Page 121 of The Artist and the Dragon

“My horse?” Malik called after him.

The man turned on his heel. “Safe and being cared for, Your Highness.”

“Good.” When the guard stood still, waiting, he added, “That’s all.”

“Wait!” Bronwyn called, nearly falling over him in her attempt to shout at the guard through the open carriage door.

He hustled back.

“Stay there a moment.” She jerked the door shut and pulled the curtain. A moment later, she was pulling at the ties on her ruined dress.

Malik chuckled. “You know I’m always up to try new things, but you never told me you were interested in having an audience.”

To his delight, Bronwyn rolled her eyes and pinned him with a hard stare as she pulled the dress free. She’d barely kicked off the last of the stained and torn thing before she gathered it into a ball, cracked the carriage door, and shoved it out. “Burn this, too.”

She didn’t wait for a reply before closing the door once more, sealing them inside together. She grabbed a blanket and pulled it around herself before snuggling up to him on the bench. “I’m making a terrible habit of returning to the castle in only my underthings.”

“Terrible for whom?” He looked her over appreciatively.

Bronwyn swatted at him playfully. “We almost died.”

“Exactly. Why wait? Who knows what the future has in store.”

“Mmm. Perhaps.” She nestled closer. “Though I reallydon’tprefer to have an audience.”

He chuckled and put an arm around her, content with her safe and close. Theyhadalmost died. The thought of losing her nearly undid him then and there. A tight ache in his chest had persisted from the moment she’d gone missing until … well, it hadn’t really let up. But he tried to breathe, to relax. The head of the dragons was dead. At last. And he’d taken more of them down over the days prior. Bronwyn was safe. She was his.

There was much to be grateful for and look forward to.

Some minutes after the carriage rocked into motion, Bronwyn broke the comfortable silence between them. “Do you know what you became?”

He rubbed at his chest.Just when I was starting to relax…“A monster.”

She looked up at him despite the darkness of the cab. “A dragon.”

A—“What!”

To his surprise, she smiled. “Not a monster like we know, like the rest of them. You became a dragon, Malik. Wings and all.”

His chest shook, a strange sort of laughter coming out of him in little huffs. “I can’t have. They don’t exist anymore. I’ve never—”

“I saw it. So did Drystan. And the guards.”

“But how?”

“You tell me.”

“I…” He was speechless. Utterly at a loss for any kind of explanation.

Bronwyn rubbed soothing strokes up and down his arm. “Did you … did you use dark magic?” she asked.

“No.” It hadn’t come to that, thank the Goddess. “I drank blood, though, to convince the dragons that I was on their side and to get them to let their guard down.” Which had worked incredibly well. “There wasn’t time to vomit it up before I felt something stirring within me, almost like another presence waking up.”

Her hand stilled on his arm. “Is it still there?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t sense it. If it is there, it’s content and quiet for now.” Perhaps because it had had its due, its lust for violence and blood slaked. That was what the monsters wanted. Would a dragon be the same? There was no one to ask. No record to research.

“I wonder…” Her brow knit as she stared at nothing on the other side of the carriage.

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