Not Breathing

The shell falls apart in three pieces and the thing inside slides out into your hands like a wet loaf of bread.

It's slate-blue and silver-bellied and all wrong angles: long neck, folded wings stuck flat with fluid, four tiny clawed feet curled up tight. A thin grey membrane covers its face. Its sides don't move.

The healers' keening rises to a wail. "Stillborn," the old one cries. "Stillborn, Highness, the line is—"

"Shut up," you say, and to your own surprise, he does.

You don't think about dragons. You think about your NICU rotation, the one you hated, and the neonatologist with the bow ties who said most babies who don't breathe just need someone to insist. Airway. Breathing. Circulation.

You peel the membrane off its snout with your thumbnail. Clear fluid trickles from two slit nostrils. You flip open the trauma bag one-handed, dig past the trauma shears and the tourniquets, find the bulb syringe and suction both nostrils, then the mouth, which is full of very small, very sharp teeth.

"What are you doing to him?" The sword is still out. The man holding it has gone pale under all that copper and gold.

"Clearing his airway. Hold the lamp."

"I am the Crown Prince of Drakemoor."

"Great. Hold the lamp anyway, Your Highness. I can't see."

For one second you're sure he's going to take your head off. Then he sheathes the sword with a hard snap, grabs a brass lamp from the nearest healer and holds it over your hands. The light shakes a little. You pretend not to notice.

You lay the hatchling on your thigh and rub its back with a dry corner of the warm blanket, hard and brisk, the way you'd rub a newborn. Nothing. You tip its head back gently to straighten the airway. Its neck is so long you have to guess where the airway even goes.

"Come on," you mutter. "Come on, little guy, insist."

You cover the snout and the nostrils with your mouth. The scales taste like copper and rain. You give a breath, a tiny one, just a puff of your cheeks, and watch the narrow chest rise.

Behind you, somebody makes a scandalized noise. Somebody else whispers a prayer.

Another puff. Rise. Fall.

You find the heart the way you'd find it on anything with ribs: low on the chest, between the front legs. Two fingers. You press. The chest is springy under your fingertips, almost like cartilage. You count out loud because it keeps your voice steady. "One, two, three…"

Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Again.

The prince is breathing hard above you. The lamp doesn't move. You can feel his attention on your hands like heat off a stove.

"Highness," the old healer says softly, "the egg failed for weeks. There is nothing in there to call back. Let it go."

"Do not," the prince says, without looking away from you, "speak."

Two breaths. Thirty compressions. Your knees burn in the hot sand. Sweat runs into your eyes. You've done this on grown men in parking lots and on toddlers pulled out of pools and you know the exact moment people start to give up, and you've never once been the one to do it.

"I'm not letting you go," you tell the hatchling. "You hear me? You called me here. I heard you. So you don't get to quit now."

Two breaths.

Under your fingers, something flutters.

You freeze. Press lightly. There, again, a tiny, frantic drumbeat, like a bird's.

The hatchling's whole body jerks. It coughs, a wet ugly cough that sprays fluid across your scrubs, and then it sneezes.

A spark comes out.

A real one, bright blue-white, the size of a grain of rice. It lands on your knee and fizzles against the wet fabric.

Then the hatchling opens its eyes.

They're silver. Pure silver, enormous for its face, and they find you instantly. Not the lamp, not the healers, not its father. You. It looks at you like you're the only thing in the world.

It opens its mouth and croons.

The sound rings. That's the only word for it. It rings like somebody struck a crystal glass with a spoon, a clear high note that goes on and on and gets inside your ribs and settles there. The braziers all flicker at once. The sand under you hums. You feel it in your hands, your chest, the soles of your feet, a warm thread pulling taut between you and this small wet creature, and then it's just there, like it's always been there.

Every healer in the room goes silent.

The old one, the one who told you to let go, sinks back onto his heels. "No," he says faintly. "No, it can't. Not to a human."

"What?" you say. "What can't?"

The hatchling crawls up your arm. It's slippery and determined, claws pricking through your scrubs, and it tucks its long neck under your chin and goes limp against your collarbone with a long, contented sigh. It's warm now. Warm as a cup of tea.

You start shaking. Adrenaline, finally catching up.

"He imprinted," the old healer says. "Highness. He has imprinted on her."

The prince sets the lamp down very carefully on the sand. He looks at his son, curled under your chin, and something passes over his face so fast you almost miss it. Not anger. Something rawer.

Then he holds out his hands. "Give him to me."

You'd love to. You lift the hatchling gently away from your neck and turn to place him in his father's hands.

The hatchling screams.

It's a shocking sound for something that size, a shrill furious shriek like a kettle in a horror movie, and it twists in your grip, scrabbling back toward you. When the prince's fingers close around it, it whips its head around and sinks every one of its brand-new teeth into his thumb.

The prince doesn't flinch. He just looks down at the small blue face attached to his hand.

"Ah," he says.

"I'm so sorry," you blurt. "He's, um. He's got good reflexes?"

The hatchling lets go, scrambles out of his father's hands and back into your lap, and plasters itself against your stomach, making a high grieving noise until you put your hand on its back. Then it stops. Instantly.

The prince wipes his bleeding thumb on his leathers. "Master Fenwould."

The old healer gets slowly to his feet. "Highness."

"Tell me what I'm looking at."

"A royal hatchling imprints on the first heartbeat it knows," Fenwould says. "Usually its mother's. Sometimes its father's. Once in a while a nurse dragon's. Never," he looks at you with something between awe and horror, "never a human's. There are no stories of it. There are no rules for it."

"Where," you say, and your voice cracks, so you try again. "Sorry. Where exactly am I?"

The prince turns those silver-ringed eyes on you. "Stormhold. On Mount Ardrach. In the kingdom of Drakemoor, which humans from your side of the sky are not supposed to be able to reach." A beat. "I am Kieran Drakemoor. This is my son. And you are going to explain how you got here."

"Ava," you say. "My name is Ava. Not 'human'. And I'd love to explain. I was on a roof. Lightning. Big hole in the sky." You swallow. "Something was crying. I followed it."

Fenwould and the prince exchange a look you don't like.

"Then she goes back the way she came," Kieran says flatly. "Tonight. We'll find a way."

"Highness." Fenwould's voice is very quiet. "An imprinted hatchling cannot be parted from its imprint. Not in the first year. It won't eat. It won't sleep. It will cry until its fire goes out." He looks at the small blue shape breathing against your stomach, and then at his prince. "If you separate them, your heir will be dead in three days."