The thin night air echoed with flapping wings. Someone screamed, high and feminine, a sound not of pain, but shock and fear. I tried to look, but my view was flashing glimpses of tents flattened and scattered by the dragon's force.

An arrow lodged itself into the King's throat. Making an abrupt turn, he tore it out with his free paw and glared below us.

"Do not test me!" the King bellowed, reptilian anger lighting his eyes. His grip cracked my ribs. "She declared herself for me! Me!"

"St-stop it!" I screamed, trying to pry open his claws and pull myself free, knowing it was ineffective but desperate to escape. "You're hurting me."

"No worse than you've hurt me, my dear," he hissed, and smothered my voice against his chest, jammed my nose against his blighted sores. "The next fool loses his life."

The world was a spiraling flash of feather and scale and indiscernible faces shaded skyward. An odd silence, descended across the market, over which reigned the recurrent thrum of his rattling breath. Then, as the King cruised low over his subjects, crowing victory with an outstretched neck, there was a sharp, sudden jerk and a strangled squeal. Forward progress nose-dived into the market, spraying glass and stacked weaponry in a thousand different directions. His arm and paw,  pinning me suffocatingly tight to his chest, was what saved me as the King smashed chin-first into the ground. We skidded through several bodies and stalls, flipped and tumbled over and again.

The landing ripped his claws through my side. A hot rush of heat ran red over cracked boards., rushed across my fluttering stomach. Somehow I found my feet in the chaos, staggered out of the mess to glimpse Chiro, with Dakota just behind him, running toward us. He was yelling something. I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything. In a daze I climbed over a broken barrel, flopped onto my side and rose again, held my hand out to him for help....

A wing swept him effortlessly into the nearest wall.

The King's paw slammed into my back and I was breathing dirt. He righted himself over my head, talons sinking into my shoulder, shaking debris from his wings. Dakota hefted a spear in one hand and threw it. It pinged weakly off one outstretched wing and thumped harmlessly on the ground.

With snake-like speed the King snapped. Chiro shoved Dakota to the ground. Dozens of teeth closed on the air over their heads. Her head banged hard on the rubble and she went still. Chiro lodged a sword into the dragon's tongue, and without a second thought grabbed Dakota by the shoulders and dragged her to the far side of an outdoor fireplace. Unable to roar, the King knocked the stones onto them and I could see no more because he'd towed me along for the ride.

My fingers curled around a shard of broken pottery. When the King's weight shuffled to yank the blade from his tongue, I shoved the shard down my shirt and into my bra.

The King crouched on the smashed stone that had entombed Dakota and Chiro, wings flicking off attacks left and right, claws grinding against my bones. I couldn't see who was there, lost track of motion and time as the breath left my lungs. The great muscles beside me tensed, and in a moment we were airborne.

Darkness above, the King's winding tail below, nothing but his swelling chest in my sight; for several endless minutes the Dragon circled and roared and climbed ever higher. Something sharp cut through my exposed limbs; what might've been an arrow lodged into my calf and tore sideways and buried itself deeper with the dragon's every wingbeat. He would dive, now and then, and send stone scattering as his talons gripped the parapets for mere seconds, and then he would push off and seek a new perch to scream from. The creature's monstrous head would curve around the greyed stone, leering out at the forest until some noise or monster or human returned his fury to the targets within his kingdom.

Light, dim but brightening, sparked into existence around the scales of his belly. The sky around him thickened with sulfur. Sweat and tears rolled off my cheeks.

Flame bellowed through the sagging muscles of his throat, wisps of searing blue streaking through the gaps. The majority concentrated in his jaws, illuminating wiry tendons and sharp fangs. For the second time the world was a vacuum for sound, and then with a tornado's fury the jaws split in a brilliant burst of flame. A thick spray of lava blistered the earth with the force of a broken hydrant. Flames consumed the market. After the third tremendous blast he roared again, climbing higher, awkwardly, his left side sagging.

Had he been hit? Injured? Wounded?

He kept flying. We were high above the Malumbrian Oaks then, whose branches swayed and seemed to stretch for his toes. Still he flew on, sporadically dropping fifty feet at a time, teetering on collapse, threatening to plunge into the eager wild wood.

