They named her Error, and that was their first mistake.

Born the smallest and weakest of all her siblings, the tiny, blood-red Fae fought for every breath, every heartbeat, every dragonfly wing she could rip off her siblings’ meals. Her eyes were too blue, too sensitive to the blinding snow-light of Ice flight, and she could barely venture out in the daytime. When she did, she was all but blind, and her playmates left her behind. Through sheer struggle, and a touch of pity from those who set aside bits of their meals for her, the scrap of Fae survived to a fledgling age. But her wings - far smaller than her brother’s, and leagues frailer than those of her Imp sister - could never fly. Enough was enough, and her parents began to call her Error. The regret in their voices said enough, and the hate in their child’s eyes was the only reply. What good was such a weak child as this?

Error understood the concept of being unwanted. She felt it keenly, like a sword that had been impaled in her chest since birth. She grew with it, around it, forming herself to the core concept of being on her own. For some long nights, when she was younger and less set in her ruthless cynicism, she would wonder if her parents regretted not selling her egg from their nest - it happened, you know - and simply keeping the other two. The two that they loved. In time, Error no longer wondered. Blind, grounded, alone, Error’s mind began to twist and curl around one thought, and one thought only.

Prove them wrong.

The blood-red Fae gathered a few belongings that her family wouldn’t miss - a clawful of treasure, a pair of old horns, and a ruby-eyed helmet that a beastclan had dropped - and she left without looking back. The walk was long, but Error was flightless - patient. She navigated through the red-tinted lenses of her new sightpiece, crossing oceans of red to the first caravan of travelers. She stole what she needed - food, weapons, riches - and none were the wiser. With neither sound nor face, a tiny, war-red sprite vanished into the blizzard, her wings strapped down with crystals, chains, and a dozen swords.

Whispers began to circulate among such travelers, and the lucky ones who she visited when still unarmed heard every tale. An ice-hearted Fae was roaming the isle, gathering outcasts and rogues to her side. She was a pint-sized tyrant, they whispered. And snow-blind, too, others hushed. She passed through the camps of travelers and each time, she asked for hospitality. If none was given, she brought down war and a dozen swords upon those who dared to turn away her crew.

But hadn’t you heard? Another would chip in. There was always one such dragon near the telling of her tales. This war goddess was a savior of others. Her crew of rogues were once thrown-away children, disabled soldiers, abandoned fliers with holey wings… For every word spoken in fear, there was one in reverence, the kind of respect shown to a force of nature. There was always one to tell how her club-footed crew carved out a fortress of ice, where the abandoned would have a home.

No… No heart of ice could ever beat in a chest where fury burned so bright. Hot coals and black smoke beat at the ribs of those dragons, each a living torch of vengeance on society for casting them out in the cold. Through the snow they roamed to rage and rage, and at the end of the day, they stood on their wall tops - a dozen, turned thirty, turned a hundred loyal, burning, burning disciples of a palm-sized goddess of war.

Day by day, she looks out on the land through her ruby lenses. She gazes upon breathtaking snowscapes and pilgrim camps, and sees nothing more than the color of her very own coat; sanguine, sanguine! Burning, raging, roaring, sanguine!

In the pit of her chest where that sword had grown old and taken good root - with a blade in her claws and the dragons she’d taken under her flightless wings striding just and fearless at her side - Error knew one thing with unshakeable certainty:

The only mistake that dragons like her parents had made...was in underestimating them.

She’s blind to the colors of the world, deaf to the barks and jeers of the naive merchant fishers she’d asked shelter of. She hears only her own chains rattling on their gems and the draw of metal from sheaths as her rogues - her children - make war. Sanguine, sanguine, she sees even after she turns her back on dragons who knew nothing of what the word “error” meant. She strode away, soundless, into the snow, and saw nothing.

Only sanguine.

Sanguine.

Sanguine!
Error finds the soffest disabled mate who curls up with her, takes her mask off, makes her close her eyes for a while to rest them from the harsh red glare, and tells her sweet nothings until she doesn't feel unwanted anymore. And sometimes she just needs that. And her mate is the only dragon in her crew who never goes out on raids or harms anyone. Her mate only ever heals.

“My love?”

She didn’t turn as he swung the door to her chambers open wide. She sat by her window, overlooking the castle of ice that she ruled, her wings folded close to her body and shed of their usual armaments and chains. No war today, then.

Mitral closed the door behind him, padding across a floor of solid ice. It felt too cold underneath his palms—it always had—and he couldn’t fathom staying in one place in these halls for so long. But Error looked as if she hadn’t moved in hours.

Slowly, gingerly, Mitral slipped up behind his love and wound his body around hers. His head came to rest on her shoulder, his wings curling to blanket her body. Her heartbeats—Mitral never had to strain his ears to hear them—came shallow and heavy. He shifted and rested his head closer to her chest, closing his eyes…

But Error moved. She turned to rest her forehead against his—one of her new favorite affectionate gestures she’d learned—and Mitral forced a smile as he leaned back. Her armaments were gone, but she still wore her mask.

“Let’s go to bed, love,” he said, before the cold metal of her mask could leave a print on his face.

Wordlessly, Error rose to her limbs and gracefully moved to the dais of furs and warm beast hides where she slept. Mitral curled his body as tightly as he could manage around hers and gently placed a hand on either side of her mask. He didn’t need to ask now. Not verbally, at least. Error sat still in his touch and allowed him to slip the mask from her face.

One pale blue eye half-squinted open at him. Pain creased her face, and without hesitation, Mitral shushed her and cuddled up closer. Eyes once more closed against the light, Error buried her face under her mate’s wing and stayed there.

