by Ava Kelly
“No, I’m entirely serious. If you weren’t lacking claws,” Orsie says, lifting his fingers in demonstration, “I’d say you were one.”
The smirk is back on Orsie’s lips, and Ark wants—he wants something. Not knowing what, however, leaves him staring, and Ark tries to distract himself.
“Is it true that Havesskadi gave birth to the first Thjudinn ship?”
“No.” Orsie laughs.
He has such a beautiful laugh, and Ark’s chest tightens with it. “What’s he like?”
Orsie raises an eyebrow and hums. “The fabled black dragon that breathes frost from his mouth? You tell me.”
It takes longer to figure it out than Ark would like to admit, and by then, Orsie’s mirth is visible in the slight shake of his shoulders. “Ah, yes.” Ark waves his hand to hide his embarrassment. “Me and old Haves go back to the beginnings of time. We are like vines entwined around each other,” he jokes.
Instead of more laughter, Orsie’s face grows serious, yet his eyes turn even brighter. “Now we are, my soul,” he whispers, so low the words are almost lost, but they bring back the sweet sensation in the middle of Ark’s chest. It wasn’t only the gem Orsie wanted, after all.
His breath stills as Orsie leans closer.
“I promised I’d find you,” Orsie says, just as quietly. “I promised you’d be mine.”
He grips Ark’s chin, thumb sliding down the side of his jaw. Ark shudders.
“Do you still want me?”
The thing blooming inside of Ark makes his stomach flip and his inhale tremble.
“Does your soul want mine?”
Yes. This is what he wants, and Ark’s fingers go to Orsie’s chest of their own accord, scraping blunt nails over his skin.
“Say it,” Orsie murmurs, his thumb now tracing Ark’s lower lip.
“I want all of you.”
Orsie slides closer, leans in until his nose touches Ark’s cheek. “Would you share my soul?”
His cold breath tickles Ark, pulling a low sound from his throat as his want builds until he’s too full of it. “Yes, please, yes—”
An answering growl returns, vibrating through his entire being in a way that brings contentment. Pleasure. Ark’s eyes close. The sound lasts, long and low, traveling through his fingertips where they’re pressed against Orsie’s ribs, reaching his ears from Orsie’s throat. This is exactly what he wanted, and he shudders again.
It tapers off, after a while, just as Orsie’s lips part against his cheek, the tiniest of movements. Ark takes the invitation, turning toward it, and slots their mouths together. He belongs here, with Ark.
His.
Orsie chuckles, releasing him too soon, but his hand presses Ark’s over his own chest. Ark draws a calming breath before opening his eyes.
“Good,” Orsie whispers with a smile.
“No. Bad. Leave, go away,” the malice hisses from behind the closed door, and Ark lies back with a groan.
“Is it always this disruptive?”
“No,” Ark whines. “It’s usually worse.”
“Let’s take a walk,” Orsie says, already pulling Ark to his feet.
Yes, some air would be good, and he follows, something different in him. Calmer. Untorn.
*
Ark can’t contain his smile at the joy on Orsie’s face as he runs his hands through the snow. Clouds have started gathering again, heralding another snowfall with a frosty breeze. Ark pulls his coat closer around himself. The day is too cold, even for him. He didn’t want to wear it, but Orsie insisted, then stepped outside as unclothed as he’d been inside. It’s so very strange, what he is, how he moves. Ark can’t remember anyone ever telling him dragons can change their shape like this.
“What’s it feel like?” Ark asks, and Orsie looks at him with a hum. “Being a dragon.”
“Ah.” Orsie turns to him fully, offers Ark the snowball he just made, then strides to one of the stone benches overlooking the forest. “Like I am…everything.”
He jumps on the bench, face tilted at the sky, arms spread wide. Ark almost trips on his own feet as he approaches, mesmerized by the sight. Orsie’s black skirt trembles, stretches, runs like liquid up his torso, turning into a long coat. It even has a hood, matching Ark’s almost entirely, save for the lack of sleeves.
“Being human felt like a prison,” Orsie says. “A dragon can fly, can see into the core of things. We are not bound by age like humans. We’re not exactly immortal, but we can live for hundreds of centuries, even longer sometimes.”
