How long did I spend enchanted by the simple pleasure of being a beautiful thing?

I kept trying to remember what came before, but each time the before grew fainter and my trying grew feebler. I remembered my upbringing the way one might a fleeting dream. The interminable lessons and banquets, the endless gifts and finery, all the cage-gilding worthy of the king’s daughter—all of them began to fade like frosted breath on a windowpane. Only the more recent, deeper impressions remained clear. The day of my wedding. The attack. Scaled wings beating at the air, and flame hot enough to make the stone of the chapel’s walls flow like water. A sprawling claw clamping down around my waist and bearing me away into the sky.

Then a pair of great, gold, lidless eyes. Then little more.

For months, I sat reclined and resplendent atop a hoard of treasures so vast and so splendid, it put my royal father’s considerable wealth to shame. As the dragon’s prisoner, I wanted for nothing—because I did not want. I lived only to be wanted. To be the jewel in the creature’s crown. A fair princess for it to set up amongst its gems and jewels like a living sculpture, their beauty to enhance mine, and mine theirs.

It was the very style of life I had spent years railing against—but under the dragon’s spell, I welcomed that golden stillness. I could not tell where I ended and the rest of the hoard began. It seemed only right to me that I should be as still and as pleasing as the rings, necklaces, and crowns the dragon arranged occasionally about my person. I let days upon days slip by, distracted by no more than the ecstatic touch of ancient coins beneath my fingertips, and I needed nothing to satisfy me but the simple pleasure of being one adored, beautiful thing amongst many. That was enough to fix my face in the perfect, golden smile the dragon wished to see.

Though there were other pleasures. From time to time, the dragon would see fit to drag me over to its sleeping mound, to pin me beneath its bulk, to part my body with its claws and have its way with me. In my right mind, I would have sooner split my own veins than suffer such a violation. But then I welcomed the monster’s attentions. I venerated its every touch. I was a beautiful thing, and to be adored by the very being that had raised me up into its hoard was paradise itself. What are treasures for, if not to be enjoyed?

But one day, the stamp of armored boots. The ringing of steel upon scale. The righteous screams of combat. It was not the first time, to be sure, but that day it was louder and more persistent than ever before. It did not rouse me. Not truly. I remained placed amid the dragon’s orgy of gold, and felt only a faint irritation that any ugly sound would dare pierce my opulent serenity.

The moment the dragon perished, I snapped back to my senses.

It was like being born anew. All the cold, cruel clarity of the world washed over me at once, and I realized to my horror that I was surrounded by fire and blood and molten gold. It was the sight of my captor’s great ruin that truly stunned me, its breast split and wrenched apart by desperate sword-strokes and its head pierced through by a knight’s lance. That such a being could be slain at all was a wonder to me; in search of another wonder, I clambered to my unsteady feet and sought the identity of my rescuer.

Thus I first saw her face. My salvation. A knight of my father’s court, and—as I then learned—a woman, like myself.

“Princess Rhianwen!” The knight dropped to one knee. The gesture was not chivalrous; she was leaning heavily on her ruined sword to remain upright. “I am Ser Morgan Brithdir. I have come to rescue you.”

I recognized her only from the coat of arms etched into her shattered shield. I had never heard Ser Morgan’s voice; she had appeared at the gates of my father’s castle some years ago, bearing a writ that proclaimed her vow of silence. Pious, silent knights were not unheard of, and she soon distinguished herself in my father’s esteem by her surpassing feats of arms. It was stranger, perhaps, that she never showed her face, but the same writ also bound her to a vow of humility that demanded she be perpetually helmed in self-effacement.

Even if I had seen her face a hundred times before, I might not have recognized her then. Ser Morgan was scarcely in a better state than the dragon she had just slain. Her famous helm was rent asunder, and my shock at her true sex and handsome beauty was surpassed only by my shock at her wounds. One side of her face was a melted ruin, her eye destroyed by the dragon’s ravaging claws, and there was not an inch of her skin that was not blistered and bloody from her trial.

“Ser, I…” I trembled. It was a wonder to me that the knight could still find the strength to speak. “I owe you my life.”

