Silver's First Attempt

And so there he lay. Sleeping in peace and blissfully unaware of her undoing him seam by seam. His body raising and lowering like the calm tide before a ferocious storm. His life was in her talons, and he still hadn’t caught wise.

Not that he didn’t deserve it, of course. This ‘loyal’ mate had been caught numerous times sneaking off and spending time with others. He’d whisper promises into their ears like poison, tempting them with forbidden love and hoping they were dull enough to actually believe him.

And most of them were.

Truthfully, however, Silver didn’t care whether or not he saw others. Just so long as they were together in the public eye. Her status was the only gift that he’d given to her that truly mattered, everything else being simple materials that filled some sort of invisible quota of presents that signified a good relationship. Of course, now, everything he’d done was meaningless.

The most important thing to holding a high status in society is the illusion of perfection. The perfect body, the perfect voice, the perfect relationship. A dragon could be anyone, but as long as they made others believe they possessed all three traits, they could lead an army to their doom with the promise of immortality. Silver’s soon-to-be husband had let his fun interfere with his image, and now he was about as useless to her goals as a commoner.

After sneaking out of their abode one night, he had stumbled and seriously damaged one of his wings. Local healers did what they could, but despite their best efforts (and the amount of gold his father threw at them to aid his son), he would likely never fly again. His wing would always be misshapen. His body perpetually disfigured, and his perfection tarnished because of it.

An injury seemed like hardly a reason for Silver to be upset with him, though. She wouldn’t have been as angry if the story of how he got hurt hadn’t spread through the village like wildfire. Murmurs about the dragon who hurt his wing when trying to sneak away from his beloved.

Silver could hear whispers whenever she walked down the streets, some theorizing that she wasn’t easy to live with, while others sympathetic to her ‘broken’ heart. She hated all of them equally. Most importantly, she despised her fiance.

And so he lay there. Sleeping in peace and blissfully unaware of her undoing him seam by seam. The medicine she’d given him for the pain in his wing would relieve him of his life, and make him no longer carry the burden of a damaged reputation.

The last words he’d said to Silver before he’d fallen asleep were that of love and appreciation for being the only one to accept him for who he really was. In that moment, she’d seen the spark in his eye, for the first time since they’d been together she saw that he truly had fallen in love with her.