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“What was it like?” Deathbringer asked one day, his black wings outstretched on the leafy platform. The sun was dappling his black scales, accenting the little silver speckles and the slightest undertones of rich, midnight purple.
Sometimes Glory thought his scales were more appealing to look at than any Rainwings’.
“What was WHAT like?” She shot back, twining her tail with his. He didn’t normally ask questions, or even really talk at all, during sun time, always so adamant that she needed her rest. So either he was very bored, or this was very important to him.
“Living under the mountain.” As if on cue, a chill ran over Glory’s scales, like the sun had frozen into ice. As if she could still feel what it was like to live underground, only seeing the sun through a small hole in the ceiling. She shook her wings out a little, jarring away the cold.
“It was…dark,” Glory shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant.
Deathbringer snorted. “No kidding. I mean, like, what were the guardians like? Webs seems…nice.”
Glory rolled her eyes. “Webs was always decent, I guess. Useless though, like a sea slug. Never brought me any scrolls about Rainwings. I never knew anything about them…us.”
She waited for Deathbringer to yawn or something, give off some sign he’d rather be asleep than listening to her talk. But he was staring at her attentively.
She sighed. “Dune was gruff, always kinda grouchy. I think it’s because his wing was mangled. And Kestrel…”
Just saying that name had anger and fear boiling up in her heart, memories rising unbidden in her head of spitting insults and blasts of hot flames aimed at her head during training hours.
“Well, she didn’t like me very much.” That was the understatement of the century.
“Why not?” Deathbringer looked comically confused, as though he couldn’t understand anyone disliking her.
For a professional assassin, he could be surprisingly innocent.
“Because I’m a Rainwing. Morrowseer’s epic prophecy called for a big strong Skywing, not a, and I quote, ‘lazy, rainbow fruit eater.’”
Glory rolled her eyes again like she was indifferent to it, laying her head down and stretching her wings out like Deathbringer’ to absorb as much sun as possible. The tips of his wings overlapped with hers, and she couldn’t help but enjoy how even more heat radiated off of his dark scales.
“But the prophecy wasn’t even real in the first place.”
“She didn’t know that. And even if she had, Pyrriah didn’t. It was all about the image to her. I think she used to lose sleep at night over what people would think when they saw Sunny and I with the others.”
Deathbringer looked strangely troubled, and Glory huffed a sigh. “Don’t stress over it, bodyguard,” she teased. “We’re supposed to be napping.”
Deathbringer nodded, and once Glory was sure he’d been successfully steered away from the topic, she closed her eyes, relishing in the feel of the golden sun on her scales and of Silver’s warm, furry body on the back of her neck.
Despite her reservations about sleeping during the day instead of fulfilling her “queenly duties” and keeping peace between the Nightwings and Rainwings, sun time really was so relaxing. It was like all of the tension melted out of her body, and it was the time that Deathbringer was least likely to look all smug when she twined her tail around his.
Just as she was drifting off, she felt Deathbringer moving around again, followed by the sound of his throat clearing.
Glory sighed and opened her eyes. “What now?”
If Deathbringer were a Rainwing, she was sure his scales would all be rosy pink from embarrassment.
“Well…uh, I was just gonna say…”
“Say what?”
“That I think Kestrel was wrong. You were just what the prophecy needed.”
Glory snorted. “The prophecy doesn’t exist, remember? Or have all those volcanic fumes finally rotted your brain?”
He growled playfully at her. “It came true, didn’t it? Two died, one learned, all that jazz.”
“Mm-hmm, whatever,” she hummed, closing her eyes again.
“That couldn’t have happened if there was some mini Kestrel in your group. The dragonets had to be compassionate enough to actually WANT to stop the war so dragons would stop dying, not because they wanted all the fame. Any old Skywing taught by that overgrown lizard would’ve been too angry all the time.”
Glory kept her eyes closed, knowing he was doing that thing again where he looked at her with deep and kind eyes, and God, she hated it when he did that, because it felt like she couldn’t hide from him. No amount of sarcasm could keep her secrets away from those eyes.
“I’m just saying, you don’t seem like some lazy fruit eater to me. But I guess it would take some stupid Skywing to underestimate a dragon that’s so smart.”
He hummed a little, as if what he’d said was a completely average, inconsequential thing to throw out in normal conversation, and then he shifted again, lying his head back down as if to go to sleep.
So they were really just leaving that there? Like that?
Fine then.
Glory growled to herself and tried to settle back down to sleep, focusing on the rays of heat from the sun.
But even as she drifted off, she knew the real warmth under her scales wasn’t from the sun. It was from Deathbringer.