Unafraid and determined, Mina reaches me and grabs my thigh. She mutters an apology as she climbs my back and eventually holds onto one of the spikes of my spine. She meets my eyes as I keep looking at her, and she takes a deep breath, as if bracing herself.
Her soft hand connects with my scales, and she smiles carefully, before her face turns grave.
"Come on, we have to go," she orders, looking behind her shoulder to make sure no one sees.
Though I'm thoroughly confused, I make the running start again when I feel her hands are holding on tight, and I flap my wings and we take off into the gray sky.
The cave looks worse. The walls are black as coal, the ground is covered in blood that I recognize as both Tane's and my father's as I sniff.
Adhafera comes running towards us; thankfully she looks unharmed and happy. She purrs as she leans against my foot, and Mina slowly slides down my scaly side and hunches over with her hand stretched out towards the babe. She smiles, and I feel my stomach clench.
I want to ask her why she isn't afraid, why she came running, and how she knew it was me, but she looks up and meets my stare with a slightly amused look.
"I've watched you climb out of your window and shift for years, Corie," she says, shrugging like it's no big deal, "and I know you're not the monster everyone thinks you are."
Adhafera sniffs her hand and eventually rubs herself against her, purring even louder.
"I also knew that when you eventually found out I wanted to help." Her voice is a little quieter, and she keeps looking at the baby chimera and cuddles it, while still speaking to me.
I wish I could tell her thanks, hug her, or just smile at her, but my new form makes it harder to convey the right feelings. She smiles up at me and nods, as if she understands what I'm thinking, and my body relaxes just a little.
"I'm a shifter too, you know," she says, "though I'm not bound by the sun or moon, and I'm nowhere near as impressive and strong as you when I change form. My talents lie more towards speed and flight rather than muscle and fire."
With her soothing voice talking to me, I sit down at the edge of the cave and stare at her. Adhafera runs around herself, hunting Mina's fingers. If I wasn't a dragon shifter myself I wouldn't have believed her. It explains why I never saw her during the nights if she took advantage of the day to train her other consciousness, and it makes me all the more hopeful that this beauty would maybe settle for me one day—
"Corie?" I whip my head to the slight trail down the mountainside and see my father coming up with firewood in his arms. He swallows and turns to face Mina, a small nod towards her signals that he acknowledges her, and then he looks at me again. "What are you doing back so soon?"
"Sir, if I may," Mina starts, getting up again and brushing the dirt and coal off her pants as she stands. "It didn't go so well with the Master," she explains offering her arms to take some of the wood for him as she continues, "Tane was ordered to march the soldiers here, to seek the remains of the dragon, and we came to warn you."
"Excuse me, but who are you?"
"I'm Mina, Sir," she replies with a shallow curtsy. "My brother is Milus, and my parents were Mona and Petrus."
Realization coats my father's expression, and his eyes soften. "Oh, my, you're so grown up!"
She smiles. My body aches to join the conversation and talk to them, and ask more questions about Mina and her shifter abilities, but I'm stuck in the dragon's body as she keeps explaining in detail what happened inside the Master's throne room, like she was there.
By the sound of it, she was.
As I listen to her explain how she saw and heard everything by climbing the outside of the Master's house and peeking through an ornate window at the top of the roof, my affection for her grows. My chest swells with some sort of pride at the girl I always pined for but never really knew. Her small frame has allowed her to spy on the Master for years after her parents died, she tells us, and her brother being one of Tane's soldiers never cast any suspicion towards her.
When I finally shift back, Mina is asleep with her head resting on her satchel, and my father is sitting on the edge of the drop beneath the cave. I walk over to him and sit down, leaning my head on his shoulder as I sigh.
"What do we do?" I ask, making sure I whisper so I don't wake up Mina.
"We wait," he replies, "I don't think there's much else to do. If we run Tane's head will roll, and if we stay we can make a change."
He smiles down at me. His arm moves, and he puts it gently around my shoulders. His bearded cheek rests against my hair, and I close my eyes to savor the moment. I remember the last time he hugged me, before I thought he died. He held me tightly, as if he knew something was about to happen, and I didn't know. I was blissfully unaware with a growing interest for dragons and other creatures, and the stars.
"There will be bloodshed, son," my father whispers after a few moments of silence. "We will wait the days it takes for Tane to come here, and we will be ready. The way I see it, we have a golden opportunity to change Vale for the better."
He presses a kiss to the top of my head before he stands up. He smiles at me. It looks like a pained smile, and I send him one back.
What comes next will make my mind hurt. I will have to face my fear and hurt people, unless they listen to reason. The thought of Tane marching towards us with soldiers ready to sacrifice their lives to kill a beast makes my skin crawl, and as my father jumps off the edge and shifts into his glorious, fiery red dragon form, I turn my head and look at the girl peacefully asleep by the fire.
Maybe it'll all be worth it if Vale can be saved from the greedy, selfish people ruling it.
The fire cracks. We've been waiting in the cave for a whole night, a whole day, and now there's just a few more hours left of the night again.
My arms are holding onto my legs as I stare into the dancing fire in front of me. Mina is laying on the other side of it, the flames making her light hair seem orange. It's not a bad look on her at all. I keep my mouth shut, though.
During the last night we barely spoke. She told me about how lonely she's felt, and I shared my own loneliness, but she countered that I had Tane. I countered that she'd have me if she didn't avoid me like the plague, and then we were silent.
With my chin buried in my forearms, I sigh deeply.
"I'm sorry," I mutter, looking towards her glistening eyes. "I didn't want to be mean, I just..."
I trailed off, and as she shifts her gaze from the twinkling stars and my father's shadow outside, I look away. Afraid that I might let my feelings get the better of me again.
