The Thief

The child's hands were shaking.

I pressed the gold coin into her palm and closed her fingers around it. "Take it to the merchant. Ask for grain. Don't let him cheat you, it's worth at least three sacks."

She stared at the gold like it might burn her. In our village, most people had never seen a coin this large. Most people lived their whole lives trading in copper bits and barter.

"Go," I said. "Quickly. Before your mother notices you're gone."

She ran. Bare feet silent on the packed dirt road, thin dress flapping behind her. Eight years old and already she knew how to move without being seen. Poverty taught children that.

I turned back to my satchel. Twenty-three coins left. Yesterday there had been forty-seven.

Twenty-four coins for medicine. Healers from the city didn't work for free, and the blight had taken our crops, then the fever had taken our strength. My mother had tried everything, herbs, prayers, desperate remedies passed down through generations. None of it worked.

So I'd become a thief.

The ruins on the mountain had always been forbidden. Ancient, warded, dangerous. Our village elders told stories about the treasure hidden there, but also about the people who'd gone looking and never returned.

I went anyway. I found a way through the wards, a crack in the magic that my mother's teachings let me recognize. And inside, I found enough gold to save everyone I loved.

I didn't think about who it belonged to. I couldn't afford to.

"You stole from me."

The voice came from behind me, deep, resonant, carrying the weight of mountains. The temperature around me spiked. Where the autumn air had been cool, suddenly I was standing in summer.

I turned slowly.

He was lethal elegance given form. Tall, broad-shouldered, skin the color of burnished gold. His hair was black and fell past his shoulders. His eyes,

His eyes were amber. And they were glowing.

Not reflecting light. Producing it. Like coals in a fire that had never known cold.

I should have run. I should have screamed. I should have done anything except what I actually did, which was straighten my spine and meet that burning gaze.

"You had more than you needed," I said. "They didn't."

His expression loosened for half a breath. Surprise, maybe. He hadn't expected me to speak. Hadn't expected me to look at him like he was just a man and not something that could unmake me with a thought.

"Do you know what I am?" His voice dropped lower. The air around us grew hotter still.

"You're angry." I kept my voice steady. "That's all I need to know."

He moved. One moment he was ten feet away. The next, he was close enough that heat rolled off him in waves. The scent of cedar smoke and iron filled my lungs, sharp as the air before a storm.

"I am Kiran," he said. "Lord of the Black Mountain. And you breached my wards, entered my lair, and took from my hoard."

A dragon.

The ancient stories flooded back. Dragons who hoarded gold and jewels, who slept for centuries and woke hungry. Dragons who could level cities with their fire, who considered mortals beneath their notice.

Until one of those mortals stole from them.

I swallowed. My mouth had gone dry, but I refused to look away. "The wards had a crack. I slipped through."

"Impossible." His eyes narrowed. "Those wards have held for eight hundred years."

"Then I'm either very lucky or very skilled." Neither of those things was true. My mother had taught me about magic, the way it moved, the places where it frayed. I'd simply seen what others had missed.

"Which was it?"

I considered lying. But this creature, this dragon, had found me in my own village, miles from his mountain. He'd tracked me down like I was nothing. Like I was prey.

If I was going to die, I'd die honest.

"My mother is a healer. She taught me to see the weave of things. Magic, energy, intention." I gestured at the village around us. "That's why I took your gold. The blight took our crops. The fever took our strength. We were dying. Slowly, but certainly. Your treasure was sitting in a ruin, gathering dust. I spent it on food and medicine."

He stared at me. The heat was still coming off him in waves, but his expression had gone strange. Not angrier, something else. A stillness that bordered on recognition.

"You spent it," he repeated.

"Twenty-four coins for medicine from the city healers. Twenty-three more for grain, for the families who lost everything." I pulled another coin from my satchel. "This makes twenty-five for grain. I have twenty-two left. I was going to buy breeding goats. Rebuild the herds the blight killed."

"You were going to rebuild." His voice was flat.

"Someone has to."

He laughed. The sound was sharp, crackling, carrying an echo of something vast. "You stole from a dragon's hoard, an act punishable by death in every kingdom of this world, and you did it to buy goats."

"Breeding goats." I held his gaze. "Do you know how long it takes to rebuild a herd from nothing? The kids won't produce milk for two years. Won't breed for another year after that. But in five years, this village will be self-sufficient again. In ten, they'll be prosperous. That's what your gold bought."

The silence stretched. The heat around us faded slowly, though I didn't dare relax.

Then Kiran did something I didn't expect.

He sat down.

Right there, in the middle of the village road, in clothes finer than anything this village had ever seen. He folded himself onto the dirt like it was the most natural thing in the world and looked up at me with those glowing amber eyes.

"What is your name, thief?"

"Nara."

"Nara." He said it like he was tasting it. Testing how it felt in his mouth. "Do you know what happens to those who steal from dragons?"

"You mentioned death."

"I did." He tilted his head. In the morning light, with the glow faded from his eyes, he almost looked human. Almost. "But death seems... insufficient. You stole forty-seven gold pieces from my hoard. Each one was worth something to me. Each one carried memory."

Memory. Not value. Memory.

I thought of the golden chalice I'd taken, the one that had felt warm in my hands. The coins had been scattered beneath it, almost careless. But the chalice had been placed carefully, deliberately, like someone had wanted to remember exactly where it sat.

"I didn't take the chalice," I said quietly. "I left it where it was. I only took the loose coins."

His eyes flashed. "You saw the chalice."

"I saw everything. The chalice. The paintings. The little wooden horse." I remembered the way the hoard had looked, not a pile of treasure, but something more like a shrine. "I only took what seemed... unloved. The loose coins. Nothing that had a place."