My words seemed to me a poor match for the service Ser Morgan had done me, but despite her agonies she smiled as if to receive anything but a rejection from me was a balm to her very soul.

Then, her service done, my knight collapsed onto the blood-soaked ground, her every breath an awful death-rattle.

How could I have wanted anything more than to save her? I flew to her side in desperation, but a quick inspection told me that her wounds were mortal thrice over. The most learned physician in the land would have been no less helpless.

But after a few panicked moments of thought and prayer, an answer came to me. I had always been a studious girl—to the dismay of my father, who wished me to expend my energies on more feminine pastimes. Since I could not adventure in body I had been determined to adventure in mind, and in the royal library I had dusted off many a tome that had not seen candlelight in generations. I recalled from one such book a piece of lore that, though of dubious provenance, seemed my best and only chance. With little care for my own hygiene I plunged my arms full deep into the slain dragon’s open chest, and with all the strength I could muster I plucked out the organ I sought.

“Here.” The words I spoke as I knelt at Ser Morgan’s side sealed my fate, though I did not then know it. “You must eat the dragon’s heart.”

Did she mean to refuse me? I am not certain. A look of distinct horror formed on the knight’s face, but between my firm entreaties and the fever of her coming end she could not sustain any protest. Ignoring her attempts, I coaxed her mouth open and pressed the dragon heart against her parted lips. It was huge—the size of a horse’s head or greater, each of its many chambers a bursting pomegranate that, even now, pulsed with an inhuman rhythm. The droplets of wyrmblood that fell from it stirred, it seemed, Ser Morgan’s appetite; eventually, at my insistence, she used the last of her strength to take the heart between her teeth and tear out an awful, ragged chunk.

Then another. Then another. As Ser Morgan’s strength returned to her, she began to feast with gusto. Soon enough, she reached up and tore the heart from my hands so she could better bring her teeth to bear on it. I watched her devour the foul organ fearfully, but my fear quickly gave way to wonder as, sure enough, her flesh began to knit itself whole.

It was just as the old book had said. From the dragon’s heart cometh the dragon’s vigor.

Within minutes, Ser Morgan was all but restored. To be sure, the heart’s restorative power had limits. Many superficial burns and scars remained, and the great wound that had stolen the sight from one eye refused the healing altogether. I could not bring myself to complain; every mortal wound was entirely undone and as she sat upright, Ser Morgan moved with a strength even the very freshest soldiers could not evince. In that moment the old book’s strident warnings seemed to me bizarre, though I reasoned that they must be an attempt to keep a foolhardy reader from seeking out a dragon that would surely devour them. Only one as worthy as Ser Morgan Brithdir could have slain such a creature, and I counted myself the most fortunate of all the world’s maidens to have such a worthy knight at my side still.

“Princess…” Once the heart was no more, the spell was broken. Ser Morgan seemed equal parts deplored at her sudden hunger, and amazed at her survival. “Is this truly still the mortal coil? I would wonder if I was taken to perdition, but for your presence."

Overjoyed, I quite forgot my station. I threw myself fully into the knight’s arms and buried my happy sobs in her breastplate, and though Ser Morgan remained stiff and uncertain at first, it was not long before she embraced me in turn.

The ground under our feet as we journeyed home was arduous, but the journey itself was not. We passed our time in happy fellowship, and I was relieved that it seemed to mean little that I was a princess and she a knight who had been concealing her womanhood. It greatly endeared me to Ser Morgan that, with no reason to hold her tongue, downright eager was she to talk, to gossip, to ask, to answer, to regale, and to jest—all with a wit it had surely been a crime to hide. There never was a more charming knight. Of that, I was certain.

For my part I was equally disarmed, safe in the knowledge that no guard was needed between us two women. There was such happiness in growing familiar with a knight who had always been, to me, a stern and silent figure at court. Indeed, Ser Morgan proved anything but stern; she willingly indulged my desires to wander and explore as far as our food and safety allowed. On one particularly wintry night, she came to my rescue for a second time by offering to come into my bedroll and share her warmth with me. Never had I felt safer or warmer than with Ser Morgan’s strong arms clasped tight around my frail, shivering body.

