by Starla Night
The male weighed his answer. Paranoia made his cheek twitch.
“And also you just answered me,” Josh added.
“What do you want?”
“Melody stopped by. She hasn’t seen you in a while and she got worried.”
He grunted. “Tell her I’m fine.”
“She brought over cookies.”
The pressure on Pyro’s temple lessened. “Which ones?”
“White chocolate brownies.”
The pressure increased again. “White chocolate is the unnatural work of our alien oppressors. It’s how they get in our minds. You know that.”
“Oh. I forgot.”
There was a silence.
“Uh, she also brought those, um, dark chocolate — no, semi-sweet — uh, milk chocolate cookies. With the pecans. That you like so much.”
“The double-chocolate bars?”
“Y-yeah. They’re in the kitchen. Still f-fresh and warm.”
The male shifted his weight to his back foot. “Tell her I’ll be right in.”
“Okay. Don’t wait. They’re fresh, you know. I-I’m going to eat them. And, uh, she’ll take them home.”
“I get it. I’m coming.”
Footsteps receded from the door.
The man waited for a beat, then dropped the laser and backed away from Pyro. He lifted the paralyzer, a small rectangular device, in warning. “Don’t get any ideas. I’ll be right back.”
Pyro sucked in a breath.
The male seemed to take his silent breath as disagreement. He pointed the paralyzer. Arcs of blue electricity zapped Pyro, clenching his aching muscles and jolting his joints like a helpless puppet. He tightened and went slack, hanging from his restraints. From the corner of his eye, sideways, he could just see the male pocket the paralyzer and the surgical laser and open the door. He left.
Time passed. His hearing was broken, again, and that’s why he saw — but did not hear — the prison door open again. An unfamiliar shape moved silently across the floor. Were those steel-toed boots, the cuffs of black pants, and the bottom fluttering edge of a trench coat?
Pyro was lifted off the floor, chair and all, out of the dark room into blinding daylight. The ground receded rapidly. They were flying. Across the city, it seemed.
Kyan’s voice penetrated his ears. “We have a physician.”
Good old Kyan. The one brother who never gave up on him. Pyro’s eyes filled with moisture.
Sard Carnelian’s voice growled a counter-order. “We have a medical facility.”
Sard Carnelian?
“We will bring him to your facility for treatment by our physician then,” Kyan said in a quiet voice that would not be overridden.
The paralyzer wore off as Kyan flew Pyro across the river and west toward the ocean, then up to the spaceship hovering over the Carnelian office building. Deep in the interior of the spaceship, Pyro was finally released from his bonds — and the chair — and laid out on a medical air cushion, shirt cut away, to reveal all possible injuries to one of Kyan’s tactical teams.
Staring up, Pyro saw Kyan’s deliberately blank — and therefore, extremely worried — visage. He summoned a grin for his brother, but the half-hearted effort only seemed to disturb his brother more, so he gave it up. “How bad am I?”
Kyan’s gaze switched to the monitors overhead.
The slightly sarcastic, utterly dismissive voice of his youngest brother tsked. “According to these readouts, it’s only a flesh wound.”
“Flint.” He craned his neck but he could only see the silhouette of the elusive male studying the screens. “Where did you come from?”
“Clearly there’s been some damage to your head.” His brother moved into full view. The light made his gray eyes owlish and odd. “But it was likely damaged long before today.”
“Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?”
“Clearly, Pyro, as you have shunned the Empress, are moving to align our low caste company with aristocrats, and intend to sell contraband crests as ‘human jewelry’. You have what an ordinary intellect would call a ‘death wish.’”
He grinned. For the first time in possibly his whole life that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Keep me alive then.”
“Your constitution will do that.” He hovered over the screens. “This will sting.”
Hot irradiating swarms of bees stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. He clenched as his breath froze in his body and he saw the black abyss.
“Relax,” Flint muttered. “No shifting for at least a week. No strenuous exercise. Your whole chest could collapse. Understand?”
He groaned.
“Although I expect you will not stay flat on your back when your wife’s demonstration class is in less than an hour. You will attend. That kind of idiocy will exacerbate your injury, especially if you collapse of body-wracking fatigue.”
“Amy,” he moaned.
“Yes, yes. She’s your world. The ingenuity of humans is astounding, isn’t it? To think of how much damage one male can do to a dragon with three scavenged pieces of a dragon field medicine kit.”
Flint loaded a medical strip, shook it, and slapped it on Pyro’s bare abdomen. “This will see you through the class. Then, go to your Vegas apartment and lie on your back for at least a week.”
The drugs in the medical strip moved through his veins like liquid fire, dulling the already-fading sting of the chest repairs. “What is it?”
“Caffeine and sugar.” Flint stood. “Alcohol has no effect on the dragon metabolism, but we are overly susceptible to simple molecules. You will feel unnaturally well for another four hours and then you’ll crash.”
“Flint.” Pyro caught his youngest brother’s attention. “Thanks.”
