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She glances around the room like she just revealed my secret to the world, her mouth slightly parted, her breathing staccato.
“Liz, no one’s here.”
“I swear, Axel, this whole thing’s going to turn my hair grey. I’m not good with secrets.”
“Why would your hair?—”
“Never mind.” She huffs. “Alright, I’m going to try to replicate it. When you want to make a fireball, what do you do?”
I shrug, lift one hand and fling two fingers. A tiny fireball a few times the size of that little mongrel the kids love, Fluff Dog, materializes in front of me and flies through the air, crashing into an end table and incinerating it before I snuff it out.
“Axel, that table was so pretty!” I like how she looks when her cheeks are flushed and she’s agitated. It makes the bond between us thrum.
“There are many nice tables in the world, Liz.”
“But that was our table.”
I like that word, our. She hardly ever uses it in reference to me, but every time she does, I feel warm inside. Like I’m lying on the hot clay ground in front of Canterfall Lake, soaking up the rays of the sun on a slow, lazy day.
Slow and lazy days were rare for me, which made me treasure them more. So I don’t care about the table. I’d blow up a hundred more to make her fuss at me just like that again.
“You try it,” I say.
“No way,” she says. “There’s only one more table, and?—”
“Try to make a fireball.” I roll my eyes. The blessed never do that, but we really should. It’s quite gratifying when you want to show someone that you believe they said something idiotic. “I’ll snuff it out before destroying the other dead tree arranged in a way that you so admire.”
“You’re being annoying today.” But she holds out one hand, and she squints, and she grunts and flips two fingers. Nothing happens, so she shifts, and then she huffs, and she tries the fingers again.
“The fingers weren’t the important part,” I say. “You need to feel the magic build inside of you, and then release it in the direction and with the purpose you desire.”
“That makes no sense,” she says. “There’s no magic inside me, and I can’t release something that isn’t there, much less direct it.”
I grab a vase I know she likes—though for the life of me, I’m not sure why humans want to display dead vegetation all over the place. It’s macabre—and toss it up into the air.
“Axel!” Her eyes fly wide and she flings her hands out in front of her, but nothing happens. The vase shatters when it hits the marble floor. “Why didn’t you stop it?”
The bond’s practically vibrating with her anger.
“That was jade. It cost more than I’ve made in my lifetime.”
“I can’t freeze things mid-air like you did with Gideon,” I say. “I would have done it if I could.”
“But—you—then why did you fling it up like that?”
“I thought you liked the vase,” I say. “So I hoped you’d save it without thinking. What did you think we’d be doing?”
“I thought you’d be a better trainer,” she mutters.
“What does that mean?”
“The summer after kindergarten—the first year of school for humans—every other kid was getting swim lessons. Not me. My mom said that was for spoiled little rich kids. She took us to the neighborhood pool and threw me in.”
I don’t understand. “You didn’t know how to swim?”
She splutters. “I suppose dragons are like dogs—you’re born swimming?”
I shrug. “Not all of us like it, but yes, those of us who are gifted just know how to do it naturally.”
