She will escape. 

“…I apologise, Miss Kreel, if I have bored you.” Ambrose amends, somewhat flustered.

"No," she murmurs. "Not for a moment." It's the truth, even. 

She intertwines her fingers with his and just leaves them there for a moment.

He gazes down at their hands. 

It is too soon to fall in love, most would agree. But at Fifth Circle by the age of twenty, Ambrose has always been rather swift to do things. 

He trusts her. Every word that comes out of her mouth.

There could be no one else.

Ambrose will stay and talk to her for as long as her father will allow it.

...Acceptable. 

For whatever reason, the boy fancies himself in love, and his daughter's feelings are his to control, trivially. It will do. He has more important matters to attend to, in any case. 

He gives the barest fraction of a nod. He will have to vent this little frustration later. 

With promises that he will be back for her tomorrow morning, and whatever pleasantries her father will accept, Ambrose departs. He looks over his shoulder at Galora in the final moment before the heavy door shuts behind him.

Ophel doesn’t show up for breakfast that day, nor for lunch. There is a peculiar emptiness in the house without his presence, even as his furniture dominates every room. 

Voltur eats alone, staring ahead at the seat that should be occupied, on a table with enough food to feed a small village.

Eventually, the elf-lord appears that afternoon, his hair loose and his eyes tired.

“Ah. I see the dragon did not eat you.”

His tone is that of disappointment as he finds his seat at the pianoforte.

He's actually dozing. He used up a lot of energy last night. 

The human words are tantalisingly close to understandable. 

"Lord Ophel." He quickly composes himself. "Are you well?"

His fingers trace over the wooden cover, before he decides against playing. It isn’t worth the risk of disturbing the resting dragon.

Ophel hates it here.

“Yes. Perfectly well, thank you,” he replies in a way that really means the opposite. “And when will your bride be visiting today?”

It’s probably best not to refer to Miss Eloise by her name, lest the dragon recognise the sound. Not that the alternative is pleasant by any means.

"Whenever she can get away. I expect her any minute, in truth, I do not beleive she likes being away from the dragon."

Where is she?

He sighs, pressing his fingertips to his temples. “You mean to tell me you are not going to retrieve her yourself? It is hardly a surprise that you were raised in a gutter.”

"Maybe I should duel you for that insult to my honour, elf, if that's the way it goes. But I suppose you'd only run away again."

He turns on his heel and strides blindly out of the house to go and fetch Eloise. The damn elf can have a turn with the dragon. 

His eye twitches.

The remainder of Voltur’s absence is spent dreaming of several colourful ways of enacting terrible and satisfying murder.

Feeling its sleepy gaze, he looks at the dragon. “What?”

The nature of dragons is rather enigmatic. Many scholars will claim to know of their secret lives, their births and deaths, the raising of their young, and they are all wrong. Sometimes interestingly wrong, but wrong. 

It blinks its huge eyes at the elf. 

Among many differences, a dragon is not born helpless like a human infant, physically or mentally. 

A dragon's schemes incubate with its physical form in its very egg. 

He cannot understand words yet. 

But-

He stares hard at the elf.

Glances pointedly towards the door Father left him through. 

Back at the elf. 

That conversation did not smell the same way it sounded.

He scrunches his brow, not quite understanding. “Yes. Father will be coming back soon. With Mother.”

The words leave a bitter taste in his mouth.

He doesn't actually know who this is in any important way, except that Father acts funny around him. 

He stalks warily towards the elf. 

Stares at him again.

Who are you?

A soft sigh leaves his lips. He does not understand this dragon-child, and is not entirely sure the dragon-child can understand him.

A universal language, then.

Deftly, he lifts the wood guarding the keys of the pianoforte. “Do you like music, young one?”

As if in answer it flares its too-short-stubby wings and leaps up on to the bench besides the elf. It's still staring at him. 

The elf doesn’t move, but he also doesn’t try to touch the dragon. He… did not make a good first impression, and he values his fingers too much.

It is not too early to begin the child’s education. “Very well. Watch carefully.”

He plays a few simple notes to begin with, easy to follow. Bright tones – cheerful, like wind-chimes in the air, somewhere warm.

The sound becomes increasingly complicated as the minutes tick by. The elf’s hands begin to dart around the keys, with overlapping tones and quicker pace, chords pressed down harshly in the minor key – and then the climax slows, and the dragon can breathe again, and the melody from before is played again. Slower. Peaceful, though the innocence is lost. Solitary.

A second, lower melody joins in. Ophel hums quietly along to it, his eyelids flickering shut.

And then the song ends.

“…It is not yet finished.”

He's still staring. 

What 

What was that

Carefully, balancing with its wings flared, it reaches up. Sways, corrects with its tail. 

Reaches out its claws towards the keys. 

“Careful, my dear. Instruments are delicate things.”

Ophel demonstrates with his hand that the dragon should keep his claws far from anything so fragile. He presses down on the pianoforte with the palm of his hand, not with his curled fingers.

“Good. Try now.”