Chapter 26
Moerrven
“So, shorts,” Pip was saying, as he walked ahead of us with Sky. “Why aren’t you wearing yours?”
“I mean, it’s a little chilly, isn’t it?” Sky asked. “I know it’s summer, but we’re in the mountains!”
Whatever Pip said next was lost to the wind, and I glanced at my walking companion, a situation neither of us had chosen. It had turned out Queen Delsynarea hadn’t completely let me down. She’d sent her most legendary warrior, Aeldryc the Ironstorm, and his Grey Guard.
Still wouldn’t have minded a few more regiments on the rescue mission, but at least she’d sent people with powerful magic. And right now the most feared iron elemental in the land had his eyes fixed on Pip’s bottom, with a fond, far-off expression on his face.
“So,” I said. “About the dragons.”
Aeldryc glanced my way and gave a curt nod. “You’re sure it was Vyranthos? We’ve been searching for him for the better part of a decade, to request his aid in finding Delsynarea’s husband.”
“He introduced himself by his human name, Oallian. That is Vyranthos, no?”
“And your boy just talked his way out of captivity?”
I smiled fondly at Sky. “I’m quite certain he could talk his way out of anything.”
“Pip said that. I’m glad he is safe, but wish I had had a chance to talk to Vyranthos.”
As if we’d summoned the dragon just by speaking his name, a shadow passed overhead, the same as it had that day with Sky. My heartbeat sped up as we both looked up. The dragon was gliding slowly down toward a meadow at the edge of town. Pip and Sky squealed with excitement and took off running.
“You don’t run toward the dragon, Pip!” Aeldryc called.
Pip ignored him, yelling back, “I’m told this is a hot dragon though!”
“That human has no sense of self-preservation,” Aeldryc muttered, and we both sprinted after them, breathing hard by the time we reached the meadow, where Sky was already handing the naked Oallian a bundle of clothing.
“Are those my clothes?” I asked.
“Yep! And your sisters sent us off with a picnic, too.”
“You expected him?” Aeldryc asked, frowning.
“Of course. We agreed on a meetup. The plan is to become besties.”
Oallian, who was currently struggling to find the head hole for his shirt, made a muffled sound, then popped his head through. “What’s a bestie?”
“Best friend!” Sky said, jumping and clapping.
“Before anything else,” Aeldryc said, “you cannot keep landing at the edge of a town in full dragon form. Next time, set down beyond the ridge and walk in.”
Oallian pulled the shirt the rest of the way down and huffed. “This town is in my territory, according to the treaty.”
“…The treaty.” Aeldryc looked like a man rapidly revising several reports. “Fine. For this meeting. But be more careful. Every farmer you startle makes the Queen’s decree harder to argue for.”
Pip sighed dreamily. “Imagine, being best friends with a dragon. We can fuck him, ride him everywhere, take vacations with him as transportation.”
Oallian was swimming in my shirt, and the trousers were about the right length, but the fit made it quite clear that my ass was very large as compared to a dragon’s.
“Pip,” Aeldryc admonished.
Pip tilted his head, staring down at the curve of Oallian’s ass as the dragon tried to figure out how the ties on my trousers worked.
“No,” said Aeldryc.
“I didn’t even finish—”
“We are not acquiring a dragon, husband. He is not a pet.”
“I might like to be a pet,” Oallian said. “But only to someone who can reach me. Like Sky. Except not Sky, of course, since Sky loves Moerrven. Unless you guys are open to adding more?”
Pip raised his hand. “We add more sometimes.”
The Lord High Commander of the Grey Guard turned bright pink, blew out a breath and paced to the side of the field, where he stood for a good minute, facing away from us.
“It’s true,” Pip whispered. “We mostly fuck other couples. Not asking you guys because I know Sky’s possessive as fuck.”
I glanced at Aeldryc. “Is he okay?”
“Probably just horny,” Pip said, laying out a picnic blanket. “Oallian is really pretty.”
“What do you mean, Sky can reach you?” I asked.
