana could not tell whether Vharos had reacted to her hand, the guards stopping, or her breathing becoming steadier.

The memory continued.

Queen Elara appeared through smoke.

Blood was on her face.

Her mother caught Diana and pulled.

Diana remembered reaching backward.

Toward Vharos.

The dragon was still chained.

Men were shouting.

Her mother said something Diana could not recover.

After that came light and pain, her mother’s hands, and then the locked room she remembered afterward. Alma was crying beside the bed while Diana tried to call for her mother and produced no sound.

The memories broke.

The cavern floor returned beneath her feet, and her knees gave way.

Alma caught one side of her.

A keeper caught the other.

Vharos roared again.

Diana’s head struck Alma’s shoulder.

"Do not touch her!" Alma shouted toward the guards.

"We are not."

Master Clair crouched. "Her Grace?"

Diana could not even reach for the slate.

Breathing was difficult enough.

The dragonstone burned against her scar.

A keeper reached for the clasp, and Diana caught his hand before he touched it.

She could not explain why removing the dragonstone frightened her more than leaving the heat against her scar.

Alma helped her sit on the stone floor just beyond the marked line.

Vharos remained standing.

His legs trembled.

"Get him down," Daric said.

Master Clair shook his head.

"If we crowd him, he may fight us."

"He cannot hold that weight."

"I know."

Diana looked at Vharos.

The dragon watched her.

Diana remained where he could see her while Master Clair approached from the side.

"Easy, Vharos."

The dragon’s legs were already shaking from the effort of standing. As Diana’s panic eased and no one moved toward her, he finally bent his forelegs and lowered himself back onto the stone.

The keepers waited until his weight had settled before approaching again.

Diana watched the keepers check him.

One remained near his foreleg while another spoke quietly to Master Clair. The dragon healer waited beyond Vharos’s shoulder until Master Clair indicated it was safe to approach.

Diana found her slate.

Her hand was still shaking.

DID HE HURT HIMSELF?

Master Clair read the question.

"He exhausted himself."

Diana looked toward Vharos.

Master Clair added, "The healer will check whether he aggravated anything when we can approach safely."

Diana wrote another question before she could stop herself.

BECAUSE OF ME?

Master Clair did not give her an answer merely because she wanted one.

"Your presence changed his behavior."

Diana waited.

"I cannot tell you yet why he chose to stand."

Diana looked back at Vharos.

He had protected her once in a memory she had spent years doubting.

Today, sick enough that standing cost him badly, he had tried to put himself between her and armed men again.

Diana did not know whether that made the memory easier to believe.

It made it harder to dismiss.

Daric spoke first. "What did she remember?"

Alma looked at Diana.

Diana shook her head.

The cavern was the wrong place, and the memories were still too broken to explain.

Daric let the refusal stand. "Did you recognize Vharos?"

Diana looked at the black dragon.

Her chest hurt.

She wrote slowly because her fingers still shook. I RECOGNIZED THE SCAR.

Daric read it. "From your earlier dragon encounter?"

Diana nodded.

Master Clair looked toward Vharos’s wing. "That scar is old."

Diana wrote: HOW OLD?

"More than a decade."

The age fit the childhood memory. Vharos could have carried that scar when Diana was six.

The dragon had been real.

Vharos had been there.

Diana had spent years wondering whether fear, fever, and half-explained memories had turned one terrible night into something impossible.

Vharos stood in front of her with the scar from the memory still visible across his wing.

Daric walked toward the cavern entrance.

Alma looked after him. "Where are you going?"

"To send a report."

Diana’s head came up.

Before Diana could write anything, Daric added, "About Vharos."

That did not improve matters.

He continued. "His Grace needs to know his bonded dragon stood when standing without help has become rare."

Daric looked toward Vharos. "And that he stood when the Duchess entered."

Diana lowered the slate.

Too many people had seen what happened for Diana to hide it now.

Daric stopped at the entrance.

He spoke to the waiting messenger outside. "High priority. Battlefield command."

The messenger opened his case.

Daric dictated one sentence first. "Vharos stood for the Duchess."

Diana heard the sentence clearly from where she sat.

She looked at Vharos.

The old dragon had lowered his head again.

His eyes remained open.

He was still watching her.