Nina stared at the naked man who was starting to move to the edge of consciousness. “He sure is attractive,” she said to Argento. The dragon’s nostrils flared, his mouth seemingly set into a smile. He was regarding his unconscious master with big, curious eyes.
The man sat upright in a start, his mind suddenly aware. His eyes darted around the cave, bewildered like an animal being hunted. “You don’t have to look so frightened,” Nina told him. “Neither Argento or I will harm you.”
The man relaxed, but tensed once more when his eyes landed on the dragon. “He’s… a dragon?” he asked, his voice scratchy.
“Your dragon,” Nina corrected. “The two of you are bound,” she added simply.
The man raised his eyebrows at her. “Oh, forgive my manners. I’m Nina, one of the children of the fae. As a protector of nature, I was charged with the duty of taking care of this here cutey until he hatched last night. I take it you were dead until then?” Again, she spoke casually as if everything that was happening was so normal. That the fact she was a faery was normal. That his return from the dead, was normal. The man didn’t know what to think or feel.
Nina leaned forward, her face almost touching his, to inspect him more closely. “You are the first dragon lord I’ve met—I’m deeply honored. What’s your name?” she asked, almost bouncing with the energy that seemed to radiate of her in waves.
“I’m… Casian,” he replied slowly. The name tasted foreign on his lips from disuse. It had been so long since he had to introduce himself to anyone that he almost had forgotten how. “Dragon lord? What do you mean? I’m alive? How is this – any of this, even possible?” he asked, his voice almost taking on a hysterical edge.
Nina inclined back and along with Argento cocked her head to the side as they regarded him. “You know absolutely nothing about your heritage, do you?” Nina asked, sounding confused.
“Up until, what I assume was a few hours –“
“Ten minutes,” Nina interrupted.
Casian narrowed his eyes, but continued without stopping. “Ten minutes ago, I was dead.”
Nina sighed. “You better get comfortable then; it’s a long story.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of pants luing around, would you?” Casian asked. Nina blushed a she remembered he was till naked, a fact that only amused Casian. He has a right to be confident in that body… Nina thought to herself guiltily. She waved her hand over him and a pair of trousers appeared.
She shrugged at his raised eyebrows. “Faery glamour. You are foing to have to get a pair of real ones before you leave, but I’m sure Argento could help with that,” she said while petting the baby dragon.
“Argento?”
“It’s Latin for gold, like his skin.”
Casian got to his feet, much steadier now than before and walked over to the dragon. Argento looked at him with wide eyes. He moved closer and before Casian could do anything, Argenot closed the distance between them and rubbed his head against Casian’s leg, letting out a low almost purring sound. Casian’s mouth fell open.
“He recognizes you,” Nina explained.
“Please, explain all of this to me or I may think I’m going crazy.”
Nina gestured for him to sit and he took a seat next to the affectionate dragon, who continued to lean into him.
“Okay, so… I don’t know how dragon lords are selected, but I do know you have to have a pretty good heart. Then somehow the dragon chooses you when you are born and before they are – dragons stay in their eggs for thousands of years, waiting until they find the right person and the right time to hatch.
“Argento here, chose you. But he wasn’t ready to be hatched yet, probably because you knew nothing about dragons at that time. Anyway, before a dragon is hatched, the dragon lord is just a regular person, and like you did, can die. But that doesn’t mean you are necessarily dead, per se. You may have noticed yourself still aging to your prime while everyone else in the land of the dead remained the same. You also started to have a stronger hold on the physical world, appearing more real at paces where the spirit world and our world intercept.
“You’ve now reached your prime and you’ll stop aging. Your life is directly linked to Argento now. Physically, you cannot be harmed, and almost nothing can harm Argento. You will live until he does, which can only happen if he’s killed because dragons are immortal, pretty cool right?”
Casian rested his arm around Argento, an automatic movement he had given no thought to. “My life is linked to his?”
“Yip.”
“What caused him to finally hatch?”
Nina cocked her head to the side again, her fingers rubbing her chin. “Well, I know it was the thunderstorm… an unbalance in nature. I wasn’t a naturally occurring storm, so there was enough energy released into the natural plane that disrupted the dragon’s slumber. Usually, the dragon lord would be pulled toward the egg and stumble upon it… and their touch would cause the egg to hatch. But in your case, you needed a disturbance to the natural order.
“As a guardian of nature, I could tell the storm was unnatural and so I knew Argento would be hatching.”
Casian pulled his fingers through his hair once more. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Don’t piss of really powerful sorcerers? They can cast spells to harm Argento and your job now is to take care of him and make sure he’s safe. He’s going to continue to grow and he’ll need to eat a lot… so make sure to feed him or villages might start to seem appealing.”
Casian and Argento look into each other’s eyes, and for the first time Casian can see it, a lone that connected the two of them, making them one.
YOU ARE READING
Haunting Shadows (Book 2)
Fantasy"What if my sins are all I've become? Will you still love me if the Andreas you once knew is too far gone to ever get back?" Lana had survived burning on the stake, but at what cost? Every time she closes her eyes, she revisits the horror of burning...
