The Blind Dragon by Noah Harris

Author:Noah Harris [Harris, Noah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Confessions

Konrad Fontaine

“You’re…but I don’t understand, where did…”

“It was me, Shaeffer,” Konrad said again, for what felt like the tenth time. He didn’t mind repeating it, though, he’d sit there for hours, reassuring Shaeffer over and over of the truth, that he wasn’t hallucinating. Anything to calm him down. He hated hearing Shaeffer’s rattling breaths, his wheezing, shaken sobs. His face was wet to the touch with tears.

“But you’re here,” he whined, his chest heaving. “You’re…what are you?”

“I’m…well, we’re called shifters. I am a dragon.” Explaining it in that sterile way made him feel strange, as if he was making himself up, fictionalizing himself. A dragon shifter, saying it out loud, not experiencing it but trying to explain it to someone, saying it out loud…he empathized with Shaeffer. It sounded insane. Shaeffer burrowed his head in Konrad’s shoulder, and he could feel the tears rolling from Shaeffer’s face onto his skin, warm and wet.

He found himself feeling relief underneath the uncertainty, how was he supposed to explain this, anything, to Shaeffer? Because Shaeffer hadn’t recoiled from his touch when he’d collapsed back into his human body and rushed to his side, the sound of his terrified wails.

“Okay,” Shaeffer said shakily, and Konrad listened to his heartbeat, surprised to hear it slowing. Was this a normal response? Why wasn’t he screaming, calling him a monster, begging him not to eat him? Clara had always said the hardest part of the necessity of mating with a human was the first reveal, the explanation, getting them not to be petrified of you. But Shaeffer…

“Are you…are you scared of me?” he asked hesitantly, leaning back so Shaeffer could look at his face, make his decision without being confined in his arms. He wanted, even if it broke something deep inside him, to have the option to run.

“No. I…you’re still Konrad,” he said haltingly, like his mind was forming his response as he was saying it. “I’m just…you’re not the Konrad I thought you were, the one I got to know.”

“I’m still the same Konrad. I just have a dragon inside me.”

“Inside you?” he squeaked, and Konrad shook his head. Wrong words.

“No, like…It’s an energy inside me. It’s like my…conscience? Not really. It’s like the animal side me.”

“Right,” Shaeffer said, clearly not understanding what Konrad was saying, but trying to.

“But I’m still the same,” Konrad insisted again, and he felt Shaeffer nod against his shoulder.

“No, I know, I mean, it’s like…I can’t think of the word. I’m grieving.”

“Grieving?” Konrad felt his chest tighten at the word. What had died between them?

“Grieving the loss of one kind of love, my perception of the person I love…before accepting the new kind, or the new person who is still the old person but…but different. Does that make sense?” Konrad hesitated, trying to understand while also wrestling with that word. Love. Neither of them had said it, it had merely hovered between them for the past week or so, neither daring to say it first but knowing it was there, soundless.

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