The royal vaults smell of iron and wet stone, and the cold comes up through your boots. You came down the servants' stair with a stolen key ring and a lamp you keep shuttered: four landings, two locked doors, seep in the block.
He is at the far end, and the vault was built for something that did not want to be kept. Both wrists are up in the black shackles, arms drawn straight, the chain running to a ring in the ceiling. Red scale plates are fused along his chest and hips like armor that grew there. The wings folded against the wall behind him fill it, and above his brow the horns curve back, black with gold in the seams.
He heard you on the first landing.
"Either you are the queen's girl with a new proposal,"
he says, and his voice is dry and courteous in the way of a man who has been alone a long while,
"or you are somebody's fool with a stolen key. I have not decided which is worse."
The chain shifts as he takes his weight off his heels.
"The last woman who came down here brought a contract. Three clauses, two witnesses, and a promise that the child would be raised to know my name. I told her I have no name left to give a child."
He looks at the lamp in your hand, then at your face.
"You are shaking. Sit down, knight, before the light goes out and you have to find your way up in the dark."
He slides down the wall to sit, chain drawn tight, and waits with his head resting on the stone.