“I’m going to bed,” I told Glyka. “I hope I can make it up to my tree house fine.”
“We’ll come with you,” Valerin said. “I’m ready to sleep, myself. The three of us crash can at Selestiani’s hearth.”
The walk home was warmer than it had been at sunset and glowing with the light of stars peeking out from their curtained clouds. We lay on blankets stretched over hard ground and pine needles, pestered by insects and the light haze of sleep. Once I’d drowsed off the last of the alcohol, I separated myself from the mass of others, grew my wings, and launched into the tree house where a real bed awaited.
I grunted in satisfaction, happy that I’d made the transition from sleeping on the compacted ground to sleeping on a mattress even if I was buried beneath decorative pillows. Dreams found me, dreams of coiling my tail around a warm nest, the uncomfortable lumps of pillows digging into my belly waiting to be warmed and hatched. I thought of peeling off my dress, but couldn't pry my eyes open to do it. In the morning, the words whispered though my mind, in the morning.
A hand touched my knee, slid up my thigh. I felt the warmth through my cold skin, realized that I was cold and that I wanted to burrow into the delicious heat. A body pressed against my spine, conforming to my curves as I pressed against him. The hand continued all the way up. Suddenly awake, I gasped and grabbed it, turning my head to scold whoever it was.
Lips met mine, a tongue filled my mouth. A combination of excitement and anger went through me—but then I recognized the kiss. Black pepper and nutmeg teased my nose. I relaxed.
“Mordon,” I whispered.
“Shhh,” he said and kissed me deeper. Enthused, I wrapped my arms about him, encouraged a roll on top of me, loved the feel of being so small against his broad chest. My legs circled his hips, my entire body buzzing with euphoria. He inhaled my scent, nipped his way along the curve of my neck, whispered, “Not yet. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Rules, love.”
“Who’d know?”
“Everyone would smell it,” he whispered and stretched out beside me. “We’re close to the end, love. Sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mordon?”
I woke up beneath a pile of stifling pillows, pale morning sunlight trickling in through the wall opened to the east. Yes, it was absurdly early, even the birds were silent. Had the party kept them awake last night, too? Blinking, I let my eyes adjust to the light that came in through the leaves and looked around. The ground was a long way down, a higher than I usually flew at.
It was wonderfully peaceful at the moment, but I felt a growing irritation at Mordon’s disappearance. Or had he been here at all?
I took in a deep breath, and the ring on my finger tingled, the gold dragon writhing as I used it to connect with magic. I sniffed deeply, drawing in the scents. Dust, smoke, traces of Valerin, Glyka, Firan, Gudovan. All of them were completely swamped by black pepper and nutmeg, Mordon’s scent. Oh, he’d been here, the question was where had he gone?
“Hey! You still around?” I called, but not too loud. Selestiani was still sleeping, and I wanted to keep them that way until I’d had a chance to talk to Mordon. If I had to go in search of him, then that’s what I would do. Trouble was, a long walk through the woods didn’t sound like a very nice thing at the moment. Around the cool tree house whose shapes were being defined as the night faded, the air felt soft and fresh, the opposite of how my tongue felt as it stuck to the roof of my mouth.
“On the porch, love.”
Once on weak legs, I discovered moving to be a difficult task this morning. Mordon took my elbow, providing wordless support as I worked the kinks out of my neck. The creek ran beneath a bridge some sixty or so feet away, red spotted fish dodged in and out of its black shadow to snack on insects landing on the water’s surface. This was the ideal time to cast a line, if either of us had been into fishing.
“I’m glad to see you. I thought you’d run off without saying hello.”
“That was not my intention.”
“I wasn’t sure. I’m not all awake yet, you know.”
He slid an arm around my waist, laid a kiss on the top of my head and breathed in my scent. “If you are tired, you should go rest.”
“I’ll just put a knot into my neck, the pillows here aren’t meant to put your head on.”
“There is one, I can find it for you.”
“No. I think I would rather stand here with you.”
For once, Mordon didn’t have a cup of brew ready for the both of us, a fact I suspected was due to there being no cooking facilities in the tree house. Today it didn’t matter. We gazed out over the woods below. We didn’t speak, didn’t have any need to communicate through words, just stood there with his knuckles stroking slowly along my arm, pressing kisses to my neck with delicate touches of his lips. Through the waving branches the sky was soft pink and burnt umber like paint dropped onto a wet canvas, and I could see the wisps of fog as they swept across the far side of the mountain and descended to a river that I smelled on the wind.
There was a change in the wind, a stiffer storm wind, one that brought the rain of new life to replace the old life it would rip from the ground. This world we viewed, it was the last image of a world soon to be torn asunder, soon to be changed. For the moment, I was at peace with how everything was, admiring the wonder of the world around us. We stayed like that for a long time, until the fog rolled in, then was burned out by the golden rays of sunshine and shadows grew long and sharp in its place.
With a long breath Mordon started a conversation. “They’re a good people. Strong. Level-headed. Diverse.”
“They aren’t too keen on you taking me away.”
“I hear that a lot.”
“Sorry.”
“Better than everyone trying desperately to get rid of you.”
