Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Not The Life Plan

The Lord and Lady Dragon looked at the horn, and I recognized the faces of high-breds who had no idea what to do--their lifeplan had never included the possibility of having to explain this. They had no plan, no contingency, no what if in the back of their heads. A little mutt showing up and tossing a horn at thQeir feet--a horn no one had been ever been able to move--hadn't been anything they'd ever anticipated.

And that was a unicorn horn. And dozens of dragons peered around with their noodle-necks and little curled nostrils flaring as scales glittered and shone in the growing dawn, and from the more powerful ones, various auras. Mostly, everyone seemed bewildered. Even Korr hadn't known about the horn, so if Korr hadn't known, then only the most dedicated of dragon scholars and historians knew. And dragons, with their craving for novelty, probably weren't big on knowing their own history. Why read dusty old tomes when they could go look at an interesting rock?

The dragons whispered and shifted and moved as one giant, glittering sea of living gemstones.

I pointed at the mineshaft, which was now full of not just water that was full of debris and silt, but had a slight dark sheen on its surface, and if I focused, I could smell the taint. "That is what is happening to the rest of the world. There is no water, and what there is, is tainted. Slightly fetid in some places, poison in the worst areas. A unicorn horn, wedged into the stone and held there by the power of magical pearls, made that for you, and you admired it instead of share it. I'd accuse you of hiding your sin, except I know you don't care. These are things that happen, after all."

I said the last sentence sarcastically.

"Except the unicorns got tired of it happening," I added with bite and an old, familiar disgust. So the unicorns had decided to "leave" the world. Whatever that meant. Had they simply not taken mates and not produced offspring? Had they been hunted down for their horns? Had they died of collective, slow-grinding grief? All of those things.

The Lady-Dragon's entire body clenched while she fought to the urge to not move away from the horn touching her claws. She snorted petals. Korr whispered, "Who are you to tell me these things? Who are you to pull the horn no one else has dared?"

"Dared?" I snapped. "I didn't dare. Your ancestors tried so hard to remove the horn they snapped part of the unicorn's skull off."

Another fierce snort. "Who are you?"

"A soul so inconsequential even death forgot to take me."

Korr brushed his lips against my ear. "Is that your hand on my cock or your words in my ear?"

"Now isn't the time," I whispered back.

"When you speak like that, it is always the time."

I elbowed him and smiled at the ruling dragons. This might be pointless, and it felt like rolling a boulder a giant hill of this won't fucking matter, but that's why I was doing it. Time to do the exact opposite of what I had been doing. Death didn't get to win. Hell, I hadn't even succeeded at dying. They'd even taken the right to properly die from me and I'd been in a damn jar.

The world was not a jar, and I wasn't going to hang out on a goddamn shelf (or mountain top, or below the ocean in a twilight garden) like a damned knick-knack.

I'd been a fucking trinket. And I was done with being a trinket to be stolen and fought over and ignored when it was convenient, and admired when it suited whoever was in the damn room.

The ruling dragons and I got into something of a staring match. I had nothing else to say. They had the dead horn. The unicorn stallion was finally at rest. And the dragons knew, and what they made of it? I didn't care. I wasn't expecting much. But if that horn stuck in their flanks like a thorn, good.