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Five
Mahon insisted on finishing his tea and sitting for a hot minute while I got to bask in the scorching mortification.
“Isn’t my relationship… private?” I asked as we walked back to the roost. I was supposed to go talk to Petrarchan, but my cage had been throughly rattled, and the last thing I wanted was for Mayriel or her Wyrm-to-be consort seeing me less than the master of my chaos magic.
Mayriel wasclearlygoing to find out about the crater and damaged fans, and would probably speculate I’d gone home to lick my wounds. But if I showed up with wounds that needed licking, she’dknowand draw conclusions fromthat.
Mahon said, “The same way your knowledge of and concern for my health is private. You object to me giving the stone drake a smack with my tail that his presence is expected and wanted?”
“You’re leaning a bit hard into thedadenergy.”
“I am nearly a thousand years old. I became a father when I was four hundred and thirty-eight. I have been a father longer than I havenotbeen a father. It is part of my order. You have been spending too much time in the company of that bachelor, Hekon.”
“Not a bachelor much longer,” I murmured.
“He hasn’t been a true bachelor drake for the past three hundred years. I am glad to see he has finally decided what side of the proverbial slit he cares to be on.”
“There’s a hell of a double entendre in there, Mahon.”
“I know.”
I laughed so hard I almost got hiccups.
Fortunately, I had Lemurian shade to stifle any good feelings I might have had.
The Lemurian networks were full of chatter about my “stains.” I could practically hear the whispers from my living room while dragons compared the most minute notes about yes, they’d seen the three of us coming into West. Absolutely no one was dumb enough to comment on Mahon’s appearance, beyond Mahon had been present, and nobody was going to pay any attention to Keon, so I got lit up bright enough to land the space shuttle.
The newest hashtag was#StainedDress, which caught on fast, because of course it did. This time it took me about an hour to figure out what the fuck a stained dress (because my dress had only gotten slightly sooty and singed by virtue of proximity, thank you) had to do with anything. Turned out to be yet another Pandora reference, because the dragons just couldnotstop with my name and all. It was either Norse mythology references, because of Hel, the daughter of Loki who got stuck looking after the afterlife where everyone not awesome enough to go to Valhalla ended up, or Greek mythology references, because obviously: Helen of Troy.
According to the myth, Pandora had been fashioned by Hephaestus to punish humanity because Prometheus had stolen fire, and a bunch of the other gods gave Pandora an assortment of gifts. According to the poet Hesiod in hisWorks & Days, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, had given Pandora her clothes.
It wasn’t even aburn.
It was total, absolute, unmitigated space dragonsavagery.
And it was all hitting a little too close to home.
Auryn arrived backat the roost first, and sooner than I expected.
“What are you doing back?” I uncrossed my legs from my semi-numb tangle. I’d been focused so long on my assortment trying to learn the basic colors that my ass had gone numb.
He immediately came over, took my tablets, and set them aside. He studied my hands, then my feet. “I felt something happen. I couldn’t get away sooner, and A’ka was of the opinion if we were not summoned, the situation was under control. I know you went to the fields to train, and I was notthereif you needed—”
“I’m fine.” Shaken, charred, and getting straight savaged on social media, but in one piece.
His brow knit together. His jade-disc eyes seemed to have miniature cosmic clouds behind them, illuminated by distant stars “What happened?”
“I got stuck in dragon form.” His touch felt beautiful. All summer sunlight and warm honey pouring over me and through me, like it flowed through the lattice pattern seared into my skin and dripped into the magical senses below.
“Stuck?” His grip tightened a degree.
“Stuck. Like a car in neutral. In dragon form, hit the gas, couldn’t go back. So I fell.”
“That’s an unusual permutation. Normally, it’s partial and reverting to the primary form is easier. The magic wants to go back to its established order.”
Did I even need to say it?Chaos. “I managed it on the second try. But I sort of... cratered the field on the first attempt. Scorched Keon and Mahon too.” I pursed my lips and grimaced.#StainedDress.
“Not badly enough I saw them at the clinic, so nothing to worry about. How doyoufeel?”
