Water skimmed along his neck and belly as he followed along the river’s path. I pulled off a mitten and stuck my hand out. Laughing as the freezing water slap my palm before shielding it back into the mitten. He rose higher, and I noticed something white in the water up ahead. Shifting to my knees, I gripped his mane tight and leaned over to get a better look.
There, just below the river’s surface was a massive skeleton. Its long spine poked out in certain places above the water. Its head had broken off at the neck and lay next to the crushed remains of what looked like a hand. Rows of vicious-looking teeth littered its jaw, with a few missing around the front. As we flew closer, I counted several more heads littering the water. Confused, I followed the spine up the creature’s body to find that it ended in not one neck, but seven!
My eyes widened. “Is that a hydra? Like a real hydra?”
“It was a damn nuisance is what it was,”Dante snorted.“I leave my territory for a little sabbatical and every idiot with a pair of fangs thinks they can move in.”
The urge to reach out and touch the legendary creature had my hands tingling. Its skeleton alone looked far bigger than Dante. “Did you kill it all on your own?”
As if sensing my desire, Dante flew lower and stopped close enough to where I could reach out and touch the long spines that poked free from the river.“No, Kohara had returned home and found it first. Hydra are difficult prey, so she summoned me back to help kill it.”
I removed a mitten to run my fingers along vertebrae the size of watermelon. The tingle in my fingers turned into teary- eyed elation, and I had to quickly pull myself together to avoid freezing my eyes shut. “Tell me everything!” I demanded. “How did you kill it, why did it come here?”
A hydra! I just touched a hydra!
“Is this place a part of its mating grounds? How old was it?” A rush of questions flooded out of me, probably faster than anyone could understand, but I couldn’t help it.
Dante craned his neck to look back to me.“Did you develop a secondary organ to allow you to talk and breathe at the same time?”
“If I say yes, will you tell me?”
His large body rumbled beneath me.“I didn’t sit down and have tea with it, love. I just killed it for trespassing. If you want to know more about it, openThe Book Of Beastsand hold it up to the skeleton.”
My excitement soured at the endearment. “There you go with that ‘love’ bit again,” I grumbled, digging through the pack to find the book. With a tug, I was able to free it from the rest of our tightly packed luggage. “You have no idea who I am. It’s going to take more than a day to fall in love with someone.”
“A day? Princess, I fell as soon as I saw your reaction to snow.”
“I hate you.”
“We’ll work on that.”
I rolled my eyes. “What if after two days you find you don’t like me? What if the way I snore keeps you up at night?”
“I like the sound of your heartbeat. If your snoring is truly that ferocious then I’ll focus on that.”
My heart sputtered as if it were a mere puppet at the mercy of strings wound tightly around his claws.Can he hear that?
“Yes, I can hear it. In this form at least.”
“Can you read minds too?” I squawked.
His lips pulled back in a grin, revealing fangs the size of swords.“No, your face is just incredibly honest. I hope you had no desire to become a gambler. That profession is far beyond your reach.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I married rich.” When I opened the book, the pages flipped themselves to the chapter regarding hydras. Then, the pages glowed before a new blank page appeared at the end of the chapter. An image of a fierce-looking hydra materialized in the top corner of the page, while details like height, weight, and probable age appeared below it. “It can record a monster on its own?” I asked, marvelling at the new entry.
“Who has the time to make every entry themselves?” he asked.
I merely stared at the page in disbelief. “Most people, Dante.”
“Sounds exhausting,”he mused.
A shrill cry drew my attention away from the book. I glanced up to see what looked like the love child of a peacock and hawk skimming over the water. The bird flew up high, letting its dazzling red and blue feathers catch in the light. Then, it dove into the water with practiced precision before it came up with a fish in its talons.
“Oh wow. I can’t believe that bird still dives underwater despite how cold it is. It’s a wonder how it doesn’t freeze.” I was bundled up head to toe and was still freezing.
“Keep watching.”
The bird flapped its wings hard and erupted in flames. The surrounding air sizzled as the water evaporated.