He crouches on the bench as Ark nears, then rests his forehead against Ark’s chest.
“I can’t wait to show you wondrous lands. Rivers of fire and mountains of glass. We’ll fly over chasms and into the depths of the seas.”
Ark wraps a hand around Orsie’s shoulder and pushes his hood off with the other. “If it were possible to be dragon.”
Orsie looks up abruptly, then twists, pulling Ark with him until they’re seated on the bench, face to face. He kisses Ark’s cheek. “Why do you doubt it?”
With a shrug, Ark looks away. “I fear it’s just another game. It has tortured me for months, and now she wants me to save it? And after— I can’t take its bitterness much longer.”
Cold fingers grip his chin again, and Ark lets Orsie turn his head, lets himself be regarded for a while.
“It’s afraid of you,” Ark adds. “For some reason, you’re the only one it didn’t try to make me kill.”
“That’s because I can understand it,” Orsie says. “Destroy it.”
“Could you?”
“If that’s what you wish.”
A wailing sound fills the valley, echoing back from all sides and scraping at Ark’s mind. He closes his eyes for a moment, waiting for the pain to subside.
“Ark.” Orsie’s voice is soft, his touch gentle. “There are more choices than that.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I’d like to talk to her, if you’ll allow it. See if there’s anything else to be done.”
He hadn’t thought that was an option, and Ark is left blinking.
“What happens if I don’t keep it? My life won’t be as long as yours.”
Orsie smiles. “Dragons only mate once, and we’re few, so one shouldn’t expect us to just find other dragons, right?”
Ark nods.
“Right. It sometimes takes many centuries to find another creature that fits us. Some never do. I am lucky,” Orsie continues, more content than Ark’s seen him so far. “So we use a shard of our anasketts. Of course, a seed takes longer to complete the change than a whole dragonsoul because it takes time to grow, but it’s been done countless times, and never fails.”
“You turn your mates into dragons,” Ark whispers.
“We can’t give them a long life without a piece of our souls, and our souls belong with dragons. Look what happened here,” he says, fingers caressing Ark’s hair, “when you didn’t know how to talk to it. It tortured you.”
The air leaves Ark’s lungs in a long exhale. “But if someone doesn’t want to be a dragon?”
Slowly, but surely, Orsie’s smile fades. “Then we cherish what time we have. It means we haven’t found a mate, but a dear one to share a stretch of our lives.” He seems lost for a moment before shaking his himself. “If you—for you, I’ll stay nearby for as long as you’ll have me. I’d already decided so, even before I knew who you were.”
Ark catches his hand and places a kiss on his cold skin, chest tight with affection. “Talk to her, then, let’s learn our options.”
Orsie hums, smile back on his lips. Ark pulls him closer, and Orsie rubs his nose on Ark’s cheek. The gesture is strangely just as satisfying as kissing.
“How do dragons mate?” he asks as an afterthought.
Orsie straightens, narrowing his eyes at Ark, but then they widen, realization on his face.
“We touch our souls,” he says quickly, looking anywhere but at Ark.<
br />
“Are you embarrassed?”
The question earns him a glare and half a growl, but they carry no heat.
*
When Orsie reaches the cavern, he chooses to sit on the last step, the bare soles of his feet resting on Nevmis’s petrified scales. The voices of the stolen rattle the air, shake at the pillars of reality, bouncing off the walls in invisible tumult, but Orsie plucks them away one by one.
“I fought you, and you, and you,” he tells them until they’re silent.
All, but one, carried by the strings of a tempered song. “Not me.”
She’s sitting next to him, taller, wider, more powerful than Orsie even in her half-untethered state. Orsie watches her, cataloguing her features while trying to reconcile their gentleness with the dragon who almost murdered him.
“We remember them all,” she says. “Even her, the Glass Lady.”
Orsie shudders, refusing to believe Mother’s screams are among those shouting their torment.
“Our new name is befitting.”
And this gives Orsie pause. He pushes away thoughts of long lost souls in favor of focusing on the present. “What name is that?”
