Eternity Glass

XX: Deserving

There was no way in heaven that the prince he encountered in the throne room was actually Rezar. Not only did the impostor forget the layout of the place and the significance of the inscription on the throne, he hadn't once sneered or looked down his nose.

Zafiro didn't exactly wreck his brain over it. He figured that any fake Rezar would be better than the real one. Besides, he hadn't sensed any strong magic on the man. If he wasn't human, he was probably some baby witch or a bored trickster imp that managed to get through the cracks in the Eternity Glass. Zafiro also had bigger things to think about.

He couldn't sense Fallon at all. Usually pieces of her thoughts would slip into his mind, or he'd get the feeling that she entered Plygnus. He couldn't tell if something bad happened or if she decided to cut herself off completely. Frankly, he couldn't decide which would be the worse outcome. The last time they met up, she'd called them equals. For someone who hadn't seen himself as an equal to anyone in centuries... the thought of losing that caved into him like an ice pick.

Perhaps she figured out our little secret.

Goosebumps ran down Zafiro's spine. "I thought you were asleep."

Your consistent pacing woke me up.

Without any reason to leave the Underworld, Zafiro went up to the roofs of the palace, allowing the cool breeze to calm his nerves. He used to do the same thing when he was a child, back when he would avoid his tutors and older brothers. Only his mother could get him back down. She'd climb up to the roof herself and give him an earful of scolding until he held the ends of her skirt, using it as a tissue for his tears as he followed her back down.

He could see the entirety of the palace grounds from the roofs, from the main court where courtiers would take their strolls and welcome foreign ambassadors to the gardens in the back. Now everything was coated in darkness, and not a single person came out for fun anymore.

Zafiro sat at the edge, using a gargoyle as an armrest.

What're you thinking of, kid?

"A lot of things," the young man admitted. "What's stopping you from going home, Mamrecot?"

And lounge around with the other dragons? Boring. I'm your guardian, Zafiro. I'm with you even if you venture to the Ninth Ring of Hell.

A warm pressure massaged his shoulders, allowing him a brief sense of relief.

Every five hundred years or so, the royal family of Kuzaym would be blessed with a dragon-born heir: a young prince or princess with powers of the sun. At the birth of one, the kingdom would celebrate and pray for years of prosperity and protection. What they failed to recognize, or chose to ignore, was that the royal's magic didn't have any control over the nation's well-being.

Even more, each dragon-born held a secret that, if exposed, would cause utter chaos. With those powers came a guardian, one that mentored and watched over the child in a way no other parent or teacher could: a dragon, or in their tongue, a Mon-Tey.

Since Libelle married into a foreign kingdom, no one had expected her children to possess any sort of power. Some even despised her for possibly ending the bloodline. All hatred ceased when the youngest prince was born.

Zafiro's Mon-Tey, Mamrecot, visited him when he barely started walking, saying that he'd been waiting to introduce himself for five hundred years.

Of course, Zafiro couldn't talk much, so keeping the dragon nanny as a secret wasn't a problem. When he had learned to talk, Mamrecot instantly taught him about secrecy. According to him and every dragon alive, those who weren't of dragon descent were not ready to reunite with these ancient beings.