Prince Danny's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

The iron door shook again. Danny stood with the warm ring on his finger and his other hand still on his sword. Allee watched him. The children clung to her skirts. He did not understand. The ring glowed like a coal. His sword felt heavy and wrong. "Tell me," Danny said. "Quick. Why can't I raise my blade?" Allee did not soften it. "The dragon is not our enemy. It never was. My father lied to you. He lied to me too, for a long time." She touched the ring on his hand. "This is its promise. Wear it and the dragon knows you. Draw steel and the promise breaks." Behind her, on a shelf, Danny saw a slender wand laid across a row of small folded blankets. Four cups. Four spoons. She had kept them fed. She had kept them quiet. She had waited. Danny looked at his shield leaning by the door. The gold face, the proud crest. He had carried it through the moat and the tunnel ready to charge a monster. Now it felt like a stranger's thing. He set it down. He slid his sword into its sheath. His hand was shaking. The fist on the door stopped. Boots ran past and faded. Allee let out a long breath. She opened a narrow back hatch in the tower wall. Through it Danny saw a small garden, half wild, and an old wooden bench with two names cut into the seat. Hers. His. Carved long ago. "He used to sit here," she said. "The dragon. In the shape of a man. Before my father chained him." Danny knelt and gathered the children close. He kissed Allee's hand, the one without the ring. "Then we don't kill him," he said. "We free him." Outside, high on the south tower, a long low sound rolled across the stones — not a roar, but something like a greeting. The ring on Danny's finger answered with a steady, quiet heat. The plan he had carried for three weeks was gone. A new one had taken its place.