The Dragon King's Blind Mate

Warning

Xalvador looked up at the endless gray expanse above them. "The sky is dark," he said, his voice level. "It is always dark here."

He led her down the stone steps and straight into the bustling noise of the midnight market. The air instantly filled with the sharp scent of spices, roasted meats, and the heavy murmur of hundreds of voices. The sudden wave of noise made Lyra flinch, but before she could panic, Xalvador’s large, cool hand wrapped firmly around hers, anchoring her to his side.

"It is rowdy," he noted flatly, pulling her past a shouting merchant.

He stopped beside a wooden stall where the sharp smell of brine and scales hung thick in the damp air. "This first seller is offering fish." He paused, his gold eyes dropping to her face. "Do you know what a fish is?"

Lyra shook her head slightly, keeping her face lowered.

Xalvador let out a low sigh. "They live in the water. They have scales, and they are eaten. You will eat one when we get back to the pavilion." He didn't wait for her response, dragging her another few paces down the row before stopping again. "This stand has oranges. They are round, bright, and sweet."

Inside his skull, a massive roar erupted.

"Shut up,” Yves groaned, the dragon spirit slamming a paw against Xalvador's consciousness. ' Your descriptions are atrocious.You are embarrassing us.”*

"I am explaining the world to her,” Xalvador snapped back internally, his jaw tightening as he argued with his beast. "What else am I supposed to do?”

While the two entities bickered fiercely in their shared mind, Lyra’s fingers subconsciously tightened around Xalvador’s hand. She was completely unaware of the shift in her own posture. The initial, suffocating terror that usually gripped her around him had quietly faded, replaced by a strange, numbing calm. She listened to his weird, disjointed descriptions in absolute silence. It was the first time in her entire life that anyone had ever tried to explain a visual world to her, even if his attempts were completely absurd. She didn't dare speak up or interrupt, still desperately afraid of setting off his dark temper.

Suddenly, a loud commotion broke out at the end of the street. A massive crowd of market-goers surged forward, rushing away from an overturned cart. The sheer force of the moving bodies slammed into them like a wave.

Lyra’s grip slipped. Xalvador’s hand was torn from hers.

"Your Grace!" Lyra cried out, her raspy voice instantly swallowed by the shouting crowd. She stumbled backward, her hands flailing in the empty air as the cold wind whirled around her. She was entirely alone, trapped in a sea of noise she couldn't interpret.

Before she could scream a second time, a pair of bony, withered hands clamped onto her shoulders from behind. A freezing breath fanned her ear.

"You have to die so that he won't kill us," a harsh, trembling whisper hissed directly into her ear.

Lyra gasped, but the sound was violently cut off as the hands moved to her throat. An old woman's fingers dug deep into her flesh, squeezing her windpipe. Lyra thrashed, her feet scraping against the stone as she choked, the dark world spinning into an even deeper abyss.

A violent blast of wind tore through the market street.

Before Lyra could lose consciousness, the pressure on her throat vanished. A brutal, heavy force slammed into her attacker, throwing the old woman across the pavement. The woman hit the stone floor with a sickening thud.

Xalvador was instantly there. He grabbed Lyra by the chin, his grip incredibly tight as his gold eyes rapidly searched every inch of her face and neck for any signs of permanent damage. Finding only a faint red flush, his breathing steadied, though the rage in his chest was a roaring furnace.

"Kill her!" the old woman shouted from the dirt, her voice cracking as a crowd of onlookers quickly gathered in a circle around them. "If you do not kill that human girl now, you will regret it! She will be the ruin of our world."

Xalvador slowly released Lyra’s chin and turned his gaze to the woman on the ground. The mocking, playful demeanor of the Trickster King was entirely gone, replaced by the terrifying aura of a sovereign.

He took a slow, deliberate step toward the old woman. From the edge of the crowd, a royal guard materialized out of thin air, bowing low as he extended a silver tray. Resting on the metal was a pair of pure black leather gloves.

Xalvador didn't say a word. He pulled the gloves onto his large hands, smoothing the leather over his knuckles with methodical precision.

He knelt down on one leg beside the trembling woman. A slow, beautiful, and entirely humorless smile spread across his lips. He reached out and touched her withered cheek, his gloved fingers moving with sickening gentleness.

The moment his fingers made contact, the old woman’s eyes rolled back, and she let out a piercing, blood-curdling scream that echoed through the entire midnight market.

Within seconds, the old woman’s agonizing shrieks cut off into a wet, choking gasp. Under the gentle pressure of Xalvador’s gloved hand, her bones cracked and collapsed beneath her skin like brittle dry twigs. Soon, her body was nothing more than a silent, mangled mess of twisted flesh and shattered limbs on the dark pavement.

Xalvador stood up fluidly, peeling the black leather gloves from his hands and tossing them onto the corpse. The suffocating, terrifying aura that had frozen the entire street vanished in an instant. It was replaced by a flat, empty smile as his gold-flecked eyes casually scanned the surrounding crowd.

The onlookers didn't need a spoken command. Terrified by the casual brutality of the man in front of them, they dispersed quickly, scrambling into the dark alleyways until the market street was completely abandoned.

Xalvador turned back to Lyra. He reached out, his cool, bare palm wrapping around her small, trembling hand.

"Let's continue our tour," he said, his voice entirely light, as if he hadn't just crushed a woman to death in front of her. "There is a bakery two rows down. They sell sweet pastries shaped like dragon scales."

Lyra let him pull her forward, her knees shaking so violently she could barely keep her footing. Her throat throbbed where the old woman had squeezed it, but the chilling memory of that whisper—you have to die so he won't kill us—echoed louder than the thumping of her own heart. She clamped her teeth together, hiding her sheer terror as she followed the heavy, rhythmic click of his boots.

Behind them, the dead silence of the street remained unbroken. Xalvador didn't look back, entirely focused on pulling a trembling Lyra along the cobblestones.

Because of his distraction, he didn't see the thick, ink-like shadow peel itself away from the old woman's mangled chest. The darkness shuddered, flattening against the stone floor, and then slithered in the exact opposite direction.

It moved at a fast, frantic pace, a silent liquid entity cutting through the alleyways and rushing straight back toward the high, jagged spires of the obsidian palace.