They arrived at Mire earlier in the evening than expected. Rhainnon attributed it to Gorion’s anticipation to get home, and Rosalea figured that was likely. They arrived when there was an hour or two of sunlight left. Ian came out right away to join them. “How did it go?”

“Well!” Rhainnon said brightly. “I learned all kinds of things from Rosalea!”

Ian made a small huff as he caught onto the extra emphasis his daughter had. “I am glad you caught on. Rosalea, would you like me to pay you now? Or would you like to stay a little longer and do work with us?”

There was a good hour or so until the afternoon sun set. Ian let her know that he had more work for her if she chose to stay or he was happy to pay the supplies owed if she felt she had to move on. “I would like to stay a bit longer.”

“That sounds good. I want you to know that I do appreciate all the help you have offered ... so far…” Rosalea glanced down at him, curious as to why he was breaking off and looking so dazed. She looked down at him from where she was moving crates out of the back of the wagon and saw a long and sinister shadow. About the time she figured out what the shape of the shadow was, and therefore what must be casting it, her vitae magic informed her about what she could already see with her eyes: the dragon.

The moment she looked up and saw it, her first thought was about fleeing for the cover of the barn so she would not be visible. She bolted out of the wagon, but it was already too late. She felt the dragon and saw it long after it must have been able to see her. A spell she hadn’t even felt take hold on her brought that leap to a violent stop and she landed roughly on the ground on her knees. She yelped as it hurt, and the desire to flee grew stronger, but the spell intensified in tandem with it. She felt her hands pulled down to the ground, and the more she panicked to get away from it, the more the spell tried to crush her down as if gravity itself had gotten more intense.

She couldn’t feel anything, she couldn’t hear anything, the panic was all encompassing, she wanted to scream but she couldn’t breathe. There was a loud rushing hiss in her ears and she kept trying to push herself up. Slowly, she felt like someone was talking to her, telling her to calm down. By degrees, she became conscious of Rhainnon near her, gripping her shoulder and rubbing over her back and hair, begging her to calm down.

Rosalea steeled herself and took deep breaths that helped the panic to subside, and by degrees she was able to push herself to her hands and knees and then slowly sit back on her ankles. She felt like throwing up, every time she thought about the spell holding her here, she was pulled by it, back to her hands and knees.

“It is okay, you will get used to it and it will not be so hard. Just calm down, it is all right, I promise,” and when Rosalea looked at Rhainnon, she saw the other girl crying intensely about it and felt embarrassed to have caused Rhainnon so much distress. “Here, sit down,” she said, pulling a smaller crate from the wagon and helping Rosalea onto it. “I am so sorry, I did not know. I promise I did not lie to you when I told you the dragon rarely ever comes. I have only seen him twice in my whole life.”

Rosalea nodded, and that feeling of nausea boiled up through her body again, and she felt her limbs locking up on the crate as she wished she had never come here and could leave. Ian patted her shoulder, but he was silent, clearly uncomfortable.

There was a demanding pull on all three of them, they all looked toward the center of town. The dragon had landed. It was roughly sky blue, she could see it from here because it was taller than all the buildings. “I will go,” Ian said, “Rhain, stay here and watch over Rose. We will figure this out.” Rosalea glanced at his face; he was trembling and white. Rhainnon said nothing but nodded. Ian looked better the instant he began heading toward the town square.

Rosalea looked away, her heart swelling with more emotions than she could count and each with so much intensity she struggled to feel it. Rhainnon’s eyes were sparkling with tears. “Rosalea, I am so so sorry!” she cried. She threw both her arms around Rosalea and pressed herself close. Rosalea knew she would cry if she responded how she felt. So she numbly shook her head, and patted Rhainnon. This caused Rhainnon to continue, “I should have made you stay away! I should have stopped you from coming back! I told you just today! Why is he here? Why is he here?”

Rosalea was aware of the irony. She had been here for three weeks, and nothing had happened, no sign and no fear. Now that she knew, she was trapped. She also could not just let Rhainnon cry like this. She struggled to comfort her, “I had the choice, Rhainnon. Do not be sorry for what you did not do. The dragon has done this to me.”

Rhainnon was making a good attempt to stop crying, and Rosalea patted her the way Genya used to when she was little and cried. Rosalea could not find it in herself to cry one way or the other yet. She was not even sure what she felt.

Annie was spooking, kicking at the cart and being generally disagreeable and upset. Rosalea became conscious as she continued to calm, of how her magic was also interfered with by the spell and was just now starting to come back to her. She could hear Gorion calming her and explaining to her about the dragon. The mare was still alarmed by the large predator’s presence.

“I assure that it has no interest in any of the livestock. We are not the things which he takes away.”

“But how can that be?”

