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Inside the small space, he was suddenly lost for words. Just him and Min, her sweet perfume and her soft human body so close was turning his brain to mush.
They stood in what felt like agonizingly awkward silence, watching the elevator display signaling the passing floors.
“You’ll find I don’t have the same love of ostentatious bling as my mother.”
As the elevator doors finally swished open, they were confronted with his bejeweled antique dragon egg.
“Apart from that,” he muttered.
“Oh,” she said, stepping out and examining it. “It’s so beautiful.” He watched her fingers flutter above it.
“You can touch it.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” Reverently she smoothed her fingers over the surface. “It looks really old.”
“It is. Rumor has it, it was brought from a far kingdom by one of our first. That it was stolen by a human and finally retrieved about a hundred years ago?—”
She cocked her head, gazing at him. “Why was it stolen?”
“I guess when the trust was broken between dragons and humans.”
She held his gaze, her dark eyes serious behind her glasses. “I have a book that alludes to that.”
“Really? I’m surprised you found a book on dragons at all.”
“They are certainly rare,” she agreed. “My father was always trying to locate more books on dragonology for the shop, but there are hardly any around.”
“That’s because they were burned.”
She blinked at him owlishly behind her lenses. “Sorry, w-what?”
“It’s long been said that most of our books were burned to avoid humans stealing our magic. When the balance tipped from a natural symbiosis to something… shall we say, more toxic, around the time that our shifting powers weakened.”
“Did humans have anything to do with that, too?”
He shrugged. “No one is exactly sure. It could just be coincidental.” She clearly wanted to know more, but he wasn’t prepared to go into details about the strange physical characteristics that arose from dragons’ inability to shift, some of which would probably be alarming to a human female.
He drew his wings close to his shoulders. “This probably isn’t the time or place for me to give you a lesson on dragons. Let me show you around instead.”
She looked a little disappointed, he thought. Was she really that interested or just being polite?
As he led her around the modern open-plan living area, he couldn’t help feeling proud. His apartment took up the whole floor on the north side of the house, with views over the formal gardens and past that, the rooftops and high rises of The Hole In The Wall District. He’d thoroughly modernized the space, taking out the fancy cornices and ornate chandeliers, and put in modern glass sliding doors that showcased views of the city perfectly. The whole apartment was decorated with soft, muted colors, with just a few brighter accents in pictures and cushions. No bling, which made his mother shudder on the few occasions she came up here. He had finally succumbed to her insistence that “No dragon home would be complete without chandeliers,” and had purchased—at great expense—a simple modern chandelier from over the mountain ranges for the main living room.
“It’s very tasteful. and it has a calming energy,” Min observed.
“That was my intention,” he said, feeling chuffed that she approved of his taste.
He hesitated, then decided to lead her down the corridor and open the door to his music room. Just entering it made a warm glow bracket his heart. The honey-colored wood floorboards and exotic rugs. The dark red velvet curtains at the window, the music chest, the shelves adorned with old instruments he’d collected from the early days of Motham City, when monsters made music as they built the city together.
He glanced sideways at her to see her mouth open in a little gasp of pleasure. Watched the wonderment chase across her features. Min had so many fleeting expressions he wished he could just stare at her. Drink her in.
What was it about this human that fascinated him so much?
She glanced at him, and he said softly, “Go in, if you like.” She did, and he followed her, as she went over to the piano and touched the keys. “Do you play the piano?”
She shook her head. “No. I would have loved to, but it was too far to go to Tween to take lessons. And when I was a kid, you wouldn’t go into Motham for lessons, not as a human.” She smiled ruefully. “I taught myself the recorder. Badly. In the end I decided to stop torturing Dad.”
