Page 27 of Dragon Cursed
You are setting the mountain on fire.
Stone does not burn.The dragon sounded smug.We are very precise.
Precise was not the word Alsander would have chosen for a creature large enough to crush wagons beneath one claw, but before he could answer, the dragon lowered his head slightly toward Poppy once again.
Entranced, Poppy tracked the movement.Her gaze collided with the dragon’s.
Smoke drifted from his nostrils in slow gray ribbons.
Poppy’s face glowed gold beneath the reflected firelight.Her hair caught the brightness like threads of copper wire, and the dragon made a soft sound deep in his chest that Alsander realized—horrifyingly—was affection.
The beast was enchanted with her.
Hopelessly.
The fire overhead began to dim.
Not die.
Withdraw.
Alsander sensed the change immediately.Heat moved strangely around magic; it obeyed different laws.The blaze coating the ceiling shuddered once, then drew backward through the cavern in invisible currents, flowing toward the dragon with the slow pull of a tide reversing itself.
The beast inhaled.
Warmth peeled away from the air.
The brutal heat softened first against Poppy’s skin, then throughout the chamber; the temperature dropping too quickly to be natural.The glowing cracks webbing through the ceiling darkened from white-gold to ember red, from ember red to black stone glistening faintly in the firelight.
The dragon’s magic moved through the cavern walls.
Alsander felt it sink deep into the mountain itself, slipping through ancient stone veins rich with underground water.Heat.Cold.Pressure.Release.The dragon manipulated them as instinctively as breathing.
Dragon magic was never only destruction.
It was dominion.
A sharp hiss whispered overhead.
Poppy blinked upward.
One clear droplet formed in the ceiling above her.
It trembled there, reflecting the dying gold light, then fell.
Another appeared beside it.
Then another.
The cavern, first heated, then cooled, began to weep with condensation.
Poppy gasped, the sound full of wonder, as water pearled across the dark stone in glittering beads, gathering along the paths the fire had traced moments before.Droplets slid down the vaulted ceiling and fell through rising steam in a cool silver rain.
The scent changed instantly.
Smoke and sulfur gave way to wet mineral, clean stone, and the sharp sweetness of rain after unbearable summer heat.
Poppy let out the smallest breath.