Gorion was terse in his answer. “Because he is only interested in the humans.”

Rosalea put a hand over her eyes, and tried to quell the feeling of alarm building inside her. Had she really fallen prey so easily to the very spell that she had pitied Rhainnon for being under? Was she really trapped here? “The horses…” she tried to explain to Rhainnon, and Rhainnon nodded, leaving her for a moment.

New anxiety pressed through her, and she put her other hand over her face as she listened to Rhainnon trying to clear her throat and the tears away. She shivered as she thought about what Gorion had said, the dragon was only interested in the humans of the town.

Rhainnon got the stomping mare free enough that she yanked her way out of her harness and carried on with a fit in the yard, though she did not attempt to take off. She came over to Rosalea with Rhainnon and nudged her several times with her nose, but Rosalea wasn’t able to comfort her. “The dragon takes people,” Rosalea stated the gelding’s idea to Rhainnon.

“Yes, someone will be taken.”

Rosalea was silent, what could she say to that? As her panic subsided, she saw the dragon taking off from the square, and she felt only one emotion overpower her desperation and trapped feelings, and that was a profound hatred for the beast that disappeared quickly over the horizon.

Usually, she wanted to not cry, but now, she wished that she would. On the other hand, Rhainnon was crying plenty for both of them. A feeling of numb wrath had settled through her, and with it, she found she could focus herself and was able to stand up, though she couldn’t walk given the state of her mind, her feet would not move at all. Annie shoved her hard enough with her nose to nearly knock her over. “We should leave this place tonight,” the mare said.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Annie, do you think that you could find your way back to the Uryans without me?”

“With the wandering and circles you have taken us in? With them moving also, I think not.” The mare flattened her ears at Rosalea.

Rosalea knew her annoyance, but did nothing for it. “Then I am afraid we are stuck here.” The thought made her cold. She was stuck here. Worse, all she had were a few trinkets and a horse to make a living with. The prospects were quite dismal for a happy rest of her life based on that. Unless she managed to marry some upstanding farmer. These sort of thoughts made the spell act up again as her desire to flee surged. She came grudgingly and shakily to her knees.

“Whatever is the matter with you?” Annie asked, stomping her feet and acting generally alarmed. “You are barely listening to me! Why should we be stuck here?” Rosalea sighed, but did not answer her.

“Dragon,” Gorion said mildly to Annie. “She is kept by him.”

Annie snorted her alarm and jumped back. “You have been claimed by the dragon?” She began to act as though Rosalea were poisonous.

Rosalea sighed and wished to be able to get up and smack her stupid horse. “Yes, Annie, I cannot leave this place.”

The mare flicked her tail irritably and flattened her ears and bore her teeth at Rosalea. Rosalea just looked at her and waited for her to decide what she was doing. “So kind of you to go and get us both stuck, stupid human,” the mare said after a moment. Rosalea had no rebuttal for that abuse, so she said nothing. Annie snorked and came back over to Rosalea, standing over her, as if she had made up her mind to guard Rosalea from a dragon that had already left the area. That little act of kindness after her initial reaction left Rosalea feeling a tightness in her throat and chest that felt like oncoming tears. She patted the mare’s leg and tried to embrace emptiness and wrath somewhere inside her to keep the tears far down so that she did not upset Rhainnon.

Rhainnon was hovering while she was brushing Gorion down, and just generally fidgeting over Rosalea and trying to stay busy.

Ian returned, Rosalea could see from his face that he had bad news. Rosalea found herself able to stand and go to him, and she realized that she had been distracted from leaving by the simple act. The realization quickly brought her to her knees as she remembered how desperately she did not want to be here caught by this spell. Annie stood over her again, and had followed close enough to Rosalea to all but step on her heels when she walked over.

Ian smiled brokenly and put his hand on the top of her head. “It is hard to learn to get used to - always controlling your thoughts.” He looked away, staring at a far mountain, where the sun was beginning to set. “He did confirm that he wanted someone in your age group.” Rosalea looked up at Rhainnon, who had gone very white. “He’s given us a couple of days.” Rhainnon cringed and looked away.

Rosalea felt more alarm surge through her, which brought her down to her hands on the ground. “What does that mean? What do we do?”

“I am sorry!” Rhainnon burst into tears and fled for the house.

Ian lingered, his hands trembling. “In this case everyone in the thirteen to thirty range that has not secured permission to be married will assemble in the square and wait for the dragon to pick one. The dragon takes away whoever he picks, and we never see them again.” He cleared his throat, and plunged right into the next sentence, “Get everything put away in the barn when you can manage yourself, I’ll find you something suitable to wear for the day after tomorrow.” He walked away, also toward his home.

