Belzac sat at her bedside, lending his shoulder in place of a pillow. A few tears had dampened it over the hours. She had come out of her first transformation not only weak and ill, but blind.

“It will pass,” he reassured her, as he had for hours.

“You can’t know that, Belzac. We don’t know anything about dragons. We’re all blind about what we’re doing.”

He touched her radiant hair; she moved into his touch like a troubled child. “I can still hear her mourning,” she whispered. “Never a mate, now, never children, always alone…”

“You aren’t alone here, Shirley. You have us.”

“Yes - us three in the whole world. And what are we? Monsters? Madmen? Are we even human? Are we mortal?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But whatever we are, we’re the same now.”

After another little space, she said, “I haven’t forgotten your offer.” She moved away from him, sightless eyes turning toward the feel of the night breeze through the gap in the wall. She had been a handsome woman before; as a Dragoon, divine.

“I didn’t forget asking it,” he answered. “I never will. But I wouldn’t be a man, much less a friend, if I forced you to answer.”

“I can answer you now.”

“Don’t,” he said after a thought. “Enough has died today.”