I elbowed him lightly in the stomach, prompting an oof that I knew he didn’t really mean. Smiling, I rolled my head against his chest and wondered how to phrase the thought that had lodged itself in my head ever since I’d talked to Julius.
“They mentioned that some people have two fathers, or a father and an uncle?”
“A clutch-parent, yes. It used to be common for hatchlings to be primarily raised with their mother and her mate, but with the support of their biological father.”
“A different way to do things.”
“It helps, if there are several hatchlings in a clutch. Particularly if the mother has more than one clutch. Were you simply curious about the term?” He didn’t voice the other half of the question, the one that I was seriously considering.
I hesitated, asking myself how far I wanted to take this topic. “No. I knew what the term meant. Or at least, what it implied.”
“The mating pair holds the rights to the children in question, but a mature child can seek out his ‘uncle’ when they wish, and remain with that family if they prefer.”
“Why did bearing clutches go out of style?”
“Emphasis on a new, nuclear-style family. The idea that fewer children means the parents have more time to dedicate to each individual. Perhaps even a banishment of old ways as being uncivilized, too dragon-like, since so many other races do not have clutches the way we do.”
“Emulating humans as the civilized race. Perish the thought.”
Mordon’s chuckle cascaded over me, and I took in the sound. He had a rich voice, plush and textured, a voice that made me smile each time I thought of it. It had been thinking of that laugh that had helped to keep me sane. I grinned back up at him.
“Humans aren’t so bad, besides we all know elves are the pinnacle of civilization and etiquette.”
“Afraid I don’t know any true elves.”
Mordon stretched out his arms and rolled his shoulders, eliciting several popping noises from his spine.
“You have to go?” I asked.
He nodded. “I told Gudovan that I would take a flight with him and the other comp
etitors today, so I had best get myself fed and stretched before the rest do.”
“Will Caledon be there?”
“It will be expected, and the serious competitors will spend a long time in the sky. You need to stay on the ground, however. They’ll be watching you to see when you decide to rise, and once you do, you’ll have company.”
“What am I expected to do in the meantime?”
The flash of a bird’s wing through the air brought my attention to Mordon as his gaze flicked along my body in appraisal. “You’re to prepare.”
“And you’re to skedaddle!” Issa called from her hearth where she had a flickering fire started amongst the coals from last night. Valerin, cocooned in a lime green blanket, tossed onto his other side and snarled an angry phrase that I couldn’t make out. I was impressed Issa could hear us talking. Issa ignored Valerin to yell again at Mordon. “Quit fussing over the lady. If you must do that, go get her an offering. You neglected that when you visited this time, don’t think I’ll let you do it a second time.”
“Offering?” I asked.
“Food.” Mordon snared my chin, brought his lips to mine in a chaste kiss which surprised me. I softened into it, not sure what had brought this about.
A shrill cry and the rapid beating of wings cut through the air, and the next thing I knew a dragoness was perched precariously on the branch nearest us, her long neck bolted to us.
With a burst of laughter, Mordon darted away. Wings forming, he paused at the edge of the porch until he was well into this dragon body. At a second snap from the dragoness, he lunged off the porch. The sun glinted orange off his tail as he flew away.
The dragoness snorted in what could have been satisfaction or good riddance, then she landed on the pad below. By the time I reached the hole to see who it was, Issa was a woman again and climbing up to see me.
“He would stay here all day long if you let him,” Issa said.
“I don’t mind.”
“You will once your belly is sick with hunger.”
“I don’t get that hungry.”
A lip curled at my response. “Do you think that you’re feeling normal? Or are you often so eager to find the allure in stranger’s approaches?”
I didn’t appreciate her tone. “Last night was an exception.”
“An exception you didn’t have to think too hard about.” Issa folded her arms. “You’re as slinky as a cat in heat and today you’re going to eat half a lamb by yourself. You’re going to sleep, and eat, and sleep, and eat. When you’re done with that, the sky is going to be singing your name, and you won’t care about anything except hunting for males in it.”
Arguing with a woman who had been born a drake was not a wise plan. If I thought about it objectively, from her point of view, or from Julius's or Valerin's, I could see that my current attitudes did not match up with my past ones. Admitting this, though, would progress to me debating with her about what caused the change.
“Do you think that all this attention hasn’t gone to your hormones?” She stared at me in blatant challenge, as if willing me to contradict her. “Who stimulated this change, hmm? Did Caledon catch you in the rut with his brother? Was that what began this?”
It wasn’t accusational; it was said for its shock value. I refused to be baited.
“I don’t have to talk about it, and certainly not with you,” I said and tried to brush by her.
Issa gripped my arm hard. “If you take wing, you won’t want to return, and you’re not ready to fly. As there isn’t a lot of space here, you’re stuck with me.”
Stiffening my jaw, I realized that my accommodations had been very planned-out ahead of time. “You were here to keep me from ‘rising’ too early, and I was put in this tree house so it would be easier to keep me contained.”
Issa threw up her arms. “If you don’t want my presence, I will go. It’s no scale off my tail if you decide to rise before they have time to coordinate their flights.”