Then, I thought it a mere dreaming fancy that Ser Morgan’s breast grew so terribly hot, it turned the rain that fell upon us to faint-hissing steam.

After another week, we came upon my father’s castle. At our first sighting of it, the both of us grew reticent; I at the prospect of a return to the rigidity of courtly life, and Ser Morgan at the sure unmasking of her deception. She need not have worried. My father’s joy at the safe return of his beloved daughter knew no bounds, and yielded an equally boundless generosity. On the spot, he forgave Ser Morgan her every falsehood and anointed her freshly a knight of his kingdom. No barrier of sex, he decreed, should stand in the way of such valor.

My happiness at my father’s fair judgment eclipsed, I humbly believe, even Ser Morgan’s. Not even the memory of the ravenous dragon scared me quite so much as the prospect of suffering again the gilded cage of my father’s custody without companionship. But as a woman, Ser Morgan was free to call upon me privately without occasion or scandal; as a knight, she was sufficient to accompany me about the castle or beyond it. I availed myself of her services without restraint, making her take me wherever and whenever my whims struck, and she proved equally unrestrained in her regular appearances at my chamber door at night.

“Princess Rhianwen,” Ser Morgan would always greet me, extending herself in a formal bow. “Forgive me, but might I share with you a cup of tea on this cold night?”

“Ser Morgan,” I would always say, my bursting happiness at the sight of her face and sound of her voice piercing my courtly demeanor with a smile. “It would be my pleasure.”

It seemed so natural, so innocent, that the two of us, our bond forged atop that dragon’s hoard, would cherish any chance to nurse our rare connection. Not wishing to cast any shadow over Ser Morgan’s success, I had not shared with anybody the particular detail of her restoration by the dragon’s heart. It excited me to have a shared secret with her, even if it did not seem so very consequential. Ser Morgan had remained in perfect health ever since our return. The only sign of her injuries was the scar across her face, which seemed not to have healed. She wore a strip of linen tied about her head to hide the ruined eye—a rather fine, rakish style, as I often told her. Just as often, I implored her to remove it in my presence so that I might inspect and dress the wound, but she always adamantly refused me.

I did not understand her strength of feeling on the subject, but I did not press her overmuch. I was afraid, I think, to do or say anything that might have made her spurn my company. With Ser Morgan, for the first time in my life I enjoyed the respect afforded a true equal. I wanted nothing more than for our little meetings and outings to continue forever, the two of us growing steadily faster friends, comforted through all of life’s troubles by hot tea, warm conversation, and gentle touches.

Then the seasons turned. And my father announced my engagement.

It was inevitable. I knew that. Though I tried telling myself that my capture might cast a pall over my marriage prospects—my betrothed had, after all, died in flames at the altar—deep down I understood perfectly well that a king’s daughter was too valuable to go untroubled by suitors. In due course, my father made the proper arrangements. Though I dreaded a second wedding even more than I had the first, I did not see much use in petty protest. The only special boon I asked of my father was the opportunity to tell the good tidings to Ser Morgan privately, myself. He indulged me, of course. He merely thought I wanted to savor the joyful surprise of a friend.

Nothing was further from the truth. I couldn’t have put a name to the bond Ser Morgan and I shared, and while no friend would resent another’s taking a spouse, I sensed that my knight would not greet the news well. She had become terribly protective of me, and besides, my marriage would mean the end of our time together. I would be removed to the estate of my new husband—some earl’s son—while Ser Morgan would remain sworn to my father’s service. I expected sorrow. Perhaps even tear-shedding.

I did not expect that, after staring at me for a long moment in numb shock, Ser Morgan would clutch at her chest and sink to the ground as if in agony.

“Ser Morgan!” I flew to her side, panicked. “What is the matter?”

“I…” she groaned, pained. “Princess, I…”

At first, I thought her merely overcome with emotion. But as her body wracked itself with agonized shudders, I began to fear some distemper of the blood.

“Wait!” I shot to my feet, desperate to save the woman who had saved me. “I will fetch the physician!”

“No!”