In the heat and the cold and the pain my body finally gave way.

The next time I woke up, he had jammed me halfway through a window. I hit the ground at an awkward angle; something in my hip popped, and when I tumbled flat on my belly in a puff of ash and dust, there wasn't a bone in my body that would listen to what I wanted it to do. I lay as I'd fallen, head tilted toward the window, choking on dust, each cough a clench of agony.

At first only one paw clung to the window, then a second curled around the overhang. His thick wedge of a head pushed through next, one eye turned to spy on me. Black talons dug bits of weathered stone, and then those claws shrunk and his hands took on the spindly veins and warts of his human guise. Naked he pulled himself through the window and disappeared into the dark, but for the fire around his mouth.

Volcanic drool dribbled down his throat, sizzled blue against the stone and cooled black. Reaching beneath his beaky snout, he wiped it off with the back of a palm, then bent to retrieve a heavy furred cloak. He beat the fabric against the wall once, twice, and in the fine sheen of dust and moonlight slipped it around his bony shoulders. 

"I suppose," he began, limping across the stone floor. An angry tail, more bone than flesh, lashed impatiently in his wake. With a labored sigh he sank onto the ground beside me, reached out and stroked the wet curve of my chin with his tailbone. "I suppose if you plucked a cheetah from the plains of Africa and dumped it on Mount Everest, you'd see a similar result as to what we have here. Dumb little creature, snarling and hungry and confused."

I didn't have the voice to reply.

With idle interest he lifted the hem of my shirt and grimaced. His shoulders lifted in a shrug, and he smoothed the fabric back into place. "That little dotted harlot of yours climbed over the wall this evening with the rest of her amphibious friends. You should have come to me, first. I would have told you the truth. I would have told you that she isn't one of you. Could've told you sooner-" here he stopped to wrench the arrow from my leg "-but you pissed me off."

He watched my fingers tighten into a fist, and laughed when every ounce of my effort (that wasn't directed towards breathing) went into flipping him the bird. His beak clicked in time to the raucous chuckles.  "I've brought you here so you can think about what you've done, and how you've behaved towards me, your future husband, the father of your child. Use this time to reflect on what it means to be a good and loyal wife."

"Fuck...off."

He massaged the back of his neck. "I don't expect much of you, certainly not love. Marriage is an oath, a duty, an honor. You will pledge yourself to me, and only me, beneath the eyes of the Marrow Witch." He paused to cross himself. "And in return for my protection and affection, you will offer to me the greatest gift of all. What's left for you doesn't have to be miserable. You loved your cattle, you love your friends. You will love your child."

He winced, and this time wiped something dark and wet from his bisected face.

Relief, weak as my breath, soothed the rabid failing of my heart. I was safe, if only for tonight. He had been hurt.

The King rambled on for only a few moments more before excusing himself. The cloak dropped from his shoulders. Framed in the window was the half-formed silhouette of a man trapped inside a monstrosity, and then he jumped.

By the time I'd crawled to the window and heaved my aching arms upon the sill, he was lost. Starlight and a forbidding mountain range splayed against the spring tint of the moon. In the distance, far across the forest, was the cerulean glow of what might've been the castle. For a time I watched the distant burn, and waited, and listened to what roamed the night far below my towering prison. It was so high here the stone itself seemed to grind and sway to the wind's will. I sank down and dropped my head against my knees, braced myself, then sat back up and dug my fingers into my chest to pry out the lodged piece of pottery.

There was nothing to do but heal, and when I'd done just enough of that to scream and frantically search the dark for a door, there was nothing to do but think.

The King hadn't figured out what Chiro had taught me, or I doubted very much that he'd have left me here to my own devices, unguarded by nothing but a sharp plunge to certain death. By the time my meditations had amounted to anything, the sun had risen then set over the mountain range, creeping across the stone tiles in one last long stretch.  All day, black smoke had billowed along the horizon.

For the evening I balled up the King's cloak beneath my head, lay prone on the floor, breathing, concentrating against the knitting flesh and bone, telling myself that it was possible to go home again. Home was all I had.

