Page 73 of Starside

I steel myself and fight. I’m strong. I can master this sword, just like I’ve mastered plenty of impossible things. Step by step. Hour by hour.

We duel until finally my sword slips from my hands. The dragon’s tail stops just short of me. She looks me over and huffs with something like approval.

I sink to the ground with exhaustion.

With a sigh, the dragon curls herself around me.

“What do you eat?” I ask the dragon hours later, when it feels like I can move again.

At that question she gets up, and I’m knocked onto her back in a flash. Before I can recover my stolen breath, she’s in the air.

“You can’t just—” I cough, sputtering. “You can’t just—”

She looks at me over her shoulder, as if to say, I’m a dragon. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

That smug look shuts me up. I grip her scales and see where she might take me.

The air is cold up here. It feels like flying through an icy river, without fear of drowning. I peer over the side and forget to breathe.

This far up, the land looks like the weaver’s quilts—cut into patches. Forests I’ve been told to fear are just streaks of green. Mountains that would have taken days to scale are just daggers, dug into the ground.

Stellan taught me never to trust anyone. But all I can do up here is trust. If this dragon shifts to the side, I’m dead. If she decides her food is me, there’s nothing I can do about it. That doesn’t scare me. No. Because she saved me. I trust her, and it means I don’t just have to count on myself anymore. Someone is leading the way. Someone’s got me.

We fly for less than an hour before she begins her descent. This time, I hold on better, and only slightly bruise my ass when she lands.

We’re in the center of a small field, at the base of a mountain, in front of a sparkling gray rockface.

I look around, confused. It’s … empty. There aren’t any creatures roaming about. I can’t hear anything. I slide off my dragon and onto my feet, then pause. Listen.

Nothing.

“What—”

The dragon turns in a flash of silver. With a thunderous whip of her spiked tail, the stone begins to fall away, revealing cluster after cluster of glimmering red gems. Rubies? My mouth goes dry. I inch forward, blinking quickly as if this could be some sort of illusion. Priceless. These gems must be worth enough to feed a quarter of Stormside.

My dragon lowers her neck—

And devours the stones, teeth crunching them into powder.

I watch, dumbfounded, as the wall slowly goes gray again, picked clean. Only then does my dragon sit back, tired, having had her fill.

“You eat … gemstones?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re going to be an expensive creature, aren’t you?” She huffs as if she’s saying, Look at me. Were you expecting anything less? I frown. “Your diet. Is that why you were underground? Do all dragons eat precious stones?”

She doesn’t answer, of course.

I sigh. “Strange creature,” I say. By the way she nuzzles up against my side, she takes it as a compliment.

Unlike the dragon, I don’t eat rubies. It doesn’t take long for my own stomach to grumble. After a few minutes, my dragon seems to tire of the sound. She sighs, then lowers her neck. Come, the motion says. Then we’re off again.

I understand now why the writer of the journal said a creature was so crucial to this journey. My dragon knows these lands better than a map ever could. With her, I likely don’t need a map at all. Before long, she’s landing in the center of a forest.

Red is everywhere, just like the rubies. But instead of gemstones … these are berries. I slip off my dragon and grab handfuls greedily, smelling them for a moment, then shoving them into my mouth, eating just as quickly as my dragon did. I close my eyes and groan. Sweeter than honey. Sweeter than anything I’ve ever tasted.

I eat until my stomach twists in pain, and then I gather the rest to keep for later. “Thank you,” I say, offering some to the dragon.

Her huff says, I don’t eat anything as pedestrian as fruit.

Very well, then. More for me.