Page 132 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

The baby released him and scrambled backward, pressing herself against the hay.

Grievance stood. “I think I’ve got it.”

Milo knew what came next. He scooped Marigold up.

“You’d better step back,” Grievance warned.

“Way ahead of you,” Milo said, stepping outside. “But hey, maybe don’t do it in my barn⁠—”

Green light erupted through the yard. Grievance transformed. His human shape dissolved beneath a storm of green magic and swirling frost. Bones shifted. Muscle expanded. The frozen ground trembled beneath Milo’s boots as something enormous took shape before him.

Timber splintered. Beams snapped. The barn gave one terrible groan as its walls buckled outward—then the entire structure burst apart from the inside.

That is the second time that man has destroyed my barn.

Then—

Silence.

Milo slowly lowered the arm shielding his eyes.

“Oh…”

A full-grown Glaceryn stood before him. This was closer to the image he remembered seeing in his studies. But the artist’s depiction did nothing to prepare Milo for the size. The sheer magnitude of him.

Grievance was enormous.

His front legs were the size of tigers, wrapped in thick white fur striped with brilliant ice-blue markings. That fur gradually gave way to overlapping crystalline scales across his massive hindquarters. A long tail swept behind him, lined with translucent spines that glittered like icicles.

And his wings⁠—

His wings were magnificent.

Great feathers unfolded from his back, white at the roots before fading into shimmering blue at the tips. They stretched wide over the wreckage, expansive enough to blot out half the yard.

His reptilian head lifted, and those enormous brown eyes found Milo. The only sign that this was not, indeed, a true Glaceryn. No matter what shape he took, Grievance’s brown, peridot-flecked eyes never changed. His mark as a Chimera. They blinked at him now.

Milo smiled and blew him a kiss.

“You look amazing, babe.”

The enormous dragon visibly preened.

“Show-off. Now make sure you didn’t crush the baby.”

Grievance rolled his eyes and snorted a puff of snowy air. Then he turned toward the wreckage. One small corner of the barn had miraculously survived, and there, still curled in the hay, was the baby Glaceryn.

Grievance lowered his head and sent a gentle puff of frozen air toward her through his massive nostrils.

Milo watched as her ears perked and her little eyes widened.

And then⁠—

Chirp.

Grievance lowered his head in invitation, and the baby scrambled to her feet.

Chirp! Chirp!