Chapter Nine
He grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. “What illusion is this? Have you wrought it?”
“It’s not an illusion or a dream.” Darna could smell the salt wind off the sea, but it carried the closer, sharper scent of old fish in the fishermen’s nets.
He looked past her and his grip on her relaxed a little, but he did not let her turn to the window. “I suppose you’re telling the truth, as far as you understand it, but this thing, whatever we just saw, it’s not the dragon I thought I saw as a child,” he said. “It’s the same color, but it’s different, and it can’t be real, or…”
“Your grandmother might have prophesied that the dragon would destroy you, but not all prophecies come to pass,” Darna said, reaching for some slender chance that he might be reconciled to the dr
