“Sorrowlynn?”
“Yes?” I look at Golmarr’s ashen face.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel good enough to talk.”
“That’s all right.” I pat his back and adjust his weight a little more evenly.
The cave seems to go on for an eternity. My stomach feels like it hasn’t been filled in weeks, and my shoulder and back muscles burn with the burden of Golmarr. The ground starts to slope downward, and then we come to a dead end. My heart drops into my stomach. “What do we do now?” I look at Golmarr for the answer. His face is so close to mine that I could pucker my lips and they would be touching his cheek, and then I realize his eyes are closed. “Golmarr?” I jostle him a little bit.
His eyelids flicker, and he slowly focuses on my face. “Princess Sorrowlynn?” he asks, furrowing his brow. His head falls forward so our foreheads are touching, and a goofy smile quirks his lips. “From the first moment I saw you standing on that dais in the evening sun, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Your eyes are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen,” he says, his words slurred. “Even prettier than Evay’s. Hers are brown. Yours are…green.” Despite the fact that he’s obviously delirious, pleasure fills me. He closes his eyes and sighs. “If I die will you do something for me?”
“If I don’t die, too.”
“If you don’t die, tell Evay I’m sorry. Tell her if things wouldn’t have turned out this way, I would have married her when I came home.”
“Wait…who?” I lean away from him, and his head sags forward. His body turns boneless and the weight of him increases, tilting me sideways until I fall to the ground, and he lands on top of me. Our small sphere of light disappears as the dragon scale is sandwiched between us.
Carefully, I wiggle my way out from under him and turn him onto his side. His breathing is deep, his mouth hanging open. I brush his tangled black hair from his face and make sure there are no rocks under his head. And then I summon all the energy I possess and stand.
All I want to do is fall back down beside the horse lord and go to sleep. But I thrust my chin forward, tuck back the loose wisps of hair hanging out of my crown braid, and stand tall. Putting one burning foot in front of the other, I start following the cave wall, looking for a new passage. Maybe we already passed one. Maybe we already passed dozens. With the small space the scale lights up, we could have passed thousands and never known.
I shimmy over rocks and hold the scale up to the cave walls as I go back the way we have come. And then, not five steps ahead, the air in front of me fills with light, a perfect tube of orange going from the floor all the way to the top of the cave, leaving a bright circle on the ceiling high above.
My heart starts thumping and I wonder if the cave is going to fill with fire again. I limp over to the tube of light and get down onto my hands and knees. Crawling up to the very edge, I peer over a hole the circumference of a water well and shiver at the thought of walking right past it and not falling in. Far, far below, so far that I almost wonder if I am seeing things correctly, is something so shiny I have to squint to look at it, like looking at the sun after the clouds have parted. A gust of warm, dry air wafts up from the hole, followed by a shriek so loud and so terrible that the very ground I am lying on shudders.
The light goes dark as a great, moving shadow blocks it, and I hear the snap of fabric catching air. A moment later, the shadow is gone, and the light shines up again.
Too scared and too mesmerized to move, I lay with my body pressed against rock and pebbles, and stare down at the light shining deep below. It is golden, like sunlight on water. It is as bright as daylight. It might be the way out. Or it might be the fire dragon’s fabled treasure.