“My dragon is powerful and somewhat all-consuming. But sometimes, with the support of a certain kind of magic, an empathy of sorts, I can use the strength of a person to help push myself to the forefront.”
Sky beamed at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking: that he had a magical power. And I couldn’t very well argue it, because he’d bewitched me, too.
After a moment, Aeldryc returned and sat next to Pip, one hand on Pip’s bare knee.
“So,” Sky said, opening the big bag Dagmarra had pressed on us. “Lunch, courtesy of the sisters, and we’re going to figure out what the next step is. Oallian, why don’t you start?”
Oallian blinked. “Start? With what?”
“You’re the oldest one here. Have you heard of portals between worlds? The Liminal Order? Have you ever met someone who’d traveled here like Pip and me?”
Oallian’s eyes darted around. “Um.” He took a quick bite of his bread and chewed.
“Oallian, you’re, like, a thousand years old! Surely you’ve heard tales.”
The dragon went a little blurry around the edges, his fire leaking out of him, wisps of smoke curling up from his sleeves.
“Is my shirt on FIRE?” I asked, and Oallian batted at the flames, while Sky sighed and reached out, laying a soothing hand across the dragon’s forehead, and he went calm, closing his eyes.
“Is he not hot to the touch?” I asked.
Sky chuckled. “A little. Mostly only where he’s smoking.”
“Shit, Sky,” Pip said. “You have a magical power. Iconic.”
“I know, right?” Sky replied, beaming.
“Moving on,” Aeldryc said, back to being in full, intimidating Lord High Commander Mode.
“The facts remain as we discussed them last night at dinner. It seems we need to send an envoy to Liminia to try and sort everything out. At the same time, we need to make sure no one else is dropping through this portal and being kidnapped by highwaymen. Or worse. And we need a way back through.”
Sky chewed on his thumbnail. “I’m worried my family is freaking out. I’ve been gone so long.”
I cleared my throat. “I worked out the arithmetic last night. Based on arrival times and departure times, my estimate is that for every two days that pass in Qoksmere, only about an hour passes in San Jose. This is only an approximation, but I believe it’s only been about a day in San Jose since Pip and Sky disappeared. ”
Sky blinked at me. “Are you serious? I haven’t been missing for weeks?”
“Less than a day. Your mother has not called the police. She probably just thinks you’ve been busy with Club Vortex opening.” I watched him.
“So we have time,” Sky said, hushed. And then his eyes went bright and wet and he kissed me on the cheek.
He laughed, a short cracked thing, and put his hand over his mouth.
“I mean, they’ll find out soon, my older brother is my roommate.
But Connor’s probably not even worried yet, he sleeps till noon, he won’t notice I’m not in the apartment till he runs out of clean mugs—and even if he does notice, he usually covers for me with Ma for a few days, in case I met the love of my life.
” He giggled and cast me a shy glance. “Which I have.”
“Okay, so they will worry when a few days pass in San Jose,” I said. “But you have time, Sky. More than it feels like.”
“But we can’t—” He glanced at Oallian, who was trying very hard not to blur around the edges again, and interrupted himself to calm the dragon, reaching out and brushing Oallian’s hair out of his eyes. “Shh. It’s okay, sweetheart.”
“Are you leaving?” Oallian asked. “I just got myself back. And you’re talking about Liminia.”
“They’re the only ones with information,” Sky said gently. “Maybe you could fly by and visit.”
“Okay, but logistics.” Sky scrubbed his face and came back to himself, and he picked the plan up and started turning it over, fast, the way he did.
“Liminia’s across the water, right? That’s a ship, that’s days at sea, that’s me feeling seasick while you soothe me and read me books, which, fine, sounds romantic actually, but what do we do if people are still coming through the portal?
We don’t even know exactly where it is.”
“I will guard it.”
We all looked at Oallian.
He had gone still in his ruined shirt. “I fly,” he said, with the patience of a creature explaining water to fish. “Do you know where the portal is?”
Aeldryc glanced at Pip and sighed. “Not exactly, because Pip didn’t notice any landmarks.”
“In my defense, all trees look the same.”
“But we know the general area. It’s in Clovermere, about a half day’s ride from Feravael.”
