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“Where am I supposed to touch it?” a female asked.

“Anywhere should work,” someone called from below.

It.

I had a name. I wasn’t just a statue. I was real.

She climbed another rung. Her breathing was quick from the effort, and I heard her mutter when her foot slipped against the ladder.

The female came into view. My vision was blurry with dust, but I could just about make out her shape. She was small, like all of her species, with a short mane and something metal around her eyes. There was nothing special about her. Nothing that made her different from the other humans I had observed when I’d first woken after the crash. I’d watched, learned, and got bored of them. They weren’t worth my time. And no matter what Cairn had said, I doubted they’d be able to save me.

She stepped off the ladder and onto the wall next to me. It had been such a beautiful castle once upon a time. Now it was just a ruin, a shell of its former glory. Just like me, I supposed.

“So I just touch him?” she shouted to the other humans down below.

It was too loud. I wanted her to go away.

“Yes. Anywhere you like!” came the answer.

How dare they! She better not touch me in places reserved for a gharrgoil’s mate.

Her fingers closed around my wrist.

Warmth travelled through the stone. A deep vibration began somewhere near the tips of my wings.

It did not fade.

She didn’t let go. Warmth turned to heat. It spread through me, up my arm, into my chest, down into my legs, all the way into my wings.

I’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm. For a moment, I was reminded of the sun-filled paths of Gal-Grodr where I used to stroll through the rock formations, basking in the heat reflected by them. A memory that felt almost like a dream.

Or maybe this was the dream. The heat, the female, the hope that this might be the moment everything would change.

The heat where her fingers curled around my wrist became almost unbearable. I groaned – and the sound broke from my throat, vibrating through me. The female’s grip on me tightened.

She had heard me.

I had made a sound. Hope stirred beneath my ribs. I had not dared to hope for so long that it felt like a foreign emotion. A dangerous one. If this ended in disappointment, I would never forgive Cairn – or myself – for planting that seed of hope.

If my vocal cords could move, maybe other parts of me could. I concentrated on my left hand. The female’s touch was getting stronger, as if my senses were slowly able to pick up the pressure of her hold, the temperature of her skin, the softness of her. The heat was almost unbearable now.

I focused and bent my fingers.

Nothing happened. I was still frozen in place, trapped inside my own body.

I tried again, concentrating on the smallest finger of my left hand. Still nothing. The heat continued to build beneath the female’s palm, spreading through my chest until my heart gave one slow, heavy beat.

“Did you hear that?” the female asked.

“Yes,” the one below called. “Keep touching him.”

Fury pushed through the hope. They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. As if I was an object they were trying to activate.

I focused every bit of that anger on my hand.

My finger moved.

Barely, but enough. The rigid stone bent at the joint. Warmth flowed into the movement, changing the smooth surface into living skin. Sensation rushed into my fingertip. I could feel the rough stone beneath it, the edges of the wall, the coarse texture of the rock.