“Ten thousand years, and I never slept. It’s monstrous. The others remain sleepless, growing ever more insane, and I think sometimes that I have forsaken them.” She exhaled, a long rattling breath. Wiped her eyes. “Ariel, this is how I stopped being a dragon. It was terrifying—you cannot imagine how terrifying, to loosen my grip on consciousness … But I slept at last, with the scholars watching over me, and when I woke, I was the Wyrm.”
