Chapter 26 When Fire Found Frost.
Bella
When Ashlyn and I travelled for days on end to see the royal wedding, I didn’t expect to see it go up in flames. It was beautiful at first, too beautiful, really. The kind of thing that makes your chest ache because it’s everything you’ve ever read about but never thought could exist. Roses spilling down marble walls, gold-thread banners fluttering from high towers, music that made even the air feel dressed up. It looked like a storybook. And then, all at once, it turned heartbreaking. The bells stopped. The whispers started. A man at the altar stood too still, too silent. And before anyone could breathe, the world split open with fire, screams and smoke. People ran for their lives, thousands of them, clawing over one another to escape the courtyard that only moments ago smelled like sugar and roses. The air turned to ash and heat and chaos, and in the centre of it all, something massive moved. They called him a monster, a beast. I had heard the rumours throughout our travels to get here, but when I looked, I didn’t see a monster. I saw someone with a broken heart. And for reasons I can’t quite explain, reasons that probably fall somewhere between stupid and suicidal, I stayed.
Ashlyn screamed for me to run, but her voice barely reached over the roar. The air burned. The marble cracked beneath my feet, and then I saw him completely—the dragon. A living, breathing, fire-breathing dragon with black scales rippling with molten gold, wings blotting out the sun, eyes bright as burning coins. His roar shook the world itself, but the pain in it made my heart twist. This wasn’t rage. Not really. This was grief that had nowhere to go. So I stayed.... Because I know what that feels like. The smoke curled around me as I took a step forward, my shoes sliding on ash. His eyes snapped toward me, and that was the first time I truly realised just how stupid I might be. He could have crushed me where I stood...But he didn’t. He watched me instead, firelight flickering across his scales as he tilted his head, studying me the same way I studied him. Slowly, impossibly, he leaned closer. His breath rolled over me like a storm, hot and heavy, lifting the edges of my hair. Gilfred made a miserable squeak from my shoulder, pressing himself flat against my neck. “I know,” I muttered quietly. “It’s fine. Probably fine. Definitely fine.”
The dragon huffed, and I swear to every god who’s ever existed, it almost sounded like a laugh, and then after a while of our off-kilter stare off, with a gentleness that doesn’t belong to creatures of myth, he reached out one enormous claw.
The talon was the size of my arm, gleaming obsidian tipped with gold, and it hovered in front of me for a heartbeat before curling inward — slow, deliberate and very, very careful. The rest of his hand followed, each massive finger folding in until I found myself standing in the centre of his palm. The heat radiating off his scales was enough to make my eyes water, but my cold seemed to balance out his heat, and his hold was steady and oddly soft enough that I didn't feel like I was going to become the dragon's next snack. I fit there like something small and fragile, like a little bug cupped in a human hand.
“Okay,” I breathed, trying not to panic. “This is… new.”
Gilfred chirped furiously, but there was nowhere to go. The ground fell away beneath us as the dragon spread his wings, vast and black as thunderclouds, and the air roared around us. With one mighty sweep, we were airborne. Wind tore through my hair, burning and freezing all at once. The world below became nothing but smoke and ruin, with tiny, scattered people. My stomach lurched as we rose higher, past the towers and spires, until the castle rooftops gleamed beneath us like shards of glass. Flying...I'm actually flying. Well, not me exactly, the dragon is definitely flying, but I'm here, in the wind and the sky, feeling freer than ever before. The dragon’s body curved with impossible grace, wings slicing through the air as he landed atop the highest tower — the roof slanted and slick with ash. He moved like a creature born of both violence and precision, talons clicking lightly as he perched, still holding me gently in one hand. For a long moment, neither of us moved. The wind howled around us, tearing at my clothes and hair, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Up close, he was even more impossible, every scale glinting like dark glass, every exhale rumbling like distant thunder. His chest rose and fell, the glow inside him dimming and flaring with each breath, and then, something began to change. The light in his eyes flickered, becoming softer now. The smoke around his body shimmered faintly, like heat over desert sand. The air trembled, thick with magic. He looked at me one last time, and for a heartbeat, I saw something there that didn’t belong to monsters but something human. And then he began to change. The shimmer crawled over his scales, pulling light and shadow into itself. Bone folded. Wings bent inward. The sound of it was all thunder and heartbeat and breaking glass, and I could feel it vibrate through my bones as he set me down and took a step back. When the light faded, the dragon was gone. In his place stood a man. Tall, broad, sharp-shouldered, smoke still curling from his dark hair, and naked...very, very naked, his chest rising in ragged breaths. I attempted to draw my eyes from the appendage that I have only ever read about and meet his eyes while a heat bloomed across my face and down my chest. He took a step forward then, his boots crunching over ash, as he looked down at me like I was something he couldn’t quite believe existed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His voice was low and rough, the kind that sounds like it’s been broken on the edge of fire.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I managed, trying to steady myself and failing spectacularly. “You and me both.”