When Ser Morgan seized my wrist to halt me, what surprised me most wasn’t the way that, despite her pains, she possessed the strength of ten men. It was the way that her skin was so hot, it almost burned me to the touch.

“Ser Morgan?” I pleaded.

My pain stilled her. She released me, her handsome face full of shame. Then I noticed the trails beneath her eyes, staining her cheeks. From her good eye, of tears.

From her ruined one, from beneath the bandage, of blood.

I had never seen her cry before. It robbed me of all my wits. I did not know what to do or what to say. In the end I simply knelt beside Ser Morgan and wrapped her powerful body up as fully as I could with my slender arms. She hugged me back very, very tight, and I could feel her burning heat through my clothes.

“I did not save you for this,” Ser Morgan whispered eventually. “I did not save you for some other man to claim.”

At that moment, I felt as though I understood her perfectly. Her supreme compassion made my heart tremble. “I know,” I replied to her softly. “I know.”

Eventually, we parted. After that, our companionship was—to my infinite regret—soured. It did not end, not then, but we began to pull against each other. Her evening appearances at my chamber door became rare and erratic, and she often proved elusive to my summons. It was as though Ser Morgan were trying to avoid me, except that once I managed to bind her to my company, she could not possibly have been closer or more affectionate. She would sit pressed close to my side, as if trying to take my breaths for her own; if we were out walking, she would hold my hand tight in hers and drape her long, powerful arm protectively across my shoulders if any stranger so much as glanced in my direction. Her moods, meanwhile, were impossible to predict. Often she was melancholic, if not downright sullen, but sometimes, without warnings, a strange, fiery intensity would take her. Ser Morgan would grip me by the shoulders, or touch her sharp fingertips to my face, or simply gaze deep into my eyes, leaving me speechless until the moments passed.

If I had not trusted her so implicitly, I might have been afraid. But her tight embraces always kept me warm.

If her moods had been the only change, I might have understood them better. But Ser Morgan’s new taste for finery perplexed me far more deeply. She had always dressed with great modesty—no less so after her unveiling. For months, I never saw her in anything finer than a linen shirt, but abruptly, after my father announced my engagement, she was reborn in silk and gold. My father’s gratitude must have been great indeed, for there was no better-dressed knight in all the kingdom. From then on, I never saw her with less than a full hand of rings or in anything but the most extravagant brocade clothing—all cut in perfectly tailored splendor to best accentuate Ser Morgan’s tall, strong, warrior’s form.

Far from the first knight I had seen develop a taste for the finer things in life. I had never taken Ser Morgan for the type, but it did not make me think any less of her. She had earned her riches—I of all people, would know it—and if they gave her any solace after my tidings, I could not begrudge her for it.

Besides, it was not as though I did not enjoy looking at her.

Moreover, though, my mind was elsewhere. I too was often sullen; more and more by the day, as my forthcoming wedding drew nearer. My awful stint of draconic captivity had made the thought of losing my freedom even more dreadful. My husband-to-be was no monster, I was sure, but all the same, he would have demands and expectations. I would be confined by inches: first to his side, then to my childbed, and then to the nursery. Resignation to my fate seemed the dignified path, but it did not bring me any peace. It simply proved its own source of horror: what would become of me in ten years hence—or in twenty, or in thirty—if I went on being resigned? What would become of my adventurous mind and my independent spirit?

Would they survive? If so, to what end? Would they perish, like the dying of a slow-starved flame? If so, what an awful peace that would be! And children—what of my children? I could not bear the thought of nurturing a daughter the way I wished I had been nurtured, only to see her parceled off in marriage all the same. Perhaps instead I should try to be, like my mother, the very image of motherly grace. Perhaps I should fastidiously raise the strongest sons and most dutiful daughters—all so that in my autumn years, I might be surrounded by admiring courtiers who would look at me and whisper privately to one another: did you know that in her youth, she was such a beautiful thing?

My own thoughts were unbearable. But I could do nothing but mark the coming of my wedding day.