“No, wait—I’m not …”
She waited with the boredom of an experienced midwife on a doctor. Issa had seen plenty of mating flights before, I could tell from her take-it-or-leave-it attitude.
“Alright, look. Mordon's going to be busy flying today, and I think you’re right about eating half a lamb. I want to be able to eat on my own time, not whenever Mordon brings food back to the love nest. Do you think I could glide to the ground?”
Issa cocked her chin to the left, thinking, then cocked it to the right. “Yes. Good on you to take matters into your own hands.”
“I’m not. I’m taking matters into my stomach.”
Her mouth twitched into what I thought would become a smile, but she killed it before it reached the halfway point. “Be sure no one sees you fly if you wish to practice,” she said instead. I got the name and location of a restaurant-pub and set out for it.
As I was eating, Barnes burned me an appointment card—the first time he’d ever done that for me, but I had been eager to mark the confirmation box and fill in the coordinates of Gudovan’s visitor room. Outside the room, it was a fascinating combination of wards and safeguards. Inside, however, was hardly inspiring. It could have been plucked from any hotel’s conference center complete with spindly dracaena marginatas and a palm-printed carpet. At least the windowless walls were painted with Tuscan murals of vineyards and flower boxes.
Barnes gave me a parchment without a word of explanation.
“What’s this?” I tipped the scroll to see it better. Emblems decorated an insane amount of its surface, leaving little space for the full script to fit within. Who knew there were all those departments held within the Council building? There must have been at least twenty of the leafy, filigreed stamps, but for the life of me I could not make out a single word beyond the occasional capital letter. A T, the obvious D, p, t of Department, another word which might have been legal.
“Arrest warrant.”
We didn’t have a lot of time to talk—Gudovan’s room was surprisingly booked. I’d gotten lucky with my timing with Barnes.
Barnes bent to straighten the laces on his boots, then as he stood upright again, he added, “It’s got your name on it.”
“Right. I see the F and S here.” Squinting, I drew it up to my face, but couldn’t make out what it said around my name. “What grounds?”
“Weren’t home yesterday.”
“Ah. But how do they know that? Maybe I didn’t answer my door?”
“That counts.”
“Right.” I remembered that stipulation in the forms now, it had been why I used to make sure that there was someone else in the house who was awake while I was sleeping. “So, what now?”
Barnes dampened his fingers in a bit of water, smoothed them over his handlebar mustache until it was an even curl on both sides. “You stay outta the Markets. All of them.”
“For how long?”
Barnes grumbled something in a throaty voice.
“I didn’t catch that, sorry.”
“I said, until Cole’s out and Leif can get your situation sorted.”
“Pretty sure that wasn’t what you originally said.”
“What I originally said wasn’t fit for a pig to repeat.” Barnes reached again for his mustache, managing this time to make one end droop lower than the other one. “I don’t like a lick of this. Not one bit.”
I cocked my head to the side, suddenly realizing what it was that he’d let slip. “You are in on this, too?”
“In on what?”
“Leif’s gig.”
Barnes stilled for a few seconds, his silence betraying that he knew what it was—better than I did, from the look on his face.
“I’m glad,” I said. “I don’t want to see him hurt. It might not be avoidable, but if there’s a way to keep him safe, I think you’d be there.”
Barnes dipped his head in agreement. “Aye, I’ll be there. Always.” He retrieved the warrant, rolled it up, and placed it in his vest pocket. “Leif signed t
his. I’d best get going. Just keep up with your research. We need you.”
I was waiting for him. Mr. July, red hair cut shorter than Mordon’s, the center of all the commotion who Lilly and others seemed to flock towards. Caledon, the original heir to Kragdomen’s leadership. He was not the first to retreat from the competitor’s flights, but he was the first of the serious five, and he approached me straight from the sky in all his sweaty glory.
“Good noon, chicklet.” He stood at my side of the booth, expecting me to scoot along the bench to make room for him, which would effectively pin me against the wall given the breadth of his shoulders.
“Caledon.” I did not do as he wished, prompting him to either use brute force to sit where he liked, or to concede the ill favor and sit across from me instead. Perhaps if there had not been others in Gudovan’s air-cooled pub, he would have forcefully moved me. Grumbling under his breath about centaur-headed women, Caledon took his place in the open bench and set his ale on the table in front of him, leaving a wet ring of piss-colored pale ale.
“The last time we met,” he said through clenched teeth, “I let my emotions get the upper hand.”
Seeing him like this, contrite, reserved, I noticed his eyes. They were a deep-sea blue with teal streaks through them, the sort of eyes that asked for trust and got it. With his apology his face seemed to lose all its menace, becoming sweetly alluring. His hair was damp, ruffled, his hands held out to me with their calloused palms up.
“It was a mistake, I’m sorry.” He took my hand and brought it to his lips with a gentle, courtly kiss that made the brood-ring tighten.
I found that my voice had utterly abandoned me, leaving behind breathlessness. No doubt this was what Issa had tried to warn me about. I eased my hand out of his, unnerved by the tingling sensation making its way up my arm. Eyes darted below my chin, lingered at my chest. I sipped my water, drawing his gaze to where I wanted it: my face.
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