“Dragonslayer. Arkeva.”
She’s serene, smiling at the vines of red ivy growing around her feet. It’s not a lie, it’s—
“Too late to let him go,” she says. “If that’s what you wanted.”
“That’s what I wanted,” Orsie echoes in a murmur. “There must be a way to separate you.”
She finally lifts her head at this, red eyes piercing as she fixes them on him. “Kill him.”
With a snarl, Orsie rises to his feet. He paces the room, growling low in his throat. The red ivy of the illusion spreads over the floor as she nears him again, floating more than walking.
“We live. Please.”
Orsie takes a breath, then another, aiming for calm, but instead reaching dread. If death alone can free Ark from the clutches of the red anaskett…then it doesn’t matter that Orsie is willing to share his; Ark can’t possibly receive it.
“There’s fear everywhere,” she whispers, now staring at the charred sphere. “You must help.”
“I know,” Orsie says, shoulders slumping.
He sits back down, forehead in his palms. It’s useless to argue or negotiate. She is Ark now.
“You could at least have let me find him sooner,” he mutters. “What use was a confusion spell to you?”
“That was his own doing.”
Orsie groans.
*
Ark waits in the courtyard. He surveys the snow-laden treetops, tastes the lingering cold in the air as he sifts through the recent discoveries. It should feel heavy, this new perspective he has on things, but it’s not. A sort of unrestrained, long due relief comes with knowing. He understands, now.
“Stupid Arkeva understands nothing! Send him away!”
The malice hisses and sputters, and for once, Ark lets it have its fill. He listens more closely this time, for long minutes, picking up on overlaying whispers. They lash out, almost as if…oh. They’re afraid of him.
And Ark is not. Of the future, maybe, but not of them.
“Take him out,” it whines. “He wants to end us.”
“I want the same. Don’t you want to stop hurting too? I’ve seen your many faces now; I know your suffering.”
“Arkeva,” it calls, pleads.
Ark shakes his head. “Stop it. Let me think.”
“Nothing to think.”
With a huff, Ark sits on one of the stone benches. Be a dragon or not, but if yes, then how? Give in to her or—
“No other,” it shrieks. “No other. Ours.”
Ark rubs at his eyes. It could be lying. Could be trying to sway him, like it’s been doing for over a year. But Ark doubts it. Deep down, he has this certainty that somehow he’ll always be tied to the castle, this magic, the red gem. This resistance to Orsie doesn’t sound like the usual manipulation, the one calling for spilled blood.
His skin crawls and his stomach twists.
What if she carries the same lust for taking lives, what if Ark ends up drowning in it? Orsie assured Ark he could destroy it, and then the violence would end.
Laughter echoes around the courtyard.
“Shut up,” Ark mutters.
“Dragon Arkeva is too soft, soon to be trampled. Peaceful ends in endings.”
The whispers aren’t really making sense anymore, but something about them niggles at Ark.
Oh.
It called him a dragon. Does he really want this? Ark gathers snow between his fingers, watches it melt against his skin. To be like Orsie, to fly like in his dreams. A smile blooms on his face at the thought. Looks like he has his answer. He wants to be a dragon, really does.
But not if the price is festering rancor.
*
Orsie vibrates with a nervousness he hasn’t felt since he was a hatchling while they share dinner in the kitchen, like they have so many times. Now, though, the atmosphere is brighter. Orsie nibbles at bits here and there, still full from the rubies. Ark eats with a hunger Orsie hasn’t seen in him before.
“So if I were to save her, how would I do it?” Ark asks when they’re done and only tea sits between them, after they both have relayed their conversations with the red lady in more detail.
“Now that I’ve seen the anaskett,” Orsie says, tapping at his chin, “I think it just needs to be cleaned.”
Ark’s forehead creases in confusion, and Orsie waves a hand, searching for—ah. He pats the table, asking for an apricot. He holds the fruit up for Ark, then slices it open with his nail.
“Like this, take away the bad”—Orsie follows his own instructions, parting the halves to dig out the pit—“until only the core is left. Afterward, you wrap yourself around it. She grows a castle around you in turn, and in the end, you’re both keeping each other safe. You are one.”
