“Head down. No eye contact. Slow breaths,” I instruct.
“Okay.” His reply tickles the shell of my ear. His heart races, pounding against my chest.
“Try not to be scared.” I don’t mention that Nity will be able to smell it.
“I’m not scared.”
Sure.
Behind us Nity bows her head to our level to get a good look at us. It’s odd for me too, old girl, I want to tell her. When Nity nudges my back, I pull away from James and rub her nose. She relaxes. Scales shift downward and against her skin. More importantly they return to midnight black.
“Nity, this is James.”
I grab James’s hand. He’s smart enough to offer a smooth palm to her. When Nity presses her nose against his fingers, the atmosphere seems to sigh in relief. The rain not pounding the cliffs as hard. A six-ton dragon letting down her guard.
“And James. This is Nity.”
He watches Nity tuck herself back to the main part of her nest, in the corner where darkness and heaps of golden scales coincide.
“Nice to meet you,” James says, voice still sliced in confused wonderment. “Walsh, that’s really a—” His eyes widen as he looks past Nity to what she guards. “Are thosehereggs?”
I glance back at the three eggs cushioned in hay, sparkling gold. One trembles again, violently.
“They are. Since you’re here the least you can do is help.”
“Help?” James’s gaze drops from Nity’s teeth and talons back to those vibrating eggs. “They’re hatching,” he says, his voice reverent.
“Not quite.” I hurry toward the nest. “They are struggling.”
Nity roars in distress at our approach. This time it reads more as a plea and less a warning.
“Oh my god. The storm. Your dad, he—”
“My dad isn’t coming. It’s only me.” I wait a half beat before conceding to the real truth. “Only us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEENWHEN AN ALLOY IS BORN
JAMES
As I near two-foot-tall eggs, I try to process this is real. That I didn’t fall off Hort, bump my head, and imagine an extinct species.
Night has properly fallen and Feylings clinging to stalactites above us twinkle to life, brimming the cave in blue, yellow, and pink light. It’s dim, but as I fully enter the cave the light bathes Nity and the eggs in a fluorescent glow. The gold scales glimmer even brighter.
Behind them, every inch of the ground lays gilded. Piles of golden scales sit in heaps big enough to swim in. I’ve seen pregnancy shedding before, stacks of silver professionals divide to ensure the hatchlings have their fair share to eat while humans mutually benefit. But maybe we take too much because I’ve never seen metal of any class tumbling from the walls like this. It’s… I’ve entered a treasure trove the likes of which I’ve only read about in old stories. Just a pound of this and someone could buy out my father’s entire estate. All of it and one would become the richest person in the world,billionsof sterlings.
Farren kneels next to the shaking egg and rubs it. The outer shell remains pristine, the dragon not breaking through like they should.
“Something is wrong with this one.” Farren glances at me as I sit across from her. “When I came in, Nity was nudging this egg and then it started shaking. I’m worried with the storm the sudden shift in temperature could be distressing it, but I don’t—”
To my right, the next egg over cracks and we swivel. A nose pokes through the broken golden shell. The egg tooth, the one part of a baby dragon that is always coated in metal at hatching, shimmers bright gold. The hatchling’s head pops out and they coo. Nity bends down, cooing back in welcome.
Farren gasps beside me. “I can’t believe I’m finally seeing this.”
“Youcan’t believe?” I already have a thousand questions. All of them must wait.
She turns to me. “Maybe this one just needs to know it’s time.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