And I was scared for what it had become.

Getting there felt like falling asleep, felt so much like a dream I didn't believe it when my feet touched without touching the hardwood of our squat, crowded kitchen. The only pain here was the thought of what'd happened.

In the belly of our farmhouse sink, dishes glittered with frosted mold. The faucet had frozen in one extended leak. Ice popped through the cracks in the cabinets, pooled across the floor in a dark reflection of the wood ceiling. There was a newspaper frozen in the ice, too dull to make out the fine print. On the front page, there was a curious picture of Lucas in what looked like a hospital bed.

Unable to do more than uselessly scuff at the glassy ice and wonder, I walked the halls of my childhood without disruption, running my hand along and occasionally through the litany of pictures. There I was as an infant, there Mom and I were with the sculpture of a nighthawk that had won first prize at our town's children's section of the arts and crafts fair. There were more of us, and me, and later down the hall, the two of us with Ajax.  He was a talented man when it came to woodworking, and, not, as it turned out, cake baking. I stopped to look over the first one he'd made for me, a little werewolf with twizzler whiskers and a gumdrop nose. It wasn't a work of art, but it was the first time I knew he loved me like a daughter. Mom told me later that this was actually his second attempt; he'd tried making one from scratch first. What he read as 'white sugar' he took to mean 'any type of sugar in a bag that's white.' Turned out powdered sugar is not an acceptable substitute.

"Please don't laugh," she whispered, "He worked real hard."

The echoes of Mom's voice died beneath the whistle of wind and distant mooing. Several windows had been smashed. It seemed as though a horde of barbarians had torn through the house. Knowing what I knew now, I didn't doubt it. But there was no one inside, no evidence in the snow, no footprints, no lights, that suggested anyone had been here in a long time. When I could take it no more, I pushed against the will to disappear back into the Tower, stepped through the door and onto the porch.

Far across the paddocks, across the field Mom's family had painstaking cleared years before my birth, far across our lands were the  snow-covered backs of cattle. There were far less than there should have been, in spots they shouldn't be. I ran across the yard toward them. In the back of my mind I felt the tether to this life strain and groan, and then with a wild snap I was free. My feet churned no snow, but I ran, sprinted across the field until I was in the heart of steam and furry bodies. I stopped in front of Gracie, ran my hand over the white vapors of her snout. The cow's brown eyes showed only the well-trodden field and distant treeline.

I sighed. "I'm sorry," I told her, pretending to rub her ear. Oblivious, the cow walked to the forest edge, settled with a heavy grunt beneath the sheltered boughs of a thick spruce. "No one's coming for you. Don't go this way. It's just the forest. Go out towards the road. Get found by somebody. Please."

The other cattle joined her at their own pace. A light snow had begun to sweep clean their tracks, but it didn't reach them where they laid on soft needles underneath the evergreens. As I watched, a smaller cow, a young calf with puckered scars across her back and legs, bumped her head against Gracie's and folded her legs in beside her mother's. 

The heart in my chest skipped a beat. I covered my delighted gasp with both hands. "Oh God, you're alive. You're alive, sweetie. I thought he'd killed you."

I bent down to see her.

Snow crunched underfoot. "Tay?" came a soft-spoken voice, masculine and sweet. "Honey?" The footsteps came louder, faster. A tufted hat bobbed through the undergrowth. The man was wearing a thick jacket and heavy snowpants. His face was warmed by a balaclava, but I'd recognize that voice anywhere.

"Ajax!" I pushed around the branches to get to him. He barreled toward me with open arms.

"Tay! Is that really you? You made it?"

"It's me," I said, sweeping away the last of the undergrowth. "You did it. You saved us—"

Faster than a natural hand could move, he grabbed me by the throat. Though the world around me was nothing but a vision, the grip on my throat was real. The way I grabbed his wrist and struggled against the inevitable, that was real, too.

"The greatest hunters are the most patient," Ajax hissed through the fleece mask. The skin around his eyes was yellow and sunken, and his eyes- deep red veins cradled glazed irises. Flakes of blood dandered his shoulders. "Care to guess again?"