“She said her name was my name,” Ark comments, gaze fixated on the pit, but looks up at Orsie with a small frown. “How come you’re not afraid of her? She terrifies me.”
“I was when she belonged to Nevmis.”
“Now?”
“Now it’s yours,” Orsie says, trying for reassuring, but Ark’s distress grows.
“What if the evil remains? Would you—”
“Yes,” Orsie interrupts. He doesn’t need to hear the rest to know what Ark is asking. “I will stay here, contain you and it until you’re gone. I’ll destroy it after.” A lump forms in Orsie’s throat, and his eyes sting as he makes this promise.
“You’d really do it,” Ark whispers.
“I would. For you and for all the souls Nevmis stole, to give them rest, finally. But I hope we won’t get there. Mother is among them, and if even a sliver of her soul can be recovered, it could grow into a full anaskett one day. Maybe they all could.”
“But if the malice remains, would I still be me?”
Orsie bites his lip. “I don’t know.”
A long moment stretches before Ark’s face shifts from unsurety to determination, as if he has reached his decision. He grasps Orsie’s hands over the table.
“All right,” he says on the tails of a shuddering breath. “Where do I start?”
Orsie trembles.
*
They decide not to prolong things and make their way to the lower level shortly after midnight. Ark shivers as they walk the hallways, steps uneven at times, but Orsie holds fast to his wrist.
“How does touching souls feel?” Ark asks to distract himself as they near the staircase leading to the red bedroom.
Orsie coughs in his fist. “I don’t know. We only mate once. Why do you keep asking me these things?”
When Ark glances over, Orsie looks like he’s trying not to smile. It makes Ark grin. He draws near, wrapping an arm around Orsie’s shoulders. “Because, dear one, I want you.”
“It’s the want of your human body,” Orsie replies, words clipped, but he’s sporting
a blush high on his cheeks that Ark likes quite a lot. “Don’t worry, it will pass.”
“No intimacy?” Ark asks, already on his way to disappointment.
The corner of Orsie’s mouth lifts with his smirk, mischievousness unabated in his purple eyes. “Yes, plenty. But I’d rather show you than tell you.”
Ark laughs, and it feels so good after such a long time.
*
Too soon, they’re entering the cavern, and Ark is already wobbling under the weight of the sphere. Orsie pulls him along like he did last time, a solid presence beside him. They draw closer to the red agony, so much closer than Ark’s ever been, and he braces his legs on the floor, shaking his head.
It hurts, everywhere hurts.
“Come, my soul, one more step. And another, good.”
Ark’s world is nothing but the red gem and Orsie. His hand burns with frost around Ark’s middle, nails digging into his side, focusing Ark away from the torment that fogs his mind.
“Search for the song,” Orsie says, voice rumbling in that wonderful way. “You are so brave, beloved. Now pick it up.”
No. Ark shakes his head again, but Orsie’s rumbling hum distracts him. The sound croons in his ear, a language he doesn’t understand, vibrations permeating his chest and filling his heart with stillness.
She smiles, encouraging, waiting, and Ark pushes through.
He digs his claws into the tainted ether that keeps them apart, rips it with his bare hands.
He slices, growling at the malice, tearing it down piece by piece. The bricks crumble between his fingers, voices silenced, one after another.
He fights, and kneels, and fights again.
He screams and he cries.
He hurts.
He flies.
Ark pushes away the debris, shaking where he kneels on the hard floor. His fingers, bloody and raw, tremble as he swipes off the last bit of darkness. The part left in his palms sings to him.
So bright, so determined to have kindness, to bring peace, to fight for those preyed upon.
“Mine.” He is absolutely sure he wants it before the word is even fully formed.
“Yes,” she agrees, kneeling in front of him. Beyond them, the castle is silent, devoid of malice. “Nevmis loved to breathe out poison. What do you adore?”
“What do you?” Ark returns her question. He knows, holding on to it, that the anaskett craves to have purpose. A focus. He understands, now, that Orsie’s is winter. Ark adores its frost as well.