A month beforehand, I asked Ser Morgan to accompany me to the dressmaker who had been weaving my wedding gown. It was finished, and all that remained was to try it on and see if any adjustments were required. It was, I suppose, cruel to ask Ser Morgan to be my attendant. I hoped only that, with her new love of rich and beautiful things, she might find enjoyment in it.

I should have heeded my darker suspicions.

Ser Morgan was like a brooding snake as she led me through the cobbled streets and toward the dressmaker. She had on her a new cape that seemed to fold about me like a vulture’s covetous wings whenever she drew close, and throughout the journey I could not induce her to speak a word. She would only hiss viciously at any passersby who strayed into our path or who even so much as cast their gaze upon me without sufficient obsequience.

I felt safe with her, I suppose. But daily I was growing less sure that I felt safe from her.

At the dressmaker’s, she led me within and wordlessly took up her post near the door of the dressing room. The dressmaker’s company and easy chatter did much to ease my anxious mood, and as she helped me into my wedding dress, I was even able to set my thoughts of the future aside and take pleasure in the gossamer treasure of a garment I was adorned with. The dressmaker made careful notes of the few small adjustments required and then, at the ringing of her doorbell, bade me with great apology to wait a few minutes while she attended to some other business.

After she left, I turned to Ser Morgan. “What do you think of the dress?” I asked her, quite innocently. But the intensity of her one-eyed gaze transfixed me; I suddenly became aware that she had been staring at me, unblinking, for quite some time.

“It is perfect,” Ser Morgan declared, voice a low, strange rumble that did not suit her throat. She began to walk toward me. “Truly perfect—as are you, within it.”

Her words brought the specter of a smile to my face, but something in her manner dispelled it at once. Was this truly my friend? My brave rescuer? There was such a menace to her now. “Thank you, kind ser,” I replied, all the same.

“Oh yes.” Ser Morgan continued to advance. Her face was full of something terrible. “The perfect reward. The perfect gift. The perfect little trinket. And who, pray tell, is it for? The pampered son of the Earl Tresney!”

“Ser?” My voice, a mere squeak. I had never heard the gentle Ser Morgan speak in such a cruel, sneering tone.

She froze on the spot, mere inches away. “It should have been me,” she growled.

“Your pardon, Ser?”

I prayed I had heard her wrong. I understood that Ser Morgan treasured our friendship and dreaded its loss, but this was far beyond what the honorable woman’s honor permitted. To think that she would countenance such perversion turned my stomach—but that was nothing compared to what I felt when she planted her hands about my waist and took me in her grasp.

“It should have been me,” Ser Morgan rasped. “Did I not fetch you back? Keep you safe? Risk my life and limb for—what? To hand you over to some boy? It… it is not just!”

“Ser Morgan, I...” Her every breath was smoke, every word a tongue of flame. In her grasp, I was molten. Her ravenous intensity bore down on me with terrible force. Her hands dug into my sides, something sharper than fingernails on their tips. Gauntlets, perhaps, though I had not seen her wearing more than gloves.

“I want you, Princess,” Ser Morgan declared. Her boldness stunned me. “This… this beauty. Won’t you be mine? Won’t you let me have every inch of you?”

“N- ah!”

It took me many long seconds to collect myself enough to speak; before I could form a single word, my composure was taken from me again. Ser Morgan began to run her hands up and down my body, caressing, touching, stroking—and sparing no reserve for my dignity or modesty. Her burning touch speared me through. How was it that one woman could have such heat? It seemed to me that she might burst into flame at any minute, and I with her, since her fever infected me with such maddening ease.

I had never been touched like that by any man before. Only by the dragon; Ser Morgan’s sharp, grasping fingers reminded me all too well of the creature’s avaricious groping. I felt no awe for Ser Morgan, though. I felt only a mad passion that mirrored hers, tempered by a lead-heavy fear at the way I was being summarily groped and grabbed at. I was afraid she would tear through the very wedding dress I had come here for, but instead she seemed just as keen to enjoy it as she did to enjoy me, savoring its texture, its very richness, beneath her palms.

“You would look so very fine on my arm,” Ser Morgan growled. Her tongue was drooling out her mouth like a hungry beast’s. Too long, too wet, too pointed. “Do I not deserve you?”