The male blinked owlishly as though unused to gratitude. Then, he straightened and said, “You’ll be cursing my name before tonight ends.” To Kyan, he said, “You can let the others in now.” And he exited swiftly, almost at a run, as though he had no desire to meet anyone.
Kyan hesitated and rested his hand on Pyro’s forehead.
“You found me,” Pyro grinned, wishing for something more comforting to say.
His closest brother’s jaw tightened and released. He would surely be feeling recriminations he’d ever lost Pyro to begin with.
“So my kidnapper used dragon tech on me?” Pyro repeated from Flint’s mention. “Who’s trading that?”
Kyan shook his head. “It was military grade. Not consumer.”
“Contraband? Who leaked it?”
Clearly, that was a question Kyan would spend many sleepless nights trying to answer.
“You never lost your faith.” Pyro swallowed. “Thanks.”
“Amy.”
“What?”
“Amy never lost her faith.” Kyan released his forehead and, before Pyro could delve in, opened the door.
Amy rushed into the room and stopped at his bedside. “Oh, my god. Are you okay?”
He grinned, loving her heartfelt worry. “It’s only a flesh wound.”
“There was a hole in your chest. Down to the bone.”
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about your class.”
“Are you serious? I haven’t thought of my class all day. I was scared to death about what might have happened to you.”
His heart swelled. She had faith in him. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“It was worse!” She shook her head at him. “Then I called the police. They came up with the idea for Josh to lure out his dad. Once Kyan got you out, his dad had nothing to fight for. The police trapped him in the kitchen. He surrendered.”
“I was scared I wouldn’t see you again.” He tugged her closer, turning on the air cushion so he floated to face her and twining her fingers with hers to kiss the back of her hand. “Will you comfort me?”
“Yes.” She stroked his rough cheek.
One of the medical terminals flickered to an interplanetary connection and his mother’s commanding face
appeared.
“Show my dragonlet! Show him this instant!”
He cracked a grin. “Mother.”
“Pyrochlore!” She blinked her huge dragon eyes and snorted curls of fire from her smoking nostrils. “Some idiots tried to deny me from seeing you. On the brink of death!”
“I’m better.” He twined his fingers with Amy, who was sat ramrod straight and stared at the screen in silent awe. “Thanks to my wife, Amy.”
“Hello,” she said meekly, wiggling her fingers in a nervous wave and then clenching her hands in a fist in case that might be seen as an improper greeting. “Um, nice to meet you.”
“So to you I owe my son’s life.” His mother puffed out her chest. Her gemstones shimmered and clinked. “You will both come to Draconis immediately to receive my personal thanks and honor.”
Amy blinked. “Uh…”
“I can’t travel for weeks,” Pyro told her. “I have to lie flat on my back.”
“You can lie flat on a transport ship.”
“And Amy has to finish teaching classes. We will certainly come as soon as we can. Summer vacation.”
She blew smoke from fangs in a huff. “Do not delay. I was so worried when I heard. I must see you alive with my own eyes.”
He lifted up on one elbow. “And you’ll tell the Empress about my marriage?”
“Yes.” She ground her teeth pensively. “I do hope this will not delay your producing me grand dragonlets.”
Amy’s mouth opened and closed.
Pyro patted her hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Kyanite.” Their mother’s gaze rose to fix on the scarred Security Officer, third in order of age. “You will present me with your human wife within two weeks or you will take the claw of Empress Horribus in palatial matrimony. Are we clear?”
Kyan’s jaw flexed. He nodded once.
“Good. Do not disappoint me.”
Kyan turned on his heel and stormed from the room.
She fixed again on Amy and Pyro. “You will journey to our estate as soon as you are able to travel. Farewell, my charming son.”
The screen turned off.
Huh. His mother thought he was charming too?
“That was your mom,” Amy said in awe. “She’s a literal dragon lady.”
“We don’t always get along,” Pyro said. “But she always has our back.”
“Thanks for having my back. Traveling to Draconis is the most amazing trip I could imagine, and I will be able to enjoy it as soon as it’s summer vacation.” She stroked his cheek. “You look terrible. How can you come to my class like this?”
He laughed, and it only hurt like being stabbed by a single assailant rather than hundreds. “I’ll shower first.”
“Maybe you should skip.”
“I’ll be there.”
A male moved in the doorway behind her. Sard Carnelian.
Pyro still had work to do. “As soon as I complete company business.”
She looked worried.
“I’ll be there,” he promised, rising on the cushion.
“I know you will.” She stroked the bandage on his chest carefully, then took a deep breath and turned away. “I’ll see you soon. I hope my class is worth your visit.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amy caught a ride from one of Kyan’s black ops team back to her apartment, grabbed her book bag that was the cause of the whole incident today, and flew on to the campus.
Her heart beat in her throat.
The parking lot was full and the halls brightly lit in the waning daylight. The campus was humming with excitement — the parents, eager to see their children’s accomplishments, and the students thrilled with the special opportunity to show off.
Her final test was just beginning.
