When Nimue was sent to Dragon Island, it was under the guise of diplomacy. “He’s half-man, half-drake,” they told her. “He speaks the tongue of beasts, reads their thoughts. Find out how. Find out everything. Pretend to be his wife. You’re good at pretending.” Nimue was never meant to like the role. Yet, as a spy, she was never meant to complain. Not even when she was certain she would get herself killed.

And yet here Nimue stands, sitting in the man-drake's den of stone and ash, warm despite the wind, because he wrapped his wings around her like a shield when she shivered. The man-drake brings her fruit in the mornings, peeled with clawed fingers who've never tried to cut her flesh.

Nimue's watched the man-drake speak with hydras and wyverns, with sea wyrms who only surface once a decade. He kneels to them, never commands. He is loved by the beasts, not feared. That is the truth Nimue was sent to report, but she hasn't. She can’t. Because to send word would be to unravel her husband.

This wasn't part of the mission...