“Are you hurting, sweetheart?” Mitral asked. His voice never raised its volume above the soft hush used for anxious animals or frightened children. Error was neither of these things, but the sweet tone worked for her all the same.

Error slipped a claw over Mitral’s shoulder and hooked it there comfortably. There were a few seconds of silence, but her mate would have given her longer.

“It’s better now,” she decided.

Her voice was always quiet, and Mitral had to discern which flavor of quiet this was. Nothing distressing crackled in her tone, and her words fell sleepy-soft against her mate’s skin like feathered down. She was okay. Mitral hooked the edge of a blanket with his foot and brought it closer, cuddling up in a two-Fae burrito. With the added warmth and safety, a little more tension melted from Error’s body. Content with this progress for now, Mitral took a minute to preen and nuzzle through Error’s tawdry head-fans.

Error wasn’t good at communicating. Mitral and all the other children of war who cared enough to notice had learned this the hard way. Their tiny war-goddess hadn’t been raised with the type of family who spoke of their feelings or offered comfort to the turmoiled young. Error, he assumed, had never asked for love. She didn’t know how.

But she was learning, and Mitral was a patient teacher. Error couldn’t always enunciate her anxieties and frustrations, and oft-times she struggled to discern if the pain in her chest had a physical or emotional source. But she was trying. Her affectionate headbutts were still new, and Mitral’s heart bloomed with joy when she gave them. She was doing so well…

Mitral paused in his thoughts, laying his chin atop Error’s head. After a moment, he shifted and pressed his cheek to her heart, listening to her heartbeats with a keenness that no other healer possessed. Each drum beat came more regularly now. Life and warmth had returned in full force to her body after her long watch on the icy floor. Mitral twisted just enough to lap tenderly at his mate’s neck—just the gentlest possible grooming—and he felt Error’s heartbeat flutter. Satisfaction burst like fireworks in his chest.

Error’s heartbeats still ran heavy, but there were precious times like these when the beats softened, and no longer mirrored the drum of war. If he sought it, he could feel the ache at the center of her heart—the visceral spike of pain that came natural to her with every breath—as if the blade she often spoke of truly existed in the core of her chest. Each beat was a stab, each breath a deathblow. The pain pulsed within her—with her—like a living thing. If Error existed, so did the suffering that defined her. But the beat of pain that was once overwhelmingly loud to Mitral had quieted long ago. He sought it and felt the edge of that blade, but retreated, and it was gone from his senses. The pain was deep down. The tree was healing around the axe.

“You’re doing so well, sweetheart,” Mitral whispered. He twined necks with Error and blanketed her with his wing. She snuffled her head readily under his limb and seemed to relish the shady spot. No light for her sensitive eyes here, only comfort. “I’m so proud of you, you know that?”

Error didn’t reply, but she didn’t need to. Mitral knew she heard, and he knew each of his words made the tiniest impact in her self-image. Someday, he knew… Someday she’d look at her mates and verbally agree that she was loved.

Seeing as Error—and by extension himself—wasn’t going anywhere, Mitral lifted his head and called to the guard outside the door.

“Tijah!”

A brilliantly-dressed Pearlcatcher opened the door. Scars lined every inch of her body like a pale golden web, belying the coup that robbed her of her noble estate. Her broadsword—the very same she used on her traitorous family—hung at her hip.

“Does the goddess require anything?” Tijah asked briskly.

She was one of the few who Mitral and Error trusted to see their queen vulnerable like this. The Pearlcatcher never judged, and Mitral felt more grateful for her loyalty and secrecy with each passing day.

“Could you send for Hellhound, please?”

“Sir.” Tijah nodded and closed the door without another word.

It wasn’t long before her task was fulfilled. A handful of minutes passed, and then Hellhound burst through the door with all the subtlety of a cavorting greattusk.

“Error, my love!” The drake bellowed. “Who has brought you grief today? I’ll bring you their head on a pike, and drop the rest from your tower!”

Error, albeit unmoving, hid a snort under Mitral’s wing. Hellhound was all bared teeth and sharp words—and fluff. So much fluff—but the battleworn warrior was the only one capable of drawing a laugh from Error. Mitral scooted himself and Error aside to make room for their shaggy companion. Hellhound gladly flopped on the offered space, and in spite of his size, gently pressed his fluffy hide on Error’s other side. Their queen made no noise but a hum of contentment as her two mates sandwiched her with warmth.

Mitral took a good long look at the smile that wound up Hellhound’s face. As happy as the Tundra made Error, Mitral was glad that Error brought happiness to Hellhound as well. The drake was a mishandled beast, heavily scarred beneath his thick winter coat and—when Mitral first met him—adorned with dozens of bandages. Hellhound had been a war-dog, serving Gladekeeper-knows-who for Gladekeeper-knows-why. And when the war was done, a wounded Hellhound had been abandoned on the battlefield as a casualty of war, tallied down like a mere statistic—like his loyalty meant nothing. As Hellhound bared a skeletal grin and bumped heads with Error, Mitral thought fiercely—maybe a little passionately—that the drake’s loyalty meant everything now.

“My love,” Mitral roused Error’s attention with a touch on her cheek.

Error opened one eye a fraction to see where he was, then closed it again and successfully bumped foreheads with him too. Mitral melted inside.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked. Such questions had become routine to help Error and her two mates understand what she was feeling and why, but this time, Mitral was given a swift reply.

“No,” Error said confidently. With the grace and pomp of a proper queen, she cozied herself better between her two mates and dragged each of their wings closer until she was blanketed by one limb from each of her drakes. Error laid her head down on her crossed claws, her tail twining first with Mitral’s, then capturing Hellhound’s as well in the embrace.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she assured Mitral without hesitation. “Not anymore.”