Page 60 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

“Hey, it’s fair,” Milo said. “You named Grievance. I named you, and now Grievance can name the Glaceryn. We’ve all named someone.”

And Milo swore that if a spider could roll its eyes, Pip just did.

“Fine.”

“Perfect. Now let me get our poor Esmerelda out of purgatory and feed her dinner.”

“No! Nestmaker bad at discipline!” Pip hissed as Milo walked out the door with a laugh.

“Then you’d better come supervise me.”

Pip made an irritated little noise, but Milo heard the rapid tap-tap-tap of eight legs following him down the hall anyway.

They found Esmerelda where Pip had sent her, curled in the nest of blankets they’d arranged beside the hearth in the study. Only her nose and the tip of one icy-blue ear poked out. At the sight of Milo, her tail immediately began thumping beneath the blankets.

“No,” Pip warned.

The thumping stopped.

Milo pressed his lips together.

Pip is going to be absolutely insufferable about this.

He crouched beside the little dragon and set down her bowl of diced rabbit meat. Esmerelda lifted her head, sniffing eagerly. But before she could bury her face in dinner, she sneezed.

A tiny burst of frost shot across the floor. Ice crystallized over Milo’s toes, and he hissed, rubbing at them quickly to take off the frost and coax some feeling back into his already poorly circulating feet.

From the doorway came Grievance’s deep laugh.

“Not funny,” Milo said without turning around.

“A little funny.”

Pip crawled onto Esmerelda’s head and bapped her once between the ears.

“No freezing Nestmaker.”

Esmerelda gave a pitiful little chirp. Then, apparently deciding her punishment was over, she attacked her dinner.

Milo sat back on his heels and watched her eat. Pip remained perched between her ears like a tiny blue crown, already muttering instructions she almost certainly didn’t understand. Grievance leaned against the doorway behind them, the emerald in his ear catching the firelight whenever he moved.

Three days ago, Milo had been worried Pip would never forgive him for bringing the little dragon home.

Now Pip had an apprentice.

Grievance had named her.

And Milo apparently had another creature in his house who thought listening to him was optional.

He smiled. His family had grown again.

It was louder now. Messy. Colder, that was for certain. And judging by the overturned furniture in the other room, significantly more expensive.

But as Esmerelda finished her dinner and promptly curled around Pip—trapping the spider against her fuzzy chest despite his furious protests—Milo felt something warm settle just behind his solar plexus.

Pumpkin Hollow had given him many things he’d never expected.

A home.