She strode down the crowded hallway a few minutes before her demonstration. Some of her reading students had already filed in and were sitting at their desks, showing their reading logs to appropriately pleased parents.
She set her book bag on the chair, checked her appearance in the cabinet mirror — ran quick fingers through her windblown hair — and took a deep breath.
She let it out. She took another deep breath. She let it out.
Amy should be using this time to set up her colors lesson. But she couldn’t get the image of Pyro tied to a chair while Kyan carried him from the shed out of her mind.
No. Pyro was safe. He’d had a hole carved in his chest. But it was fixed now.
She let her breath out slowly and pulled in another deep breath.
He was fine. Joking about it like it was no big deal, even though the amazing skin-stuff they put on him and then covered with a thick, foamy bandage looked far too serious.
And he was going to be here, even. To support her.
The way she needed to support him.
Yes. She needed him to know just how important he was to her. Because the dismissive attitude of Sard, her parents, even his own siblings was something he’d had to live with his whole life. Never being taken seriously, he’d lived up — or, in his case, lived down — to their expectations.
Anyone could crush a child. And after enough people did it — parents, friends, teachers — it took dedication to lift that person up again.
That’s why she wanted to make a difference. She wanted to be a teacher who inspired. Empowered. Uplifted.
Made the world a better place.
Not everyone is how they appear.
Corinne caught her as she closed the cabinet. “I’ve been trying to reach you. You left in the middle of a class. You’re going to have to speak with the administration.”
“It was a family emergency,” she said.
“I heard.” Corinne turned and waved at the vice principal standing in the hallway with two board members, then turned back to Amy and lowered her voice. “I told them. They’re going to want to see a note.”
“Will a police report do?” Amy asked, unable to keep the dry tone out of her voice. She’d made an appointment to go to the station the next day. “Otherwise they can watch the nightly news.”
Corinne’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I think they follow police scanners. It was barely over and I saw reporters and cameras.”
The bell chimed for class to begin. Her students straightened in their seats attentively and parents filed to the back of the class, taking the extra chairs provided, or standing, while the administrators and others out in the hall approached the open windows to watch.
“Let’s talk about it after class.” Corinne squeezed her shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Amy turned to her lesson plan book, opened it to the colors material, and rested her fingers on the folder.
Corinne took her place out in the hallway next to Pyro.
He’d been waiting a few minutes. At her notice, he smiled proudly.
Her heart thumped. Not from fear. But because she finally realized what she needed to do.
He’d made it. After everything they’d gone through. The ways he’d misjudged her, the ways she’d misjudged him back. And how, in the end, they were both fighting to be together. Be there for each other. Do the right thing.
A little bit of empathy went a long way.
And so did fearlessness.
She set the color lesson aside and pulled out the file beneath. Turning to the board, she fixed profile photos.
“I was going to do a lesson on figurative language and a color poem. And it was very nice. But,” she turned to face the attentive class, who was extra silent and still, “as some of you already know, I had to leave our afternoon class on a family emergency. My husband went missing. We had to find him and then call the police. He’s okay now. It was a very frightening few hours.”
The room went absolutely still. Even the administrators in the hallway and the ventilation system seemed to drop silent.
“He was kidnapped by a person who feared his differences. But, like all of us, he’s much more than he seems.
”
Pyro watched her with rapt attention.
Amy turned and pointed at the photos on the board behind her. “What are some differences between these people?”
Her students, super determined to be good, raised their hands and called out differences in eye color, skin tone, hair, age, clothing, and the small flags on the lower right of each picture.
She stopped them there. “Great. Those are careful observations. Now, what things are the same? What commonalities unite them?”
That took a little more effort, but soon her students were talking about how the photos were of people from Earth breathing air and were alive.
“It’s easier to see the differences, isn’t it? But, if you think about it, we have many more commonalities.” She tapped the board. “Let’s think about differences again. This will require using your imagination. What could be some invisible differences between these people? These are differences that aren’t obvious from looking, but that we would realize are differences when they told us.”
No one had a guess, so she prompted them. “Do you think their families might be different? One might be a father, and another is a grandmother, and another one might not have any brothers or sisters, and another might have many?”
“Pets,” one of her students said.
“Yes, exactly, pets. Some might have pets and others possibly don’t. What else?”
The students came up with their homes might be different. What they ate. Their likes and dislikes. She wrote the potential invisible differences on the electronic whiteboard and then moved on to her next point.
“Of course these are possible differences, but it’s also possible that they could be invisible similarities, too.” She tapped the food. “Maybe they like the same breakfast cereal or maybe they have pet cats. Right? We don’t know without investigation.”
The class nodded. This was clearly true.
“And here is one invisible similarity that is the reason I selected these particular people: They all, despite their visible and invisible differences, won the Nobel Peace Prize for working hard to bring peace, empathy, and understanding to the world.”
She let that sink in for a minute and then passed out personal narratives from the prize winners about how they had overcome differences. Turning their desks, her students read the narratives, looked up vocabulary, and reported out summaries of the visible and invisible differences each prize winner had overcome.