The silence was different this time. Heavier. He was looking at me like I'd surprised him, and I got the sense that not much surprised someone who'd been alive for longer than my village had existed.

"You saw the horse," he said finally.

"A child's toy. Old. It was sitting on a shelf near the entrance, like someone wanted to see it every time they came in."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the glow was completely gone. Just amber, warm and ancient and filled with something that looked almost like pain.

"That horse belonged to a boy named Kieran. Not spelled like my name, different origins. He lived in a village much like this one, a thousand years ago." His voice was quiet. "There was a flood. I couldn't save everyone. I saved him. He gave me the horse as thanks."

A knot formed behind my ribs. I didn't want to feel sympathy for this creature who had come to kill me, but the image wouldn't let me go.

A thousand years. He'd kept a wooden toy for a thousand years because a child had given it to him.

"What happened to him?" I asked. "Kieran?"

"He grew up. Had children of his own. Died of old age, surrounded by grandchildren." Kiran smiled, but it was a sad thing. "I attended his funeral. His great-grandchildren didn't know why a stranger wept at the pyre."

I sank down to sit across from him. The dirt was cold through my thin dress, but I barely noticed.

"Your hoard isn't treasure," I said slowly. "It's memory. Everyone you've lost."

"Yes."

"And I stole from it. From them."

"Yes."

I should have felt guilty. Part of me did. But I also remembered the child who'd just run off with her gold coin, the families who would eat tonight because of the medicine I'd bought, the village that might actually survive another winter.

"I won't apologize," I said. "I can't. My people needed that gold more than the dead do."

His expression shifted, a fractional widening of his eyes. Not anger. Something closer to respect.

"No," he agreed. "You won't apologize. You have too much spine for that." He rose in one fluid movement, and I scrambled to my feet to face him. "So we come to the question of payment."

My stomach dropped. "You said death."

"I did. But I've decided against it." He stepped closer, and the heat returned, not threatening now, just present. A reminder of what he was. "Instead, I'll offer you a choice."

"What choice?"

"Execution for theft." He said it casually, like we were discussing the weather. "Or service. One year for every gold piece you spent."

I did the math quickly. Forty-seven gold pieces.

"Forty-seven years."

"Yes."

I was twenty-five. Forty-seven years of service would mean I'd be seventy-two before I was free, if I lived that long. If serving a dragon didn't kill me first.

But the alternative was death now. And if I died, who would finish rebuilding the village? Who would make sure the goats were bought, the herds restored, the children fed through the next five winters?

"What kind of service?"

"Whatever I require." His eyes held mine. "You'll live in my lair. Work with my hoard. Perhaps, since you see things others miss, you'll be useful enough to keep."

"And if I'm not useful?"

"Then you'll still owe me forty-seven years." A smile crossed his face, brief, almost human. "I don't discard things, Nara. Not even disappointing ones."

I thought about it. The weight of the remaining coins in my satchel. The village slowly coming back to life around me. The child with her single gold piece, buying grain so her family wouldn't starve.

I'd already given up everything for these people. What was forty-seven years more?

"The coins in my satchel," I said. "Can I give them to someone? To make sure the work gets finished?"

He studied me. "You're negotiating."

"I'm making sure my people survive without me." I lifted my chin. "Is that a problem?"

"No." His face changed in a way I couldn't define, the hard edges softening by degrees. "No, little thief. That's not a problem at all."

I pulled the satchel off my shoulder and walked to the nearest house. My mother's house. Our house.

She was inside, I could see her silhouette through the window, grinding herbs at her table. I didn't go in. If I saw her face, I might not be able to leave.

Instead, I left the satchel on the doorstep. All twenty-two coins. Enough for goats, for seed, for one more season of survival.

When I turned back, the dragon lord was watching me, his face still as carved stone.

"I'm ready," I said.

"You haven't said goodbye."

"I can't." The words came out rough. "If I say goodbye, I'll break. And I can't break. Not anymore."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded once, like I'd passed some kind of test.

"Then we go."

He didn't take my arm. Didn't force me. Just turned and walked toward the edge of the village, and I followed because I'd made a choice and I would live with it.

At the boundary, where the road turned to forest, he stopped.

"You should know," he said, "that I haven't had a mortal in my lair in four hundred years. The last one screamed when she saw my true form."

"Did you eat her?"

He laughed, that same sharp, echoing sound. "No. I sent her home. She was boring."

"I won't scream," I said.

"No." He looked at me, and his eyes glowed again, softly, like embers. "I don't think you will."

Then his form changed.

Bones shifted. Skin rippled. He grew, and grew, and kept growing, until the man who'd sat in the dirt with me was gone and something else stood in his place.

A dragon.

Black scales that caught the light like opals, shimmering with hidden fire. Wings that could have blocked out the sun. A head larger than my mother's entire house, with teeth the length of my forearm and eyes,

Those same amber eyes, burning like the heart of a forge.

He lowered his massive head until one of those eyes was level with my face.

I looked into it. Saw myself reflected there, small, fragile, mortal.

Saw something else, too. Curiosity. The same surprise I'd seen when I'd talked back to him in human form.

"You're beautiful," I said. The words came out before I could stop them.

The dragon made a sound, a rumble that I felt in my bones more than heard.

Then he extended one enormous wing, creating a bridge to his back.

I climbed.

The scales were warm beneath my hands, smooth as water-worn stone. I found a spot between two ridges at the base of his neck that seemed made for sitting.

His head turned to look at me. Those burning eyes.

"Hold on, little thief."

Wings spread wide enough to darken the world.

And we flew.