Merin, a mother with a heart filled with love and fear, couldn't tear her eyes away from the slender thread connecting her daughter's heart to her paternal grandfather. Her fingers, trembling with an inexplicable urge, were desperate to sever it, to protect her from the impending danger.

Mordecai wouldn't help her, and all she earned for her troubles was a sore body from conking out on marble. Red said he found her on the ground, but she had woken up in a strange place.

Her mind must have been the only thing that traveled.

Merin's gaze fell upon Acuzio, a growing dragon rolling towards the pond that served as his sanctuary. The dragon's presence had transformed the once teeming pond. It was now devoid of its former inhabitants, and it became his sole watering hole.

"He looks like a crocodile!" Emine said as she shelled nuts for Merin to eat.

"He's a dragon," Merin said, her voice filled with a mix of awe and familiarity. The waddling beast, with its shimmering scales and absent wings, flopped on his back to bathe under the warm, beaming sun, a sight that never failed to bring a smile to Merin's face.

"He's not very graceful..." Emine said. The young girl had the good sense to lower her voice when she said that.

As if he heard her, even with a distance of fifty feet, Acuzio began rolling over to them.

"By your leave, I'm going to go check on the laundry in case it rains!" Emine said.

Merin nodded and dismissed the girl, who awkwardly tried to leave without exposing her back to Merin.

Acuzio was quick despite his size and made a noise of annoyance as he plopped in the girl's cooling seat.

"Thank you," Merin said to the dragon. "I didn't get what I hoped for, but I am grateful to you for listening."

Acuzio's black eyes gleamed at her, and Merin noticed that red was woven into his irises for the first time.

"I will be with you until you no longer need me." He said.

Merin fought the wave of emotions that rose upon those words. She wanted to find comfort in them, but she was too wary of words alone. "What did you do to be stuck in this form?" She said instead of the half dozen questions she wanted to ask him.

The scaled beast sighed and turned its head. If Merin didn't know better, she'd think it was turning red with shame. His scales always had a hint of color between the cracks, so she had to be wrong.

"I had an accident." He said.

Merin bit her lips to stop a laugh from escaping her lips. "How so?" She said when she'd managed to strip the mirth from her words.

"Magic isn't allowed in every world, and some worlds are forbidden to those with magic," Acuzio said.

Merin noted that he'd said a lot but still had not told the exact incident. "Mordecai mentioned different worlds...what does that mean?" She said. She was curious but figured he meant countries. The concept of places past her current existence didn't make sense to her.

"This is just one world among countless," Acuzio said, but he managed to sneak in a yawn as if he were too tired to speak more. He then took a great deal of time to explain the concept to her, but the words were too strange for her to accept.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"So you performed magic in a world where magic was banned?" Merin said, wanting to change the subject.

"I accidentally burned some things." He said, managing to stand stiff and embarrassed.

"You're a dragon. That's bound to happen." Merin said, recounting the many things she'd found scorched over their time together. "Was it an accident?"

"I sneezed and destroyed a country," Acuzio said, looking away.

Merin coughed as she fought the urge to laugh, but her joy died swiftly when she saw he was serious. "You sneezed and destroyed a whole country?!" She said.

"They have weapons in that world that can cause explosions, and my sneeze set off a chain of events."

"Mordecai doesn't seem like the type to punish others for that," Merin said as she recalled the way he told her to start a world war. The Phoenix God seemed to thrive off chaos, and Acuzio doing that seemed like the thing to tickle him pink.

"The Gods of that world called a meeting to punish me. They won their case with the High Gods because I shouldn't have been there in the first place. They couldn't kill me, but they could turn me into a lizard until they rebuilt that world. They had to send a message." Acuzio said, sounding very proud that they couldn't kill him.

"They can't kill you because you're a Dragon God," Merin said quietly. She ignored the part about rebuilding the world because Acuzio said he burned a country, not a world...the destruction must have been worse than he was saying. She was still reeling from who Acuzio was and his part in her mother's journals. He was the third sibling and her distant uncle like Mordecai.

She watched the dragon to see if he would refute her. Acuzio burped and said nothing.

"What were you even doing in that world?" Merin said. It didn't seem very easy to contain their magic from the firey creatures that she saw. Their fire seemed to pulse through their veins. Why would he take that kind of risk?

"Aphra sent me to retrieve something," Acuzio said.

"Aphra..." Merin said, her voice trailing off. She knew who that was, and that name stole her mind's attention from the conversation. By the time she recovered enough to question Acuzio some more, he was sleeping off his noon snack.

Red returned to her with a glowing red eye and vengeance on his face. He told her everything his father had said.

"He's sending you to a province?" She said. Her eyes darted toward Alev, who was sound asleep in her crib. "Does that mean he expects you to leave us here?" Alev couldn't go far from the Emperor because of the string that bound them. And there was no way Merin would leave their child in the arms of a cannibal.

Red rubbed a hand over his face and gave a terse nod. "He's giving me a week to prepare, but the orders are done."

"This goes against what he said before. He didn't want you to leave the palace." Merin said, recalling that and hoping that, against the odds, it could undo their current circumstances.

"He's changed his mind and won't hear another word," Red said. "I don't know what to do."

The lack of confidence from the most self-assured man she'd ever met broke a piece of Merin. They were in the thick of too many plots. For a time, things had gone as expected, but now they were out of depth. The Emperor wasn't someone they were ready to go up against.

Merin turned to look at Acuzio, who was watching them as he chewed on some jerky. If Merin didn't know any better, she'd think he was watching the two of them as if they were playacting.

"You could make this go away, can't you?" She said.

The dragon chewed what was in its mouth and gave a loud audible swallow that echoed in the still room. "What's in it for me?" He said. His deep voice hit every raw exposed nerve of Merin.

"Why must you receive something to help your family?" Merin said.

Acuzio took another bite of his jerky and chewed slowly in thought. When he was done, he said, "Why give out anything for nothing?"

Gods are assholes, Merin thought with ripe bitterness. They had all the power and wasted it by doing anything they wanted. Maybe she was right, and Acuzio watched her life's story as if it were a play.

"What do you want," Red said, and Merin turned to look at him. He looked worn and as wound-tight as herself.

"Let's play a game." A new voice said, and Merin watched anxiously as a nearby torch grew in size. The ball of fire lifted itself from the attachment to hover in the air. Slowly a body began to form until Mordecai stood in its place. "I have this fun idea, but no one wants to play with me."

Merin opened her mouth to tell both of them to go away, but Red spoke up first.

"I'm in. As long as you remove the string attached to our daughter and ensure it can never happen again." Red said.

Mordecai snapped a finger, and the string was snipped off. "This is going to be so much fun." The man with embers for eyes said. He clasped Red on the shoulder. A bright flash of light blinded Merin, and when she opened her eyes, Red, Mordecai, and Acuzio were gone.

"This isn't good," Merin said as she stared at the empty room.