Hailey cried. She didn’t know what all of those images meant. Her side hurt and her leg hurt and she didn’t want to do this anymore. She just wanted to live her life simply without things attacking her and killing so many people. Vaguely she realized she should cast a healing on herself, but she was losing blood and she couldn’t think straight. Maybe after she took a nap, then she would have the magic to heal herself. Maybe then things would make sense.

Someone was coming. She could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. At first she was afraid, but then she remembered that the dragon was dead and it didn’t make footprints. That was people.

Aaron rounded the corner. He looked really worried. He should have been smiling. She had done it. Seeing him made her feel proud of what she had done, proud and tired and sad. Why was he looking at her like that. He was so beautiful. She wished he would smile. She loved the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled, but he just looked worried.

“Are you ok?”

“I think so.”

“You’re bleeding.” He handed her a chunk of cheese and skin of water. “Here, eat. You are going to need to heal yourself.”

She ate, remembering the spell she had cast on one of the soldiers. Closing his wound. She didn’t have any broken bones, so that was something. She wasn’t sure she remembered that one. “What’s all that noise?”

“The whole city is out there.”

“Why?” That didn’t make any sense.

“When mages start throwing magic around, it draws a crowd. You killed the dragon.” He put an emphasis on the word killed. “That’s amazing!”

Finally, she had enough energy, she could heal herself. She cast, closing the wound in her side and then the one on her leg. When she was done, she was hungry again. Hungry and tired.

“Did you get a good look at this thing?” Aaron said, a little awe in his voice.

“No.”

He put out a finger to touch her light spell and nothing happened. Then he picked it up and shone the light over the dragon. A layer of crystal had formed over the silvery scales. No that wasn’t right, the dragon itself had crystalized.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, awe in his voice. Then he returned to her side.

“Thank you,” she told him.

“For what?”

She couldn’t help the tears that spilled out. Even now, he had thought to bring her food so that she could heal herself. She couldn’t make herself speak. Tears just kept coming until she finally croaked out. “For everything.” It wasn’t enough. She knew it wasn’t, but he put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight.

“So are you going to make your adoring fans wait all day?”

She shook her head. It was crazy that they had come here, but she thought she could understand. The city had been crushed and burned in places. They were celebrating the death of the dragon more than anything. They walked out of the castle hand in hand. Aaron was carrying her light, but it wasn’t necessary. The sun was beginning to rise in the distance, casting a pink glow over everything.

People shouted and cheered for her, all standing far enough away that if the spell was there, they wouldn’t be caught up in it. Some of them even called out her name. She smiled and waved, feeling exhausted.

“She killed it! The dragon is dead,” Aaron said and the crowd cheered again.

She looked back at the castle. It was smashed in in a few places and would need to be repaired. It was her castle, though. She had taken care of it for fifteen years and she could do it again. It would be different now. So much had changed in one day. She was bound to this place but now that the curse was gone, she no longer felt like she was bound by it. For the first time in fifteen years, she looked out over the city without seeing the shimmer of the spell. She could see the balcony where Barinon had sat, watching her put out the chicken and she felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders. She was the only mage, as he had been and she would do her best to protect the people as he had done.

Aaron and Hailey moved closer to the group of people. She wanted to tell them that the spell was gone, that they could cross if they wished, but she realized that probably the first people who should have that chance should be the king and queen.

“How did you do it?” A young girl asked her. She couldn’t have been more than twelve, all elbows and knees and much too thin.

She smiled. Her voice wasn’t going to be loud enough for everyone to hear, but they could figure it out. The people clumped around the girl, all straining to hear Hailey’s words. “I fought that dragon for a long time.” She tried to elaborate and then she told them how she pulled the curse off of the princess and put it on the dragon.

“But won’t that just put it to sleep?” A woman asked.

“The mages tried that already. It didn’t work. They were trying to kill a goat with the curse.” The man who said that was someone she recognized. He was older than she remembered, but he was the young man that was with Esmerelda the day that the spell was placed around the castle and everyone was put to sleep. He might have seen them trying it then. He had grown older.

Hailey couldn’t answer all of their questions. She realized that explaining that the spell hadn’t been bound to the princess correctly and that had changed whether or not she could move it was too complicated to explain and have everyone understand. She should have just told them that she cursed it with a death spell.

Aaron grinned at her. “You gotta be able to simplify things, and it’s not a very good story, not the way you tell it.”

“You do it then,” she told him.

The crowd moved aside for a carriage. Two soldiers that Hailey didn’t know stepped out. She cringed. Most of the ones she knew were dead now. “We hear that you finally killed the dragon. Is that true?”

The king’s pale blue eyes studied her and she nodded. “And Barinon?”

Her throat instantly clenched in sorrow. She barely managed to make the words come out. “He didn’t make it. I’m sure Derrick will tell you all about it when we find him.” She had expected him to come out of the carriage with them, but he had been injured. Hopefully someone was seeing to his wounds.

“I’m sure you are here to see your daughter,” she told them.

“Is that possible?”

“Oh, yes, the spell is gone.”

The soldiers were the first to enter the place where the spell had been. The king and queen followed.

As they walked, Hailey filled them in on all that had happened.

They paused when they came to Bruce. The queen covered her mouth. “He was Bruce, the cook. I am sorry to see that he died this way.”

Hailey was too. She hadn’t realized that he had died. All of the running through the castle, and she hadn’t come in the main entryway. Memories of running away from him can calling him “the giant” flooded her mind. He had always been good to her and her friends and now like so many others, he had died. She couldn’t imagine the terror of finally waking up and then seeing a dragon. Bruce probably didn’t know if the dragon was a dream or not. She blinked back tears. There would be time for them later.

As they passed so much destruction, the king and queen seemed astounded. “This is going to take time to rebuild. Do you think we can have it done before winter?”

The king shook his head. “I don’t know, but we should give the Goddards back their home. We’ve borrowed it for long enough. That is assuming that the rest of the castle still stands.”

They passed the mage’s study without a second glance. Of course they would know it was there, even if they hadn’t been in it. The loss of books would affect her more than it did them. They made their way up the steps slowly. And finally came to the princess’s room. They gasped as they saw the dragon.

“I didn’t know it would do that,” she told them, realizing that it may have been a good idea to warn them of the dragon before bringing them up here.

The king patted her on the soldier, eying the crystalized dragon. “You managed to defeat it. Let us worry bout cleaning up the mess.”