Draped in pitch dark veils, the lips of the dragoness twitched as she lay limp atop an abandoned beach. Her tail slid left to right, and left angels of sand in their way. After a twitch of her eyelid, an eye peeked open; twilight purple, glistening as if it were a ruby dipped in midnight ink. Her stomach convulsed—and her eyes widened. She rushed to her feet and coughed grains of sand, the sound deadly—choking. Her pupils expanded throughout her iris, and she rushed to look around—the area, filled with sand wet over by the glistening tides of the water—cloudless skies—beautiful tropical trees glowing and colorful flowers blooming beneath the pleasant rays of the sun. As she took a step back, she shook her head in disbelief. She ended up… at a beach? The veils that adorned her pitch dark scales flowed barely beneath the soft breeze, and yet, the dragoness could not help but sigh. Her eyelids were lowered with pure exhaustion as she then walked throughout the beach. The dragoness did not quite know what destination she wanted to arrive at, but she wanted to find shelter. So then, her journey continued as large, four-toed footprints indented the mushy sand beneath her. Her dragging tail left created a long trail in its wake, the uplifted indenture of the sand washing away by the gentle waves of the beach water.

The dragoness walked for hours, her mind a tempest of fragmented memories. Glimpses flickered like candlelight through murk, a grand citadel of pearl and obsidian, voices raised in accusation, a crown tumbling through shadow. She pressed a clawed hand to her temples, but the images scattered like frightened birds. Shelter appeared as the sun began its descent: a cave mouth carved into a hillside, half-hidden by cascading vines heavy with indigo flowers. She climbed toward it, her four-toed feet finding purchase against the stone, her tail trailing behind like the train of a funeral dress. The air grew cooler as she crossed the threshold, and finally she allowed herself to collapse against the rough stone floor.

The memories came then, unbidden and merciless.

She had been someone. A councillor of the Scaled Courts, diplomat to the mprtal realm, and one of Queen Serena's most trusted confidants. The dragoness--Sarix was her name, though it felt foreign on her own tongue now--had wielded influence as surely as other dragons wielded flame. Her iridescent scales had caught the light of a thousand torches, and courtiers had whispered as she passed: There goes the Black Veil, the Keeper of Secrets, the Queen's Shadow.

But secrets, she learned, were like infection. They festered beneath the skin.

There had been a conspiracy. A plot to undermine the throne itself, orchestrated by those she had trusted most. And Sarix, in her pursuit of the truth, had discovered something far more damning: the conspiracy reached up, not down. It ascended all the way to the dais where the Draconic Sovereign herself sat, adorned in jewels and lies, a plot to invade the mortal lands. To usurp the mortal Queen, her friend, the mortal Serena.

She had confronted the Sovereign, Lady Roz. Foolishly, perhaps. Honourably, certainly. She had demanded answers in the Great Hall, before the assembled courts, before everyone who mattered. The Sovereign's response had been swift and absolute.

"Exile," the word had echoed through those marble halls. "You are stripped of rank, of title, of home. Cast from our lands, never to return. The tides will take you, and perhaps they will be kinder than we."

The trial, if it could even be called that, had lasted mere moments. No one spoke in her defence. The courtiers who had once sought her counsel now turned their eyes away, as if she had already become a ghost. Perhaps they had been in on it. Perhaps they had always been waiting for her to fall. They had bound her with chains of silver and salt, conducting her to the edge of the Shattered Cliffs: the boundary between the dragon kingdom and the mortal seas. She had glimpsed the void of ocean, endless and uncaring, before they'd pushed her from the precipice.

The fall had been long. The waters had been cold. And then there was nothing. Darkness. The in-between space where consciousness fled.

Sarix opened her eyes, staring into the dimness of her sanctuary. Her purple gaze reflected faintly off the stone walls. She lifted a talon and examined it with detached curiosity. The scales still gleamed, but they felt diminished somehow, as if exile had drained them of their lustre.

Outside the cave, the tropical sunset painted the world in shades of gold and amber. The dragoness remained in shadow, listening to the distant crash of waves against the shore, the very waves that had swallowed her, then spat her out again like tough meat.

"Perhaps," she whispered to the darkness, her voice rough from disuse, "the tides were not done with me yet."