A/N: I am writing this instead of studying for my AP test, the things I do for you guys... :) Anyway this chapter took much longer than neccesary (sorry). I was experiencing MAJOR writer's block and HW stress, but as the year is winding down I'll have more time to write. Yay! Oh and PS I post all my writing updates in my profile so as to not give you false hope when the next chapter turns out to be an author's note. And now to address all your amazing reviews:

Lady Bec of Imagineland (I hope I spelled that right): Thanks for your awesome feedback. I did end up having to refer to the book, but I think most of my story works out. (I hope :D)

Lurking Fish: Finally! I love editing/ writing advice. I tried to make Selendriles POV flow better. I work better with girl POV's than guys, but I'm always trying to improve. Thanks so much for your comments!

Nicole: Thank you! Positive feedback is amazing and definitely encourages me to write more!

ulquihime7980: Thank you! I definitely will finish this. One more chapter to go!

Chapter 3: Diamonds

Selendrile knew, beyond all possible doubt, that he was certifiably insane. This, of course, could be the only possible reason why he would ever let a human maiden into his lair. That is, without having any ideas for having her as lunch. Not that he ate humans. Sheep and other livestock were more to his taste. Still, he assured himself, he could if he wanted to, but who needed the trouble of dealing with humans long enough to eat them? Except that here he was leading her right to the source. Of his treasure, his secret hideaway. Only instead of grasping at it greedily, like he had expected, she fleetingly ran her fingers over it. There was no lust for gold present within her eyes, only humble astonishment, as though she had never expected to be here. She probably hadn't, he thought. What sort of human actually expects to visit a dragon's lair?

"I don't see any bones," the girl said with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Or maiden hearts."

"If I ate them, then there would be no trace of them would there?" Selendrile replied with an enigmatic smile.

"I still don't believe you," Alys chattered on. "The only thing you could ever truly covet is gold. And jewels." He followed her eyes as they traced over the light sparkling off of the many precious stones.

"How do you know?" Selendrile asked. "You don't even know my name much less my character."
"Well, what is it?" she asked. Selendrile raised a debonair eyebrow in confusion. Normally if he did this in the village, any girl within spitting distance would break out into giggles. This one, however, seemed immune.

"Your name, I mean," she explained further. "Mine is Alys. You deserve to know it, saving my life multiple times and all."

"Selendrile," he said easily, the word slithering off his tongue. She studied him for a moment.

"It fits you, I think," she said. Once again he was exasperated by her blatant attempts to study his character. After being a recluse for nearly one hundred years, one doesn't just give up the right to privacy. The way she was looking at him was just too probing, too invasive. After all, he had lived for a hundred years and she for what looked barely seventeen. If anyone should be able to read characters he should.

"Well," he said steering the conversation away from himself. It wasn't so much that he didn't like the attention. He just didn't like that look she kept giving him, the self satisfied one where she said with her eyes that she knew him better than he knew himself. "What are you going to do now?" This seemed to stop her in her tracks. Her confident expression seemed to freeze on her face, her eyes darting nervously like a houseguest who had overstayed her welcome.

"Oh," the girl, Alys, replied drawing out her words as though she was trying to bide her time until she thought of something to say. "Oh, well I—I did have a plan. It just went out of my head. Now let's see…I had decided to run away to another village far, far away from this one." Selendrile snorted.

"You can't stop the travel of gossip," he said in his classic sarcastic manner, laughing at Alys, rather than with her. "There are only so many interesting things to speak of in villages and witches are one of them. If anything, the fact that you escaped will make the news spread faster."

"They don't know that, though," Alys said. "All they saw was a dragon carrying me off."

"If they believe in witches," Selendrile countered staring at Alys with a look of dark understanding. "They will believe in shape-shifters." He wasn't a shape shifter, truly, he just had the magic powers to make him one. That wouldn't matter to the villagers, though. If anyone ever devoured maidens, villagers did,, he thought wryly The would burn them or leave them to die. Dragons never needed maidens in the first place.
"Oh," responded Alys, her assurance of her future diminished. "Well I hadn't thought of that. There must be something else for me. Let's see here…If villages are out of the question how about a house in the woods. Yes that's perfect. Just deposit me in the middle of a far-off forest and I will spend the rest of my days as a hermit." Selendrile couldn't suppress a smile, albeit a sarcastic one. He couldn't imagine Alys being a hermit, especially considering her propensity to talk her companions to death. He imagined her conversing with rocks and trees. Her plan had more serious flaws, however.

"They will most surely suspect you of witchcraft in that case," he said shaking his head. His smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "If anything happens in the village, even a distant one, far away from the tales of an escaped witch, they will suspect you." Alys grimaced at this. Selendrile knew she was imagining what the townsfolk would do, drag her out of her nice quiet hut in the woods and burn her.

"There must be something," Alys repeated, sounding as if she had used up all her good escape plans."You are obviously not thinking hard enough."

"Me?" Selendrile raised his eyebrows. He wasn't the one who needed help. And yet, as usual, he was dragged into being the role of the helper, the protector, the blasted knight-errant. He did not relish the role. Knights did, after all, slay dragons.

"Yes, you. All you've been doing is opposing any suggestion I have. It's very annoying. You are the person, after all, who got me into this mess."

"Are you sure about that?" Selendrile asked looking pointedly at Alys. "Was I the one who prompted you to witchcraft? Or your villagers to hysteria?"

"Ah, but there's the thing," she said with self-assurance born from misconception. "Without a dragon they wouldn't have tied me up and left me out there. There would have been nothing they could do." Selendrile rolled his eyes. She was forgetting that without a dragon they would have burned her, but that was a sore point. And she didn't need anything else to accuse him of.

"All I do is make trouble for you, is that right?" he asked in his characteristically bland manner. Agreeing with her was the best way, after all.

"Yes," she said loftily. "I'm glad you're finally getting it."
"Then I suppose I shouldn't get in the way of your escape plans," he said softly, walking away as if to leave the cavern. His tone might have been quiet, but his words stopped her in her tracks.

"No, wait!" she called after him. "I didn't say you weren't useful. You know these lands better than I, I'm assuming. Flying does tend to cover a longer distance."

"Fine," he said. "First of all you'll want to hide in plain sight. Go to another village and find work at a manor house. Most of the time you'll be kept in there so no one will see your face. It's very easy to be anonymous in a sea of people."

"So I just walk in and ask for a job?" Alys asked. "What if they say no?"

"Then you keep looking. Just be sure not to stay in any one place for too long. And don't stay with anyone."

"Well, I know that," said Alys with a roll of her eyes. "Now how shall I get there?" And then they planned. Selendrile was surprised at how easy it had become to discuss strategies with her. Alys did have some ideas worth mentioning, but she had trouble forming them into real, concrete plans. So Selendrile filled in the holes while Alys mapped out her journey. He knew that he wasn't supposed to help her, that she was human and therefore would turn on him, if not now then eventually. They always did; they being the maidens he tried to save. Either them or the people in their liver, one vengeful father, one belligerent brother would reinforce his cynicism towards the human race. And yet…Alys had no one. He wasn't helping her, Selendrile decided, he was simply…disentangling himself from her presence. Once Alys was gone she would no longer be of his concern. This, he knew even as he thought it, was a lie.

…