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It was on an ordinary autumn night, one where the stars and the moons hung high over the rainforest, that Glory leveled an unusual accusation at Deathbringer.
“Did you know that today’s your hatchday?”
He looked up from his scroll, stretching his thin NightWing frame out with a yawn. Like most nights, the two dragons spent their evenings together in Glory’s personal chambers, a modest home woven from vines and RainWing ingenuity that hung high in the trees. “I’m sorry? Did you say it was my hatchday?”
“I know you’re not as deaf as you look,” she said back, shooting him a toothy grin. “And I didn’t stutter, either.”
“I would never accuse you of stuttering, my well-spoken queen,” he said, rolling up the scroll of guard schedules he was poring over. “But though you are my authority on many things, I don’t think you’re allowed to tell me when I was born.”
The muted “ugh” that rose from her muzzle, matched only by the faintest of pinkness creeping through her fins, left Deathbringer smug with satisfaction. “Now, out of all the things you could choose to lie about, why would you lie about this?” she asked, peering over her own tiny hoard of scrolls scattered across the floor. “You’re much mouthier than usual.”
“Look at me, Glory. Would I ever lie to you?”
He ingratiated himself with a sweep of his wings, revealing the glimmer of stars painted across inky nightscape. Though they were hardly unusual amongst his tribe, Deathbringer took immense pride in the fact that Glory had eyes for no NightWing’s wings but his own, captivated by their majesty for far longer than he knew she would ever admit to.
“Distraction is a form of lying,” she said after a moment of quiet consideration. “And you should know a ploy like that doesn’t work on me.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” he said with Glory-triggering dismissiveness. “Should I try sweeping you up in my arms instead? You seemed to like it last time. You know, in front of—”
“Silence, you ridiculous dragon,” she said, though the undercurrents of a blush began to sneak their way under her scales. She stepped over her scrolls and settled in next to Deathbringer, pressing up against his warmth. “I know you like to be dastardly charming and persuasive, but even now you’re laying on a little too thick.”
“Ah — you’ve caught me, Queen Glory. It was all a ploy to get you to show me some of your rare affection.”
“Rare. Rare?! You dumb, unappreciative smokebreather—“
He drew a starry wing over her smaller form, quieting her again. “Honestly, that’s the truth of it,” Deathbringer admitted with a chuckle. “Don’t you think you’ve spent enough time tonight working? I promise those scrolls won’t go anywhere.”
Her defeat showed in her shoulders. They slumped down as she cuddled in closer with her partner, though he still caught her longing glances towards the pile. “I still don’t believe you when you say your only motive was to distract me from my work,” she said. “How do you know today’s not your hatchday?”
“Well, that’s certainly an assumption. I never specified whether it was or wasn’t my hatchday.”
He adored the muffled groan that rose from underneath his wing, but with his enjoyment came a small pang of guilt for inflicting himself upon a tired Glory. “I actually don’t know when I was born,” he admitted, nuzzling down towards her horns. “Quickstrike was never one for those celebrations, so she never told me.”
“How do you know how old you are, then?” Glory asked. “Did you pick a date?”
“I just count the number of times the yearly eclipse has passed. I know they kept hatch records back at the volcano, back when keeping NightWing dragonets alive was a serious problem. But those were all destroyed in the eruption, right?”
The way Glory peeked back at him with her green eyes told him everything he needed to know. “You know,” he started, “you’re looking awfully shy for a queen.”
“Greatness brought a lot of records with her,” the RainWing said, looking anywhere but back into his eyes. “Not all of them made it, but we have the hatch records for most of the NightWings. And before you get any ideas in that tiny head of yours, they’ve been helpful for census work, and determining what resources NightWings will need from the rainforest, and—”
“Looking up the hatchday of a queen’s most favorite NightWing?”
“Don’t give me that look,” she growled back as he struggled to not let his simpering smirk melt into something far too romantic. “Don’t give me that insufferable look, you stupid, pitiful guard, don’t you dare…!”
But despite her protests, Deathbringer felt her surrender herself to his affections, slackening against his scales as her body flushed pink from horns to tail. “Is it really today?” Deathbringer whispered.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Well,” he admitted, “you’ve kind of made it difficult to ignore the truth. Otherwise you wouldn’t have assertively told me that it’s my hatchday, would you?”
“It could be a bluff,” she said. “What was it you said? A ploy to show me your ‘rare affection’?”
Deathbringer let out a bark of laughter. “I thought you already knew I have nothing but an endless fountain of love for Her Majesty.”
“First of all,” she said with an abrasive burst of laughter, “language.”
It was only when he mouthed his words aloud that Deathbringer let out a snicker of his own. “Well, perhaps, if it’s my hatchday, then maybe—“
He gasped in pain from the RainWing elbow suddenly lodged in his ribs, nearly doubling over as Glory wormed her way out from underneath him with a gruff grumble. “Gross NightWing,” she said, shaking her head. “And second of all, you will be delighted to know that your queen has gone through the painstaking activity of identifying something to give you despite your unbecoming behavior.”
