Page 5 of Wynter and the Stone Dragon

A featherlight touch tickled his bare toes. His first thought was that it was a snake who would put him out of his misery, but a giggle alerted him to the little girl’s presence on the step below him.

Shocking white hair framed her bright green eyes and her dimples. He pulled back when she tickled his toes a second time. Wiping at the tears on his face, he scanned the garden for her mother or father. He had never seen her before, but that meant nothing. The palace was filled with staff.

“Who—” he began hoarsely in Arabic. He cleared his throat. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The little girl tilted her head as if she were trying to understand what he was saying. She used his knee to steady herself as she climbed another step.

He gaped at her when she reached up, stole one of his tears, and then licked it from her finger. Her eyes glowed softly in the darkness, swirling through the endless variations of green.

She asked a very brief question, and her word for mother was familiar enough to guess what she was asking.Your mother?

He nodded.

She pointed at the building behind him. He glanced back to see what she was looking at, and she asked another short question that contained her word for mother.

“She’s sick,” he answered.

She roughly pushed on his knee and pointed behind him again with a determined expression. She said a short statement this time, something about his mother, though he had no idea what it was.

Frustrated, he scanned the garden again. He didn’t want to deal with the little girl. He wanted to be alone in his grief. His father would be furious if he knew his son, the next King of Aethon, was crying.

“Where is your mother?”he demanded.

Instead of answering him, she touched his cheek. Khalid wanted to push her hand away, but the look in her eyes held him entranced. She applied enough pressure that he turned his head to look down at the crushed flowers. Tears burned the backs of his eyes. The flowers reminded him of his mother—broken and dying.

“Mama,” the little girl said, waving her hands over the flowers.

The tattered bouquet glowed. Khalid scrambled back and stared with disbelief as the scattered petals swirled and connected, healing and opening, until they were in full bloom. The girl’s eyes glowed with happiness.

He swallowed when she picked up the now beautiful bouquet with both hands and held it out to him.

“Mama,” she said.

Khalid reached out and took the bundle. He was afraid to touch her, yet, he wanted to know if she was real. His mother used to tell him tales of the ‘amirat khurafiat alsahra, mystical women who once rode across the sky on mighty stone dragons. It was said that the breath of the dragon could be seen in the sky at dawn and dusk. Aethon’s desert sands supposedly came from the dragon’s scales, worn down by time and wind until they were an ocean that his people could sail on.

“Mama,” the little girl repeated, this time with a stomp of her bare foot and a jerky wave at the building.

Hope bloomed as he stared at the restored flowers. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Come, I will take you to her,” he said, standing.

She slipped her hand into his and smiled. His chest expanded, and he stood a little taller. No one had ever looked at him like this before. This was the way people looked at his father when they came before him. This was the way his mother looked at his father.

“We must be quiet,” he instructed, lifting the hand holding the flowers to his lips.

She giggled, then pressed her hand over her mouth and nodded. Together, they climbed the last steps and entered the palace. Their bare feet didn’t make a sound as they wended their way to the Queen’s chambers.

Khalid hoped they would get there in time—and he hoped she was alone. It was after midnight. Normally, only a single nurse sat with his mother. That was before she took a turn for the worse, though.

He heard the doctor and his uncle speaking, the low murmur of their voices getting louder as they got closer, and he pulled the little girl into an open doorway. They waited until the two men disappeared around the corner, then stepped out of the doorway and hurried along the corridor.

A guard stood leaning against the wall. The man’s eyes were closed, and his arms were crossed as if he’d fallen asleep standing up. Khalid tiptoed past the man, glancing down at the little girl clutching his hand as they passed. She was staring at the guard with a curious expression.

He opened the door to his mother’s quarters, gently pushed the little girl inside, and closed it quietly behind him. A lamp lit the living room with a soft glow. He crossed the room, motioning for the little girl to follow him.

He peeked into the room next to his mother’s. The night nurse sat with her back to the door. She was wearing a pair of headphones and staring at her phone. He could see a movie playing on the screen. He closed the door.

They moved to the next door. A bedside light cast shadows in the room. Medical equipment beeped. The waves on the monitor were not as big as they had been the day before. The wires attached to his mother made his heart ache.

Khalid couldn’t speak. Shortly after the doctor had ordered him away, Khalid had come back to see her, but his father, drowning in grief, had given in to Uncle Inarus’s insistence that Khalid should not see his mother in this condition.

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