He gathered her up, and held her close. “I cannot bear to see you like this, my love,” he told her. “I cannot change what has been done to you, Nidhug, but perhaps I can make it better for you.”

“How?” She sniffled, nestling against the blue and gold scales of his chest.

“You are required by the magic world of which you are a part to replenish your kind,” he said. “I will give you a child if you will let me,” Cirillo told her.

“But faeries only give children to those they truly love,” Nidhug said softly.

“And I love you,” he told her. “Oh, one day I will wed with some pretty faerie girl, and to please my mother love her enough to have an heir for the Forest Kingdom. But you are she to whom my cold faerie heart truly belongs. Will always belong. I would sire your child, and when that egg hatches, I will indeed be father to it. Together we will create a Great Dragon such as Belmair has never seen!”

Nidhug began to cry again. But this time her tears were tears of happiness. Theirs was a love that should not be. Yet it was. A faerie prince and a Great Dragon of Belmair. And together they would create her heir.

“Come,” she said, and she led him within her cave where as they mated passionately their roars of joy thundered throughout the mountains of Belia, bringing the rains that washed away all evidence of the murder done.

Nidhug laid her new egg, setting it into a fresh nest of willow and swansdown that Cirillo had fashioned for it. He blessed the egg and, this time, added a protection spell. This egg would remain safe and hatch in its time.

As the glorious sunset spread its myriad of reds, oranges, golds, purples and greens across the Belmairan skies, Nidhug and her faerie mate stood watching, filled with happiness. Above them the great star that was called Hetar rose to blaze across the night skies, settling between Belmair’s silver and gold twin moons. Their world had begun a new era. Dillon and Cinnia would rule in peace for a thousand or more years to come. And there would always be a Great Dragon of Belmair to guide them and their descendants.

Bertrice Small

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