Jax grunted,“Let’s not keep the audience waiting.”
Adalinda nodded, her gaze fixing on Flint.“You go first, little one.”
Flint didn’t hesitate. He shifted to human in mid-stride, a messy, graceless tumble that landed him in a heap at the threshold. He picked himself up, brushed off the seat of his pants, and shot me a look that said he was ready. He stepped through the portal and vanished.
Jax and I followed, shifting as we walked. The transition was easier than it had ever been, one second dragon, the next just skin and muscle, and the familiar awkwardness of human gait. I reached for Jax’s hand, squeezed it once, then let go as the two of us crossed together.
On the other side, the world was brutally mundane. Our backyard was exactly as we’d left it. At the edge of the patio, Izora was waiting, arms folded, her expression carved from something harder than stone.
She was dressed in a charcoal suit with a lapel pin shaped like a tiny skull. Her hair was wound up in an elaborate braid. Ather feet, Courage sat in a tiny, studded leather jacket, looking less like a chihuahua and more like the world’s least-convincing Hell’s Angel.
“Is this what passes for punctual among dragons?” Izora called, her voice bright enough to cut granite.
“Is this what passes for a welcome home?” I shot back, but there was no heat in it.
She ignored me, focusing on Flint. “Welcome, little prince,” she said, dropping to one knee. “Did you bring me a souvenir?”
Flint looked at his hands, clearly at a loss, then held up a stick of what looked like petrified licorice. It was a dragon candy he absolutely hated.
Izora took it, bit off the end, chewed thoughtfully, then said, “That’s revolting. I love it.”
She stood, dusted her knees, and turned to me. “You forgot these.” She produced, with a flourish, both dragon daggers, which she held between two fingers like a pair of surgical instruments. She handed one to me, the other to Jax.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or strangle her, so I compromised by sheathing the dagger at my belt.
At that moment, the portal shimmered again, and Solenne and Corvus shot through in perfect formation. They were massive, even by dragon standards, and their combined arrival sent a shockwave through the air that knocked over a plastic flamingo and set off every car alarm within two blocks.
Then they disappeared.
Not, like, “stepped out of sight” Disappeared. One second, they were there, blotting out the sun, the next, they were just… gone. I looked at Jax. He looked at me.
“Are we dead?” I asked. “Did we die, and nobody told us?”
Jax shook his head, but before he could answer, I heard Corvus’s voice, crisp and unamused, directly in my skull. “We are cloaked. It is standard procedure.”
Solenne added, her tone amused, “There is no need to alarm the populace. Unless you wish to deal with a local militia.”
I blinked, and in that half-second, two enormous depressions appeared in the grass, each one the size of a minivan. Then, as if emerging from heat haze, the outlines of both dragons flickered into being, their scales refracting the morning sunlight in a way that made them look both hyperreal and impossible.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said, my hand pressed to my heart.
Solenne laughed, a low, rolling sound that vibrated in my teeth. “Would you prefer we flew above the city in full view?”
Jax snorted. “Might be worth it just for the headlines.”
Courage, apparently unphased by the sudden materialization of two sky-lords in the backyard, barked once, then did an elaborate circle around Corvus’s foreclaw before cocking his leg and peeing directly on the scales. Corvus looked down, nonplussed.
We waited for the rest of the portal party to arrive. The court dragons filtered through one by one, each more polite and ceremonial than the last. The entire exchange took less than fifteen minutes, but by the end of it, our backyard looked like a parade had come and gone in the space of a heartbeat.
At the last, Adalinda herself stepped through. She didn’t linger. Instead, she turned to Jax, to me, and to Flint, and gave a single, solemn nod.
Her mind-voice was a benediction.“If you need me, you know how to call.”
Then she looked at Flint, her gaze softening.“And you, little one. Never forget what you are.”
Flint grinned. “I won’t. I promise.”
Adalinda smiled, then jumped back through the portal. The portal hung, a faintly-glimmering circle in the morning light. Jax and I stood on one side, Adalinda, already halfway back to Ayrathys, on the other. Solenne and Corvus stood just behind us, their outlines flickering as their cloaking kicked in and out.
