Page 40 of The Dragon 2
She wouldn’t say his name aloud.
Not yet.
Not when her lips still tingled from the memory of tasting ash and desire in the same breath.
Her feet were bare, soles scraped and tender from scorched stone. Shoes were a luxury of the Nobles, not the Lowlys.
Her tattered white dress clung to her like a second skin, sweat-drenched and marked with soot. She pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders.
Head down. Eyes low.
She slipped into the main square like a shadow.
The light was strange here—neither full night nor dawn. Just the slow exhale after catastrophe.
People were gathering now. Pulling bodies from rubble. Dousing stubborn flames. Whispering over the broken carcasses of their homes. Soldiers limped by, leaning on each other. A little girl wailed as she clutched a scorched doll to her chest.
Sol kept to the edge, moving like smoke around them, unseen.
A man yelled out. “Did anyone see what happened?”
Another called back, “I saw it all!”
Sol slowed her pace.
Her fingers twitched at her sides, ice faintly sparking at her fingertips before she hid them in her shawl.
“I will tell you everything!” The person cried from across the square, “It was the Goddess Purra! She rose from the soil itself and struck that beast with her silver wrath!”
Sol blinked.
“No!” barked another, a soldier with blood matting his hair. “It was the God Thip! The Sky Father! He blessed our archers with lightning and then struck Korin in the heart midflight!”
A third voice cut through—older, gravel-edged, male. “No! No!”
Many turned his way, even Sol as she headed on.
“It wasus! The King’s head army. We scared the monster off with our sheer force!”
Sol slipped closer, angling her body behind a broken stall. Her head stayed bowed, but her ears drank in every word.
The man continued, "We have the strongest warriors! We showed that fire-spitting bastard what we're made of!"
A shallow wave of cheers echoed around him, feeble and half-hearted. The people were too exhausted, too devastated to truly rally behind him.
Sol barely suppressed a snort.
A cluster of villagers stood nearby the man—bandaged, dirt-streaked, wide-eyed.
Then, a small voice pierced the din—young and clear.
“I saw a Lowly appear,” said a boy no older than eight. “It was her that chased away Korin.”
Sol paused within the shadows.
The boy bobbed his head. “The Lowly shot ice from her hands. Hit the dragon. Twice.”
Silence came.
