“You were headmaster when we met back then, when I was an elf. I remember that,” Kian said, closing his eyes with his eyebrows furrowing in concentration. “I remember all sorts of magic you could do. I remember us flying to Aefraya, and...” His eyes opened at that, and he met Adrissu’s gaze with his brows furrowed and his mouth pressed into a tight line. “I remember a dragon. You flew as a dragon. But you didn’t just... transform into one. Youwereone.”
Adrissu let out a long breath.
“That is correct,” he affirmed, watching a multitude of expressions cross Kian’s face as he spoke. “I am one. That is why I am still here the same as ever, even after Braern died of old age at over two hundred years old. I had... hoped you might remember that. Having to explain it all over again would have been... difficult. Ruan struggled with it for a long time, at first. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Volkmar and regretted not doing so immensely, if you remember how that turned out at all. Braern remembered, so I’m glad you did too.”
“I think I’m remembering more each time,” Kian interrupted, looking down into his lap. “Is that normal? Braern remembered, but the others didn’t?”
“I don’t know what is normal in this case,” Adrissu confessed, and Kian sighed. “To my knowledge, no other humans have been bound in this way to an immortal creature such as myself. Not many dragons have done it either, but from the accounts I have read, fated pairs will typically retain most, if not all, of their memories if they are slain and reborn. They gain their memories back slowly through adolescence, but by the time they are old enough to leave their parents, all memory of their past life has been restored.”
“I guess it was sort of like that for me,” Kian said, still looking into his lap. He remained silent for a moment, and Adrissu watched him. Mentioning his nature as a dragon had almost been an afterthought to Kian, which surprised him—though, he supposed, Braern had remembered to an extent and adapted to the idea rather quickly as well. “I don’t know how old I was when I started remembering things. I think I thought they were dreams at first. But I was pretty young. I remember...” He flushed, looking away as if embarrassed. Adrissu remained silent and gestured for him to continue; after a moment, Kian sighed and spoke again. “I was a little kid, and I asked my mom something like whosheused to be. And when she asked me to explain, and I told her I had these memories, she said they were just dreams, and I had an overactive imagination. So I didn’t think much of it until I realized there was... I don’t know. Continuity between them, I guess? And I tried to write out everything I remembered—to try and piece it all together—but my brothers teased me so much about it that I stopped.”
“They never believed you,” Adrissu said softly, and Kian laughed.
“No, never. None of them did. So no need to be concerned that any of them really suspect there’s a dragon living under Polimnos.” Despite his chipper tone, Kian’s smile faltered, and he glanced away with an uncomfortable expression.
“I’m sorry no one took you seriously,” Adrissu replied.
“No, it’s better that way. What if they did? What would they have done? Them taking me at face value could have ruined you, ruined everything.” Kian gestured between them as he spoke, then sighed. “Though I guess they could have been nicer about it. My oldest brother took everything I wrote and showed his friends, and everyone our age in the village made fun of me for years, even though I never talked about it with anyone. It was just... one more thing that made me different.”
“Where is your family now?” Adrissu asked, hoping the disdain in his voice wasn’t as obvious to Kian as it was to him.
“My parents run a farm out in Colnos,” Kian said, shrugging. “I’m the youngest, so... My oldest brother still lives in Colnos with his wife. Our middle brother moved out to Vlissingstadt a while ago. I don’t really keep up with them. Not even my parents write to me, so... But it doesn’t really matter. I don’t need them or their help. I’ve been fine on my own.”
“You aren’t alone,” Adrissu said quickly, though he winced as soon as the words left his lips. Kian obviously valued his independence; such a statement, meant to be reassuring, nevertheless would likely only frustrate him. “Rather, I mean... I want to help you. I’m on your side now.”
Kian peered at him with an indiscernible expression for a long moment, then smirked.
“Yeah,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, I know.”
