The color drained from Fynn’s cheeks. He wildly swung his sword, hacking through the shrubbery until Sol grabbed his arm and screamed. “Fynn, stop! You’ll kill him!”
A sparkling blur of blue and white scales flew from beneath the bush, screeching as it darted between Fynn’s feet. The Captain of the Refuge yelped, leaping onto the abandoned tree stump as Sol dropped to both knees, her arms outstretched for the wailing creature in the grass.
“Sol, don’t touch it!”
She ignored him, smoothing her hands over the dragon’s back, his wings, the top of his head and horns. Sol studied her wet skin, the metallic silver that shone there, and frowned. “Fynn, you idiot. He’s hurt. Those thorns cut him to pieces.”
“Good!” Fynn gripped his sword, pointing the lethal tip at the dragon she was gathering in her arms. “What are you doing? Sol, put that thing back where it came from!”
He would never admit that he trembled, would take it to his grave that the dragon in Sol’s arms had conjured up a fear so deeply rooted that it burned like acid in his stomach. To Hell with the godsdamned Dragon’s Heart. Dragons were awful, wretched creatures that deserved to rot in Dryu’s training pits.
Sol scratched the beast beneath the chin. “Did those nasty thorns hurt you, little one? That’s all right. We’ll get you all fixed up.”
“We?” Fynn did not leave his stump. “Don’t you know what that thing is?”
The Princess glared at him, her eyes raging with such unusual ire. “Of course I do.”
Footsteps thudded over stone, and both Amael and Riel emerged from behind a small building. “What’s going on?” Riel panted, knives gripped in each hand. “We heard Sol scream.”
Sol snorted. “That wasn’t me,” she told them, glancing pointedly at Fynn. “It was your Captain.”
His cheeks reddened, heating with such humiliation that the tips of his ears burned.
The creature in Sol’s arms whined at her, pawing at her chest with talons sharp as razor blades. It shredded through her tunic with unintentional brutality, twisting in her grasp before nuzzling into the bend of her elbow. His spiked tail curled over her wrist and clung to her.
“Is that—is that a hatchling?”
Amael shoved Riel aside and scrambled towards Sol, his dark eyes wide with wonder. He traced his fingers down the length of the dragon’s spine, pulled gently at its wings and studied the silky skin between each arched bone and claw.
“We found him in that thorn bush,” Sol told him. “I think he was trying to eat the berries.”
He hummed his acknowledgement. “I can’t believe it,” Amael said, more to himself than to Sol. She watched him with bated breath, preparing herself for the same grim diagnosis Fynn prayed for. “He’s only a few weeks old, and his wings aren’t clipped. They must have left him behind before he even hatched.”
Sol frowned, fumbling with the dragon and holding him out in front of her. “Have you been out here all on your own?”
His back legs kicked at the air, and he squirmed until he was secure in Sol’s arms again. From the safety of his stump, Fynn realized that the dragon was shaking with the very same fear that rattled the Captain to his core.
“Shame,” he said stiffly, sheathing his sword. “Put that thing back, and let’s get out of here.”
Both Sol and Amael turned to him, and the shock that contorted their faces, the outrage… Fynn had already lost some predetermined battle. A fight he knew they would wage before they opened their mouths.
“I’m not leaving him.” They made the declaration together.
Riel’s laughter echoed off the nearby stones. She wiggled her fingers in the dragon’s face, grinning when he snapped his teeth at her. “Fynn’s afraid of dragons,” she informed them lightly, tapping the dragon on the nose. “Feel free to point out the irony.”
Sol looked at him incredulously, ready to do just that. “Seriously?” she said. “You dragged us all the way here for a dragon scale, Fynn.”
“That’s different,” he argued. “The dragon it came from is dead, and it’s magical. I didn’t need nor want the whole thing.”
She rolled her eyes at him, adjusting the creature in her arms. His pale, crystalline scales were like sparkling shards of ice, shining in the sunlight as he wriggled in Sol’s embrace. “Well,” she said, raising her chin as if the Captain were beneath her. The stance and poise of a Princess, he knew. A role she had not played since stepping foot on his ship. “This one is just a baby, and he’s hurt. I can heal him once we’re back on the beach.”
The Captain laughed harshly, bridled beneath such indignation. “Heal him all you’d like,” he said. “But then that thing stays on this island. Don’t you think for even a moment he’s coming with us.”
Sol lurched back as surely as if Fynn had slapped her. “You’re serious.”
“Very.”
He was not expecting the tears that welled in Sol’s eyes. “I can’t believe you’d be so cruel.”
Riel snickered, her arm slung low around Amael’s waist. “This should be good.”
But the Captain barely heard her over the blood roaring in his ears. “Excuse me?” Fynn stepped off the tree stump. “Cruel? That thing is a monster, Sol. A threat to my—”
“Indyr is no more a threat than I am.”
Fynn stilled, and it was no longer his blood that roared in his ears, but his heartbeat.
Indyr, the first dragon.
Indyr, the strongest of them all.
Indyr, the giver of Magic.
“What did you call it?”
Sol stepped back, clutching him close to her chest. She gripped him hard enough that he writhed in her arms and whined at her. “Indyr,” she repeated. “We came here looking for the Dragon’s Heart, Fynn, but we found a dragon instead. I don’t think that that’s a coincidence.”
Amael hummed his agreement, rubbing one of the horns protruding from Indyr’s skull. “I think it’s fitting.”
“Me too,” Riel added, grinning wickedly at Fynn. “I vote we keep him.”
Fynn shook his head at the betrayal. “No,” he said. “No. It’s bad enough I let Draven on board. Did you even stop to consider that? What your direwolf would do to it?”
Sol bristled. “Draven does nothing without my orders.”
“He’s already taken to Sol,” Amael intervened, observing the way Indyr nuzzled into the bend of her arm. “He’s a Nevis Thorntail, a gentle sort until the affection and kindness are beaten out of them.” Shadows dimmed his eyes. “If we let them, they’d bond with their trainers like a dog bonds with its owner.”
The smile that lit Sol’s face was blinding. “If we found him this young,” she started. “Does that mean we could train him to be good?”
Amael huffed. “Dragons are born good, just like you and me. It’s us—people—that make them bad.”
Sol whirled to Fynn, a look in her eyes that told him she’d already won. “Fynn, please,” she begged. “I can’t just leave him here, and you’ll only have to deal with him until you drop me off in Nedros.”