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“Go,” she said, glancing at the stairs. “Keon and Auryn will be here soon.”
“I’m sorry,”Auryn told me the instant he arrived, dropping our bags on the floor by the doorway. “I’m so sorry.”
“Aren’tyousorry?” I asked, voice cracking. I hadn’t cried yet, and Iwasn’tgoing to cry.
“Of course. But we knew—”
“Don’t tell me what we knew!”
Auryn gathered me close. Akoni tucked himself against my back and made me a sandwich. The pressure steadied my shot nerves.
“Hekon pulled you off the archives, Keon,” I said tearfully.
Keon added himself to the heap, snuggling his head against my shoulder. “He did one last search using new algorithms and pulled everything related to Chaos dragons. He translated it and passed it to Dekka. Dekka said she will review and send to me. Hekon has to focus on topside.”
As if my soul couldn’t sink further. Hekon needed to be glued to the twenty-four-hour news cycle twenty-five hours out of twenty-four. He needed to be monitoring government chatter. He needed to be Super Spy Master Hacker Hekon, and he’d be using his topside drakes to help.
I bit my lower lip hard enough it bled while the grief twisted itself through my shoulders and burned patterns up into my skin. “Everything that’s happened. Everything we’ve been through and done and has been lost, andnoneof it has changed anything!”
Auryn ducked forward and with a swipe of his tongue, licked the blood away, then brushed his thumb over my lip, knitting the delicate layers of flesh back together.
Keon moved closer. “Have hope, Helena. It’s not over until it happens.”
Akoni murmured, “Today is today, and today, it hasn’t happened.”
Twenty-One
Lemurian social media was not a happy place. TheHumans Are Cockroachesclubs that normally stayed off in their own corners crawled into the light to saystep on it, and a number of other dragons voiced their agreement. Dragons analyzed and re-analyzed the footage of Maren and every report, rumor, and statement. They reeled upon finding out Jahlim had been the one who had essentially betrayed Lemuria. They openly argued about how to interpret my willingness to stay silent at Akoni’s expense, and a lot of pontificating about howthey’dnever do that to a consort.
As far asnewson Maren—now dubbed “Miss Nessie”—the thing keeping her body front page news was arguments over whoownedit. The fishermen saidtheyowned the body, various government agencies in the UK were trying to claimtheyowned (or had custody) of the body, and some other parties had thrown their hat into the ring. Maritime law was a complex beast I had no understanding of. So Maren’s body was sitting in a very large freezer until the business of who owned the corpse got settled. Even sequencing her DNA had been hit with an injunction and all samples that had already been taken and sent to labs ordered destroyed.
(According to Hekon, sequencing of her DNA was still ongoing from samples taken before the injunction, and the government-owned labs were lying about destroying samples.)
The fishermen who had caught her had saidwhenthey were awarded ownership, they’d be selling the body. Bids in the high millions and low billions were coming in while more people cried that she needed to be studied, not put on display. Then there were the people who didnotwant her studied and animal testing was bad and all.
People were fascinated that dragons had proven to be real, but by and large, it was more of agee, whiz, waddaya knowthan anything else. Children’s television shows had to re-do scripts on dragons, make-believe, imaginations, and all that. Various groups claimed it was all a hoax, various religious groups had their opinion, and so forth. And one enterprising soul had drawn many pictures of a dragon vaguely shaped like Maren doing various professions (bakery chef, shepherding sheep, driving trucks, etc) to speculate on what “Miss Nessie”’s life had been like.
Lemuria found the coloring bookdownright offensive.
“Probably not how Maren thought she’d end up,” I said as I flipped through the pirated copy of the coloring book that had been found on a torrent somewhere. The one of Maren as a flannel-wearing lumber jack was hilarious.“Known asMiss Nessieand beloved by conspiracy theorists and small children all over topside.”
Akoni gave me a sideways look. “I am sure it is not the legacy she hoped to leave. I am not happy, though.”
“Why not?”
“I will never cross paths with her again and will be unable to grind her snout into her failure to dismantle anything. Humanity is taking this far better than I expected. And I would be offended by the coloring book, except I knew the real Maren, so I enjoy her post-humous humiliation.”
Auryn made a noise of agreement.
I gave him a kiss on the cheek. He nuzzled me in return, then kissed me gently.
Keon stepped into the flat, tablets tucked three deep into his grip. Akoni inquired, “You bring us something, stone drake?”
“The pleasure of my company?” Keon retorted.
“You seem to have come in with purpose, but if that purpose was merely delivering your carcass, I’m sure she will be pleased.”
I untangled myself from Akoni and went to greet Keon, suffering a swat on the ass from Auryn as I stepped over his feet. Keon smiled and slid his free arm around me as I pressed against his side. Softly, he said, “You don’t get tired of greeting us as we come in?”