Her possessiveness was absolute. Not an inch of my skin escaped her foul touch, nor the attention of her throbbing, bloodshot eye. I could not escape her. Even my nose was full of her scent, like scorched stone or the tang of molten metal in the crucible. I felt as though I was being devoured. I could sense her intent: to make me hers. I could not stop her. I felt my own weakness as keenly as any blade. I could not stop her from having her way with me, or from carrying me off to wherever she pleased. I could not stop her from painting her name across my body however she wished.

And would that be so terrible?

There it was: the madness in me that hearkened to Ser Morgan’s touch. I could feel myself itching for more. Would I be free, with her? Ser Morgan was proposing to save me from the very marriage I dreaded. Was my body such a terrible price to pay in exchange? Whatever future she could offer seemed no worse than the one staring me in the face.

Her fingertips teased the hem of my dress. Her other hand worked against my thighs, parting them. I began to give in to her. I let her open me. I let her heat in.

But what would life with Ser Morgan be like? With one heartbeat, I hoped for the gentle companionship that had comforted me these past months. With another, I felt certain it would be anything but. The way she touched me then—this was not the companionship of equals. And the way she spoke of my beauty—this was no better than the very captivity she had saved me from.

“No!” I cried. I would not be a thing—not even hers. I pressed my hands against her, trying to fight her. Ser Morgan’s body was utterly unyielding, and beneath her clothes, I could feel strange, raised ridges running up and down her skin. When my hand strayed lower, I touched against a huge, hard, impossible organ, equally ridged, and whimpered a sob. “No!”

And she relented.

Ser Morgan’s eye widened, and she backed away as if my refusal were an unprecedented shock. Then she looked down at her hands, as if her own actions were a surprise to her. She looked at me, and in her horrified face, I saw the gentle friend who had brought hot tea to my bedchamber again and again.

“Princess!” she cried. “Forgive me, I… I did not mean... She clutched at her chest. “It is w-within me. It grows. I cannot… I cannot… I am sorry!”

Her words failed her. It was as if she could not name the force that had possessed her—and confronted with both her failure and her sin, Ser Morgan could only turn and flee from the dressmaker’s shop.

My mind was in turmoil as I made my way alone back to my father’s castle. Later, the seneschal asked me why Ser Morgan had not accompanied me home; I replied simply that she had disappeared. What else was I to say? I did not want the treatment I had endured in that dressing room to become the talk of the castle—nor, perhaps absurdly, did I wish to bring Ser Morgan’s good name into disrepute. She had done me much service, and in the end she had fled in clear shame and regret. What good would it do me to see her slandered a deviant before all the court? Better to consign her disappearance to the stuff of minor mysteries.

So I thought, anyway. It was not until she returned on my wedding day that I thought otherwise.

Ser Morgan loomed large in my thoughts for several weeks, but the festivities surrounding my coming union eventually rendered me incapable of dwelling on anything else. I judged it fortunate that courtly affairs took up so much of my time as to leave me exhausted. Better to collapse to sleep at once rather than spend hours awake in bed, dreading what was to come. But I dreaded too the sleep that spirited me ever-closer to my wedding day; once it finally arrived, I had not thought of Ser Morgan in a week.

I was waiting in my bedchamber for the ceremony to begin, dressed well in advance by my handmaidens and left briefly alone to contemplate my coming vows—or rather, to enjoy my last true moments of solitude—when she appeared. On a day like this, a helmed knight going about the castle attracted little notice, but I recognized her blackened armor at once.

“Ser Morgan!” I gasped.

Should I have screamed? I considered it—but no, no! This was my friend. My rescuer. Whatever my gut told me, I could not be in danger. I knew of her desires, yes, but also of her restraint. I was safe with Ser Morgan.

Then she took off her helm, and I did not scream because my shock utterly robbed me of my voice.

It was the same woman I had known—but only just. Her face was rabid and her visible eye was bulging and bloodshot, and those were by far her least alarming features. Interlocking, diamond-shaped scales were encroaching on her face, having already conquered the surrounding skin, and on her forehead, two pointed horns were breaking through at her temples. Her lips were drawn back, revealing sharp teeth, and when she spoke the tongue that extended from her mouth was many inches too long and forked at the tip.

