Where the Old Blood Sleeps

The baby wailed against my chest as I clawed my way up the last few feet of stone toward the ledge. My arms shook. My lungs burned. Still, I forced myself higher. If we did not reach the mountain path before the palace guards caught up, they would find us. They would take him. They would kill him, an innocent child condemned for the blood he had never asked to inherit.

“Almost there, little one,” I promised, though my voice came out ragged and thin. My fingers closed over the edge at last. I only had to get him onto solid ground. Then I could breathe. Then I could decide how much farther I had to carry him before my body gave out completely. With one trembling hand, I pulled him free of the sling against my chest and pushed him onto the ledge, as far from the drop as I could manage.

My foot slipped. Of course it did. I kicked blindly for a new hold, but my legs were spent, useless even with fear pouring strength into them. My fingers scraped against the rock. I was going to fall. But he was safe, wasn’t he? He was on the ledge. We had to be close to the mountain path. Someone might hear his cries. Someone might take pity on him. Both my hands clung to the edge now, knuckles split and shaking as I dragged the last of my strength from somewhere deep and empty. It was not enough. My grip began to fail. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, silent tears slipping down my face.

The left hand slipped.

The right hand slipped.

I was falling.

A hand closed around my forearm.

I cried out as the grip wrenched my arm nearly from its socket and stopped my fall. Above me, a shape moved in the darkness, blurred by tears and night. Impossible. Someone had been there, had been watching us, and only now had reached for me. Before I could decide whether to fear or thank them, I was hauled upward and thrown onto the ledge beside the child.

I hit the stone hard and folded around the pain. My shoulder screamed. Every muscle in my body trembled from exhaustion, but I forced myself upright, searching frantically through the dark. The baby was still there, tucked against the mountain wall, his red eyes swollen and glassy from crying.

“Little one!” I gathered him into my good arm and pressed my back to the mountain, shielding him before I looked up at my rescuer.

Long black-and-red robes hung from a tall figure carved in shadow. Horns curled from straight black hair. Clawed hands flexed at their sides, the same hands that had caught me without cutting my skin. The air around it felt older than the mountain, cold and watchful. I knew what it was before it spoke.

A dragon. Perhaps the guardian of these peaks. Perhaps something far worse.

Its voice rolled through the stone beneath us. “You should not be here. This is my home, and you have woken me from my slumber. Why have you sought me out?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

The question struck harder than the wind. Why had I come? Why had I climbed into dragon territory with palace guards behind me and a death sentence sleeping against my heart?

“For him.” I lifted the baby a little with my good arm. “I shouldn’t have. I know that. I should have obeyed.” My throat closed around the words. “But I couldn’t hand him over. Not after they killed his mother. Not when all he has done is breathe.”

The dragon stepped closer. Its eyes narrowed, then widened as it truly saw the child: the red glow beneath heavy lids, the tiny horn nubs at the crown of his head, the faint twitch beneath the swaddling where a tail was hidden.

“A dragonling?” The dragon knelt beside me, all menace gone from its voice.

“Half,” I said. “Though to the king, that is the same as full-blooded.” I stroked the baby’s cheek with my thumb as his cries faded into exhausted hiccups. “He is my sister’s son. We were never allowed to have children. Not after what the fortune teller saw.” I sniffed, tears threatening to spill as I gazed upon my nephew. “He doesn’t even have a name yet.”

“A dragon ancestor,” the dragon stated, looking from the child to me.

I nodded. With every breath, the fear inside me thinned, leaving only pain and the terrible weight of what I had done.

“Our great grandmother was half dragon,” I said. “When my sister and I were children, our fortunes were read. We were told our children would carry the old blood strongly enough to become dragons themselves.” I looked down at the sleeping boy. “The king heard. He forbade us from having children without his permission.”

The old loyalty twisted inside me, stubborn even now. I served that crown. I had believed in it. But belief had not saved my sister. “I couldn’t let him kill my nephew too.”

The dragon was silent for a long moment. Then it rose to its full height and held out one clawed, human shaped hand.

“Come with me,” it said. “You may rest here tonight. In the morning, we will decide what can be done for you and the young one.”

I hesitated for only a heartbeat before tucking the baby back against my chest and taking the dragon’s hand with my good one.

Perhaps I was foolish. Perhaps desperation had made trust look like courage. But dragons were guardians, the old stories said, and guardians did not harm children. To save the last of my family from a king who feared the return of dragons, I would follow even the creature I had once been taught to hate. I would raise this child to be strong, to defend the helpless, and to know kindness and love, even in a world that believed he should never have been born.