Chapter Six

I fell to my knees in the treasure, my heart racing in instinctual fear. I heard the dragon roar. For a moment, my vision greyed, and then I remembered to breathe. I rose to my feet and staggered down the tunnel to the mouth of the cavern, feeling the wind raised by the dragon’s wings blow back my skirts and braid, whipping the stray hairs that had worked their way free against my face, and setting the pearls around my neck swaying.

The dragon wheeled on a wing tip, and roared again, blowing out a shock of fire. He was breathtakingly beautiful, his scales grading from white across his stomach, green gold, to the rich gold of the treasure pile behind me. The spikes that ranged along his back held threads of orange through them. Like the sculptures of lions in the castle, his head was square jawed and regal, and his legs muscled, and claw tipped. His wings were long and strong, and his tail lithesome.

He circled again in the sky. He was fo