He said nothing. Like a jerk.
“What did you leave them?”
“A gift.”
He was the most infuriating man alive. “When people are purposefully vague, it doesn’t make them enigmatic. It makes them assholes.”
“I wouldn’t know. People aren’t purposefully vague toward me.”
I had to remind myself that strangling Randall in a cave in the mountains wasn’t the best course of action. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. I won’t push.”
He snorted.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t push too much.”
“It was a token of goodwill,” he said. “From a friend.”
“Who?”
He didn’t respond.
“Did they accept?” I asked, trying a different tack.
“They did.”
“Did you see them?”
“Briefly. They knew…. Well. They knew why I’d come to Castle Freesias. They understood wanting to be left alone.”
I hesitated at that. Kevin and Zero had both said something similar. “Have they been…. Have people tried to hurt them before?”
Randall sighed. “Sometimes humanity forgets how to be human. Dragons were the unfortunate victims of that.”
“I wouldn’t hurt them. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
The butterfly flared briefly.
Randall said, “I know.”
“But I’m going to have to. One day.”
“I know that too.”
“There isn’t—”
You say you wouldn’t hurt us
But we have heard false promises from your kind before
You think yourself different
You think yourself better
“No,” I said, trying not to stumble at the crushing pressure in my head. “I’m not better. I’m just… Sam.”
Sam
He is Sam