Rosalea was wrenched the rest of the way to the ground. She laid there, trying to master her thoughts and the panic inside herself. Annie paced back and forth, even leaning down to nuzzle her a little. Gorion had gone with Ian.

Rosalea felt the need to cry as she lay there in the dirt, powerless to even stand up. Yet, she could not bring herself to do so. She hated that dragon with every fraction of feeling in her heart. What sort of monster could be like this? To trap people in one place, and then decree whenever he felt like it, that one should just… apparently just die in such a short time?

The idea that it might be herself had not occurred to her yet. Even as it did so, she could not fathom it. She could not believe that either she or Rhainnon would be the ones to disappear with the dragon.

As it grew later, as the sun went completely down, Rosalea was finally able to get herself up off the ground and retreat to her customary place in the barn. She did not see Rhainnon for the remainder of the night. Annie, for once, seemed empathetic and concerned about her distress, and so Rosalea was too happy to let the horse lay down near her and to sit against her. Usually Annie was not interested in cuddles, she only liked brushing, but Rosalea appreciated the quiet reassurance.

***

Kaylar unfolded his wings and then resettled them against his body. In this spot, he could use his magic to see a lot of the town. I did not expect to see anyone new. That has not happened for a long time. He could see that she was struggling intensely with the spell. She is not adjusting well, now is she? But even with the short exposure to his new capture, he knew that she was very… willful. He lurked in his unseen spot, watching her struggle to get up. She struck him as the type which would take a long time to master. I suspect she is so strong-willed she might rather die than belong to someone. He felt anxiety and frustration well up as he looked over his town. Yet, I am not sure how Mire will handle the presence of such an obvious shape changer. Well, he had a couple of days to decide in any case. He wished, just a little, she had not been here, it was disrupting his plans. After all, he had to remove the last one after only a short time, but that was decades ago.

***

Rosalea awoke early the next morning to the feeling of being stared at. She blinked a few times and her eyes slowly focused on Rhainnon. Rhainnon tried to smile, but Rosalea thought it was the most pathetic attempt at one she had ever seen. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rosalea answered, sitting up. Her voice sounded hoarse, like she had been crying or gotten sick. Except she wasn’t sick, and she had carefully avoided shedding tears. Thinking about that made her recall what had her so upset, and she felt the pangs of being trapped all over again. The spell settled like a weight on her chest, and she dropped hard back onto the pallet. Rhainnon’s weak smile dissolved instantly into a face that made it look like she was on the edge of the tears. Rosalea made a pathetic attempt likewise to sound lighthearted. “It is as if the spell is a real object, like a rock or something.”

“I was so young when the spell was first placed on me, I just got used to it, and I don’t even remember. The same for mother and father. It is hard to think what you must be going through, to be stripped of freedom when you knew you had it.” Rosalea looked away and her eyes burned. She silently willed herself not to cry. She didn’t trust herself to speak though. “I really hope… I mean, I just. I really did not mean for this to happen to you.”

Rosalea nodded again and again. She squeezed her eyes shut, she knew. She had chosen to come here after Rhainnon had warned her. Annie stamped her foot on the barn floor and Rhainnon got up and let her out of the stall and out the door. “Thank you.”

Rhainnon shrugged and moved back to her customary sitting spot. Rosalea by degrees managed her feelings and thoughts well enough to sit up. Rhainnon sighed. “Well, mother doesn’t know about my magic. Which is just as well, it would make her worry more, I think. She thinks the dragon tends to choose those with magic most.”

Rosalea sighed and felt her terror surge up, but managed to master it slowly. “Well, that would put you and me at considerable risk then,” she said softly.

Rhainnon nodded. “I don’t know. Hopefully the end of the week won’t be as terrible as it looks now.” They were both quiet for several moments. “Well, I don’t know if you know what happens… so I thought I would come and tell you.” Rosalea looked at her. She seemed uncomfortable, and Rosalea wished the situation was different. “So, anyway. Umm, at the end of the day after tomorrow, the dragon will choose someone to be sacrificed to him. He will take them away, and the rest of us move on with our lives until the next time he comes. He can pick any age group or gender that he wants, but he most often chooses from the youth. Sometimes, he looks for a specific gender, but not this time.”

Rosalea didn’t know what to say. She did know what she thought. It was even more monstrous than what she had estimated last night… the dragon did not just break lives… but ended those that were just truly beginning.

“Anyway, we shall all have to dress up for the event to please the dragon,” Rhainnon said with a sour look. “The less we displease him, the best, they tell me. You and I will be in about the middle of the line since he’s looking from twelve to twenties. I’ve heard he protects the town or something, so we try to be good about these things, but… you know, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Rosalea huffed, but nodded, and Rhainnon changed the subject to something less painful. Protects the town from himself, I bet, she thought darkly.