“General area is all I need,” Oallian said.
Sky was staring at Oallian, and then a smile spread across his face. “Oallian, you cannot fuck every person who accidentally comes through the portal.”
“I only search for someone who can reach me. Who has your magic. Everyone else goes to the palace.”
“And if someone can reach you?” Aeldryc said.
Oallian beamed. “If someone can reach me, I keep him.”
“No. Everyone goes to the palace,” Aeldryc said firmly.
“Every single one of them, or this is a non-starter. Dragons are only allowed to be in dragon form in the high mountains unless the Queen has issued a decree. You want that decree? You bring every goddamn twink that appears through the portal to the palace.”
“I do not know this word, twink,” I admitted.
“A title among Pip’s people,” Aeldryc said, with the gravity of a man citing law. “It denotes a young man of rare quality and consequence. He explained it to the entire court.”
Beside his husband, Pip beamed like a man whose life’s work was complete.
“Also, as a note, you can’t just keep people without their consent,” Pip added.
“Fine,” the dragon huffed, looking rather grumpy about it. “But if I find the person, I can woo them?”
Aeldryc narrowed his eyes.
“Oh, come on, honey, wooing? That’s so sweet!” Pip said, leaning in and rubbing his husband’s arm.
“Wooing is acceptable,” the Lord High Commander of the Grey Guard said with a nod. And the dragon sitting next to him broke out in a huge smile.
Oallian straightened. “I will be a very good portal guard. I am large, I am frightening.”
“So that’s our plan?” I asked. “The envoy? Can the envoy be Sky and I?”
Aeldryc frowned, then nodded. “Good idea. It’s a risk for it to be anyone under the Queen’s direct command. You will travel as tourists. The Queen will fund the voyage, though.”
“Can we also fund a voyage that includes my cat?” I asked. “Poppy is tired of waiting for us in inn rooms.”
“She could have come today,” Sky said.
I leaned in and whispered, “Not with dragons about.”
Oallian vibrated a little, then leaned forward for another piece of cheese and it melted in his hand. Sky reached out and did his soothing magic thing again, as the singed sleeves of Oallian’s shirt continued to smoke.
“Perhaps you should try meditation or something,” Pip said cheerfully. “Sky knows tai chi!”
Sky looked at Oallian, whose sleeves were still leaking smoke, and got to his feet. “Actually, yeah. Up, buddy. Stand like me.”
Oallian rose and copied Sky’s stance the way he did everything in this body, with total commitment and slight confusion, his knees bent twice as deep as necessary.
“Softer. You’re not lifting a cow. Now follow my hands, and breathe when I breathe.” Sky turned his palm over with aching slowness, and the dragon followed, and by the third shape the smoke had thinned to nothing.
“It’s working,” Oallian said, delighted, and one of his sleeves promptly reignited.
“Nope. No talking, just breathe.” Sky pressed his lips together against a laugh. “We’ll work on it.”
“Show me the other one,” Oallian said. “The faster one. You did it in the field above the gorge, before I took you.”
Sky’s mouth fell open. “You were watching me?”
“You were the most interesting thing in the valley,” the dragon said, as though that were an ordinary thing to admit.
Sky beamed at me, and then he was off across the grass, coming back with a long straight pole, the weathered handle of somebody’s lost rake. He weighed it in both hands and gave it an experimental spin.
The staff blurred. It whistled over his head, snapped flat along his spine, and wheeled around his body in figures that turned the air into something he was carving.
He drove through it low and fast, the handle cracking against the ground on the turns, and finished with the pole tucked under one arm, both feet planted, breathing hard and grinning at all of us.
The meadow erupted. Pip was on his feet screaming. Aeldryc had stopped chewing. Oallian applauded, and sparks leapt off his palms with every clap.
“Teach me that one,” the dragon said.
“Breathing first,” Sky said, tossing the rake handle into the grass. “Then staffs.”
He was going to end up in one of my novels exactly like this: a dancer from another world, banking a dragon’s fire with his grandfather’s slowest art, then setting the meadow alight with the fastest.