"You were right, though." She sits up, brushing her hands down her shins to rid them of the dust and burnt pebbles. "I did avoid you like the plague, but only because I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut."
A scoff escapes my throat. I've never known her to say much at all, so it's not very believable. I clear my throat and try not to let it show.
"You're magnificent, Corie," she continues, and as I finally look at her again I see her shining smile, the twinkle in her eyes, and my guts turn around repeatedly as I watch her eyes dreamily wander the ceiling in the cave. "You're mighty and strong, and really beautiful. I've dreamt of the day I'd fly on your back, and though it was amazing, I wish it was under different circumstances."
Her eyes drop to the ground, and her throat bobs. I watch as warmth rises to her cheeks, and I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes to mind as I look at her. My mind is blank. All I can think of is her hands around the spikes of my spine, clutching hard, her knees pressing into my neck as she holds on, and we soar high above the white clouds of day.
"Maybe," I start, clearing my throat after finally finding my voice again, "maybe after all this is over, we could, um..."
"I'd like that," she says when I'm unable to find the right word.
We stare at each other over the fire for a long moment, and something swells in my chest. My cheeks flush, but I don't think it's from embarrassment as I stare into her wondrous eyes. The moment I've been waiting for for so long is finally here, and I'm—
A loud roar fills the silence between us, and both our heads whirl around towards the opening of the cave. We get to our feet, Mina more gracefully than I, and we go out to the edge to see my father breathing fire into nothing, flying zig zag in the night sky and avoiding something shiny that lunches for him now and then.
Mina gasps and grabs my arm.
"Look," she whispers, pointing towards the mountain side.
Soldiers.
The silver helmets and armor glistens in the light from my father's fire along the mountain side. Arrows are flying through the air towards him, and I feel the same warmth and rumbling in my chest as I did when Tane and I were attacked by the chimera.
Adhafera growls by our feet, her tiny roar intimidates no one, but brings a grim chuckle to Mina's lips. I shift on my feet as my father roars again, and I spot an arrow going straight through his wing, the silver tip glistening red on the other side.
Stones fall to our right, and a soldier tumbles into the cave. We both draw our swords, but Tane's voice makes us lower them again.
"I'm sorry I couldn't warn you," he says, shaking off his fall. "They saw him and just... attacked."
His armor is dented and full of scrapes from the stone. It's clear he tried to get to us as fast as he could, which means the soldiers started attacking my father the same second they spotted him in the sky.
The fire inside my chest burns even more now, and I struggle to keep my fists unclenched while I notice Tane confusingly eyeing up Mina, but then he dismisses her, deeming it unimportant why she's here. I agree, though I wish she was safe in her bed.
My blood boils. It feels like smoke erupts from my skin as I raise my trembling hands and clench my fingers so hard it cracks with every motion. My heart thumps so loud inside my body it's threatening to go through my ribs. I've never been so filled with rage.
"Is this what happened every day in Vale?" I ask, staring at my father's attempts at moving out of the way from arrows— and now also spears. When no one answers I turn my head towards Tane and Mina and fire another question towards them. "Did they just blindly attack me when I flew over my own home?"
Tane's throat wobbles. He attacked me too, when he didn't know.
"Yes," he breathes after a few seconds.
"We have to stop them," Mina spits out, most likely to stop me from arguing any further.
"How?" Tane rasps. "Do you have any idea how to use that thing?"
He points to her sword, and she narrows her eyes at him. For a second I think she's going to spit in his face and my rage calms a little. But then she drops her sword and leaps off the edge of the cave.
Tane yells after her with a horrified tone, before he takes a step back and a glorious silver dragon emerges and flies towards my father.
She's breathtaking. Her wings glitter like real silver in the moonlight, the blue from the sky adding to her beauty with every twinkling star above. Though she's absolutely smaller than my father, and me, from what I can gather, she's fast. Incredibly fast and within a few seconds she's by my father and helps him dive down and blast fire at the soldiers.
"No wonder you like her," Tane mutters, but I ignore him.
Every dip is a risk; the spears and arrows are big, thrown and shot with precision and force unlike anything I've seen. The years of fighting me in Vale has probably taught them more than necessary about how to wound them both, and me— and Mina is smaller.
Worry extinguishes my anger.
Another roar comes from father, a growl from Mina, and I frantically look around as if anything in the cave will help me shift into my dragon to help—
This time the roar from my father is strained, full of pain and agony, and I take another step towards the edge, looking towards where his body falls down to the ground by the foot of the mountain. Mina dives with him, just as the moon slowly vanishes behind the mountain tops.
I yell. It's not a word, I think, but not quite a scream either, as I start to descend the mountainside. Tane is on my heels, swearing repeatedly with every step down towards them— and the soldiers.
A collective gasp among the warriors makes my blood run cold, and I stop. The red dragon is nowhere to be seen, and before them is Mina's silver scales, her wings covering up my father's human body, shining with blood.
Tane and I stay still for a moment, then we both start moving again.
I meet with Mina's icy eyes for a moment, before they widen. No sound erupts from her, but the scales on her chest glisten in my peripheral vision before red flows down. Everything around me turns to ice as I watch the glacier-glow in her eyes soften, her eyelids relax, and her body goes limp.
"Fuck," Tane mutters, but I scream.
No, I roar.
Before I know it I'm in my dragon form and the sun starts shining upon the blood surrounding my father and Mina. I'm soaring above every soldier and land by them, my left foot on something that crunches and squashes behind the beautiful girl I just barely got to know, the promise that 'we could' when this was over vanishes along with the realization that the spear through her chest is irreversible.
It was unprovoked.
My father touches one of my wings, his other hand clutching a bloody shoulder.
This is all my fault. This is all my fault.
This is all. My. Fault.