“Princess Rhianwen,” Ser Morgan drawled. Though her face throbbed with appetite, there was something woefully cold-blooded in her voice. “Such an unfaithful little trinket. I’ve come to take you back where you belong—again.”

How I shuddered at the threat! Though it seemed impossible, given my time as the dragon’s captive I could not possibly mistake what I was seeing: my beloved Ser Morgan was undergoing some manner of horrid transformation! It took me only a moment more to think of the dragon’s heart and the book’s warnings. Ser Morgan’s behavior at the dressmaker’s shop slotted perfectly into the puzzle.

I could have wept from guilt. After all, I had made her eat the heart. But that did not diminish the danger I faced. My best hope, I judged, was to appeal to the better nature that had prevailed at our last meeting.

“Ser Morgan!” I begged. “Listen to me. You are sick! Tainted! You must-“

“I am stronger than ever,” Ser Morgan countered.

“But this is not you! Don’t you see? The dragon’s heart has poisoned you. It has given you its monstrous nature.”

“Everything that was the dragon’s, I claim by right of conquest,” Ser Morgan boasted. “Its heart. Its strength. And its hoard.”

As she spoke that last word, she looked at me with such naked avarice, I could not possibly mistake her meaning. Ser Morgan’s bloodshot eye registered no warmth, no friendship, no respect or deference. It was clouded with gold-lust. It was as if she looked upon me as just another piece of treasure.

“N-no,” I whimpered. My heart broke as Ser Morgan’s presence abruptly transported me back to  my stint under the dragon’s spell. I felt that same trembling fear—and worse than the fear, that same, awful sense of my very being flattening beneath an awful gaze that cared nothing for the thoughts and dreams that sat coiled behind my pretty face. “You cannot! I refuse!”

“You cannot refuse me,” Ser Morgan growled. “You told me once that you owed me your life. You spoke true, and I have come to collect. You will be mine.”

Hers, instead of my husband’s. Or instead of the dragon’s. Or instead of my first betrothed’s. Or my father’s, even. A hysterical laugh threatened to burst from my chest. What difference would it make?

No matter what, my fate was to be a possession.

But the brimstone scent coiling ever thicker around the room stirred me to passion rather than fatalism. I was determined to fight tooth and nail for whatever freedom I could preserve. Moreover, my better nature demanded that I save Ser Morgan from her pitiable plight. It was I, after all, who had led her to it. The noble knight I had once known deserved to be so much more than the awful chimera that stood before me.

As if sensing my horror Ser Morgan proudly began to disrobe. She unfastened her armor with practiced ease; it was clear from the many sets of rings, bracelets, necklaces, and other such trinkets that adorned her form that her appetite for rich and golden things had only grown. And what a monstrous form! Ser Morgan still had all her fine curves and proud muscles, but her strength and girth had swelled with her draconic transfiguration. Beneath her neck, she was completely overtaken with hardened scales as gorgeous as rubies, set in ridges along the contours of her body as if to make of her a work of art. At her back, a thick, trunk-like tail uncoiled from its hiding place beneath her cloak, and as she removed her armored sabatons, she exposed that her toes had fused into two huge talons, a third protruding unnaturally from her heel.

Truly, she was a monster.

Despite myself, I gasped in wonder at the sight. But the greater miracle was yet to come. When Ser Morgan unfastened the loincloth from around her waist and let it drop, I saw that I had not imagined what my hand had brushed against in the dressmaker’s shop. From between Ser Morgan’s legs had sprouted a massive, swelling organ, ridged with scales along its length and culminating in an upturned, bulbous, throbbing tip.

It looked just like the dragon’s.

The sight of Ser Morgan’s womanhood so utterly warped made me shiver; worse was the distinct intent with which Ser Morgan had unveiled it. It was plain that she meant to violate me, and as she began to advance on me anew, my passion erupted into panic. I could not endure this again. But surely—surely my knight would relent.

