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frayed dress. “You take it off, or I will.”
    “You know Zerelda would flay me if I come back with it torn,” she hissed.
    “I will eat her.”
    She sighed. “You say that every time, but you know you can’t. No harm may come to her while she owns me, you know this.”
    Gnashing my teeth, I hated to admit she was right. But she was. Lena had told me once that any bodily injury Zerelda sustained, so too would she. Believing her to exaggerate, I’d hissed out a jet of steam at that hag when she’d not been looking several nights later.
    Lena had screamed a sound that’d ripped an agony of pain through my own soul. The hag had gone down, but so too had my love.
    I’d never tried to hurt the witch since, even though the mere sight of her incited me to a riot of rage.
    “Take it off, please.” I gentled my tone. “I only wish to ease your pain, my treasure.”
    She stood mutinously, ramrod straight for several tense seconds, but I knew the moment her desire to be healed had overcome any silly feminine sensibilities. Humans were entirely too ridiculous when it came to nudity.
    “I really shouldn’t do this. You’re a boy and I’m a woman. It is wrong of us—”
    Wrapping an arm about her waist, I yanked her tight to my side, my voice rumbling heavily as I said, “How many times do I have to tell you that I am no boy? In only a matter of weeks I become pledged.”
    I did not lie. I was very nearly into my fully matured state. For every year that a denizen of Kingdom aged, we aged twice as fast. Every six months we celebrated the equivalent of another year. For my people, thirteen-and-a-half years saw us fully fledged. In Kingdom years, that made me nearly twenty-seven.
    My kind lived to be several tens of thousands of years old in a lifetime; our quick maturity was due to our poor ability to conceive. We matured faster so that we could try sooner. Most dragonborne could only conceive one hatchling during their lifetime. My parents, being of royal blood, conceived twice.
    My brother and I would also be able to conceive twice. And while I did want my two to be with my Lena, my hands were bound until she was freed of the hag’s enchantment.
    Her pretty clear blue eyes glimmered with worry and another strange emotion I couldn’t quite place a talon on.
    Closing her eyes, she gently shoved me off her. “Just...do not hurt me.”
    I placed a fist against my heart. “Never in a thousand lifetimes would I ever harm you.”
    Turning her back to me, she gently eased the scraps of fabric off her shoulders. She didn’t disrobe completely; the top hung loose around her hips, but all of her back was exposed to me.
    It was all I could do not to caress the tiny hatch work of silvery scars running across her back. I’d healed her countless times by now. But after a while, even dragon’s tears could not keep the flesh pure when it continued to be broken open time and time again.
    Already I could see the heavy bruising of the hag’s cane crisscrossing the length of her spine and even up into her hairline. By tomorrow her reddish-purple skin would be a heavy shade of blue-black.
    “My beautiful Lena,” I whispered, and bending over, just slightly brushed my cheek and nose against her back.
    A cool breeze whispered through the night, and off in the distance I could hear the innocent laughter of fairies at play. Sometimes Lena and I would spy on them and imagine to ourselves what types of parties they had or what they celebrated this time, but tonight I cared nothing for the lives of the fairies.
    My tears ran like healing waters across her flesh, mending the wounds before my eyes. I did not need to touch her to heal her, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
    I ran my callused palms across the flat of her abdomen, pausing in my exploration of her when she released a pained hiss.
    “Your rib?” I asked without preamble, already knowing because of the unnatural bump of her bones beneath my fingertips.
    Her only answer was a