“Aww, Glory.”
“Shut up.”
Deathbringer bowed his head. “I would be honored,” he said, “to receive a personal gift from Her Majesty. Fun fact — it’ll be my first hatchday gift. It turns out that not celebrating hatchdays means that you don’t ever get gifts for them. I’m surprised you went through the trouble for it.”
“Shush. Can’t you just receive a gift without making a big deal about it?”
“Not if it’s from you,” he said, though he bit the rest of his words back when he saw her stern expression. “Alright, alright. What will Her Majesty bequeath upon me?”
“Ugh.” Glory paced across the room to the nightstand beside their bed, digging deep in one of its drawers. She walked back awkwardly on three claws, the last one wrapped around a scarlet-clothed package. “Here. Just take it.”
Deathbringer received her package with both of his claws, cradling it as if it were a newborn dragonet. “It’s heavy,” he commented as he played with the knot holding the package tight. “May I, Glory…?”
She rolled her eyes with a huff. “Yes, Deathbringer. You may. But be careful with it.”
His claws worked excitedly at the gift, undoing the knot, and he marveled for a moment at how delicately Glory had folded together the cloth. “Careful? Why would I need to be careful? Surely you wouldn’t give me—”
He had no more words the moment he pulled the cloth away. A pair of steel-wrought shuriken greeted him, their edges honed so meticulously that they gleamed silvery death at him in the moonlight. He held them close to his face, partially to inspect the stamps forged into them, partially to hide his less-than-happy expression. “Cloudsong Armory,” he said with an almost reverent murmur.
“Queen Ruby frowns upon making weapons beyond those she uses to arm her guard. But I convinced her that my elite guard would need only the best weapons that she could provide, and, well,” Glory shrugged, “she commissioned Cloudsong Armory.”
“No one commissions Cloudsong Armory,” Deathbringer said with awe, turning the shuriken in the light between his talons. “They wouldn’t even manufacture weapons for Queen Scarlet when she was alive.”
“I’m sure Ruby asked nicely,” the RainWing said briskly. “But that’s besides the point, isn’t it?”
Deathbringer tried to ignore how she looked up at him. Though she would have appeared stoic to anyone else, he could sense the vague hopefulness in her eyes, and didn’t want to face the reality that he would disappoint her. “I… thank you, Glory. I can’t believe you had these made for me—”
“But?”
“What do you mean, but?”
“I hear the hesitation in your voice. You have something else you want to say.”
Deathbringer let out a sigh. “Can’t even let me finish my own sentences, huh?”
“Deathy.”
He gave Glory a weak smile. “I don’t think I work in that business anymore,” he said as he wrapped the shuriken back in the crimson cloth. “You know I gave that life up when I chose to be with you.”
She let out a long sigh through her nose. “That is true,” she said with a frown. “But what if you will need these again someday?”
“Need these again? We live in the rainforest. There’s nothing that would be threatening enough that these would be necessary.”
“You’re not thinking far enough ahead,” Glory said, crossing her arms and raising her snout at Deathbringer, and for a moment he felt like an insolent dragonet rather than her esteemed bodyguard. “Everything is alright now. But what about five years in the future? Ten? Or do you not concern yourself with such things because you plan to abscond with some other dragon before then?”
He froze at the smirk she shot at him. “The only dragon I would ever abscond with is you,” he said with a wounded look. “I’ve already proven myself, haven’t I?”
Glory covered the giggle that rose from her snout. “Perhaps. But though we are safe for now, we can’t predict what the future holds in store from us. Did you ever think that someone like Darkstalker would come by the rainforest? We just don’t know,” she said, drawing closer to him.
Deathbringer’s eyes softened as she clasped her claws over his, pressing the weapons tight into his grasp. “And if there ever comes a time when my best bodyguard ever has to defend his queen,” she said with far more solemnity, “then it is her duty to arm him with the tools to do so.”
Her statement sank itself in Deathbringer’s heart, stabbing deeper than any blade could ever could. He realized then that he held in his claws not just weapons, but his partner’s love and trust, responsibility that she would never dare to bestow upon him with words… and suddenly the shuriken felt so much heavier.
“That’s a pretty good reason,” he admitted with a nervous laugh, for once uncertain of what to say. “How long did it take you to think of all that?”
She growled and raised her head. Her claws rose up to grasp his shoulders as she bumped her muzzle against his, and stole his wit away with an impassioned kiss. Deathbringer’s heart quickened as he returned her affections the best he could, though he found himself overwhelmed by her intensity, and submitted to her until she pulled herself away a moment later.
“If only you had as many thoughts in your head as you do stars in your wings,” she said with a haughty, blushing huff, freeing him of her grasp. “I am a queen. It is my responsibility to plan for the future and whatever it may hold.”
“My apologies, Your Majesty,” he said with a crooked bow. “Perhaps you might remediate this poor guard’s intelligence with some physical punishment?”
Deathbringer barely had time to set the shuriken aside before he felt the weight of an entire RainWing pouncing upon him.