“Ser Morgan!” I pleaded. “Please! Show mercy!”

“Mercy?” The dragon-knight tilted her head, bemused, unrelenting. “What mercy is there for a jewel but to be claimed?”

“Please!” I begged again. “Think back! This is not you! You are no dragon. You are a noble knight of my father’s court. You do not want me like… like this!”

Something of my plea seemed to reach her; just a single pace from me, Ser Morgan froze in her tracks, and briefly, a soft look came into her face.

“Oh, Princess,” Ser Morgan said mournfully. “I always wanted you like this.”

As I lapsed into silent shock, Ser Morgan reached up and removed the sash of cloth wrapped over her ruined eye.

Beneath it was anything but a ruin. The jagged scar the dragon had left her with had completely faded, but her eye was not as it had been. It was a reptilian orb of purest gold, split down the middle by a black thunderbolt of a pupil. The draconic eye rippled and pulsed with an unnatural fire, and as I looked into it, I felt my will sapped away just as it had been upon my taking by the dragon itself. I remembered, then, how the dragon’s eyes became my world; how, within them, all seemed so placid. So beautiful. So right.

The eye. The eye…

I smiled. My hands, raised in feeble protest, fell to my side. My gaze, suddenly unfocused, filled with an awe-consuming majesty as I regarded my new master. My dreams, forgotten. My aspirations to freedom, gone. All that mattered was that I could see myself in the gold mirror of Ser Morgan’s eye, and in my wedding dress, adorned with my mother’s jewels, I was beautiful for her.

Ser Morgan smiled a wide, reptilian smile. “You are mine,” she declared.

“I am yours,” I echoed, and the words came to me like a song from a dream. They were perfect.

I was hers! A wonder. A blessing.

“You shall be the jewel of my hoard,” she hissed. I moaned, ecstatic.

“The jewel of your hoard. Yes.”

I longed for it. I longed for the sensation of piles of gold beneath my fingertips. I longed to lounge on her great treasure-mound, resplendent, my flesh sinking into its riches.

I longed for nothing more.

“You will be beautiful for me. Always.”

“Always.” I nodded in frantic agreement. “Always.”

What other duty was there for a prize such as I? To be beautiful and splendid for my master. To shine as brightly as she wished. Ah! Such pleasure.

“But right now,” Ser Morgan vowed, her smile twisting sinuously, “I will stamp your body with my mark like a fresh-minted coin.”

Then and there, she took me. Ser Morgan took the finest care not to damage my dress or my face as she disrobed me, but after that she left her mark deeply indeed as she raked her razor-sharp across my back in throes of passion. My pleasure matched hers; her newly-grown dragon cock split me to my soul as she bent me over in her clutches. If there was any trace of anything but avarice left in my dear Ser Morgan—any kindness, any respect, any care—it did not show. Not in the way she drove in and out of me mercilessly with her hips, or in the way she left long ropes of hissing, simmering drool danging down my front, or in the way she forced her long, rope-like tongue all the way down my throat so far that I might have choked to death if her powerful grasp had not been there to anchor me.

I was, to her, nothing more than a possession.

And I adored it. It was as it had been with the dragon—I greeted her every touch with reverent awe, thunderstruck with gratitude at the simple fact that a being so wondrous and superior had found me beautiful in her sight. What more could a mere girl such as I wish for? Ser Morgan’s eye had extinguished my every other want. With my every moan, I thanked her for it.

I saw now. My longings for more than the gilded cage into which I had been born—it had always been futile. My every tear shed for my free flights of fancy, wasted. My every pang of longing, misspent. What ought I do but thank Ser Morgan for my enlightenment?

At least now I could find bliss in my proper subservience.

After Ser Morgan had used me to her satisfaction, she spirited me from the castle. I followed her obediently, a will-less zombie, until she led me all the way back to the very cave she had once rescued me from. There she raked her claws proudly through her many inherited treasures and enveloped me greedily in her sprouting wings, before setting me down among her fantastic riches as one jewel among many, that they might enhance my beauty, and I theirs—and that I might want nothing more.

Nothing but the pleasure of being a beautiful thing.