Adrissu was a man of restraint, or at least he liked to think so. He was rarely rash or impulsive, but being alone with Kian in his tower was pushing him to the absolute limits of his self control. It did not matter that Kian was alreadyhis, Adrissu told himself over and over, as the smaller human sat quietly in a chair and pored over a sheaf of papers, notes from his lecture on the transmutation ritual. First and foremost, he was a student. That was all anyone else would see if he were to give even the smallest reason for someone to suspect that something untoward was happening between them. He had already promised himself—and Kian—that there would be nothing physical between them until after he was no longer a student. That was the smart thing to do, therightthing to do, but every animal instinct that lurked just beneath Adrissu’s consciousness was hyper-fixated on his mate’s presence in his lair. He could focus on nothing but the visage of his mate sitting in the sunlight, the sweet scent of him filling the room. He knew he had to keep his distance, but that only made him want to draw closer.
Kian frowned, glancing up at him. “I don’t understand this,” he said, pointing to the page, but then his expression faltered. “Were you just staring at me the whole time?”
Adrissu glanced away, feeling his face become warm. It was not often that he was embarrassed, but the evidence of his obvious weakness felt shameful. “I... Yes. My apologies.”
For a beat of silence, Kian only stared at him, then he laughed. “Gods, that would be unsettling if you were a stranger. Well, are you going to help me study or just look at me all afternoon?”
“What did you need help with?” Adrissu asked, ignoring the human’s teasing tone as he moved to read over Kian’s shoulder.
“I don’t recognize these runes at all,” Kian said, lightly touching the paper where the arcane script was laid out in a careful circle. “Are they just old? They don’t look like anything used today.”
“Partly, yes,” Adrissu explained, leaning over him. This close, he could smell Kian with every inhale, a clean herbal scent with a touch of something floral, like lavender and sage. If he leaned a little further down, he could bury his face in the human’s soft red hair. He kept his feet planted, pulling away slightly with his hands clasped firmly behind his back. “They are elven runes, quite old and unrefined. Starck, the mage who devised this ritual—or at least as much of the ritual as I can piece together—used elven runes because he planned to turn himself into an elf.”
“Right,” Kian said, nodding slowly with his eyes still locked onto the paper in his lap. “That makes sense. But his ritual didn’t work.”
“No,” Adrissu agreed. “At the time, runes with very general, broad meanings were commonplace. They were thought of as catch-alls, to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. More general runes have their place, of course, but I think it is obvious now that a delicate procedure such as this would benefit from very specific runic meanings. There should be no room for interpretation; the runes should describe exactly what is desired.”
“I see,” Kian murmured, shuffling through the papers until he pulled out one with his own handwriting, notes he had taken from those Adrissu had given him. He made a note—specific runes—then glanced up at Adrissu with a grin that was nearly a smirk. “See? I didn’t want to fuck up your notes.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” Adrissu chuckled, forcing himself to look away from Kian’s smiling face. “I would not mind, though. I gave those to you, for you to keep.”
“Yeah, well,” Kian shrugged and turned his attention back to the ream of notes. “It helps me remember things when I write them down, anyway.”
The change in him was like night and day, Adrissu thought as he settled back at his desk. Kian had openly hated him the first time they met, and he had maintained an obvious hostility long after that. Yet it had only taken a single lecture, a display of his intelligence and investment in Kian’s interests, for that hate to instantly transform to love, or something close to it. Was the human really so fickle, or had his disdain for Adrissu been exaggerated to disguise the pull of fate? Adrissu suspected the latter, though some elven poets claimed the difference between love and hate was thinner than a razor’s edge. He probably still had some volumes of elven poetry in his study, lingering artifacts of Braern’s collection.
The thought of Braern sent his mind careening back through time, comparing his mate through each of his lives in turn. They were all different, yet the core of them was the same: how damned stubborn they all were. He had always thought Ruan’s stubbornness exceeded that of the others by far; but now, considering Kian and how doggedly he pursued his goals, the student very well may have wrested the title away from his past self. It reminded him very much of Ruan—as did the distance he struggled to maintain between them—the obvious attraction they each harbored toward each other, yet begrudgingly refused to indulge.
It was comforting, in a way, to have a mate so similar to Ruan again. Adrissu had sometimes feared his mate might become someone he did not recognize someday, might grow so far from the way Ruan had been that there would be nothing linking them together. But human souls were not so malleable, it seemed, and Kian was a perfect example: that even if it were reborn into a female body, the soul stubbornly insisted on its maleness. He should not have doubted.
